"Love Me or Leave Me," as performed in 1957 by a 25-year-old Nina Simone, is the end-all-be-all, most movingly, ridiculously perfect edition of this song ever.Ever.
Maybe it's the "Exclusive Side Street Club" part of the equation.
Regardless, it's what's on the hi-fi this morning. It's doing a relatively good job of substituting for the caffiene I'm not drinking. It's reminding me how much I love performing. Tell Mama (my own personal saviour more often than I care to admit) asked me the other day why the hell I wasn't makin money bustin my pipes open on stage when I have "the voice of an angel" (which comment I can only attribute to her inebriation; otherwise, God's Gestapo ain't so gifted as they've been cracked up to be).
...Yeah, Doxy, why ain'tcha singing and writin to pay the (back)rent? Girl you know you got skills, don't tell me you don't.
Yeah, well, maybe.
Maybe.
I can stay in key, I can and do improvise, and I've got notes and rhythms in my soul that most people don't see much anymore, outside of paintpeeled backwoods oldfolks' porches, or smoke-stained velvetlined subterranean speakeasies.
For the writing, I'm a word slut, an inordinately (maybe reasonably) proud autodidact with drugged up needle-on-the-rekkid Beats pulling warmwood rhythm outta the furniture for the Sufi's universal creation, everybody whirlin and smokin and lookin crazycool in my bluelight brainlounge.
I was raised on Jesus and the Jabberwock,
on Whitman and Eliot.
Bach and the Last Poets.
Angela Davis and Proverbs 31.
Solomon and Camus...
I'm in constant conflict,
knowing I'm an anomaly/regularity of god/universe/earth/energy/whatever the fuck I/you believe holds it all together;
knowing I got the Cassandra sight and that it ain't normal;
knowing I've got something that might actually be unique, the real deal, to serve forth into the world,
knowing I've never seen or heard my perspective anywhere else,
that I've seen lots better, but none justlikemine,
...and knowing none of that means a goddamned thing,
that all of it is ego anyway and, thus, self-negating;
knowing that I probably can't save anyone from suffering,
that Art ain't practical fer payin the bills,
and who the hell do I think I am to call what I do Art, anyway?
...
A chickenshit, that's whom.
A chickenshit who is so afraid of not being unique,
of being a poseur,
a charlatan,
a meat-study in smoke and mirrors,
that she draws back in horror from the idea of foisting her masturbatory detritus onto an already cluttered plane of writers and musicians and visual artists whose own work is no more original than The Gap's new clothing line,
no more inspiring than the latest tome of self-help pap,
addressing no more mystery than does a Thomas Kinkade painting.
...
So, I flipped the rekkid from Nina Simone to Los Hombres Calientes (vol 4: vodu dance) for an audial change-up and grabbed a little Albert Camus for a metaphysical refresher course in absurdist philosophy's take on willful creation:
(from "The Myth of Sisyphus")
"To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries — this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors."
"Every act of creation, by its mere existence, denies the world of master and slave. The appalling society of tyrants and slaves in which we survive will find its death and transfiguration only on the level of creation."
"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."
And then I feel better,
feel like making art makes sense for me,
feel like the effort I need to expend in order to expand is
worth.
it.
Though Camus is often accused of nihilism, he really just vocalizes an acknowledgement of nihilism and an injunction to continue the rebellious path beyond nihilism into creation.
To create not for Greatness' sake, but for Goodness'.
In this mode of thought, this offshoot of absurdist theory found in my scribblings and moanings, creation is justified.
Not because I am/we are necessarily uniquely unique,
Not because I/we will necessarily positively change the world with this creativity,
Not because the Normals will ever amend their complacency and see the twin lights of Spontaneity and Joy that could change absolutely everything about our bipedal race of mammals and the world we have created,
But because my/our effort at joyous creation in the face of abject conformity is an honorable endeavour in and of itself.
Goddamn it.
I don't claim to speak Truth too terribly often.
Probably shouldn't ever.
But...
But this time, I do,
and I am,
and I ever will be,
riding Eternity as I/we have always ridden,
ephemeral infants and sagacious mystics,
all trying to sort through the mess we've created,
all trying to bring Beauty and Perspective
to the limelight
where it belongs.
Yeah.
To the limelight where it belongs.
Write even when I/you feel like a liar.
Sing even when I/you feel tongueless.
Paint even when I/you feel translucent.
Cook even when I/you feel abandoned by taste.
Transcend our insignificance through creativity and through ceaseless searching.
That way lies the Happiness in which we already wallow (and don't even know it).
Went to 