Motorcycles and MixingBoards

Redux: Valentine's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:12:00 +0000

Peep the audio, reposted from the past, but in a flashier player.

Okiedoke #8

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:37:00 +0000

John Jacobs is a comedian in Tampa. Every now and then we sit back and talk about stuff. Peep the record.

Three Pics

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:50:00 +0000

WMNF.org

On Soundcloud: Deacon

On Soundcloud: DJ Sorta

On Soundcloud: Chismatic

On Twitter @thedamnjams

A Fractured Reflection on the Siren.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:41:00 +0000

Sometimes I feel that if I could only understand one story that maybe I could unlock my world.

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.

The bike leans. Awash in dust and dirt and in need of maintenance that I cannot cover. The music of the band is sublime. The woman sings through a voice coated in cinnamon and cigarette smoke. But I can still hear them. Or her. Or it. It’s dark out and though it feels like open waves, I know that there are rocks in that sea.

I reach out for a drink with the hand that has an extra line in the palm, one put there not by nature but by fate. Bitter tea, but hot. I step to the Atlas. It starts on the second try. The throttle sticks and the road feels as rough and uncertain as my maintenance schedule. I ride on but there is no distance from the song. I think that Ulysses new that.

Time passes. I return to the machine. Before friends and hummus I scrub and scrape and screw it back into a form I can believe in. It takes an entire day. In the night, I ride. There is a chill in the air. It grows colder the faster I go.

I stop in the dark, in a place where I haven’t been for a while. A text message from my man says that there is symmetry in tragedy. That all songs are beautiful, though we should also be suspicious of them all.

Songs. By the weekend, I am at a console of lights, my finger on the masterfade for an entire city. I speak into a microphone, into waves, into radios. A voice in the void. Then music. But not the song.

But Ulysses, if one may so express it, did not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear them. For a fleeting moment he saw their throats rising and falling, their breasts lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted, but believed that these were accompaniments to the airs which died unheard around him.

The story. It looks like a tale of resisting a song so that one does not fall prey to the destruction that lies behind it. But perhaps it is a meditation on just what we are willing to do to hear that melody. We only think that if we succumb, we we are ruined. One forgets that, even in ruin, we get the song.

Three Pics

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:07:00 +0000

The Damn Jams.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:39:00 +0000

This just in. Me and my people are on the radio.

wmnf.org

wmnf iphone app

David Bowie Promo

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:46:00 +0000

David Bowie Promo by Chismatic

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:01:00 +0000

...Then he asked me if I was a student too. I said no, I was a teacher. What did I teach? African literature. Now that was funny, he said, because he knew a fellow who also taught the same thing, or perhaps it was African history, in a certain community college not far from here. It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know. By this time I was walking much faster.

...

Th[is] young fellow from Yonkers, perhaps partly on account of his age but I believe also for much deeper and more serious reasons, is obviously unaware that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions and, like everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things.

...

If there is something in these utterances more than youthful inexperience, more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply it is the desire-one might indeed say the need-in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.

...

Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.

...

A Conrad student told me in Scotland last year that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. … Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril.

...

The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. I would not call that man an artist, for example, who composes an eloquent instigation to one people to fall upon another and destroy them. No matter how striking his imagery or how beautiful his cadences fall, such a man is no more a great artist than another may be called a priest who reads the mass backwards or a physician who poisons his patients.

...

But whereas irrational love may at worst engender foolish acts of indiscretion, irrational hate can endanger the life of the community.

...

…as a sensible man I will not accept just any traveller's tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not trust the evidence even of a man's very eyes when I suspect them to be as jaundiced as Conrad's.

...

Travelers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves.

...

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently, Africa is something to be avoided, just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity.

...

I read in the papers the other day a suggestion that what America needs at this time is somehow to bring back the extended family. And I saw in my mind's eye future African Peace Corps Volunteers coming to help you set up the system.

--Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa"

Marco Simoncelli. 1987-2011.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:04:00 +0000

He will be missed.

