Elicitation

Today is one of the
Bittersweet ones
Troubles on the mind
Coronation of arrivals
Illuminating pathways
Of itineraries booked and pre-paid
Slide greasing zen ninja monkeys
Walking the talking

But do I want to write in the poetry style today or do I want to write in the style of the prose? I cannot really decide whether straight-shooting mavericky or heavy-hopey coding is the order. Bittersweet, from above, heavily coded because sometimes all is neither. So I shall plunder all the words, thoughts, and notions from others and conversations previous.

There remains open transactions to conclude, ends to tie (or ends that need a close once-over to determine whether tying is the correct course of action), and mountains to climb. Not for me.

A poker game edgy
Acceptance blossoms credibility
Camouflage the new plumage
In the new social order
As long as cards are showing

It's not like I'm careless with the cards at all. I hold them in a manner, the whole time, where all can see. Deliberately as stratagem for all to know. But. If you haven't counted the entire deck recently, you'll see that there appears to be an ace a-missing. And I'm wearing long sleeves in the summer shouting something about "the view from the top" being "really great." Cocksure dapper schnookery.

People find asking the difficult questions to be frightening and disorienting, 180º from majority and popular opinions. But we are empiricists by nature and emboldened by nurture. It's always best to ask. Mr. Wise in the 6th grade made it clear, "There are never stupid questions. Stupid answers? Yes. But all questions are valid."

Like the snowball
We create it
And the effects grow
With momentum
in layers
Life and art

A river flowing
A dark alley
A knife
A drunken mime
Go

Maybe winning the game is completely beside the point. Perhaps being the best player--knowing from within rather than through feedback--is what it s all about. Maybe without the win/loss/player elements, IT becomes less the game than the real. What keeps a pattern going? You tell me.

Elicitation. See?

This is How We Roll

Habituation

I was going to clean my studio today. Not that it's too big of a mess but it's not as efficient as I'd like my space to be. I'm at the point where I have to execute things utilizing one to three additional steps. My mind is generally several steps ahead of where my body is at any time. I'm an efficiency/execution junky. Art is as much about ideas as it is about execution. If you don't DO it, it never happened (or the opposite: if you've done it in your mind, it's done. Just ask Jimmy "sin-in-the-brain" Carter). But I do like having the drums set up if only to play a funky ass beat for 30 seconds (hit it n' quit it), but they're totally blocking access to several things (printers, monitor, VHS deck, storage selves, media archive, etc.). Oh well. I don't have the cancers, thank g-d, so I don't have to feel like I'm in such a huge rush all the time. I can take some of my own advice and breathe....I'm blessed like I'll never quite comprehend.

But looking around this place I decided I'm not touching a thing. Not today. Not right now. Cleaning this place is not on any schedule for the time being. This is evolution of how and why I work. From the American flag (photo 5) to the volcano thing (2) to the genuine Iraq combat boots (3) to all stuff I've been planning to mail to friends (4) to the drawings the B SOLD me this weekend (1), this is my world and my world is customize and has significant meaning. This is middlespace live; the real deal, the real world.

But looking around I got to thinking about how we all get so used to things. Granted, taken for, our possessions, our surroundings, our environments. Perhaps--aside from the internal combustion engine and coal power--our greatest human shortcoming is our blinder tendency. I am certain evolutionary theorist could provide meaning but I'm guessing that it is our curious and empirical nature to focus on finding out what's next, what's on the other side of the hill, damn the known, what's unknown.

Habituation. Just...getting so accustomed to certain things from mere presence and exposure or repetition or context expectation. Everyday situational habituation and message habituation. Situational habituation is the opposite of middlespace, where trees are missed because of forests and such. It's how people run new stoplights. It's why stopping to smell the roses is an anomaly of an ideal. It's the cognitive mapping and structures of our everyday existence; so "focused" on "important" things that so much fades into backgrounds. I'm convinced most of us miss all the good stuff.

