I love hearing new music that just shoves right through all of the sentient defenses and rocks your reality, lighting your center afire. Starts with a tapping foot. Then the shoulders start to rotate and bounce. Next thing you know the world is dancing with you as you live the joy of the sound. Yesterday I was heading home after work and I was listening to 88.9 FM WDNA, the

I was recently thinking about my last 5 months in San Diego. From a musical point of reference. At the time I was listening a lot to Nneka and Erykah Badu. The beginning of my Afrocentric discovery of identity and self-determination. The music was fulfilling and touched a part of me I did not know existed, at the time. I listened to their albums constantly. So it’s been quite a

Last night I went to Tobacco Road in Downtown Miami to their 1st Annual Hip Hop thingamajjigger. Don’t really care about all that, I just went to go see Dead Prez. Now, getting there was a whole mission and a half. It did color my night with a slight patina of disappointment. Not in the show. Dead Prez was amazing. Those two brothers were on stage in dashikis, expressing their

One of my biggest obstacles in my journey to individuation is self-confidence. It’s a sizable issue in my everyday decisions. There are things that I have done in my life that I could have excelled at. What happened instead is that I could not stop second-guessing myself. So, I’m going to stop explaining myself. I’m going to do and achieve and stop talking. You see, for those like me, perpetually

Several months back I made the decision to begin learning and training in capoeira. For those of you who do not know what capoeira is, check out Capoeira Sol e Lua and this video. I also highly suggest watching Besouro. This Afro-Brazilian art form is much more than a martial art. There are spiritual and philosophical tenets that can only be understood within the roda. There are links to ancient African overstanding and

It is quite a harsh realization when one becomes aware that the greatest obstacle in one’s path is one’s self. That moment of truth is enough to send the most jaded psyche reeling sideways into a dark void. At which point there are two choices: wallow in self-pity or get the fuck up and do something about it. Self-determination starts with self-discipline. It is easier said than done and it will not

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything at all. I have not been writing at all, really. I have not been using this outlet to clear my mind of all the little things bouncing around inside my brain housing group. I have not been pulling them out and applying coherence in order to do this form of self-therapy, albeit in a bit of a public venue.

I have recently made the decision to quit using Windows. Now, most of you reading this are following the fallacious line of reasoning that wild end up with you thinking at this moment that I will be going to Mac. No. I am going to Linux. Not a big deal. I am merely choosing a different operating system for my computer. Well, to give a tad bit more detail, I

Why does everything always appear so fucking absurd? Why is it that movies like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas resemble truth more than a drug-addled tale? Some days I wake up and feel like the 8th short movie in the Animatrix. Except it’s not short and it’s not fiction. This sense of living in a surreality makes me wonder if I’m not on my personal trip to the dark

The worst lie is never told to others. It is to one’s self. It is an invitation for your mind to create whatever illusion it should be so inclined to produce, benevolent or malevolent. A healthy and relatively successful life depends on a firm grasp of one’s own sense of reality. Allowing others to skew that self-truth can have vicious repercussions because this game is played for keeps. It is

What can I say? What can I write? I can’t think of a single thing that can explain the musical wonder that was Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His enduring legacy of musical composition and experimentation from the African point of view has blasted me sideways and forced a complete re-analysis of all I believed about music. The steady beat carries one into an auditory vision of a land long past. A

Apologies for the lengthy silence. I encountered some technical difficulties. My bad.

We stand on the shoulders of giants: our elders and ancestors. Those who came before us and blazed the path that has allowed the current generations to push even further in the quest for a better life for one’s self and for humanity. The gray hair and weary countenance shrouds a kinetic power; an ability to move the obstacles gently to the side reach beyond, and an ability to move

I know that I do not know. Such a simple statement may lead one to the pinnacle of creative possibility. It is not only an acknowledgement of ignorance, which in and of itself is necessary to maintain one’s humility, for arrogance is the fall of many. It is the wonder when one sees something new. Because, if you know that you do not know, that implies that there is so

Life is a strange experience. The everyday is absurd and the routine is madness. It all feels so surreal and slightly skewed. It isn’t something I can quite put my finger on. It’s a feeling. A gut sensation telling me that there is something not quite right. Sounds like a premise for a movie, right? I don’t know kung fu. However, I will pilot the gunship that is my word