Fiendish Fundraiser

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:20:00 +0000

Check out them buttons I be pressin'.
Fiendish Fundraiser by Chismatic

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:23:00 +0000

"Journeying solo around the world was more than just riding a motorbike, which whilst being a tremendous undertaking, it required more. Journeying alone around the world necessitated a total commitment to being away from home, and away from family and friends. It also took you away from every conceivable point of reference you had ever learnt. If you also recognised the metaphysical content of such a journey, then you laid down your soul to fate.

∞

I always believed that the really big story of your life is the one where the faintest fabric of your existence is woven into someone else's fairy tale. There is also that brief moment when the bridge of air becomes stone for that person to walk across and touch you. There is also that moment when the stone petrifies to become brittle; it cracks, turns back to air and you fall.

∞

Standing still in silent solitude is the antithesis of what bike riding is all about, yet it is ironic that you need a means of transport to get there, unless you walk. Unfortunately, modern day time frames make walking impracticable. Well, that's kind of an excuse. The not very secret reason for not walking is that no biker likes doing it. It's tiresome, wears out shoes and the scenery moves by far too slowly.

∞

People who dress in one piece leather outfits on a bike that looks like mine don't pass by these parts very often, and if they do they don't stop long. You could tell. The fantastic image kept you completely safe. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but in human life it creates a bond. People are essentially good and just need you to give them a sprig of of honesty for them to relax.

∞

There was no sound from the engine now and I became aware of how quiet this journey could be. Serenity comes in small moments of contemplation. Everyone needs to go where they will not be disturbed, yet by simply being, they were already there. It is the great irony of rides like this that the engine both takes you to and separates you from that quiet place of reason."

From The Loneliness of the Long Distance Biker, by Nick Sanders

The Manifold.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 02:18:00 +0000

The other night I stepped into brisk darkness beneath the faded light of a few tenacious stars and rode unknowingly into the mechanical revelation of my past selves.

As of late the night sky has become a map that, patiently and with reference to tech, I can decode. It means much less to gaze into that infinity alone, but like a fool I have been looking. The light of the city is a damper on the sky so I have been searching for distant darkness in the midst of an open tree line. So it goes and so it went the other night.

I slid on the fast jacket and eased a warming engine out of the carport, over the crunch of fallen acorns, onto the subtle camber of the street. As soon as I hit motion, a cool humid breeze sifted around leather and plastic and brought goosebumps to my skin. I chilled at a series of red lights, listening to my breath, until finally the road opened up enough for me to drown everything under an open throttle.

Open, but not flat out. This is the dark we’re talking about. A loss of visibility is also, strangely, a loss of feel. Anticipation is a crucial element of sensation. If my horizon is brought up short, those opaque corners are shaded by fear, or at least by possibilities into which I cannot rush headlong. I have seen those fools rush in. But the cats I ride with know the pace. We lean to the side don’t fall.

The road unfolded. I passed the park and came to the slight curve where the street lights had ended and the dark could finally reach out. My high beams cut the path all the way down to the corner named for the Green Ninja. A hazardous left turn. On the exit I twisted throttle all serious. A steady climb in rpm, gearing and road speed. The front end went light. The world became a narrow, short tunnel and everything on the periphery was simply forbidden. And that was when it happened.

I hadn’t traveled the road at that time of night in a long time. But I know the road well. I travelled its path on my first bike and every bike since, in joy and anguish and that feeling that can’t be named without it being destroyed. Tucked behind the pitiful windscreen of the Pharmacon Atlas, I felt every bike I had ever ridden. Felt also the person that rode them. Boys and men who resemble me only in the memories that they hold in common. They put wheel to road in wonder, in anger, in despair. Most knew nothing about the bikes they straddled. They didn’t know the extent of their longing, their capacity to suffer or the love they could have for a child. Perhaps the Oracle would say so much of me now, but I didn’t have that third to give me perspective. This existential familiarity stripped away the leather and in that moment I was laid bare before the road.

