the greatest

Its an honor to be able to bring top notch poets from around the country, sometimes outside of it to our venue and watch them perform. Even though Wil and Nate work very hard to book and promote these events along the way being very kind to all guests, they are not the reason poets come back. I guest host at times or play funny music but no one comes back to hear me play Kermit the Frogs IT AINT EASY BEING GREEN for them. The port veritas movement carries with it a very appreciative audience that fully understands how tough it is to perform your poetry or prose or ramblings successfully. That being said they dont impress easy.

Andrea Gibson came and performed for us yesterday and if you werent there to see it, you'll have to be one of those people who don't know. Wil and I have discussed at great length her skills and talents and every poet I know has a copy of Pole Dancing for Gospel Hymns.

I've seen her perform before but each time there is a different shade of genius(thats right I said genius!!) She achieves at each dimension better then people who focus completely on one. She can string together metaphors in a way that makes me want to study them like ancient text and go from that to tossing out hilarious stories that bring you closer to her.

I don't even know what the heck to say to her at this point. What do you say to the greatest? I didn't say anything, I think I learn more that way.

don't give up on the future

I voted No on question one. I voted no on whether or not Maine should repeal the law allowing homosexuals to marry. This was a large scale issue for Mainers and I'm told that close to 60% of the state voted...and it was repealed. It was very close but a defeat is a defeat.

I'm writing this blog for the people who voted like I did. Don't kick your cat. As America has urbanized people have been drawn together, this has happened over decades and as its happened you can track the success of civil rights. Its easier to vote against gay marriage on your own plot of land where you don't have to interact with any. I have too many kind friends to be able to look them in the eye and say "We have to preserve the foundation of something that barely works. Sorry."

This is a setback but we will win. Time is on our side. The issue won't go away and progession changes things even if you try and preserve traditions. As times change the litigation needs to reflect that. We live in a world that can't tolerate the poor broken logic that prevents gay marriage.

If we want to save marriage we can't make it an exclusive club we have to open it up and show people that its worth it. In the eighties the big topic was "will we ever get equality in the workplace" now everyone is solidly behind the notion. The pressure exists to treat people equally in the workplace or be fired for not being politically correct(considerate). In ten years this issue will be the same way.

The only way my side can lose this one is if we give up. We might win even then.

Album of the week-Here, My Dear

A man from Chicago once said "Fuck Bob Dylan" but even he would have a hard time making a solid argument that Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan isnt one of the best angry break up albums of all time. It finds Dylan throwing intellectual shrouds over his real feelings to cover them up while they shine right through.

Recently I found an album just as good. In 1978 it was released as part of the divorce settlement. Its earnings were to go to Anna Gordy the ex-wife to Marvin Gaye to pay her off. The very first line is "I guess i'll have to say this album is dedicated to you although perhaps I may not be happy, this is what you want so I've conceded." There might not be an album as raw as this one, the first song contains the same passive agressive seething insecurity that the rest of the album does. Marvin Gaye is at points smart enough to stand back and ask her to appreciate the good times but ultimately he can't get away from the hard truth and so he lashes out.

Some of the song titles should be an indicator, the first is Here, my dear the second I MET A LITTLE GIRL third WHEN DID YOU STOP LOVING ME, WHEN DID I STOP LOVING YOU fourth up ANGER fifth IS THAT ENOUGH? There is a song on here called You can leave but its going to cost you! Unlike Dylan he doesn't take the time out to throw up fictional scenarios and mix them in with his story to water down the concentrate. This is more raw then anything Eminem will ever do, this is all for her.

The majority of the songs on this album are more then five minutes why is that?
Too long for general radio rotation to ensure the album won't be a hit and Anna won't get too much. The album is a long slow swear word to Anna sung beautifully.
The sonics of this album continue the legacy of Marvin that ability to create songs that flow into each other effortlessly and create a mood, a tone that is his and his alone. He can create a song so smooth that you forget he is singing you the question how can I pay my lawyer fees?

Of course the album failed, it was his lowest selling album of the seventies and critics panned it...called it weird. Oddly enough over the years of all these desperate music publications putting together lists of their favorite this and that the album rose in popularity. It landed on Rolling Stones top 500 albums of all time list but honestly that list is less valuable to me then a not of hot steamy sex with Paul Giamatti. Its not the best at anything, if you only can buy one Marvin Gaye album its not this one but if you like soul you have to love this. It has enough to last anyone a long time.

He wanted to pull it and I'm sure if you could talk to the spirit of Marvin Gaye he would hate this album. It captures that moment when your cool friend comes over drunk and tells you a bunch of wild personal shit you couldn't have even made up. You both feel bad hearing it but those conversations define us, only a handful of artists are willing to have that conversation with the audience through their music.

Check it out.

the 38 elements of hip hop

when people say there are 4 elements of hip hop thats not true there are four core elements of hip hop but if you took the whole culture in you'd find many more elements. I've noticed thirty eight.

