Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Bringing something a little extra to our tree with special gift wrapping

2011-12-27T11:05:00.002-05:00

It has been a season of trying to find ways to reclaim my voice. Each time that I write or speak that, it is completely foreign to me - like it is coming out of someone else's mouth. It certainly does not accurately reflect what is going on in my world. For some who know me, the statement will mean that I'm not writing poems anymore. This is not true. I still write poems, and although my voice has definitely not gone anywhere, it is not quite singing in the same way.

Having the chance to step back and really *see* myself outside of the underground of poetry has forced me to really focus on who I am as a poet, to really embrace the things that are important to me and let all the other things fly away. For example, I am more attuned to the relationships I have formed through poetry than I am to what a poetic achievement does for my name as a poet. I cherish the passion of what words can do to a life more than I revel in the "umm-hmmm" of a single poem. I'm more interested in what kind of impact I am making with a body of work than I am how much attention I can get with a single project.

Don't get me wrong, even the things that seem to have become back burner are important. It's just not my engine anymore. I try to bring art into everything that I am doing these days. Christmas was not filled with presents for me to give this year, but when I thought about how I might like to do this, I kept thinking things like how can I make the wrapping a piece of fiber art that would be hard to destroy in the unwrapping of the gift? Make it cloth and quilted or a collage that has to be unraveled to reveal its overlapping parts? How can I turn the gift wrapping into a poem? How can I make the receiver know how much the artist showed up to present the gift?

The season was a reminder that the poet and artist in me lives in every adventure that I take on. I've grown to love certain home improvement tasks because it helps me get quiet, inside my own head, to know what it is that I really think. It helps me to become a great translator of my own voice.

On Christmas, my biggest gift was a visit to my father. He recently had surgery, and I wanted to make sure he was behaving. I wrapped this gift in a coat and a smile. It took him only a minute to open his gift, and he spent hours enjoying it. Despite all the places he wished he could have been, or all the people he wished he could have seen, his daughter, the poet, was in his house. He has not always understood why she chose her path or why she refuses to walk another, but he knows that she always know how to get home. And some of what she brings through the door or to the family tree cannot be wrapped or tied.

The History and Art of Shedding Skin

2011-11-01T09:35:00.007-05:00

Via: Tanda Skincare

Shedding skin is not an easy thing. It belongs in the same family of life-altering events as accepting change. I am slowly realizing, though, that I have to make some changes to my life. I need to move away from the project that has been vampiring my time and get back to me. It is now a blemish (like one that requires serious acne removal) and leaves me with little time to think. That does not even speak to making time to write and do art. I have not figured out how to make a graceful exit - or if it should even be graceful - but I do know that if I am going to continue living my purpose, I cannot do that building someone else's dream. Getting back to your own dreams is no easy thing. It forces you to remember who you are and do something about your pace. Most of us are afraid of this, eh?

Poetry and Voice on Video

2011-02-21T20:52:00.000-05:00

Because a very generous poet friend has been doing a video poetry series in which he performs poems by 28 poets, I have been thinking a lot about the way we package poetry. The same ideas/questions run through my head as usual - What ever will become of the book of poetry as we know it? Will people ever buy mass quantities of hard-copy poetry volumes? (Have they ever?) Are there other formats better suited for the times in which we live? How, as an artist, do I preserve my need to hold a book in my hands, yet keep up with the digital/electronic/sound byte/holographic revolution?

Video production is nothing new for poets or poems. The ones that are tailored to showcase poems have evolved to be quite visual, often including more than just scrolling text. They are quite the poetic audio production as well, sometimes employing elaborate songs that rival those of a music production. Some poets have employed the talents of a video production company and voice actors to bring their poems to life.

Voice talent brings a whole new dimension to the presentation of a poem. For some, it violates something sacred. One of the reasons for experimenting with poems in alternative formats is to try to preserve the actual delivery the writer intended and to capture her voice while she is still walking the earth and breathing. The voice actor intrudes on that intent. While the poem may still be presented beautifully with all the bells and whistles of a full-scale media production (or a high-drama television production), it is not the author reading her own poem. This offends some people - especially if the author is still alive.

I can remember feeling this way when I heard a ton of voices reciting Langston Hughes poems, which the whole writing world is familiar with and quotes often. I enjoyed many of the interpretations, but they weren't Langston. When I was finally privileged enough to hear a recording of Langston Hughes reading his own work, I was thrilled! Just the sound of his voice was like a television production of my favorite show. Hearing the poem in his voice did something different to me than hearing it from other people, and it made something more magical happen in my head with the poem. It was somehow more authentic - real - than any grand commercial production could ever be. Voice over talent is wonderful - especially for TV commercial production - but in the world of poetry, it has its limits.

Billy Collins video poems seem to be pretty popular among poets and non-poets, alike. His animated video poem "Forgetfulness" is full of both visual effects and the captivating sound of his own voice to woo you. No search talent of fanciful script translation would have ever done the same justice to this poem. Voice over actors - especially a female voiceover - might have made this a different poem. Any other male voiceover would not have taken the same pauses or done the same breathing or phrasing, even if Billy Collins were sitting in the same room with them. This type of format works well for poems, even for the radio commercial production. If I heard that voice in a car, I would immediately tune in.

There are other video poems, like the one whose text speaks in the voice of all the animals harmed and poisoned in the BP oil spill, that use music in such a haunting way that it drives an emotional undercurrent. This music serves as a worldwide audio presentation of how far-reaching a single disaster can be. It really is the music and the startling photos that make this video such a memorable thing to live through. By the time the video ends, it is easy to forget about some of the Los Angeles video production films that seem to stay with viewers for life once they see them. A good visual or audio production has that effect on you. The same is true of a good music production.

Despite my strong desire to always hear poems read by the poet in her own voice, even I know that from New York video production to video production Richmond style, there is a huge benefit to using voice acting to preserve poems. Given the massive pool of actors in New York, it is a good thing when a poet can be near New York music production studios for a studio center total production. Access to New York City voice actors is exciting. A video production in which the poets has a lot of tools to produce a poem is the arrival of a powerful moment. In the case of my friend who did 28 Days of Poetry, I really appreciated the fact that there was no fancy background to compete with his voice or presentation. There was just a poet, looking you in the eye and luring you to listen. By the end of the poem, every listener had the performing poet, the writing poet and the poem to take away with them.

While I am on the subject, let me also give a postscript to my thrill at finding the voice of Langston Hughes. It was also a disappointing moment. Not every poet who is skilled at making poems can deliver with plausible, memorable poems. I remember my first encounters with Langston Hughes as a sound being quite boring. In fact, he had been such a giant on the page, I expect a Paul Robeson delivery. Not that he needed to sing, but voices with impact really matter.

This brings me to the idea that voice is both an internal drive and an external perception. While we writers who consider ourselves more literary than we are performers focus heavily on the internal process - because we should. We want to make good poems. But voice acting (and v! oice acting talent, for that matter) for the poem/poet is about projection and perception. It's about using the voice over to ensure every listener walks away with a fulfilling interpretation of a poem. It's about guaranteeing that every voice talent understands that the voiceover is indeed a vital part of the poem. And in the case of book voice talent, it is about creating a singular narrative with voice actors that is as engaging on page one as it is when the book is done.

Longing: A Valentine's Day Confession

2011-02-14T05:12:00.008-05:00

I have talked before to close friends and in this space about the fact that sometimes, powerful women stay partner-less because there are not too many people who can handle the intensity of their presence. I have observed this to be a possibility for women who are highly intelligent, fearless, unapologetically brazen, self-satisfied, iconic, revolutionary thinkers, free-spirited, high-energy and high-achieving or world changers.

In my own experience, I think I have lived this on some levels for long, intermittent periods of time. I have dated someone who was afraid he didn't "know" enough to be with me, but over time learned to be comfortable. Soon, that comfort turned to this: on-the-spot moments when he'd snap his fingers to hurry me to give the "right" answer because "You're smart. I know YOU know the answer." Or he would quip with, "You think you know everything!" No matter what, it was my job to "perform" intelligence to his specifications.

I have close male friends who have given me well-intentioned advice about approaches to dating. "Don't be so ... independent," they tell me. "A man has to feel like a man, and sometimes when you are too much woman, they don't know what to do with you." So, it's my responsibility to help an equal significant other discover his manhood?

