haiku review of sampa the great’s as above, so below

v.tight production

dope voice, expert beat riding

hrishikesh hipped me

haiku review of #baecation

vancouver weather

janky yet charming auberge

friendship renewal

haiku review of heather o’neill’s when we lost our heads

pleasure principles

hyperbole necessaire

orgasm consent

haiku review of montreal noir (eds. jacques filippi et john mcfetridge)

romado’s a front?

this genre’s like the city

something’s not quite right

prompt: “add a rainstorm” (with mild edits)

in my constant inventory, i’ve devoted myself to filling all of the notebooks that i’ve started over the years. i found this gem from one of my writer’s bootcamp classes:

Montreal Jazz Fest, 2007.

She had moved into a summer sublet with cantaloupe-coloured walls and knew that her relationship was coming to an end. It was too humid for long-distance. She had just gotten back from visiting him in New York, and he was already slated to visit her for their first jazz festival. That would bring their total time spent together in recent history up to a month. Straight. In two years. What a development. She was learning that she didn’t like this amount of time together, she liked having her own life, and that he didn’t have much of his own. He wasn’t interesting, so she wasn’t interested. Not long-term. The 36 hours of real time and three months of anticipation was previously working in his favour but he was now slated to invade this tiny space. She checked the time and pre-suffocated. Later that night, the musician from Somalia would keep playing despite the monsoon and everyone stayed, filling the streets to soak up the rain like experience-starved sponges. She felt him pulling at her, but she wanted to dance and drown. Her eyes were burning, and she wasn’t sure if that was due to her eye makeup or if it was acid rain because, well, when it acid rains, it pours. She agreed to duck into a doorway with him, not at all panicked when it appeared that her phone was water-logged because if it was damaged then he wouldn’t be able to call her-four days, six hours, and seventeen minutes from now when he went home. Back in the sweltering melon, she sat on the floor, clothes fully stuck to her, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was very heavy so she plugged in the clippers and started to relieve herself of the weight. “Don’t you want to wait-for a professional?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a rabbit, drawn in pen by the lease holder and replied, “Nope.”

un/natural cycling

i just tried to lie down because it was four-thirty-something and i have been crying for hours, and it turns out that there is a top limit of clips that i can watch of lebron becoming the GOAT (again).

what season is this? spring? summer? are the birds confused or ecstatic? what is the reason that they are yelling at the top of their lungs at this time? are they organizing? are they catching up? do they know that we don’t have that much time left? are they really free, or are they just in the sky? i mean, they’re definitely not in the sky right now, they are all in these trees, loud as fuck.

have you ever noticed that when you cry lying down, your tears pool in your ears? since equilibrium happens in there, is it actually possible to drown yourself in sorrow?

either way, i’m up and trying this again because i am not tired, even though i am exhausted. or maybe i am not exhausted, even though i am tired. i’ve never been sure where one stops and the other begins.

i put the itunes on shuffle and three songs in, have just been reminded that i haven’t removed kanye from my ipod yet. we haven’t had the chance to debate whether or not we are removing kanye from our ipods yet. because it’s “lost in the world”, i’m not skipping the track. nope-because it’s “lost in the world”, i’m skipping it. hold on.

(“consideration”-rihanna feat. sza)

when i first met you as a fresh-faced music enthusiast, your locks were swinging proudly as you bragged that you became a woman at a lauryn hill concert. i have always wished that was my story.

(“speechless”-beyonce)

i had to tell my single dad that i got my period when i was eleven and he gave me the free samples that came in the mail, immediately called my uncle, and gave me five dollars to ask my sixth grade teacher to buy me “what the girls were using these days”. he did the best he thought he could.

(“needed me”-rihanna)

it’s been twenty years since miseducation and it’s hard to get excited for a reunion when you no longer recognize anyone. i’m there in a heartbeat if there’s even a little chance of original arrangements, so eager that i’m satisfied with the four bars of ex-factor that skratch bastid played on saturday, and i like “nice for what” as much as anyone, but that song is not meant to be a jock jam.

(“kick your game”-TLC)

i heard the hurt in your voice when you rejected the comfort that people offered you at the funeral when they told you that it was their time. “no. it. wasn’t.” i’ve never said that about anyone from that point on.

(“caint use my phone”-badu)

yesterday, my sistar said that about you, and i said, “well….”

she knows the tattoo artist that was supposed to do your chest piece. of course she does, our communities are strong, connected, beauty-full and resistant as fuck.

i heard the news from your ex, who had heard from your other ex-the one that i had a crush on first, for the record, and i introduced you to. nobody ever remembers that part, but i’m not really mad about it, and now is not the time to be petty.