Up ahead I stopped in what passed for a clearing and dismounted. I was shook and felt the eyes of imagined ghosts in the woods surrounding. In the sky, past the thin slow clouds, I could see only the Swan. I didn’t matter. The tuning forks revealed for me a more crucial constellation.

The Great Pessimist says that “To live is to lose ground.” He speaks truth. And yet in the chill of night, my own lostness was brought into view in one summary moment of perspective. I can’t call its meaning. But I think the picture will be completed by the next bike that travels with me in darkness.

Beautiful Lasers.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 03:35:00 +0000

Music can take you places. It can also make you glad that you have left those places behind.

Lupe Fiasco, "Beautiful Lasers"

The Wet.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:12:00 +0000

Sometimes the rain falls. Many choose to wait it out, to turn their gaze away from the torrent, let it pass peacefully overhead. But the rain does fall as wheat does sway. You can never make peace with it; you have to just ride. Maybe find another who feels the same. For me, tonight, there is no other.

I push the bike down the road so I don't wake the sleeping. It fires up, sucking in chilly air. In a dark chamber at its core, there is an endless series of injections. Injections of fuel; those that are not followed by sleep and death. I ride through a still puddle, distorting its reflection of the infinite sky. In a moment of morbidity I wonder what it is that a puddle of blood would reflect.

The ride is all treachery. A layer of water between road and tire, instability at any meaningful speed. Beneath, an engine that wants to give more than the road can possibly take. Perched above, I try to ride smoothly. The tire slides on the white lines that I cross at the intersection. I stay loose. They slide again, front and back, on a short but smooth patch of asphalt entering the interstate, but I hold steady. Distribute my weight. Look through the turn. I don’t know where the edge is. I reach out with my feelings but I can’t hear it. The voice has been extinguished by the wet. Downtown, I pause beneath street lights and peer into the darkness beneath an overpass. There the homeless sleep. I think about how the night always speaks more truthfully than the day.

I ride home. On the route I have taken, a road is closed and I must pass through a detour I have never known. I come over the crest of a slight hill and find a fallen branch blocking the road. I swerve. The severed limb is large, covered in moss. Mangled shadows dance upon its bark as my headlight passes by.

The bike slides yet again on the roundabout. I barely notice. I suppose it doesn’t matter. If the streets don’t kill me, the state probably will.

Flyer.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:14:00 +0000

T.E. Lawrence

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:19:00 +0000

"In five minutes my bed would be down, ready for the night: in four more I was in breeches and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which lived in a garage-hut, opposite. Its tyres never wanted air, its engine had a habit of starting at second kick: a good habit, for only by frantic plunges upon the starting pedal could my puny weight force the engine over the seven atmospheres of its compression.

...

I gained though, gained steadily: was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down went my left hand to give the engine two extra dollops of oil, for fear that something was running hot: but an overhead Jap twin, super-tuned like this one, would carry on to the moon and back, unfaltering.

...

I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram-lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man’s very best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.

...

A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him."

From The Mint, by T.E. Lawrence. Lawrence rode a Brough Superior S.S.100. He named it Boanerges, a Greek name that means "sons of thunder." It is the name that Jesus gave to his disciples James and John and a fitting name for a twin.

It is interesting to see these old accounts of riders and their rides. No matter how different the language or how exotic or mundane the machine, the narrative is instantly recognizable. As though there is only one universal ride and all of us at one time or another travel its hallowed path.

Okiedoke #7: Two Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Here is a poem from Kate Greenstreet. She told me once that the only book that she ever stole was by Heidegger.

The poem is called "If Water Should Cover the Road."

This one is from Lea Marshall. Once, she and I walked the streets of the Bronx listening to headphones plugged into the same ipod through a splitter.

It's called "Dark Matter."

Okiedoke #6: The Robbery

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 22:12:00 +0000

A friend and her son walked into their home recently, only to find that the joint had been robbed. But, thanks to a cunning act of omission, the thieves didn't steal her son's innocence. Well, innocence is the wrong word. Naiveté, maybe?