I know these men really care about me. At least one has been my best friend for almost 15 years. He never tells me not to be independent, but he does remind me all the time of the subtle differences between men and women. Tells me there is a very palpable thing called manhood that is quite fragile in some creatures, that makes men have different thought processes than women - that drives the dynamic in almost every relationship. I am always quick to admit: I do not know nearly enough about what it means to be a man, though I am always open to learning more than I know. What I do know is that I am my best self when I am with a man who does not need me to be something other than what I am in order for him to be comfortable with himself.

And women friends are worse! One of my childhood buddies has continued to remind me that she thinks I should "spend some time by myself and date no one." This from a woman who hasn't been alone since we were in 7th grade and has been married to the same man, her high school sweetheart, for almost 20 years!

To be fair, the women friends who truly get where I am with this have been very supportive of what it is they think I'm looking for. Their eyes light up when they discover I'm heading out on a date, and they get excited at all of the possibilities. I have had the conversations with them in which I tell them I am prepared to be alone - manless - for the rest of my life, if that is in the big design. I have enough work to keep me busy for the next 100 years.

I have had good talks with A: The Moon about how some artists consciously make the decision to not have partners or children because they know they cannot do both well and want to spare themselves and loves all of the inevitable drama. Love is a distraction, in those cases, and hinders some artists from doing their best work(s). They choose to have recurring episodes of good sex and good laughter ... which, in my experience, pleases for only so long.

But I am not that artist. What I want in my heart and in my life is not to travel alone, to come home or have someone else come home to me and share stories about the day wars. To be in something together and moving toward something together. To defend a partner's right (and have him defend my right) to grow into a dream.

For a long time, I have been afraid to say this aloud. It feels desperate and seems to suggest that I'm not a complete person unless I have this. It is also a confession about longing. About being tired. About expecting more than I believe I've gotten in recent times. It is vulnerability - my surrender to the theory that nobody makes it in the world alone and my commitment to myself to discontinue any ploys to build stronger walls to keep everyone out.

There are many things fueling the need to own this feeling in me. The one most present is probably two truths I've had to swallow recently: 1) The only man I've ever married is the one man who probably understands me best ... yet I cannot be married to him again. 2) The man I've loved so deeply for three years now is a man who, for practical reasons, I cannot be with. I do not want to grow into an anticipating old woman ... waiting ... the ball always in his court. I am honest enough to own how I feel. I am realistic enough to know when I'm panning fool's gold in my plate.

I was probably struck to start confronting a lot of this when I read a NY Times article that talked about foremother Lucille Clifton. Her friend, poet Anne Caston, talked about Mama Lucille's legacy of longing - that she came from a mother who did not sleep with her husband again after her last child was born, but wanted more for Lucille. How Lucille's fascination with a fox that kept arriving outside her front door might have been a loose metaphor for longing. How she wrote in a poem about the fox, "I will keep the door unlocked/until something human comes." How Lucille, a widow with six children at 48, longed to be with a man again, but, sadly, wasn't:

"That something didn't arrive; she had no lover in the 25 years after her husband's death. 'She talked about how people write you off as you get older, Alexia told me. 'But she would say, 'I think about men and sex all the time.' And it is in this yearning that Clifton's lines might outlive her most resonantly. As she wrote, 'it is your own lush self/you hunger for.'"

Let me say that Lucille Clifton is not the only woman - or the only woman writer, for that matter - who has made me think of all this. I do not want to be presumptous here (either about my own magnitude or their persona lives), but I have often asked myself what man is bold enough to ask Toni Morrison or Sonia Sanchez out on a date? Over the years, I think about it when I talk to ordinary people in my world who no longer live in the same house with a legal spouse, yet have refused to get an official divorce. Some of them live like this for 10, 20, 30 years, until one person dies and "leaves a spouse to cherish his/her memory." I also think of this when I think of people who live in the same dysfunctional house of paralysis, refuse to move out or move on and do not have sex or a connection with one another for decades.

I do not want to live those kinds of lives. I do not want a decade of longing. A dysfuctional house. A dishonest sense of what I need as a woman to give my journey its fullest blooms. I want to turn my house of longing into a shared border (see Rilke), in which ever hour is one in which a good hankering is something that is easily satisfied.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Death of Fred Clifton

11/10/84
Age 49

(Lucille Clifton)

I seem to be drawn

to the center of myself

leaving the edges of me

in the hands of my wife

and I saw with the most amazing

clarity

so that I had not eyes but

sight,

and, rising and turning,

through my skin

there was all around not the

shape of things

but, oh, at last,

the things

themselves.

The Restaurant: A Museum of Lessons

2011-01-31T15:10:00.019-05:00

January was quite the hectic month. I was mostly sleepless and deep in sweat with at least two projects. The one I can talk about took most of my time, but I am starting to see light at the end of this long tunnel.

For the last year of my life, I have been embroiled in a project with a friend to open a restaurant in Downtown Raleigh. So many times, we have believed we were close to opening, but ... no go.

We came into this place knowing we'd have to do a lot of work. The building is a standalone and was erected in 1947 as a gas station. The last restauranteur was in the space for about 30 years. Some mornings on our way to other places, we stopped at this place in the mornings to grab country biscuits, eggs, grits ... and they even had turkey sausage.

My friend set his vision on the place as soon as we discovered the previous tenants had shut down the restaurant. We secured the space with a deposit, walked in and looked around us. A hot mess!

We didn't think twice about it though: we rolled up our sleeves and dug in. Every single day, we'd make tracks down to the building to paint, demolish, sand, stain, nail, clean, glue, grout, spackle and drill everything that we needed to refurbish.

Here is a picture of what it looked like before:

And here are some pictures of what it looks like now:

I can now begin to tell you the strong lessons I have learned about:

--how to select contractors (watch especially how they treat your property when you are not looking);

--how to deal with "tail-end" contractors who come into a space, see all the work you've done to beautify a dump and believe you can pull money out of your arse to pay them thousands of dollars to do work that doesn't need to be done (show them the door ... quickly);

--what it means to meet code (which changes, it seems, at whim when the city needs to level fees to cover whatever they cover to stay a "city");

--how to deal with the city (no two people tell you the same thing and no one is accountable for what they've said. The whole entity called The City is a racket, and no matter what they tell you, it is not small business friendly. It is a money-gobbling machine designed to do everything to make you not want to own a business.);

--purchasing equipment (required NSF stickers should not be pulled from old equipment and stuck randomly on a used prep sink you are trying to get rid of);

--designing the interior of a building (art should always be thought of first and installed last, and if you paint a mural on a wall early in the project, expect everyone to try to get rid of it);

--Historic Preservation Societies (they're legal and the General Assembly gives them license to charge you for painting the outside of your building and make you ask permission and approval for an exterior sign);

--how to deal with neighboring restaurants whose owners might not be happy about you moving in (refuse to respond to them at all and move on about your business);

--and food safety courses (I am now trained and certified to serve safe food to a buying public. oh, so many rules, but this by far was one of the pleasures of this journey).

I feel I am now prepared to open that Bed & Breakfast that I've always wanted. Trust me, I won't suffer the same effects of blind-siding as I have with this project. This experience has given me a real sense of what works and what doesn't.

So, we're about to go through our last round with the Health Department. For the most part, our rep there has been very helpful and has not given us nearly the amount of drama as some of her cohorts. She has given us a short list of items we need to "fix" before she returns. Then, I hope we will be ready to open for business.

If this drags too much longer, I wonder how much money we could charge patrons for coming to see a decade-long exhibition: "the anti-business museum: what The City doesn't tell you."

Close Encounters of the Jesus Pamphlet

2011-01-04T03:08:00.005-05:00

The last time I encountered an end-of-the-world predictor, I was almost 10. My brother and I spent the entire night huddled near each other in the same bed because we were afraid to sleep alone. There had been so much talk in our town of Armageddon, the Rapture and the bad souls who wouldn't make it to heaven that we were both afraid all of our little childlike mischief had finally caught up with us. Our bad souls would be sucked into the fiery pits of hell - which we honestly believed was deep, deep beneath the soil we walked on each day.

The next morning came; we were still breathing; our mother and baby brother survived, too. My grandmother thought it pure comedy that the Rapture might have occurred and she was still here and not called up with all the other angels to a heavenly post. My brother and I read in the newspaper a few days after this prediction that the husband-wife team that had done the predicting had committed suicide in the desert.

