I’m just saying…
Clap your hands and dance The Collapse. One time, two times.
Smack dap in the dead of summer and I’m trying to get the reigns on my sanity, while many around me have experienced loss and death. What’s the deal? Is it the War Times™ we’re living in infecting us like an ebola outbreak? Like Dennis Brown famously sang, “I don’t want to be no general, to end up in a burial.”
Yet still I’ve been riding the 21 Hayes Street bus relentlessly: downtown, uptown, like uptown top rankin’: In a mi black Dickies jacket and ‘ting… The MUNI bus fast pass is my communion wafer, a quick ride to fleet freedom whenever/wherever.
If you’ve had heavy financial losses recently, I’m feeling your hurt. I went out on a limb (pun intended) for a self-produced club night called Rare Bird and had the branch sawed off. No soft landings when you’re dealing with dollars and sense. In the end, it’s all about flipping your artistic poverty however you can to pursue some satisfaction and contribute to the music conversation.
Someone sing me a song of San Francisco. Cause its July and you know the fog here is thick once again. I hear the globe is feeling our hyphy movement, but the kids at the community center I work at say the fad is over already, or will be by summer’s end. With over a hundred dead homies in SF from gun violence this year, ain’t nobody tryin’ to go dumb nomore.
And another thought: our urban rituals are real simple and obvious nowawdays. Gone are the days of taking weeks to prepare something permanent, organic and nurturing for the community (street fairs don’t count). Our lives come and go quicker than cups of coffee. We’re feasting more than fasting, while our streets are littered with homeless and hungry. (I know I sound pretentious).
Like a lot of folks I know, I am about to embark in a lot of new directions. Emphatic and dramatic, with scholastic and artistic roads to tranverse in the coming months. I’m looking to avoid the potholes and landmines if possible.
The sounds of this city are coming up through the cracks, in the shadows of millionaire lofts. Do The Collapse. One time, two times.