The Road

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

"In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy. Her nipples pipeclayed and her rib bones painted white. She wore a dress of gauze and her dark hair was carried up in combs of ivory, combs of shell. Her smile, her downturned eyes. In the morning it was snowing again. Beads of small gray ice strung along the lightwires overhead.

He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and death. He slept little and he slept poorly. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from such siren worlds. Lying awake in the dark with the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory."

From Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Silencing the Past

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:29:00 +0000

"We are never as steeped in history as when we pretend not to be, but if we stop pretending we may gain in understanding what we lose in false innocence. Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake."

"I also want to reject both the naive proposition that we are prisoners of our pasts and the pernicious suggestion that history is whatever we make of it. History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots."

From Silencing the Past, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot,

A Fractured Description

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:13:00 +0000

There are only two things, mainly. The object before you and your relation to it. Always changing, whether you notice or not. A thought is a beginning, but it is not complete until you set it to work in the world. It is not complete because there is no world outside of the objects of your consciousness. It’s all in your head, slick. Even when you have gotten the words on the page or the paint on the canvas.

Yeah. The outer is the inner. So if you want to know how I am doing, all you have to do is look at my bike. If grime covers the plastic, so much can be said of my soul. I set out into the streets, motivated by feelings that I wish were behind me.

The night is moist. I keep thinking that my visor is blemished, that I have only to clean it to stop the world from looking so cloudy. But the thickness is out there and it casts a sad halo around every brake light. The halogen lanterns that light the streets repulse me as ever, drowning the world in that sick sepia. In the summer heat, there is only sweat between leather and flesh. Tonight, I will not be looking back.

A small hill can feel like a speed bump if you go the right speed. From the fast vantage, familiar roads become alien and new. Contours turn to kinks and gradual bends become hairpins. The vista is always coming up; it is truncated by time and my frenetic movement through space. In a true moment of beauty I can’t feel the machine. Neither can I feel myself. I am lifted out of that void by my own doubts, but I return as the next corner draws closer. One good turn. I begin to feel the ink unwritten on my skin.

The streets let me pass. They do not challenge me, nor do they slow me down. The engine screams for me. It is a tone my voice can’t sustain but that my status demands. I hear the sandy grind of the brakes between downshifts.

I stop in a dark place of endless tarmac. The light of the city obscures the sky, though I can make out one constellation. The Swan. I think back to a time when I walked the streets of New York in the same frame that now rides me through Tampa. It won’t do. Even the tragedies that don’t belong to me are mine; I am tired of giving so much to the road and the wander. I ride it with heart but it adorns my rubber with nails and chips of wood. My back tire is a crown a thorns.

The Atlas rides on. I search for a clear sky but the darkness that I need is too far away. I turn away from the heavens and focus on the smell of the exhaust, the feeling of the front end, the reflection of knower and known. It will be time to turn back soon. My greatest rival is the dawn.

Six pics

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:10:00 +0000

Experiences and Reflections in Northern Uganda

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:02:00 +0000

Atiak is hard living. No electricity. No plumbing. If you can't afford food, you grow it. If the drought comes, you starve. But what it lacks in bourgeois comforts, it more than makes up for in uneventfulness.

Yeah, the movement of life is slow. Maybe the football team of the next town will roll up and everyone will have a game. Maybe the discotech will get enough solar power to put some sound in its speakers for a night. More commonly, cats chill around a fire, beat a drum, sing the old songs. I just stare at the stars or read comics on the computer.

∞

The road from Atiak to Sudan is much smoother than the mess that lies between Atiak and Gulu. It is a mercy on the car and its occupants. Makes me wonder what happened with the bus crash that killed a hundred people on this stretch a week back.

We had a priest and a well-known foreman with us on the trip, so getting across the border was a butter-smooth process. After a point, the orange dirt of Uganda just stops and what replaces it is a more faded and dusty style, the sand of the desert, perhaps. Then we hit Nimule, the southernmost town in Sudan. It lies on the bank of the Nile, by a large national park and a panorama of hills that fades into mountainous distance. In the town center we hit the market in search of fish. It was a slow market day, but we found some scaly goodness and a few veggies.