Messages too. One can hear a message so often that the message becomes an internalized self-fulfilling prophecy (telling a child that they are smart, for example, may result in a child who believes he or she can and will be smart) or the message can become completely lost and discounted (when there is no reinforcement or evidence to support messages). OR BOTH.

And here is my point today: I'm told certain things frequently, we all are. Very positive things about some of my "abilities" have been disclosed to me for all of my life. But...have these messages shaped who I am and what I do? I mean, I shy away from praise and acclaim and completely discount much of what I hear in terms my ability. Even as a child I just figured all kids heard about 90+% the same shit from parents and educators. As an adult I just figured that people buttered you up to get things for themselves from you. But that's naive and jaded, respectively, as hell.

Where does message influence and message discount meet? Do they meet? Or are these exclusive events? I tired to graph it with axes labeled "Credibility" and "Frequency" (high and low, each) but that doesn't seem to capture what I'm not sure I'm trying to capture.

Maybe the producer in me is trying to understand how to motivate people to do their very best, most personally reflective work -AND- the creator in me is trying to understand when to believe and use feedback best.

Maybe I should just clean my studio.

S-s-s-something from the Emailings

Ty,

Thanks again for letting us use your photos for the digital offering of the emmet swimming EP. The release is tomorrow but Amazon has a teaser so I thought I would share it with you:

[clicky]

Also, I enjoyed throwing a bass part on the mashup recording of the TKOL stuff that Rich sent me which became "Las Calaveras".

Thanks again and stay in touch!

- Scott

Universalis Metaphorilus

Working Harder in a New American Economy

Finally rebounding from the Ghosts of the New America

モスラ is Dead!

[what?]

Quit Frontin': Black People Need to Stop Accusing Other Black People of "Acting White"

Overheard office-environment snippet by some 30-something white woman:

"This morning I heard on Pacifica radio that inner-city African-Americans hold each other back by accusing their more academically proficient peers of acting...white! Isn't that weird? Why would they do that? Such a vicious cycle...."

Everybody has heard of this phenomenon via anecdote, on NPR, or in the research literature of academia. Oprah probably did a feature on it. It's well documented--and you have probably even explained it to people you felt were less worldly than yourself--that blacks sometimes humiliate other blacks with the accusation that they are "acting white." It's an inner-city accusation that arises at the first signs of assimilation-based achievement. You can discuss the negative outcomes for all parties involved and detail historical predictors and blah-blah-blah. In fact, by explaining all that shit aloud, you are totally acting white yourself. I'm acting very white right now by writing words...on a computer...A MAC...on a topic!! See? That's some rough shit [some prior discussion here].

"Nigga, you actin' white now?" is a typical affront that is immediately replied to with "No I ain't!" Then the accuser and the target immediate regress into the same time-worn stereotypical behaviors that make old white ladies afraid of black people throughout America. Once outed as acting white conversation then refocuses from topics such as what pi might equal, aerodynamics of predatory birds, and the probability that other intelligent lifeforms exist in the universe, to timely and significant topics such as crunk ass shiny ass rims, mad ass dope beats, phat ass bitches, and "making my moneys, playa" and the like. Frontin' for frontin' sake.

Unfortunately--unlike crack babies and profits from credit default swaps--the aforementioned phenomenon is actually real. Black people perform that very behavior to other black people all the fucking time. I've had it done to me many times throughout my life, "There go Ty...actin' all white and shit." Kid shit; just some silly teasing, right? Well, except for the venom and hate-emphasis on the word "white," and how the accusation was meant more as a warning than as a factual analysis, it is indeed just some harmless teasing (sarcasm is quite white).