(“what they do”-the roots)

or maybe neither of you took me seriously because you’d seen me cry over that professor, though you never questioned me when i professed my love for him, or his for me-ok, maybe one of you did. you just laughed when i compared him to that big, drooling cat that came with your sublet in mile end, the one we wrote your dissertation in, the one you introduced me to sweet tea in, the one we lay around montrealing and discussing so much music in. i don’t think we ever talked about how he went on to offer a whole course in kanye when it was i who loved him, i never got to tell you that i felt a way about that.

(“skit #4”-kanye west i have to leave it because it’s the “there’s an imposter among us” skit)

i was on the subway when i got the text, on a slow crawl from warden to kennedy.

(“gold digger”-kanye and jamie foxx-fuck fuck fuckity fuck. skipping.)

(“the old prince still lives at home”-shad)

aside: for someone who came from the midwestern united states, born almost in the ’90s, i was very impressed with your knowledge and gusto for canadian hip hop so this is actually getting kind of eerie.

basically, i had too much time to imagine every possible scenario-in this present climate in your country, in your body, it could’ve been any number of things.

(“blood on the leaves”-kanye west fuckity fuck fuck i cannot skip this one.)

but the truth was absolutely not anywhere in the realm of any possibility that i could have imagined. and that’s how you always were-out of this world. honestly, homie, where did you come from? how were you so full of joy, life, experience, curiosity, wisdom, wonder, and how did you have a renewable source for so much more?

even when you were low, and i know you were. you always lived in such an exemplary way. and so you the ending matches the middle that we didn’t know was the middle. your social media accounts are already fading, but i have your letters and know your hand. i love your pictures and that you printed and mailed them to me. i just looked up at your holiday card now and my eyes are misty again.

(“southside”-common and kanye ok, so you trying to have this discussion, huh?)

the thing is, i didn’t realize that i put up so many of your pictures. i was also on my way to resume the library tour with the book you gifted me with as my guidebook when i learned. i was wearing my sue bird jersey. i was reading the first chuck palahniuk book i had read in years. everything was you and pndubs.

i was numb for 48, but this morning on the train uptown, the tears came forth. of course. you always supported metrotextual, you always saw me and my little acts of processing. remember that time my letter got lost because it went to jamaica jamaica and not jamaica plain, boston? and when you wrote back with a giant box filled with all of my favourite snacks from trader joe’s? there was no return address but i knew immediately that it was you. how the fuck did you remember my favourite snacks from trader joe’s? we never went to no trader joe’s.

(“compton”-kendrick feat. dre)

do you remember our babies that last year we were both in montreal? how you couldn’t just let keyanna cry so you ran to pick her up thirteen seconds after she started? i had her under less than ideal circumstances, and you helped me keep her safe. the twins are ten now, and look so much like their parents, i got a picture last year and meant to send it to you, did i send it to you? i never saw a picture of your new twins, but we did talk about all of the twins that seemed to find us.

(“everything i am”-kanye-sigh, i give up)

2016. it had been a minute. washrooms were a hot topic at that time. you were so relieved to be away from it while you were here. i picked you up and we ate so many seafoods with our hands, and you were there when i kicked my newly finished verse to my favourite poet. you floored me by remembering how i prefer to go through revolving doors-everyone in the same door, bobbing like muppets. i cannot remember a single revolving door in montrill so i don’t know how you even knew that, let alone how you remembered it 9 years later….

(“fireworks”-drake feat. alicia keys)

we went to the conference finals that year. you were here for game 7 vs. indiana, when i cried because we made it out of the first round for the first time since forever. you were still here when kyle hit that halfcourt shot to tie the game and i almost puked in hurricane’s, where they’d already switched some of the screens to the jays’ game because toronto sports fans are like that- hashtag,trust issues.

(“hola’ hovito”-jay-z)

you were there when i went “home” to vancouver before i moved here, back when i was still grasping at that idea of “closure”, when i cut off all my hair and was performing a lot. i was processing and you were in love, travelling to the yukon and shit because, that’s what you did, naturally.

(“the healer”-badu)

i didn’t know that i walked fast until you told me when i last saw you. i don’t think i ever noticed that before. did i walk slower in montreal? probably. i don’t recall you having a problem keeping up.

well, you’re ahead of me now, dear friend. i feel that in a lot of ways, you always have been. lightyears ahead, flying past on your bike. i hope the wind on your face brought you freedom and peace.

i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you.

thank you for loving me and making sure that i felt it.