The baby walked alongside and a woman strongly admonished us to carry her. We told Olivia about this back at the site. She said that cats are worried about witch doctors kidnapping light-skinned and albino children. I check the paper and find that, at least in the south, there are in fact kidnapping rings in which albinos are abducted and shipped to Tanzania, where they are killed for the sake of certain ritual styles. And all the witch doctors I have met here seemed so nice.

∞

On a sunny afternoon I gather up some babies and put them in the land cruiser. So long as you crack the windows, it is basically a big playpen. Amaya pretended to drive while Stuart played with blocks in the backseat. I was riding shotgun with the little one when two of the construction workers ran by, laughing. They were chasing a chicken.

The people had felt my suggestion that perhaps we should put some meat into the snacks. After finally nabbing the fowl, they called me over to do the honors. On occasion I am struck by how much of my life is described by old wu-tang lyrics. Much like the GZA, I am totally the "child educator plus head amputator."

∞

I rolled into Atiak town one day to drop off a Traditional Birth Attendant and find a particular church congregation. Instead, I got catholics.

Before hitting the town center I had to pull over for a procession. A multitude of children walked down the road. One in front held a cross almost twice his height. Further down, the parish priest, a man that I regard as a moron, walked holding some icon of catholicism that I did not recognize. He was transfixed. If this were some pagan religion, I would say he was possessed. They marched on.

Later in the church, the priest gave a sermon about God's power to answer prayers. I never understand how such a message makes any sense in places like this. Surely people must pray for rain. I look at the congregation. It is almost entirely women and children, and mostly children. Get 'em young.

∞

I went with Obong the foreman into town one day to get a part made from a piece of sheet metal. As the metal worker deftly constructed a meaningful object using nothing but a hammer, we chilled in the concrete home of one of Obong's relatives.

Upon the walls of the place were educational posters for children and a few other interesting styles. There was a poster of the individual members of some European football team. Each players profile pic was also accompanied by pics of their homes and the cars they drove. I wondered about the origin and meaning of such a poster in the place such as this; what kind of world did it aid in constructing?

Also upon the wall was a list of African leaders as of 2010. It pictured every president and prime minister of Africa, but the center of the poster was reserved for Barack Obama, the Luo leader of the free world. Haha.

∞

On a rare day of cell tower internet access, I cruised the net and find an old pic of an Acholi family. It was from the late 1800s and depicted hair styling and adornments that I had not ever seen here.

I showed it to a group of women who were sitting, waiting for a young girl to give birth. Most of these women were TBAs and they were old. All of them thought the pic was of the Massai. When I told them it was of the Acholi, there were like, oh, oh shit. Then one of them said it must be the Acholi from across the way, on the other side of Acholiland in Kitgum. I asked them why it is that they don’t dress like that anymore. As if they were a chorus, they all screamed "Muno!" This means "white people."

I asked them if they thought it was good that they dressed like white people now. They said yes; in those days there was no salt for food and no blankets. The whites brought all of that and this is good. Also, in those days people did not feel cold. But people feel cold now so they must cover up.

I said that where I am from, some black people are suspicious of white people and believe that many of them have brought things that have been very bad. They said no; White people are good. Look at this maternity clinic that is sprouting up. They bring us good things. The words were siphoned to me from a translator, but the body language of the women speaking seemed quite final, as though what they were saying was categorically the case.

I took the pic to a hair salon in the town center. I showed it to some ladies and the initial response was much the same as with the TBAs. They did not recognize the people to be Acholi. When I told them that, yo, these are Acholi people, the stylist remarked that those people are naked, and that "we are modern people now." I told her that I was in search of someone who knew about the Acholi. She told me that I should go find someone who is old, since she and other younger people did not know about the Acholi.