Here I am in 2011 confronting the same prediction: Armageddon is only months away, according to the woman who stopped me downtown to give me a pamphlet. It was innocent, at first. She approached me claiming that she was sorry she didn't see me there on the sidewalk (as if I knew her). Then she promptly handed me the pamphlet which read: "The End of the World Is Almost Here! HOLY GOD Will Bring Judgment Day on May 21, 2011."

She asked me to go to my computer to a website and read all about it ... in order to prepare for it, you understand. I wasn't about to spend that kind of energy, but here is what the pamphlet clearly pointed out for me: There is (according to the pamphlet) a 7,000 year date from the first time the world was destroyed by flood that we are supposed to be destroyed again. "Seven thousand years after 4990 B.C. (the year of the Flood) is the year 2011 A.D. (our calendar). 4990 + 2011 - 1 = 7,000 [One year must be subtracted in going from an Old Testament B.C. calendar date to a New Testament A.D. calendar date because the calendar does not have a year zero.]"

Is any sane body out there afraid yet?

Now don't get me wrong: I fully support every individual's right to believe as he or she believes. I even support the right to broadcast that belief far and wide in our world. But I am a firm believer myself that the only humans who might know the exact hour and day of the world's end would be the humans who are ending the world.

I think I might be due for another Armageddon scare when I am 70 years old. They are very interesting markers for how I've grown over the eras of my life. In 2011, I am no longer 10 and crouching with my brother beneath covers because I am afraid for my own life. And I can only predict one thing for 2041: if I am there and breathing, I will have survived the end of the world two times.

Remembering the Vanilla Child: Teena Marie

2011-01-03T20:47:00.003-05:00

this is not a poem ...

butawaytorememberherbeforeallthepartsofmeforget.

Her death immediately sent me back to root: when did I sing my first note (as poet, as songstress)? Her vibratto a tickle in my throat, when did I first hear her song?

This death, like so many others, came without caution.

Dear desired fire: what is it that we build with loss?

How is it that one voice can be holy and secular in the same breath?

She made lyrics come as sacred scripture?

A bit of blues and a taste of classical anchored in a whole lot of soul.

Teena: the mix of everything about us all.

I heard her vibratto crooning alongside funkster Rick.

Instrument: gutsy sweet air from such pretty cartilage.

Unloc’d: The Journey of Freeing My Hair

2011-01-02T21:04:00.007-05:00

On Christmas Day, I took a bold step into a new hair direction by engaging in the “big chop.” For the last 12 years, I had developed a carefree ritual around dredlocs that stretched from my scalp to my bottom. It was a wonderful thing to find a natural style that complimented my face, made others question my age, and required little more than washing each week, lightly oiling, twisting or braiding when washed in order to get crinkles or waves, or pinning up when I didn’t feel like thinking about it.

It was convenient not to have to plan hairstyles too often. I had tinted the majority of my strands with copper dye and almost everyone I met had learned to recognize me by my hair. I was part of the International Tribe of Dred – those who, for one reason or another, had decided to say no to perms and relaxers and other harsh chemical hair treatments and wear their hair in one state of natural.

I learned to really appreciate the secret smirks and head nods of other dreds on the street. Every now and then, I even got a sacred greeting, “What’s up, Dred?” I felt so affirmed at those times because the knowing glassy-eyed look came from people from all walks of life, and when they acknowledged me, they were speaking the language of understanding the world of the matted helix.

I had heard so many others in my tribe speak about the reasons they had decided to go the way of the whorl. For some, it was a strong statement “against” mainstream establishment social politics. It was a way to look as far removed from what in our (U.S.) culture has been embraced as a superiority of light skin, straight hair privilege. For others, it was just about fashion trends and being part of the “hip” crowd. Everyone else was doing it …. so why not fall in line?

Then there were the spiritual hair purists – those who believed hair should be left alone to find its own way. You could “train” a patch of hair to be a certain thickness and length, but do not dare try to put anything unnatural in it to aid the process of growth. The spiritual purist sect held worshippers who ranged from true religious practitioners (Rastafarians) to naturalists who couldn’t take the lye and other chemical poisons used in black hair care products.

I fell somewhere between a spiritual purist and a woman who was tired of going to the barber shop to get her TWA (teeney-weenie afro) trimmed to perfection every week. My friend TSO and I started our locs at the same time, and we were both adamant about “locking” good energy into our hair so that we could carry it with us to do battle with the world each day. No strange admirers were allowed to oohh-and-ahhhh their way through our hair. We didn’t know what kind of energy they were bringing with them and so we were quick to tell folks that we didn’t want their fingers in our baby dreds.

Family was a different story. My grandmother, who later became a huge cheerleader for the long, flowing dredloc, initially was stunned to the point of chastising me. “What are you doing with your hair?” she asked. “You know we don’t do that in our family.” She was the lead voice in a jeering section of relatives and friends who called me “Buckwheat,” “jigaboo,” “radical,” “militant” and anything else that might indicate I was engaging in an embarrassing taboo.

Once the locs started to get long, many of my aunties initially asked me how long it took me to “put those in.” They thought it was synthetic hair that I had paid to attach to my own. And the classic question came from my Uncle M: “Ain’t you tired of that sh*t yet?”

Over the last decade, I realized I lived in two different hair worlds: the one in which I was accepted and celebrated (usually other Dreds and artists and open-minded folks who appreciated difference) and that one in which I was labeled as being “a little different,” meaning off the norm. But I started to notice something else, too: everywhere I went, I was known for my hair.

Those who didn’t know my name used the hair to describe me – “You know, the little short woman with copper dredlocs.” Others were fascinated by it and wanted to be near me and ask a ton of questions to see if it made me able to do some kind of magic the rest of the world didn’t know about. (“So how did your hair get this way?” “What does it feel like?” “Take it down let me see how long it is.” “What happens to your hair at night?”) So many times, when I got the “hair at night” question, I wanted to tell the person asking that my hair grew wings and I was able to fly to a star and back.

In 2008, I was hit with crazy health news and discovered I would have to undergo treatments at the Cancer Centers. I buckled up internally for that journey, but there is rarely anything you can do to prepare your hair for it. My hair didn’t fall out or get shorter, but it did get extremely thin at the root. I responded by pinning my hair up every day to disguise the thin spots.

On Christmas Day 2010, I wanted to come out of disguise. I had said that I was not going to cut my locs until I hit age 50, but I could not see going another seven years with my hair in such a limbo. I stood in front of the mirror at least three times before I cut the first strand. I was teary thinking about the big change that was taking place, but I soldiered on. In less than 30 minutes, I cut away 12 years of growth.

I realize that one of my initial reasons for loc’ing my hair (to keep good energy close to my head and bad energy away) had also been flipped on me. I also was loc’ing in all the challenges that the last 12 years had brought to me (especially health, money, family drama and relationships), and I needed to be free of them. Just as I had tried to loc the world out of my good thing – of my growth – I had loc’d in the memories of those growing pains. My hair had assumed a weight that could kill my spirit if I let it.

So now, another leg of this journey begins. It is one in which I recognize that hair in its natural state does not have to be matted or take a cultural-political stance. It does not need to stand guard against whatever tries to seep into me and take me down. I’m tough enough on the inside now to guard my own house from within. And what a joy to finally feel the wind tingling against my scalp.

Walk Worthy: Reclaiming the National Treasure

2011-01-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

In 2009, I watched an interview Oprah Winfrey did with Whitney Houston in which she asked Whitney a pivotal question: "When did you know you were destroying the national treasure?"

It was an odd moment for me as a listener and an artist. Oprah was asking about the personal habits Whitney developed over the last two decades that have helped to lessen the quality of her singing voice. I thought at the time that the act of calling Whitney's voice a national treasure was an act of burdening Whitney's talent with national oversight.

Yes, Whitney Houston has been blessed with an incredible talent ... but I wondered at the time: does the U.S. have the right to own your voice in a way that allows others to chastise you when you don't deliver?

Wait. I had to really think about this one in order to get it.

I don't think Oprah intended the question to say that the U.S. literally owns her person and can command the use of her voice, but I think, in a spiritual sense, she was saying that the national public admires and honors the recognizable sound of Whitney Houston so much that there is a void in the treasure chest of things American born and bred when it can't be heard.

So, on the first day of 2011, I am thinking so much about what part of me (and what part of my art) is the national treasure.

As a writer, so much of what I come to the page bearing is so personal, it is sometimes hard to see that it might have national impact to the point that it is missed or sought after if I decide to be quiet for a minute. I mean, we intend for this effect to happen when we write. Many of us are here on the keyboard and on the page to alter lives for the better.