Elements of hip hop

Mcing
Djing
Graffiti
B-Boy dancing
fashion
beef
braggadocio
threatening to kill people
Convoluted messages towards women
biting
keeping it real
pretending
retiring
becoming popular and trying to then make popular your group of friends from the old neighborhood who just aren’t talented
confusing reggae into your hip hop
confusing rock into your hip hop
mixtapes
Paying respect to the forefathers of the genre
disrespecting the forefathers of the genre to become popular
Too Short
Drugs
getting a super cool R and B cat to sing the hook
a new york accent
a southern accent
the club song
cars
Robert De Niro films
Al Pacino films
distrust of the government
Once a crew is established adding a female MC
songs dedicated to mom
Basketball
Not really retiring
Speeding up your flow to prove to everyone your talented
Eating another MC on a track
groupies
falling off
incorrect spelling

the poets duct tape

In Slam poetry everyone is supposed to chart out a territory and make it there place to exist. No one can get spiritual like Saul Williams, not many people do the whole funny yet touching thing as well as Big Poppa E and Nick Fox is so sharp he is a Ginsu knife of a poet.

On October 6th one of the most important slam poets in the world will be at the North Star Cafe featuring and its got me thinking. He is a world champion of poetry and has won on every slam stage he has graced. If your wondering what he looks like picture Ed Harris and then mush him together with Yul Brynner and you have Buddy Wakefield.

This show is important because I might get to meet Buddy and he is the singular most important influence on my time here with slam. I remember seeing him open for Sage Francis in Portland and quiet an obnoxious crowd quite easily. I bought his CD and brought it over Wil's house and we were struck by each word by every delivery. Wil has every season of Def Poetry Jam and we would watch buddy again and again while we both tried to convince ourselves we could be like that someday.

When we ran a writers group we would take people who were new to genre of Slam Poetry and I would force them to sit and listen to Buddy whether it was his conveniance stores piece or my town it didn't matter. The point was not to have them sit down and listen to a poet who does this right or that right it was SIT DOWN AND LISTEN BECAUSE THIS GUY DOES EVERYTHING RIGHT. He can apply his skill and wit to any subject and it will come out beautiful he can make the political personal as is so often harped on in Slam.

Every single person got it once they heard him. I just hope everyone there on October sixth knows how big of a deal this is, how much more talented then your favorite poet Buddy Wakefield really is. Go to Buddywakefield.com to look at funny pictures of Buddy and say to yourself how much like Yul Brynner he actually resembles visually.

movies about things that aren't stupid

Movies should be creatively sound. They should push the boundaries of what we know to be our experiance and there are a lot of ways to do that. I don't think I'm alone in thinking this but I'm close. The expectations people have for movies are so low you can hear it when you come out of the theatre, "It wasn't bad...it was entertaining."

I have a hard time reading any modern novels because I feel they are setup very similarly and that through the guise of symbolism and metaphor the real goal is the entertainment one finds while unraveling a mystery. People don't seek depth anymore from these forms of media, they find it elsewhere. I cannot.

My father only read one book his whole life and it was a book of short stories I remember it because he used to talk about it all the time. He really loved that book of short stories but his learning disability prevented him from enjoying all the good books my mother could and so he depended on movies for his inspiration. His Shakespeare and Dante were Paul Newman and Steve McQueen and the movie that held together his story was a film called The
Hustler.

The main character Fast Eddie is from Oakland, CA like my father was. He couldn't read and wasn't educated like my father was but he was good at pool and as long as he found something to be good at he was an artist and that was his craft. My father has spent his whole life looking for that one thing.

That movie means a lot to me but a lot of people don't want to watch it with me. It's not a slapstick comedy or bromance. It doesn't have explosions and for gods sake its not even in color. Its emotional and not Jude Law at the end of ALfie emotional.

I'm not a snob. I can enjoy a movie reliant on fart jokes but I can also draw the line and seperates that from a meaningful movie experiance.



Here are some examples of Movies that I don't feel get enough love.



Japan

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Akira Kurisawas dreams

Tokyo Story

Red Beard

Ikiru

Branded to Kill



Russia

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Destiny of a man

Commisar

Battleship Potemkin (silent movie)



Italy

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La Strada

Amarcord

I vitelloni



France

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Alphaville

Breathless



United States

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City Lights(silent movie)

Vertigo

Lady from Shanghai

Double Indemnity

The Apartment

Shadow of a doubt

the evaporation of language

I have had the opportunity over the last year to take a look at letters written by people back in the 1940's sent during world war II. Most notably last week when I went to visit relatives in California and I was given a box of letter my Grandfather wrote back to the family during his time in Japan in the Navy.

Before this I had the chance to read through letters in the University of Southern Maine archive from the late husband of a friend of my mothers. It was an impressive journey through not only the personal instances of the author but it covered a lot of world topics and political and philosophical ideas.

I have written letters before but I understand them in a modern sense, hey how are you doing i'm well send money. You type them or scribble them on paper and send them out but the dialogue is kept simple this is why in the military i ceased sending letters and just sent continuing short stories about nutty things in my environment.

Letters from this time were different and more thoughtful partly because of methodology. You were using a typewriter so you had to be careful, the mistakes kept. There wasnt a whole lot of other communication options, calling was expensive overseas and email didnt exist. You couldn't update your facebook status to PTSD in WWII. They covered politics and the ongoing changes in social programs and how they fit in the philosophy of the country we grew up in. The letters weren't written to one person in most instances but as long narrative commentary to home.

As we communicate in one sentence emails or blog posts i hope we don't lose the ability to take each word seriously as serious as it demands and to treat each sentence like we can't erase and rewrite it.