∞

The elder I found told me a great deal about old Acholi styles and referred (without me even mentioning the salon conversation) to the problem of young people. They all want to live modern life, he said, so they turn away from the old ways. They even will not believe the stories that they hear about how people used to live. His comments got me to thinking about the nature of modernity. The scholars say that it is a "melting of the solids," a movement in which the laws and customs that used to bind people together and to ways of doing things fall away and leave much less rigid alternatives.

But for some, modernity doesnt not evolve. It comes crashing down from above in such a way that people to not observe a transition, but a rupture. So that even people who live a form of life in which they feel the authority of chiefs and elders nevertheless regard themselves as modern and look with amused pity at their naked ancestry.

Of course, the march of war helps none of this. Though the practices of warfare are modern, war itself is something from a much older world, where meaning is destroyed and worlds are unmade. That would be the story of the Acholi if I wrote it. Mercifully, I am not the elder of this town.

∞

At lunch with a nun, I ask about a story that I heard from the Acholi elder, about how the Acholi had a split and the new faction travelled to the other side of the Nile and became the Alur. The story, one of brothers in quarrel, does not flatter either tribe. Yet the tale was not told to me in a way that suggested it was an etiology used to condemn the other side. (Like the story of the transgression of the son of Noah that led to the condemnation of Canaan. Or America's origin story, for that matter.) The nun, who was herself an Alur, told me that the story was indeed told the same way by each tribe. She said that her mother used to tell her the story and stress the morale; don't fight with your family, lest you be divided.

The nun wished me a happy 4th of July. In my typical Frederick Douglass response, I told her that the independence of America was not yet the independence of America's slaves. She did not know this. "I wouldn't celebrate it," she said. Well, I thought. Score one for Douglass.

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:46:00 +0000

Religion is like prison

keep the people locked up in different divisions

some of them promise you heaven

but I see a whole lot of bullshit ism-scism

imperialism

in the form of spirituality

slave mentality, escape reality

what we supposed to just suffer and smile

and be content

sending' our prayers to the clouds?

i want my heaven now

freedom on earth

and if the preacher ain't with us then we takin' his church

what is it worth to have the biggest religion

when the people got miserable living conditions?

no water, no lights, no rights

all over africa we fight

but we have to unite

'cause ain't no power in the gospel

when the priest puttin' powder in his nostril

and the elder's council fails to lead

and the children suffer from daily need

and the people can barely eat

is it a sin to stand up

to fight against the ones that put is in handcuffs?

goddamn

what happened to the daily bread,

spread love

ain't that what the bible said,

but in the name of the bible

how much love was spread

compared to how much blood was shed?

--M1 of Dead Prez, on "Shuffering and Shmiling"

Three Notes on Gulu

noreply@blogger.com (Chismatic) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:02:00 +0000

Cats tune the radio to one of two stations. Either it plays the worst of American hip hop and Ugandan pop music or white people singing about Jesus. This Christian music ain't the soothing sounds of Gospel; it has no listenable value for the non-religious. The hip hop is kind of interesting; I don’t hear any songs about rappers doing their usual violence, so all that is left are songs about bitches and hoes and sex. The Ugandan jams have taken to emulating these styles, so there are a lot of songs that are all autotuned and horrible and far from revolutionary. I don’t know why I thought cats would be playin’ Fela Kuti and Lucky Dube round the clock.

In a town with 65 percent of the population living in poverty, it is pretty easy to tell who has some flow to spare. Look to the men, because they are driving something German. Then look to the women, because they 1) have a hair weave and 2) their skin is lighter than other women. Not because they are actually light skinned, mind you; they have been using the skin cream that lightens skin. And they seem to only use it on their faces; arms dark as mine, face dark as my baby's. Not a good look, you would think. But here it is.

Gulu is slowly taking in mad missionaries and visitors. They are mostly young white college students. Many are with Invisible Children. Aid groups who have been in the area for a while tend to call them “highly visible children.” I pray to God (heh) that one of them will walk up and ask me if I know Jesus.