(“desperado”-rihanna)

get out-dir. jordan peele

“i didn’t want to say it, but i told you so.”

i can’t lie. when i went to check the game 3 score before leaving the house, i thought the internet was broken. first of all-how do you even score 41 in a quarter, let alone outscore your opponent (my team) 41-17? i’ve been riding with these guys for a minute, so i know we have to be extreme and extra and extremely extra, but bruv.

i was wondering if, in addition to playing the barney theme song, jason kidd was out there stirring tea (and spilling sodas-why was derozan slipping so much?!). shit, i can’t even merge the honey in my chaga without looking both ways.

i took a wrong turn this morning, into outrement, and it felt a bit like the opening scene, though i am thank-full that i was out in plain daylight, and at night, i have a rottweiler.

officially the highest grossing original screenplay, everyone’s got something to say about this movie, and people will continue to have things to say. hopefully, that will precipitate an actual conversation one day, and not just all this idle chatter.

it’s revolutionary just by being an american film about race that is set in the present, and not as another self-congratulatory “look how far we’ve come” pat on the back excuse to show black bodies brutalized in hd as a period piece. because it was made by a black director, and that director is jordan peele, it is a more nuanced look at racism than we’ve ever seen.

i am not a fan of the horror genre, i’ve never really been interested, but i do appreciate the homages to the tropes paid here. but the fact that the true horror is just lurking beneath the surface (and in gated communities) is the scariest of all. in fact, i would argue that the scariest person in the film is the young white woman, and the horror isn’t that she’s not aware of racism, the horror is that she’s complicit while masquerading as an ally.

the humour in the film comes from the conspiracy theory that these white folks are snatching black bodies to use as “sex slaves”, but the horror is when we discredit the grain of truth that lies in every conspiracy theory, and when we laugh off that feeling that “something isn’t quite right here”. even when the cops are all coloured, they’re still police. the institution is bigger than the faces. and the black people that are a bit “off” because their bodies have been snatched (and scientifically manipulated) by white people, and they are the proof that something’s up. perhaps that’s the silver lining-you can never fully hide your dirt, your deception will catch up to you.

and so there is the fear of white inferiority and the problems that exist in resource distribution that allow the imbalance of science, medicine, and legal impunity to just
“go and get” the bodies with the traits that you need for immortality. the issues of appropriation-“we want your skills but we don’t want you” as well as banking on the fact that all lives don’t matter, since nobody’s going to ask about the black ones that have been missing.

the point of technology as a weapon is an interesting one, as the phone is what keeps saving chris, and it’s what they tried to disarm while he was in the house. the recordings of recent police brutality and protests is a beginning to turning the tables on apathy and blowing the gates off our communities.

the lure of the white woman, which is driven home when he’s looking through the box of photos (of the “deer” that rosie has helped to eradicate), is one that is also laughed off, but the sociopath is real. this bitch is pure evil, as she’s able to show a human side from the beginning, and go through the motions of feeling the outrage that the cop that pulled them over was racist, or running away from the racist white people party and being the comfort to draw chris into a false sense of security, to transitioning fully into a dirty dancing watching single froot loop eating cog in the family racism wheel. and presumably, she got (and enjoyed) all that black dick (and possibly pussy) along the way. this was the white woman that people feared that hillary clinton may have been, and she may still be, but what’s the point in getting lost in coulda beens, when the reality is a whole next level of sinister?

it would seem that the raptors are emerging from the sunken place, as i’m halfway through watching game 5 (thanks mikey, for the league pass), and that the youngsters are starting to lose their grip on the ball.

also-what a difference norm powell makes in the game. it’s not a coincidence that when he’s starting, we win, and when he doesn’t play (which, WHY THE FUCK IS HE NOT PLAYING?!) we lose. i was starting to feel waves of deja vu to the past two years before this season when i was begging for james johnson to be traded so i could see him play somewhere (and now look at him in miami), but coach seems to have come to his senses, at least for the time being.

your lineups are still on scrutiny, though, dwayne.

get your exercise in.