It's an unfortunate external manifestation of an accuser's inner struggles, suffering, and socio-economic envy, right? It's just a normal lashing-out at a dominant culture from the oppressed you say. "Oreo," "white nigger," "house nigger," "uncle Tom," "sell out," "you can't change your skin," and "forgetting where you come from," I've heard all that bullshit from blacks (and of course, "faggot!"). Sticks and stones, certainly, but it still hurts like fuck and leaves a person at proverbial crossroads of how the rest of one's life should play out.

Let's Make A Deal! One of these boxes contains a happy, long, healthy life featuring family vacations, intellectual stimulation (subscription to The New Yorker), proud colleagues, collegiate alumni membership, and neighbors you trust. The other box contains three-baby mamas and a colostomy bag as the result of a drive-by shooting because you "dissed" someone at the funeral of some cousin (because there are always cousins involved) who was killed at the age of 17. Oh and you're in prison too...with AIDS. For life. Pick one...now!

But even though that's some fucked-up, bitter, self-hate psychology, I never let it stop me from acting as white as Patty Hearst acted on February 3, 1974. As a half-black/half-white/all Jew Californian, I've always felt entitled to act in any mother-the-fuck manner I chose--or, in the case of the occasional fight or flight situation that may arise, acting in any matter in which I need to act. My choice. Besides, I deconstructed the "acting white" 'tard-code as a three year-old and observed that significantly all of the rich and famous and historically significant humans happened, to that point anyway, to be more white than not white. The police were white. The mayor, governor, and president were white. Actors were white. Hugh Hefner was white. The Six Million Dollar Man was white. G.I. Joe with kung-fu grip was white. So, if acting white was gonna be my ticket out of poverty, obscurity, and desolation, then I figured that I'd put on a goddamn one-man show! I got all Stanislavski method and shit. "Hello, how are you doing. My name is Tyrone."

Remember in 2004 when Barack said, "...children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." Now it's 2009 and Barack Hussein is president of all of this. The President. Mr. President. Our president. Damn, it must be real because Barack said it...and look at him.

And even when Barack Hussein was running for president as a viable presidential candidate, there was still that fake ass debate over whether Barack Hussein was either "Not Black Enough" for blacks or "Just Too Black" for whites. What?! Even when people were giving millions of dollars and volunteer hours to the first viable black presidential candidate's campaign, fucking Jesse "Jealous" Jackson and Ralph "Hater" Nader were still labeling Barack as "acting white." What the fuck? Occidental College. Columbia University, Harvard Law, Illinois Senate, United States Senator, Ivy League lawyer wife and Barack's still acting white. I'd trade for that act in a second.

Oh, but wasn't that the very same Jesse Jackson I saw crying his authentically black eyes out in Grant park on November 4, 2008? And I see Nader wisely just shut the fuck up.

So yeah, black people have got to immediately cease and fucking desist insulting other brothers and sisters who just don't want to be a perceived as or called a nigger anymore with the accusatory, "acting white" drive-by bullet bullshit. In fact every black person in American should immediately begin telling all their black children and friends and cousins (because there are always cousins involved) to start "acting presidential." Black people should demand explanations for when peers are not acting presidential enough. They should warn, "don't do anything to embarrass Barack, start acting more presidential." And white people need to start telling their kids to start acting black...like the president!

Am I still acting white? Do I hate blacks or black culture? No and no, shut the fuck up with those dumb ass questions, don. My office tower colleagues used to love how I could "talk black" to certain support staff. To them I was, what, a white person talking black? The support staff were just proud that I represented them on the billable staff side of the ledger. So I guess I can do it all now. I have all the acts down. Do I look down on my people? No. Do I forget where I come from? No. Do obfuscate notions of how race intersects the majority paradigm? Hells yeah, motherfucker! But I know what I am. I made it and I survived it. People act like me now. I do not want to taste Hamburger Helper or Kool Aid ever again even for some retro-nostalgia bullshit.

Driving a Prius is acting very white though. I'd never stoop that low.

Quit frontin'.

Sam 2 [Summer Portrait Series 2009/24]

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[SPS09]

Boyds, Maryland - 2009