But to actually sit down and acknowledge to yourself that you are responsible to a watching public who has invested spiritually in your creative acts is an almost overwhelming notion. You bear the weight of walking *right* and *worthy* so that you do not squander any gift that comes through you.

Here's an even more powerful way to look at it: if you can believe that you are truly a part of the national treasure, then you are more vigilant about protecting what belongs to you and your country. This means that no one can come in and tell you that you're not *good* enough (not even the crazy voice in your head that makes you second guess). No one can *walk off with alla your stuff* (thanks Ntozake) because they don't have access to it. And no one has to acknowledge your gift or applaud it or give it permission to shine; it's part of the national treasure and will be for thousands of years to come.

So, I've made no real resolutions this year except to own the part of myself that is the national treasure. I want to live my life in art as if I'm protecting the gold for me and my country ... country being my children and their children ... country being the United States ... country being the world of art. And that resolution speaks to what I know is inside of me and what I genuinely believe lives in all the other artists I know and love.

Say it with me like you believe it, too: we are the national treasure.

My Scrooge Rears Its Dark Head

2010-12-19T23:19:00.004-05:00

After a night of relaxation and trying to keep my seasonal stress levels down, I got to see some Christmas decorations in my neighborhood. Boy, some people really did go all out (would hate to see their January light bills). Can you imagine looking at a house that looks like the one I've posted with this entry every day in December???

It would make me crave the dark.

I swear I must be far from childhood fancy or burned out on good old American bling because the more gaudy the lights and decor, the more I want to run for the hills. Perhaps, this will make me a scrooge, but I'm so serious. I am finding that the most alluring decorations for the holiday are ones which make minimal use of lights. Simple stands out ... and is meaningful ... and makes me feel peace inside.

This must seem strange, I'm sure, for those who know that I sign off almost every written message with the word "light!" It would seem that too much would not be too much. Most things illuminated have always held court in my heart.

And if I'm asked about someone's Christmas decorations, I'm polite, can converse about the nuances of decor and smile and nod at all the right pause points.

But secretly I find myself tuning out the bright, bright, light-light houses and looking for the lone house on the row that has a single candle burning in every window.

Somehow in my head, I've convinced myself that the owners of the simply lit houses get what this season is all about and the others are in search of something. This actually might be too judgmental ... but the world in my head is my world ... and change doesn't come unless I let it in the door.

Light!

The Box of Locs

2010-12-17T22:19:00.004-05:00

When I heard about Sourced Material exchanging (and selling) some fiber pieces they had listed on a website, I was eager to participate. The Sourced Material project is maintained by a group of artist collaborators. I believe there is also some collaboration from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Art.

The group processes raw products using sustainable methods and then analyzes how those products are used. The focus here is on being responsible as both producers and consumers. They've done things like spit roasting a leg of lamb ... responsibly.

When they agreed to send me one of the pieces, they had only one request: they wanted all the exchangers to make something with what they sent to us. I was game.

I surfed on over and picked out some wool stock, got all giggly about it and tucked the joy away in my back burner file. For the record, I know nothing about carding or spinning, but you would be amazed to know what gives us fiber addicts a thrill.

Yesterday, the box arrived and I cut through the packaging tape to find ... 15 ounces of grey Icelandic roving wool that would have sold for $750. I opened it and gasped ... it looks like dredlocs.

This is a very interesting thing, spiritually speaking. For the last few months, I have been trying to plan a transformation with my hair and make the dreds on my head disappear. One reason is practical and cosmetic: when I did treatments last year, the therapies thinned my hair. Since the length of my hair is down to my bottom, it has made my head feel heavy when my hair is down. I have to keep it up all the time so it won't feel like it's weighing me down.

The other reason has to do with a need to shed old skin ... old follicles ... old selves. I didn't start loc'ing my hair for any political or rebellious reason. I did it because I had been sporting a short natural for a long while and my life got way too busy for me to see a barber every week. I knew I would not go the chemical route and submit to a relaxer or perm and dredlocs seemed a logical alternative. It was my hair in its natural state minus all the barber bills.

Now, I itch to free my scalp.

I want to be able to run my fingers through my unmatted hair, even if it's short, and feel the breeze on my pores. Though I vowed I would keep my hair loc'd until I was 50, it would be a great ritual to start the next phase of my life - to keep me graceful as I gallop along and leap my next hurdles.

Besides, how could I possible ignore the sign of a box of roving wool showing up at my house looking like a treasure chest of shaved dredlocs?

(I will keep you posted on what I decide to make with the box of locs.)

The Yellow Wallpaper Challenge - An Informal Invitation / Craft Prompt

2010-12-16T09:25:00.009-05:00

I remember the first time I read "The Yellow Wallpaper." I thought Charlotte Perkins Gilman was slightly off center. But I was still trying to bend my cells to be a straight arrow then.

I was a goody-goody linear structure, traditional character chick then and wondered what on earth the writer had to be smoking to come up with this somewhat fantastical story.

Then I grew up. I wanted more stories like this one, but on more steroids -- and even worse, I wanted to be the one to write those stories! In many ways, this story helped push me right on over into the magical realism realm. I have always been a writer/creator/thinker with a wild imagination. Stories like this one very early on my journey gave me permission to break all the rules.

After I read it, I continued to give myself a staple of odd plots and magical realist stories to feed on as I was "growing" my voice.

Gilman's story is one in which a woman is asked by her doctor and her physician husband not to engage in any intellectual activities for fear they might make her more mentally unstable. One of the things I love about the premise of the story is the fact that it can apply to many predicaments beyond gender. Young (in experience, not age) writers are often asked not to writer, painters not to paint, thinkers not to think. And whey they are doing their best writing, painting, thinking, they are judged most harshly and labeled as "weird." What's worse is, the "weirdness" (which is often not weird at all) is attributed to being an artist.

I can't count, for example, how many times people in my life who are not writers or artists assume that any choice I make (even about the decor on the wall in my house) has to do with the fact that my ability to write makes me eccentric and forces me to make what they consider "odd" choices. If I get emotional and cry during a scene in a movie, it must be because I'm a writer, and we writers don't know how to draw the line between reality and TV, you know. We live our lives in hyperbole.

Case in point: I recently did a mural on a restaurant wall. No less than 10 people went to my partner behind my back to say how ugly the wall was when I had only put on the first layer of paint. "She might be an artist, but what she's doing is destroying the restaurant," they said. No one had the courage to ask me what I planned to do with the wall, or -- knowing that I was doing a mural -- wait until the wall was finished to pass judgment.

The comments they made to my partner were centered around the idea that I had made a "weird" artistic choice that was going to completely destroy the decor of the restaurant. They had no idea that I chose everything else -- tables, chairs, ceramic tile and color palette -- that went into the restaurant. To keep myself from being defensive, I embraced the idea that it was nobody's business what I was doing. Then I became the woman in the room with the yellow wallpaper and got to work on my wall. Strangely, they all love it now.

Lately, I have been returning to my fascination with Gilman's story. At one time, I thought I wanted to do a stage adaptation of the story like Heather Newman did in 2003. But if I do that, I'd really want to do something more modern based on the story concept and not repeat the story ... sorta like Chiori Miyagawa did with Kate Chopin's "The Awakening."

In the spirit of where my life is moving lately, though, I am craving other voices on "The Yellow Wallpaper," writers and visual artists alike. I really want to challenge others to take up a "Yellow Wallpaper" challenge. I'd love to see responses to this story in some way through art. If you're a poet, write a poem. If you're a quilter, make a quilt. If you're a playwright, write a play.

Although it's fairly easy to find the text to the story online and read it (and I encourage that), I have pulled some passages from the story and pasted them below. I'd love to see what other artists can do with this by the end of January. Read the passages. Pick one or more that interests you ... and create! Please post a message here in the comments section to let me know what you create, and I'll highlight it here on my blog. If you have pics, I'll let you know how to send them to me so I can post them.

from "The Yellow Wallpaper":

1.

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off - the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flambouyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves at unheard of contradictions.

The color is repellent, amost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others ...

~~~

2.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

~~~

3.

Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

~~~

4.

The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother - ...

~~~

5.

But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so -- I can see a strange provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

~~~

6.

I lie here on this great immovable bed ... and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

~~~

7.

... I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alteration, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I have ever heard of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade, and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges in rushes of equal distraction.

~~~

8.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.