pour garder un homme pour toujours

peindre les yeux
avec un oeil ouvert
allonger tes cils
avec une ancienne brosse noire
pour avoir l’air d’une minette
toute coquette

il est simple
et il juge rapidement
d’un seul et premier coup
qui declenche tous ceux qui suivront
si tu le vois
trop honnetement
il aura peur
si tu le vois
tel qu’il est
il se mettra en colere
mais si tu veux vraiment le voir
juste le regarder simplement
attirer visuellement son attention
et puis le laisser passer
le defigurer est le faux-pas le plus grave
parce qu’il a besoin de se sentir libre
et pour proteger sa liberte
il va mentir

il ment avec ses yeux
il ment avec ses complices en geste et en mots
et s’il ment en corps,
il ment encore
il ment en coeur
il ment en courant
actuellement
et quand tu ne le veux plus,
il est a toi.

going through my filing cabinet today, i found the snoopy book that i mourned because i kept it here along, and this piece that i wrote in 2007 in french class.

um, i’m fucking niiice en francais aussi.

shit.

journal mine #2

highlights from a small hand-bound green book of natural fibre paper with ganesh on the cover and an “apprendre, ca vaut le coup!” sticker on the back circa 2007 in montrill:

-a watercolour goldfish

-brainstorm and research for my “spy sex” column for nightlife

-six degrees of couples stemming from superhead

-this bio for something i no longer remember: Angelica LeMinh is a resilient woman. Her optimism and spontaneity works for her more often than not, and she credits her razor sharp with that just won’t quit. A refugee from Vancouver, she’s managed to work her way snuggly into the armpit of Montreal’s art scene. From hip hop to sex talk, funk and fusion. She can be read in Pound, The Mirror, Ricepaper, Watchmojo videos, and online…..

(i didn’t credit the latyrix or sy smith songs that i sampled, and submitted a bio with an ellipsis?!)

-questions for a lyrics born interview that he stood me up for-i suppose that explains the above jack now, also the article ended up being called “desperately seeking tom shimura”

-exerpts of unfinished poems: “it’s one thing to be immature and another altogether just to render yourself obsolete”

-“poetry is the weapon that cuts me deepest, especially when laced with the arsenic of irony”

-“we used to be built to last/now we’re running too fast/to ever catch up to the past/our ancestors aghast”

-“i am so tired of being too weak/i am the strongest/woman i’ll ever meet”

-drawings of outfits that i want to build-my style hasn’t changed that much-i have a fur vest (two!) and fur boots (also 2!), and still don’t have but want a denim catsuit and an orange jumpsuit

-apparently, i wasn’t allowing myself to buy any more: jeans, t-shirts, underwear, workout gear, sneakers, bags or track jackets

-i was looking for: basics, business casual (whatever the fuck on earth for?!), flat shoes, and a swimsuit

oh, the snapshot into a woman in her late twenties trying to figure out where she fit into her personal style, love, the city, and work. i am feeling a bit calmer about all of this almost a decade later, but can still recognize a lot of it. guess that means that i’m just a more experienced version of me.

🙂

zaki ibrahim at yonge-dundas square

“woah woah woah WOAH woah”

as went the best front row singalong with my daughter and her mama on friday night. still feeling a bit knocked out, and having just started a living space rehaul, i wasn’t sure if i was going to make it out, but in the end-of course i did. i couldn’t be one of the too many at this town who came out in droves for janelle monae and stayed away for zaki ibrahim-that’s just too canadian for me.

as soon as i rolled up, having to cross the threshold of “religious” jackassery of the no-man’s land of the square (literally-i walked past someone saying into a microphone-“i don’t know what you’re a slave to, maybe it’s homo sex”) the first person i saw appeared to be samurai bambi. not wanting to grab up on someone else’s child, i let it go, but within seconds in my peripheral vision, her mama confirmed the whole family’s presence and i was ecstatic. the only bad part was that she was being kanye during my second favourite cover of the evening-it ain’t no fun (if the homies can’t have none), the first of course, was glamorous life. but that’s the thing with zaki- she can take it all those places, and still win with all of her originals. (my heart did skip a beat though, when she started with “when i met you last night baby….”)

unlike the massey hall show, we got the chance to see the artist (and the beauty-full human) truly unfurl over an hour and a half-i love that she truly brings and spreads her joy, humanity, and heartbeat from the first moment she appears in her black angel wings and punk couture. multi-disciplinary and multi-talented to the nth degree-this one’s a national treasure.

i was also infinitely great-full for the 5141604 reunion that happened, both with folks that i expected to be there and those that i had no idea, and the one i was hoping to see and it magically occurred-yea, zahra!

i got handbilled for the emancipation of ms. lovely by l’oquenz, and since my plan for this week was to make (few) plans-because who am i kidding, i can never make none-i just might be in the last seating for that one this afternoon.

brap.

*addendum from the future/past: here is the concert footage from the massey hall show: