My husband introduced me to Liane La Havas, “Is Your Love Big Enough,” one night (wink wink LOL!) about a month ago and I have been hooked ever since. I’ve played it so many times, I think even he’s sick of the album now.

The Song that Hooked me

Found myself in the second
I found myself in the secondhand guitar
Never thought it would happen
But I found myself in the secondhand guitar

-“Is Your Love Big Enough”

I have to say, I really pretty much loved this entire album when I first heard it. I was hooked right away. But I do remember feeling like I was at the beginning of an exciting ride when I first heard the title song, “Is Your Love Big Enough.” The energy of the music, and it’s bold inquiry reminds me of Lenny Kravitz’ “Are You Gonna go My Way?” It’s a great album takes me on a journey whenever I hear it.

It was while I was listening to my Lianne La Havas Pandora station a few weeks ago that I started to notice songs by H.E.R. playing repeatedly. I’m always working while Pandora is on so I never see the names of the artists. I just know that whenever an H.E.R. song came on, something happened. I listened. What was once just music playing in the background would make itself fully present as the only thing in the room worth noticing. And with music, if I respond to anything viscerally that I’ve never heard before, I immediately stop whatever I’m doing, find the album on Tidal and upload it.  “Volume 2” is my favorite of the 2 volumes H.E.R. has released. And I love the Album cover art. The silhouette of a thick hood girl with a softly glowing halo of letters H.E.R. just above her head is endearing and sweet.

The Song that Hooked me

If the world should end tomorrow

and we only had today

I’m gonna love you in every kind of way.

-“Every Kind of Way”

“Every Kind of Way” is about making love and pleasing someone and the pleasure derived in pleasing someone and how much she wants to please. I just think it’s beautiful. In fact, even listening to it now is like listening to it again for the first time. I just feel it inside me. It moves me.

Okay so I heard both these last two artists while listening to my Lianne Lahavas Pandora station. LOL! It’s my top fave station right now.

I only had to hear “Unravel” by Sabrina Claudio once. And it was only half way done when I looked up and clicked on my Pandora window. I went straight to Tidal, uploaded “About Time” and I’ve been mesmerized for days.

The Song That Makes Me Emotional

 The flowers will be blooming
The leaves will be turning
And snow will be falling
While we’re making love
And the sun will be shining
The flowers still are blooming
Then leaves will turn again

But time will be frozen for us.

-Frozen

Frozen makes me think of those moments when you share a special time with someone that you don’t ever want to end from something as brief as a gaze, to something as long as  a ten minute walk. Yet as a matter or your ability to cherish the moment, it must in fact end. It’s bittersweet and I’m a sucker for some melancholy done right. And this is done so right. The music on it’s own is just, unraveling. I fall open whenever I hear it.

A well crafted playlist of all three of these three albums is in the works. I imagine it would be a great mix for nothing but chillin, making love, feeling good, sexy, introspective, smoking a L, crying, having visions and starting anew.

My honorary fourth fave new artist is Bomba Estereo. A new friend I made over the weekend, at a Racial Justice conference I attended with Khalilah, explained the video for the  song, “Soy Yo” as it was playing over the speakers after an incredible night of deeply vulnerable shared stories and a hell of a closing speech by Michelle Alexander came to an end. “Soy Yo” is on the album “Amanecer” which means dawn.  I’ll also be checking out their album “Ayo” which I uploaded this weekend because the video for “Internacionales” hooked me as well.

Do you know how many times I’ve watched the film The Hustler with Paul Newman and still not understood why some people choose to loose?

Never seen “The Hustler?” Never mind. My film fanatics will get it.

But I wanna bring the rest of you in.

Let’s try this:

Beloved are you more committed to your anger than you are to your dreams and pleasure? Observe what happens when you in all your receptivity call upon the passions never expressed. Ignite the bouquet of flowers along your spine. Don’t judge anything. Just observe. 

-From “You Look Like Something Blooming”

By India Ame’ye

I was heading downtown to Brooklyn for an orientation last Saturday morning and unless I truly don’t give a fuck, (and sometimes even then, to be honest) I pride myself on getting to events and meetings on time if I have anything to do with it. But like most people who commute via mass transit in New York, I often have nothing to do with it. Especially every weekend when the MTA decides to put you through train travel hell.

All that to say,  I had transferred to the third downtown train and was pacing in a virtually empty car which crawled along at a snails pace like it had no where to be when I realized I was not going to be on time. In fact I was going to be late. I’ve been is this situation enough times already and it’s always hard for me to avoid getting upset.

I was pissed. I was infuriated. I had to squeeze the hell out of my cellphone just to displace my violent energy into something I couldn’t hurt or destroy. Then I decided to just sit and read this book. Whatever was going to happen would happen. I couldn’t control it. I had done all I could.

All this over being late. I have problems…

And that’s when I read the passage from India Ame’ye. And this is a teeny tiny footnote at the end of page 170.

It occurred to me that YES, I have been more committed to my anger than my hopes and pleasures! And for a looong time! But hearing it, reading it out loud and outside of my own head for the first time just made me think, made me realize how fucking wrong that is. When did that happen? Who would do that?

But there it is. Over identification and investment in anger which is closely connected to fear of failure breeds a kind of lifestyle that always ensures failure. Because no matter what good you have in your life, no matter how talented, how capable, how unique, how worthy you are, if you don’t actually believe in it, you’re not really living, You’re busy avoiding imaginary pitfalls that haven’t happened yet. And even when they do, the idea should never be to hang out in the pitfalls but to learn from them and transcend them. You’re  not supposed to remain perpetually at the starting line watching others race and think you’ve figured out how to never be disappointed by never daring to try.

That sounds extreme. But I think most of us are conditioned to do this in one way or another. We think someone else will do what we need to do and do it better, or that we weren’t meant to do it anyway so why bother?

Where does that kind of thinking originate?

Some of us are conditioned to treat the world as if it could never have existed without us.

I’m not going to give you my specific theories as yet but I will say that a large percentage of it is intentional and systemic.

And I really want to move away from it.

There are many of us who subconsciously dedicate so much time and energy into our own failure through self sabotage. I’m there quite often myself. But as we become more conscious we have to demonstrate an understanding that the terms which we have been conditioned to accept are deeply dysfunctional, unhealthy and totally inauthentic to who we really are. And then go discover who we are by being who we are, in effect,  we have to create ourselves again…

For the first time.

So I was late but I wasn’t turned away as a I feared I would be. And I got exactly what I needed, plus a little bit more which I will happily share in my next entry.

♥

I look to art and design a lot for inspiration, motivation and occasionally to improve my mood. And when I say art, I mean anything from fine art to street art, to fashion, to performing art, to the way any medium is crafted to mimic or honor or comment on a vibration that resonates intentionally with the human heart. Like when Migos says ssskrrrrrrt!

I like art that effectively communicates a feeling and expands or explores it. The feeling cannot be contrived with the crude and oppressive language of mainstream or standard commercialization. Obviously, for a series of reasons, not all art is effective in disrupting those destructive normative conditions. And so it’s all the more sweet and priceless and irreplaceable, that feeling when you come upon a work, which connects you squarely to your spirit in it’s execution.

This was how I felt when I came upon Laura James painting of Oshun as I was perusing pinterest for Orishas, which is what I do for inspiration and motivation and to improve my mood when necessary, along with the 7 other things I do at the same time on the internet.

I have a page on my board called “The Originals” where I curate images of Orishas created by artists utilizing all kinds of mediums, interpretations. Visually, Oshun is one of two of my favorite Orishas to see images of.  I don’t want to incur a wrath of jealousy among the others so I won’t say who my other faves are here. But there are sooooooo many! So many depictions of Oshun!

Go ahead and google Oshun now and click on the images link. Make sure you come back, although I can understand if you don’t. You got lost in Oshunlandia™. You drowned in Yemeyatopia™.

I GET IT.

Of all the incredible images of Oshun I have collected on Pinterest, this one below just filled me right up and in all the right places.

It’s the colors I respond to initially. I love colors and the way in which a good painter uses color combinations and shades to evoke specific themes, feelings, moods and undercurrents of energy. Laura’s colors are playful but not juvenile. They are unapologetically vibrant and joyful and seem to reference a lot of popular Mexican and Egyptian art.

Then it’s the forms. Laura’s Oshun curves her hip to pop her booty out to the left, her proud breasts jutting out in the opposite direction of her head which is tilted towards an up-stretched arm as she looks down into the water, which she is pouring from a soft pink shell onto the ground. There are also fish being poured from the shell. There are bees buzzing around her yellow clad form, ya know because she’s sweet like honey. The tail of a peacock in a tree on her right hangs down almost to her knee. There are birds gathered in a tree to her left. There are lotus blossoms and lily pads at her feet. the tiny yellow orb in the upper left corner seems to be descending into the blue of a twilight sky. In fact all the plains of the painting, the hills, the ground are painted in the same blue that blue goes shortly before it turns into night. There is purple in the blue. There is yellow in the blue. There is blue in the blue.

The shapes are simple, triangles, ovals, wavy lines. The bottom of her dress blooms out in a series of down turned  lotuses. On her waist is a belt of cowrie shells. Her hair is a rolling network of orange and blue circles that mimic the tale of the peacock.

And the last sweetest detail, a form, which seems to imitate a cloud or gust of wind is a brown face curled in profile looking down over her with an approving smile.

OH, I love this painting!

And lest I forget what looks like a frame of uniquely arranged cowrie shells painted around the entire edge, against an outer frame painted in gold.

I didn’t even know James painted this image of Oshun until last week. The more I looked at it, the more I needed know about the artist but the signature on the low res image I saved was hard to make out. I recognized Laura, made up what I though was her last name and let google do the rest.

I learned that she is an Brooklynite of Antiguan heritage! YAAAAAAAAZZZ!!! She Blackity Black! And she has painted a series of religious, spiritual and secular images in the same style. She calls her art, “Art for the People.” I have to keep my eye out for her next show because I would love to see her work  up close. Anything more I turn up or discover about her, I will happily report here.

I knew we weren’t going to be able to fly off to an island for vacation this Summer and I was fine with that. There are plenty of great places to go in New York for a decent staycation. I also knew Mercury retrograde would come along and shred our ability to communicate effectively whatever the heck it is we wanted to do during my staycation. And that was fine too. This is not my first time at the Mercury Retrograde rodeo.

What I did not know was that hundreds of unmasked White Racists would take to the grounds of Charlottesville University on Virginia with lit tiki torches, protesting their rights to not be replaced? It seemed inevitable that once they were allowed, (because not one law enforcement officer stepped in try and stop them) the KKK, Masks off Eddie Beuer edition would go on a violent rampage.

My husband and I were was hosting a late lunch with family when it happened and to be quite honest, there was so much going on, that it didn’t sink in for me until they had gone. Khalilah had texted me and I didn’t check the info until later on.

Who wants more salad with Goat Cheese? Who the hell turned over the Taboo hourglass timer before time was up. Image of White men with Tiki torches? …is this a new add for camp gear?

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.

It’s a trip down racist ass memory lane, the good old boys’ lynching days are back, well never left but most definitely ushered in with no attempt from government or law enforcement to shut it down, call it out, hold it back until blood was spilled and a life was taken. Actually, no, not even then, still to this day, it has not been dealt with. Because it’s never been dealt with. Its been ignored, enabled, perpetuated, supported, maintained, slapped on the wrist…

So naturally my instinct is to wanna get the heck out of town… but where in America is safe for Black person these days?

I like to travel. I like to go on long drives upstate to Nyack, Woodstock Hyde Park and such. And all the time that I have been doing these things, I’ve been aware that the further I get away from NYC the more I am surrounded by uncomfortable Whiteness that I can no longer sidestep the way I have done for years. In just the last couple of weeks, any plans I had to leave the relative safety of my apartment or NYC has been cancelled.

Understand that for me, ever since Travon Martin, and now with this recent Charlottesville event, Whiteness has indisputably come to be mean violence, brutality, terror, fear and a deep psychological sickness. And the struggle to disentangle myself from it’s very deeply destructive and embedded structure is real.

My husband and I searched the internets frantically for places to go in New York where Black people lived, owned property, could be seen in community. The best we found was Martha’s Vineyard. But ultimately, anger and frustration and heaviness gave out to weariness and no one wanted to spend that long driving with no concrete idea of exactly where we were going. The Blackest place we could be was in our own neighborhood (Inwood) and in Brooklyn where I was born and a large chunk of my heart still resides. We spent the afternoon there lounging in the magic of nature, the soft breeze, the slowness of pace and nostalgic respite that the Botanical Garden has always been for me. I was frankly shocked at how comfortable I was staying close to home. But then these are some shocking ass times we’re living through and self care for Black and Brown people everywhere, however they can get it, is vital as fuck. It always has been.

Neutrality has been neutralized and there is no longer a place, nor perhaps should there ever have been, a place for White people to be satisfied with simply not having been there on the day when their forefathers decided to institute decades of systematic, mental, physical and spiritual terror on enslaved and descendants of enslaved Africans. Most of my life as a Black woman, I have been open and accepting of most White people (Ha!) thinking that this was a choice I had made rather than an implicit instruction. If I had chosen to be as open and accepting of my own people, I’m certain I would have learned sooner how little choice I was afforded by a majority of White Racists who existed quietly all around me. The good Whites, the liberal Whites, the oblivious, the seemingly harmless Whites in the cut who do nothing, say nothing, plead ignorance because they claim no one told them otherwise, and  in the age of massive social media oversharing and limitless access to information, they remain inactive, dumb, and ultimately dangerous and destructive.

Sigh….

I would totally have asked Siri where we could go to find Black joy but Siri sounds like a White chick to me and she does not sound down for the cause. So I switched her off. I don’t need her. Never really did.

We stayed in the hood and found whatever peace we could there while we could because we will surely need all the energy we can get to gear up for next month. Because August has been crazy…

Guess what September is going to be like?