~~~

9.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

The color is hideous enough and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get underway in following, it turns a back somersault, and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions ...

~~~

10.

At night, in any kind of light ... it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it as plain as can be.

~~~

11.

It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

~~~

12.

The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

... And she is all the time trying to climb through. But no one can climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off, and turns them upside down, and turns their eyes white!

~~~

13.

... As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning, we had pulled off yards of that paper.

What My Father and Bella Akhmadulina Taught Me About Adoration

2010-12-15T09:03:00.009-05:00

I am at the hospital now waiting for what must be my dad's fourth or fifth surgery from complications with his colon. I say "complications" because that has been his euphemistic way of coping with his special challenges.

A few years ago when his colon was removed and I asked his why it had to be done, he blinked for about ten seconds, looked around the room away from me as if I were a reporter (and I was, after all, wasn't I?), and said, "I have a weak colon, baby." It was the comic relief of the moment, and I chuckled at him without questioning aloud his blasphemous logic. Sometimes, he forgets that I am 43 and not three years old.

I am remembering today that I hate the smell of gauze or band-aid adhesive, hospital blankets that have been bleached to death and stiffened, mopped antiseptic floors and the slightly metal smell of pills. It all triggers a descent into a world in which bodies surrender their poise to knives and exposure and fluid-dripping needles and drug-induced slumber. I don't even have to look around me anymore; I just need to take a deep breath, smell where I am and ... phlegm, alert signals ... distress.

But there is a silver cloud in all of this mess. It has never been more clear to me what makes the hospital bearable: the staff (!). They can ugly the place up or they can make this whole experience feel like a field trip. Fortunately, I'm in a hospital where the latter is true. A nurse, anthesthesiologist, CNA and the surgeon (who has learned my entire family in the last five years) all greeted me and my father this morning as if we were old friends. As my father removed his partial plate and dropped it in a cup for me to keep during the procedure and handed me his glasses, the nurse chatted with me about Julian Assange, the bitter cold and other local news. She massaged a cramp from his foot as she gave me tips on how to get a good night's sleep. She even laughed with me (and laughed hard) when the anesthesiologist came in and said to me, "M'am, we're going to take very good care of your husband." (Hmmm ... do I look old or does my father look young?)

It seems almost poetic that I am the one here at the hospital. Nobody else has a schedule right now that will allow them to be here. I have learned, though, that when things seem unreasonably odd, I am about to learn something else I didn't know about myself or give something to someone else in need.

As much as I have tried over the years to dress this up, my father and I have rarely gotten along. This is a complex truth that does not tell any reader how much I love him or how much of him I know lives inside of me. He is the most stubborn, indignant chauvinist I've ever had the chance to be near, yet he is the most gifted artist that I know. He has always been self-destructively loyal to his own soil, so he would never leave his home land to see where his talent would take him. He had two invitations from professional groups, and he still wouldn't leave. In some ways, this almost makes him tragic.

This is the same man who sat at a brunch buffet with me a few years ago and got pissed because I told him I attended a church where the pastor was a woman. "Women aren't even supposed to talk in public unless men tell 'em to," he said. Whuuuut?

I snatched my body away from the table and went back to the buffet line. My brother, who understood full well what kind of fire was possible, said to my father, "C'mon man, you can't do that kind of stuff with Cherryl. Do you know who your daughter is? You're not just talking to somebody you helped bring into the world when you say crazy sh*t like that. You are talking to the whole women's movement. Now cut that crap out before she slices your throat." It took at least two years for me to laugh at his audacity to push my buttons like that.

This is also the same man, though, who tricked me into pulling my baby teeth and left me fifty-cent pieces from the tooth fairy beneath my pillow; who gobbled up every crumbly cookie and downed every Coke bottle I ever left for Santa; who let me beat pillows and pots while he played his guitar; who gets heated with significant other men who don't treat me right; who makes the best secret-recipe barbecue sauce on the planet; and whose singing voice makes you think Sam Cooke has crawled right out of the earth to sing for you one sweet last time.

I have started this ritual lately, of taking the first words of my day as some kind of instruction. If it is someone calling to say, "Good morning," or my daughter yelling to ask, "Mom, what time is it?" or Ru (my business partner) calling me to say, "Coke (our vendor) is waiting for us," I take the words to set the pace of my day. This morning, it was the lovely opening line of the poem "The Fog," by the late Russian poet Bella Akhmadulina sent to the WOMPO listserv by Joelle Biele:

"All means of adoration cause great pain."

I really had to pause for a long minute when I read this. This tangled, complex relationship that I have with my father -- is it a means of adoration on both our parts? It's my moment-of-truth question for myself for this week.

I waited almost two hours before it was time for surgery. When the staff came to wheel him away to the operating room, I grabbed my computer and his belongings and walked as far as I could go in the hallway alongside the bed. I wanted to leave him with the words that would let him know that inside of all our fighting, there is a deep and abiding adoration. "Dream about singing, Daddy," I said. "Yeah, I'll do that," he mumbled back. It was the best I could hope for in the moment: my father peacefully doing something that I, a mere woman, asked him to do.

Breathing to Think

2010-12-14T22:21:00.001-05:00

I don't always know when the Universe is about to drop some new spiritual science on me, but I've learned lately that I have to be prepared at every turn. Today, it was a conversation with a new spirit (read that old soul who is a new spirit in my world) that triggered some new lessons.

For some time now, I've been struggling with re-entry. I'm in a new geography (well ... my birth state in its modernized incarnation); I have a re/new(ed) body; I'm bursting at the seams with both new works and literary desires for my new community. One thing has been startling and clear to me: Carolina is not Atlanta.

This is not a bad thing on some fronts. What I loved most about Atlanta is its ability to always morph into a new version of itself even while I was staring the city in its night-light eyes. Something is always being built, torn down, challenged, reframed, severed and reconnected. That kind of change keeps me on my toes, creating conversations with myself through art over and over and over again. I've said many times that the city kept me fed (spiritually and artistically) though it was very hard to stay fed materially. Atlanta is not an easy place to make a living as a teaching/working artist even in the best of times.

If Atlanta can be that place that kept me fed, then the return to Carolina has proved the ground where I've had to learn how to eat all over again. Things here are a bit slower on some fronts. I find theatre art slightly more progressive here and poetry a bit tougher sell. The one thing that seems to abound when you say the word "poetry" is "open mic." I grow a bit sluggish when I keep running into poets who only know how to define the genre this way. Only a handful of people I've encountered on my return home know that poetry is much larger than a microphone and an audience to cheer.

I've had to wear the questions that plague me as a creator under my skin: who's really defining poetry as craft? are there distinct schools of poetics in the Carolinas? how does poetry enter our communities? who is funding it? who is patronizing it? what 21st century ways are we engaging in poetry culture to keep it relevant to the community-at-large? who needs it and doesn't yet know they have a need?

I can't say that I've been able to answer these questions in full yet. The journey toward answering these questions, though, has been more of an inward quest to find and re-define myself on the other side of illness. I am discovering that I am overwhelmingly disappointed in how I have not been able to find the true pulse of this place, yet completely satisfied with knowing (finally) what kind of role I need to play in the art of art here.

To that end, I have developed a plan for myself (personally and professionally) that will take me to my next level. I don't know that I'm ready to spell out the entire plan at this point, but I'm okay sharing some action points. One of the first things I've set out to do in recent weeks is surround myself (again) with like-minded people. Once I had the plan written so that I could look at it, I wanted to talk to someone who seemed to have been down a similar path. I called my bud Frank X. Walker. He is so busy these days, I had to grab his attention by phone between cities as he was driving to a reading.

Now, the two things I really appreciate about my connection to Frank is 1) he is completely honest when he is in conversation with me and 2) he is always down to lend his skills and resources to the plan. His honest feedback was the kind of affirmation I needed (from someone who pulls no punches with me) to keep moving in this new direction. (I should also say that much of the early thought for this new plan came from very honest conversations with Addae, Collin, Dasha, Ayo and BFF "A: The North Star" for listening to some of this plan in its early stages. You all keep me solid and engaged.)

Next, I started to look for local folks who have my kind of passion and energy about art. I talked to one of those people today for almost two hours. Her name is Robin Mills, and she has been spearheading a visual arts movement here in Raleigh for a minute.

Robin very clearly refers to herself as an entrepreneur, and hearing her say so helped put me in a different space to listen to her. Though I know part of what I'm doing is about free enterprise, it is not necessarily my primary mission. The mission for this new plan is very connected to entrepreneurship, though, in the sense that I believe artists who work should be paid for their talent and labor.

Robin talked to me about how she's had to shift gears a little and get artists to invest in the very venue she was providing for them to showcase works. She talked to me about the local climate, the usual hurdles, and the necessity of believing (always) you have to be in the right place AND ready when an opportunity arises.

I listened a lot as she talked today, but not necessarily for the information she was giving me. I knew a lot of what she was telling me was the Universe really speaking to me to be mindful of certain fundamentals when it comes to dealing with people while engaged in art ventures. It was her energy that mezmerized me.

For a long minute during the conversation, I recognized the voice of one of my former selves and wanted so much to be her again. I wanted her passion, her conviction, her willingness to suspend disbelief in selfless investment(s). For a moment, I felt very aged, though not quite dead. I wanted to match her tone and timbre with all the love for art that was boiling inside me. But I didn't. Couldn't. I listened like a school child to this woman who was a mirror of myself with my mouth (mostly) clamped shut.

That part of me that still remembers "noodle" days when I couldn't get out of bed last year kept warning that I would never be that energized woman again. On some fronts, my body simply can't go there anymore. Then I realized that this same marvelous energy can live inside of you (as it has in me for the last two years) in the same way that it tends to spill out of your mouth. Passion doesn't always have to be vocal. I can channel that energy I might spend *talking* about art and my hopes for art actually creating art (and creating a movement).

I am excited to know Robin and have high hopes for how and why our paths have crossed. Even as a hyperkinetic version of my now more mildly expressed (still wildly felt) passion, she reminds me to leap ... LEAP.

Thanksgiving and the Comfy Chair

2010-11-27T09:08:00.012-05:00

We made it through the Thanksgiving holiday with as little fuss as possible. I needed to be in at least three different places at a time, and don't know how I managed it, but I did.

I was happy to hang out a little with my daughter and her long-time friend who attends a local university. I dropped them off for Thanksgiving and watched them devour breakfast leftovers that my mom made before we even could get to a Thanksgiving meal. I delivered homemade mac-n-cheese and sweet potato pies to places I had promised to deliver food. Surprisingly, it was a Thanksgiving when I didn't pig out.

I got home and took refuge in the comfy chair that lives in my bedroom. I think I'm beginning to understand this emotional tendency men have to claim a chair and dare anyone else to sit in it. Most of my adult life, I have not had a chair that I could sit in like this in my room. I had an office or work space that held somewhat comfy chairs. But this one is one where I'm comfortable reading, watching TV, writing on my laptop or curling up a little to nap. I have now entered the world of understanding the territorial nature of men when it comes to their favorite reading, news-watching or sports hawking festivities.

My daughter tried to ease the chair away from me. Last year, I kept noticing that she would ease the pillows away to her room and use them to give herself extra cushion when whe was sitting up in bed. In true indignant fashion, I'd storm into her room, snatch them from her bed and put them back in my comfy chair. It was a war she would not win.

The chair came to me last year the week after I had my surgery. I was surfing Craigslist and clicked on the listing. It was only $240, which I thought a reasonable price to pay for the post-op comfort that I needed. The woman who owned the chair showed up at my house with her husband to deliver it for me. When she stepped into my living room, we started a conversation that let me know how much we had in common. We clicked immediately.

She had a young child who was undergoing cancer treatments, and she seemed to really want/need to talk about that. Of course, I told her about my surgery, my illness and gave her a glimpse of what it was like to come out on the other side of something sinister that takes over your body. I could sense that she needed that kind of hope. A couple of times while talking, she teared up, grabbed my hand, took a deep breath then kept talking.

When it was time to pay for the chair, she wouldn't take the money. I kept trying to give her cash, but she said the Universe was speaking to her and letting her know that this should be a gift ... that the chair had a new purpose. It had been sitting in her house for about a year unused, and she had paid much more for it than she was asking. After a couple of refusals to take the cash, she and her husband dashed out, and I was left with my new chair.

I didn't bond with it at all last year. I sat in it when necessary to rest. I sat there to have protracted phone conversations with the folks in my inner circle ... but it was still a fortunate gift that was ... just a chair.

One day, I got the overwhelming urge to move it into my room. It nestles in a corner near the small refrigerator where I keep drinks (who wants to go downstairs in the middle of the night when thirst attacks?). I've even added a small storage cube ottoman to prop my feet when I feel like it.

That first night, I had been wrestling with a new piece on my laptop. I couldn't get comfortable on my bed, and I didn't want to drag my work into my office space across the hall. So I gave in to the chair. In a matter of moments, I became so comfortable in that seat, I was able to finish two pieces of writing that night and curled up in the chair (I'm short enough to do that!) and slept there until morning.

Now, I don't know how I make it without my chair. It's where many of my important domestic routines - writing, conversation, program gazing, and occasionally napping - take place. If my daughter wants to sneak a pillow now, she'd be in real trouble.

Craft Note: Before You Make Good Notes, Pay Attention to Your Text!

2010-11-24T07:53:00.008-05:00

I heard an NPR segment while in the car recently that was not about writing at all, yet it made me think more than seriously about how I approach my craft. The segment was about the vocal emotion of Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf.

Ordinarily, I would really just listen to Billie for Billie. After all, she has one of the most inimitable, haunting voices on the planet. But the whole segment was indeed a craft note for me as an artist ... and this is the quote by Joni Mitchell, who spoke about both artists on the program, that set it all off for me.

"I think I took this from Piaf and Billie Holiday - that many of the so-called great singers loved their notes more than their texts, and those women never forgot what it was that they were singing about so that the note almost played second position to the text - not that there was anything wrong with the chosen notes (there was still beauty to them), but the emphasis was on telling the story from the heart." ~Joni Mitchell (from "Billie Holiday: Emotional Power Through Song," NPR, Tom Vitale

Now, Billie Holiday was indeed a singer (!), so how could any breathing listener not pay attention to her notes. In fact, how could she not pay attention to her notes. But when she was on, she was on -- which, based on Joni Mitchell's assessment, means that she was probably paying more attention to her texts and what they meant to her in order to push such an incredible interpretation of the lyrics.

As far as the voice goes, I must confess I was extremely disappointed when I first heard Billie talking. She sounded like she had so much trash in her voice. Think a drunk Anita Baker trying to chew glass and talk to you. Her speaking voice did not compare to the superb quality her singing voice. I found a recording of a session she did and someone accidentally left a recorder on to capture her talking. Billie's speaking voice is .... so .... raggedy. But the woman can "sang," and if her craft process is truly about tending to the text, then she is a poet of the highest order: one who can let the muse guide her through words and then sing it to the bone so that we all feel it the way that she does.

Do we (/should we) not reach for the same kind of hypnotism in poetry?

The nature of our medium demands that we pay attention to the text if we want to serve the purest intents of the poem. But poets like me who have natural unrehearsed inclinations toward the musical in poems will also (after the draft is done) pay attention to the notes. How does it arc in the ear? What kind of hum does it make in the throat? What lingers in the air between you and the listener? Is the listener's motivation to move or stay still hinged on the way the poem stops him in his routine tracks?

As a poet, I can say that on most days, I believe I'm a good singer. I come to the page with a lot of ambition that I am capable of making good-sounding notes. When I give the poem the attention it deserves, I keep a pretty good batting average for good poems. I make the pop charts. I know how to sing so that the average listener believes I can carry a tune quite proficiently.

After listening to the NPR segment, though, I had to ask myself if I've ever allowed a subject matter to dictate how I write the poem - its form, its tone, its word choice(s). Yes ... absolutely ... in rewrites, mostly, but while the poem is in progress, I'm not sure that I do let the subject matter dictate form or meter or line breaks or anything else. My goal is to get it out of me, so I don't know that there is a part of me that initially decides my sonnets must lament or my bops complain.

No matter how much I surrender to the process, though, this all begs the question of me as an artist: are certain subjects are more suited for certain forms? I mean, can I really write seriously about 9-11 or human traffiking or a mother selling her child to the man who rapes and kills her in the same way (in the same form, with the same kind of rhythm) that I pull off a playful poem about the luxuries of red velvet cake or my fascination with pinwheels or Southern drawls? The short answer is, "Yes, probably ... but is it (am I) being honest if I do that?" Do I want a reader to give the same kind of emotional weight to cake as I want for human atrocities?

I don't think this is as simple here as giving myself permission to use humor to write about serious subjects. I know all too well that humor is one of the most diffult genres in which to tell a serious truth. It is extremely hard to say something funny that that has endless depth, lingers long after the line is delivered and still has the capacity to change a life. There are comic geniuses who can do that about racial tension and other tragedies, but I haven't mastered it yet and have not taken it on as a task for myself.

But this notion of conciously knowing "what" you are singing about as put forth by Billie and giving a text the emotional integrity that is fitting for the subject matter has much merit. From the creation side of craft, your emotional connection to a subject should help guide the tone and timbre - and sometimes the form - of the poem, though not in a real contrived way. We should reach the point in craft when the dictation of that process is a natural habit -- a metaphysical correspondence between poet and poem about what the final outcome is supposed to become when it reaches the body of a listener. The reader's emotional connection to both the process ansd delivery determines how well it sings.

I guess what I'm saying is there is a reason that Billie Holiday is (and will always be) relevant. Her music is honest. She would never sing "Strange Fruit" in the same way Jimmy Buffet sings "Margaritaville" or Kool & The Gang sing "Celebration" ... it's just not even in the same ball park of requiring the same kind of energy.

It's the same reason the song "Smile" required a different kind of energy for Michael Jackson to sing than it did for Nat King Cole: they sang the same lyrics, but they definitely weren't singing about the same thing. Cole (as beautiful and pure as his version is!) was singing for an audience who wanted his lovely notes; Michael was singing for his life. In this particular case, the notes made Nat Cole's song no less beautiful to hear, but both artists' attitude toward the subject matter definitely dictated a different approach to delivering the text and two different emotional outcomes for the song.

In the best writing worlds, I'd like to sing well because I'm honest when I come to the page; I pay close attention to my text; and I make good-sounding notes. I want generations of readers and critics to speak of my work the way jazz historian Phil Schaap describes Billie: "She swings and invents; she innovates; she can compose on the fly; she can make you hear the rhythm section if they're not there and make them play better if they are."

"Black Girls" Rocking

2010-11-21T11:47:00.006-05:00

I finally *made* the time to watch Black Girls Rock, a ceremonious show that recognizes the achievements of black women.

Unlike some others who had cautioned me about the show before watching it, I did not find it to be a black male-bashing fest at all. Raven-Symone had one startling moment with a comment about black men "getting it together" and respecting women (trust me, it was wayyyy left field and seemed more personal for her than anything else), but I didn't find anything else that really could be remotely connected to the denigration of black men.

As a janie-come-lately viewer, I found myself happy that it was taped, so that I could fast forward past some of the *challenged* notes landed by some very highly praised singers (sue me, I'm tough on singers), but there were three moments in this show that pushed me to the brink spiritually.

The first was the award acceptance by Iyanla Vanzant. Let me say that because I don't know these people personally, it is often hard to know when someone is being "showy" and merely saying what she believes is expected of her. But I do know that Vanzant's moment was one of unprecedented energy up to that point. She remembered the folks who might be in such a deep struggle that they don't know where their next meal is coming from ... she acknowledged the strongs backs of other writers who paved the way for her (Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Cade Bambara). This is the voice I have come to expect from her when she is being herself and not what everyone else expects her to be.

The second was that stellar "Four Women" singing moment by Ledisi (!), Kelly Price, Martha Ambrosius, and Jill Scott. Damn, that was such a hot combination of voices! Jill seemed to be pulling back a little, but it was okay. There was plenty other fire on the stage for a good balance.

The third, and pivotal, moment came at the end when Ruby Dee received her award as a living legend. How amazing it is to simply listen to her and know what she has contributed to this country as a history maker. She described herself as a writer and Lynn Whitfield introduced her by reminding us that Dee and her late husband Ossie Davis "MC'd" the 1963 March on Washington. These are the kind of details we tend to forget, but Ruby Dee has made an immeasurable long contribution to our evolution as a nation.

And I love the fact that she didn't have to say, "I am a black girl who rocks," (which host Nia Long had almost cliched to disingenuous oblivion by the show's end) ... yet it still came through loud and clear. Here's what Ruby Dee did say:

"What you are is part of what you do and vice-versa, and if you're lucky, you find out who you are before you decide what you're gonna become." It reminded me of something I've always said to those who don't quite understand why I write like my last breath depends on it: Writing is not just what I do, it's who I am."

Another Dee quote that stopped me in my tracks:

"Just as I didn't start myself, I don't expect I'm going to stop myself. I think that birth is the beginning of a trajectory, and I'm still on it. I know enough to know that I'm not where I'm going to be - that I'm always becoming."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was worth the whole show for me!

The Colored Girls Epiphany

2010-11-15T11:50:00.010-05:00

This is not an easy return. Some days I sit down at this keyboard and wonder how in the world I ever churned out blog posts every day. The sheer time demand is quite exhausting if you want to talk about something of substance. I remember those days, though, as times I rarely slept.

I kept thinking it was my creative mind that kept me awake all hours of the night ... and that was partly true. It was also a symptom of my illness, and now that I'm on the road to being somewhat "fixed," when it's time for my body to sleep, it doesn't give a flying fig what it is I have on my "awake" agenda. I fall into covers and dream.

I think there is a courting period that has to happen here with me and the blog - a time period when I remember how to expose enough of myself to stay honest and learn what to keep for myself to stay sane. I have to come to the page and break down the wall of fears that builds with moss while you are away.

~~~

I finally made my way to the theatre with my daughter to see Tyler Perry's adaptation of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow in Enuff. The trailer was enough to really pull me in. The all-star cast and the prospect of seeing a fellow poet's words come to life on the screen guaranteed I would go see it.

I have already posted on Facebook my impressions of the film and many, many others have chimed in with reviews. While I love that the film was taken on as a film project, I had some true jolting moments at some of the direction, the script and the creative choices I later learned were jointly made by both Whoopi Goldberg and Tyler Perry. Some of that was a hot mess. The idea of this being a film, however, is something that I fully celebrate.

Besides the gripping scene where two innocent children lose their lives, I was most moved by the Lady in Green monologue. It was a deeply personal moment in which the conversation in my head was so much louder than the film that I was mouthing the poem as Loretta Devine's character was spitting it out. Call it a growing pain, an epiphany ... whatever cliche makes it understandable. Remembering the power of this poem as it was floating into my pores woke me up! Indeed, I have, for the last two years, almost let somebody "walk off wid alla my stuff."

... now that I know this in my bones, I have to do something about it. It will indeed be an entangled process, but at least I have been snapped into knowing that it has to take place. And I'm off to do just that ...

The Real Meaning of Dasha's Quilt

2010-11-13T06:40:00.008-05:00

When I am working on a new quilt or piece of art, there never has to be a rationale for why I am doing it. It's just part of who I am. But I cannot deny that one of the things quilting is about for me is the art of not wasting ... or the art of deeply knowing that nothing on the planet is wasted even when we throw it away.

So, I was thrilled when my very beautful, talented friend Dasha Kelly told me she was making a quilt with her daughters. They had been working on it inch-by-inch, on and off, between work, school and other routines for some time, but hadn't got around to finishing it.

I remembered when I heard Dasha talking about this project how many of my learning sessions at my grandmother's feet were never about quilting, but the act of making a strong memory or the power of learning life while quilting was happening with the fingers. I didn't know it then, but most of what I would learn about what it meant to be resilient, love others and myself, and build a strong personal constitution came from just being a sponge beside her as she stitched to me the story of her life.

I could not tell Dasha how much this project would build for her and her daughters. I could only smile in as witness. When she sent me a text message with the photo of the almost completed "pop" quilt, I squealed with joy. They had made it to the final phase. There had to be some kind of special magic in all the sessions that had ushered them to a near finish. Quilting is quite "ninja" that way. You think that you're sewing, but what you're really doing is mothering, daughtering, feeding, eating, teaching, learning ... growing into yourself.

Through a few text messages, Dasha and I laughed (or at least I laughed) about her designation of her project as a "pop" quilt. It is the kind of quilt my grandmother used to call a biscuit quilt or a puff quilt. Dasha vowed to take notes and know what kind of quilt it should be called.

But she didn't need to change a thing. As far as I was concerned, her project was a "pop" quilt ... and from here forward, she and her daughters will always call it that, and it will have special meaning for them (us) all.

Confession of a Collard Green Stalker

2010-11-08T13:00:00.006-05:00

At first, I just took quick peeks as I drove by. The anemic cells in my body started percolating ... slowly - then with a little more gumption. Then I started making excuses to drive by more than once a day. I had to get a closer look. Something about the way the veins popped so thick almost through the skin of the dark leaves made my mouth burn and water.

It's odd: I have always been this excited about collard greens, but these were the GOVERNOR's greens. Would I become a suspicious-looking dread-loc'd intruder because I was dreamily gazing at the lucious leaves spreading near the rear entrance? Would they have already noticed that I drove past at least three times a day to get my peek on? I sometimes get really nervous even driving near the Executive Mansion because of the airtight camera system at each entrance. These are the kind of cameras that I think can move when you move and detect your frame down to the bone level.

But I finally got brave enough to walk around the block and creep close enough to get some pictures. I stood far enough away so that I would work my zoom lens at 24x power. I wonder if the cooks at the mansion are going to stew these leaves in some slow Carolina-seasoned pit liquor. Mmm -- ahhhh --- I can smell the steam already.

What I want to know is: can the Governor invite a green-loving poet over for Thanksgiving or a reasonable Sunday spread? She won't even have to feed me anything except the greens.

A Joy Arrives on the Page: The Poetics of M. Ayodele Heath

2010-10-31T06:33:00.007-05:00

I have long admired his work as a writer, a painter and a human. M. Ayodele Heath is one of the few poetfriends I have who seems to be constantly trying to raise the bar for himself no matter what he undertakes (and the man is brave enough to undertake a great many things that most of us wouldn't dare admit in public that we did).

His latest publication credit is yet more proof of his brilliance. In Diode Poetry, he uses the subject of okra to talk about a practice that lasted hundreds of years. I will not say what it is here, so I won't ruin it for you. I do know that many other writers have tried to tackle the same subject, and their attempts were historically accurate, narrative, and deeply painful to read. The subject always is ...

But what Ayo does makes it art. Someone who doesn't get the subtext will enjoy it as an instructional poem about Okra. Anyone who gets the subtext will realize it's pure genius the way he cooks on the page. Reminds me of quilt codes, work songs, reading by candlelight in the dark, getting out the vote in church, even.

You gotta watch a pod of southern fried Okra like Ayo ... he's fingerlike and real slick. Before you even realize what you're eating, the man has moved on to the next crop.

(love it, love it, love it!)

Turning the Page: To Blog or Not To Blog

2010-10-28T15:23:00.006-05:00

That has been the question of my life for the last two years.

On the one hand, it has always been a comfort to be able to express myself in this forum without an editor over my shoulder slapping my hands. This blog is the place where I can ask myself all kinds of artistic questions without being "weirded" into a corner or having to apologize for perceived eccentricities. With the single press of the SEND button, I can have a complete transformation -- talk myself into a firm position on an issue and then convincingly argue for the other side -- while the virtual world eavesdrops.

On the other hand, keeping a blog has also taught me that some things are definitely private. After discovering two years ago that I have a serious blood disease and that I would have to undergo surgery to remove a tumor that literally was taking over my body, I was set to document my whole journey through the illness. Soon after treatments began, I began to covet the privacy of my own recovery. I wanted to be able to fall apart and put myself back together again without an audience. Doing that would require a hiatus from blogging. So, I (poof!) disappeared without warning, without explanation and without apology. I did not know if I would ever come back to this space.

October 2010 makes one year since a successful surgery and two years since I stopped blogging. In my absence, a lot has changed on the blogging frontlines -- so much so, that I had to question the value of even doing a blog anymore. Facebook has become a really convenient alternative for me. The brevity and "snapshot" nature of the medium gave me a way to stay connected to friends without lengthy emails or loads of exhaustion (unless I gave in to the addictive nature of it and stayed on for hours!). At one point, I even questioned whether it was a worthy pursuit to do a blog in such a social network-heavy cybersphere. Most writers, I reasoned, are on Facebook, anyway, and no one even reads blogs anymore, right?

Not quite.

I questioned, too, what the focus of this blog should be. I am a poet, playwright, fiber artist, mother and (most of the time) health conscious. I wanted initially to narrow the focus of the blog -- to choose just one area of focus. But I couldn't. I could not segment my interests any more than I could segment my body parts.

There was more that pushed back here me, too.

I started to get private emails and even open Facebook wall inquiries asking when I would return to blogging. I didn't want to discuss it too much because I didn't want to commit to anything I wasn't ready for yet, but it was refreshing to know that this blog actually held meaning for some readers.

So, this is a long and winded way of saying I am back in the blogosphere. Hopefully, I've learned a lot of lessons in my absence -- the biggest of these being: don't be absent.

Now, let's see how being present -- being fire instead of ash -- changes the page.

2008-10-03T14:40:00.009-05:00

Fiber Artists for Obama Has a Quilt!

Maria C. Shell, a quilter and fiber artist from Alaska, sent photos of the quilt done by Fiber Artists for Obama today. Since I opened the door for discussion about this group in an earlier post, I thought I would share some of her photos here. There is one full image of the quilt and a crop of my square.

Maria arranged for a CD of professional pics to come to those who contributed a square, so I'll post those, too, when I get them. I'm just extremely happy the quilt is finished. Still can't post any specifics about where the quilt will travel yet because I don't think the group really knows. And I've taken some word diet pills to control my tendency to just blatantly ask ... so, I'm in a *passive* state of waiting with this project.

We still haven't named the quilt, but Maria's stitching for the quilting of this piece is exquisite! So many wonderful details to get lost in. Maria did the border for us, and she donated the batting, backing and her time for the actual quilting. I'm more than impressed with her work on our squares.

Wow ...

2008-10-03T14:06:00.005-05:00

Family Bonding and the Virtues of Wii

One of the funniest sources of entertainment for me recently has been watching my mother play wii games in the presence of our family. She's never really been a strong video game player, even when she bought an Atari system for me and my brother. I have to admit, too, that when my brother was surfing through wii consoles and ended up buying the system for her, I took a deep breath and hoped it would not be one of those gifts that would sit in the box and collect dust for years. I don't know if my brother was able to compare prices, or if he just knew this was going to be a source of laughter for the rest of the family and just made the investment -- no matter what the cost.

Much to my surprise, mom is all in! When she straps on the remote to her wrist and powers up the tele, we are in for some grand laughs. She talks back to the virtual creatures as if they can hear her, makes the most hilarious grunt noises and acts utterly indignant when the machine is able to beat her. She yells that she knows she's smarter than a machine and doesn't understand how on earth it could ever "hold back" her score. The game that requires her to ride the cow is the most hilarious to watch. She hits trees instead of targets and can't seem to keep her cow on the track. Then it becomes our fault that she didn't make a higher score because we were laughing too hard and distracting her. Guess what? This makes us laugh even more. It's the best unadulterated family fun.

Although I haven't been brave enough to try Nintendo Wii myself (and even though it's become a family pastime to laugh at my mother), I am thinking too of trying wii fit for my own enjoyment. I'll be smart enough to try it when no one else is around though ... so if I fall flat on my face trying to do virtual calisthenics, I'm the only one laughing.

2008-10-03T10:30:00.003-05:00

For the last couple of months, I have spent many hours at the bedsides of ill family members. Most of my caretaking is really based on how intuitive I naturally am and how well I listen. Not only do I have to be on point with a schedule for meds, tube flushings, bandage changing and liquids, but I have to be very attuned with what the sick person really needs (as opposed to what she might be saying that she needs). I am no nurse, for sure, but I've done this so much recently, my best friend has started to call me Florence NightinCherryl. Truth is, I can only imagine what it might take to become a licensed practical nurse in terms of how much study is required. You really have to know some technical things about the human body and how it is supposed to function in a healthy state. There are many lpn schools that teach students how to work closely with patients in various health care settings to maintain and provide them basic medical care. You can complete LPN training in as little as 7 months to 1 year for a hospital certificate, or you can get an LPN degree in two years from a community college or trade school. LPNs earn up to $35,000 a year after graduation, depending on where they're located and what type of medical facility they work in. University of Phoenix, which has programs in several states, including Georgia, Florida, Colorado, California and Ohio (among others), seems to be a popular choice. Some of these kind of schools even have LPN - to - RN programs to ensure students become registered nurses, too. In our frail economic times, those who have been thinking about a career change might be pleased to know that this kind of work is always in demand. There is always a need for a gentle, knowledgeable hand on a sick bed.