fallow fields daydream of wind-borne seed. in church, godly women give in to heaven's touch. the blood that jesus shed for us reclaimed, to engorge a holy purpose, to stiffen flaccid faith & sate those wanton souls who need so much.
spring tears blossoms screaming from their buds. in church, a preacher perorates prurient fire. the blood the savior bled for us declaims a passion & mortal weakness, an unyielding temptation; a long & lusty wallow in the mire.
a river's perennial soaking flood. in church, tears & plaintive wails connote happiness. o blood of the lamb, given to many, abet the young child who mistakes joy for suffering, & put his anxious, simple mind at rest.
the sun wears a dazzling robe of rain. jesus, savior, pilot me through this muck & slime. the very blood that thou hast shed for me would wash me white as snow; would steal away my shadow, would feign to season me before my time.
when my daddy preached in the fifties, sinners would tremble; would confess the lord jesus just to make him stop. sisters would shout & cry; brothers would speak in tongues that none but a few could understand.
when my daddy preached in the fifties, the church rocked, with or without music. he would spin like a dervish, jump in the spirit over the pulpit & for a moment be lifted up, drawing the mesmerized congregation unto him.
when my daddy preached in the fifties, i saw jesus. i believed water could be walked upon; could be turned into wine. i believed the hungry could be fed, & the sick healed & the dead called forth from the grave.
when my daddy preached in the fifties, i saw heaven, rose up through its twelve gates; saw the cherubim & seraphim & the spirits before the throne. through the power of his homily, i peeked through my fingers & saw god & lived.
when my daddy preached in the fifties, i was sustained by the certainty of god & the gospel & the promise of heaven that made life on earth endurable. i had not seen the enemy’s frightful face; nor knew him to be me.
in the temple of my spirit there is a congregation, a network of cells more complex than any bolshevik can conceive...
when i should feel so sad is a certain gladness in my heart the substance & evidence of the workings of spirit? when i am burdened & beset with trouble is the absence of worry proof of the kingly rolling function of jesus? that king jesus would actually roll all burdens away was the poignant promise of the gospel singer that i took literally so convincing was the touch of her voice like soft lips brushing against my ears like breath caressing the fine hairs at the nape of my neck standing them up & erect like love resonating in the hollows of my sin-sick soul rippling outward in tingling tension pricking my skin like a thousand needles from the inside out filling my chest with some- thing heavier than air filling my scrotum with something more than blood
in the temple of my spirit, what a fellowship of sensory motor & interneurons. what an electro- chemical joy divine...
my eleven year old curiosity would know the neurophysiology of rapture the sociolinguistics of speaking in tongues; how being filled with the spirit differs from possession from generic schizophrenia my youthful curi- osity yearns to know the thera- peutic effects of the laying on of hands or the process involved in acquiring one's heavenly name but alas my curiosity cannot shape the questions cannot form the right words my eyes are presented with the evidence of things seen the seizure-like jerking the jumping running foaming at the mouth & flagrant losses of consciousness my ears are presented with screams that are indistinguishable from joy or pain & the binding forms of my eleven-year-old logic tells me that even if the kingdom of heaven were at hand – nothing neither spirit nor nerves piety or pathology would make me carry on that way if in my power to prevent
my music memory reaches back into time to embrace songs, musical concepts & structures i could not have possibly known if my temporary definitions of birth – date, place & moment – are to be believed. i have known some melodies, some harmonies, some structural forms instinctively, before i heard the records, heard their tinny reproductions on the horned victrolas & the vacuum-tube radios of the late forties & early fifties; knew them to be part & parcel of my body, etched upon my soul, resonating when proper tone, chord or thoughtform sounded, thrilling through my system. these are no doubt the coded ciphers ensconced in the genes passed to me by my daddy, a prototypic blues shouter-turned-preacher, who in the turbulent second & third decades of the twentieth century would ascend the dwarfish, arboreal hills near bassfield mississippi to a place called nigga ridge each weekend to take his place among the local rural & itinerant troubadours – under the stars, in a clearing stomped flat & smooth by feet supporting the worldweight of dancing black humanity; & with minimal accompaniment – an occasional fiddle or acoustic guitar, a banjo, a mouth organ or tin whistle, & some bones – would ejaculate in libidinal meter & vivid verse, his gift to his loved ones, those lucid mournful, meaningful blues that were his lifepoem. the folk up there called him blue jesus, because he stood out & apart from the other singers, most of whom were inspired by abundant 'shine & motivated by coins tossed into the hats at their feet or for the favors granted free of charge or passed for small profit by the fresh or jaded women who frequented the ridge every friday & saturday night. daddy stood out, not because he was blueblack, over six feet tall & wore a starched & creased jumper; not because he was barrel-chested, built like a steamroller (for comfort, they said, not for speed ) & cast a dense shadow; not because he wore his hair trimmed skin-scraping short at the ears, but cut in an oblique slant on the top, resembling at a distance a lower case, cursive "r." no, what made him stand out more than his presence was his voice, an ultimate emotive vessel, shaping, containing his fluid, shape-shifting feelings, his visceral, instinctive & sanguine response to his life. his voice, a thick black baritone caress, a subliminal narcotic, stimulating, depressing the frayed nerves of honest dirt farmers & sharecroppers; slicksters, gamblers & scoundrels; liberal wives, daring spinsters & the "other" women who would come to forget or at least to numb the muscle aches of back-bending labor; the despair distilled from a life of exigency & flavored by racism; the pretence, fickle-fortune, inconstancy & loneliness left at the foot of the ridge but waiting faithfully like old friends to accompany them home when the evening was over. his voice was a goad to those who came to lose themselves in the 'shine passed around in earthen jugs, in the occasional fights embellished by razor & pistol, in the loud, not-to-happy laughter, in the tomcat posturing of arrogant swains, in the weekend wantonness of soul-weary women – but that same voice was a comfort to those who came mainly to hear the country blues. he could holler like a mountain jack; he could moan like the wind in the trees. he could keep time by clapping his hands, the cadence syncopated with the echoes his lyrics made bouncing off of surrounding hills & hearts, or marking the slow, irregular patter of falling tears. he could shimmy like sister kate; his shoulders & hips ablur, fading in & out like a hummingbird's wings. he could bend over backwards, touching his heels with the back of his head & come up slowly in a snakish torso poem without missing a word or a lick. he would be driven by his voice, by the forces focused therein, to do anything to draw attention to that emptiness out of which his melody came, out of which his rhythm came, out of which his feelings came, out of which his words came, out of which his world came. that emptiness called compassion which encompassed all self-absorbed black actors of his time & the peculiar drama playing itself out in southern rural america. daddy created space in his blues, wherein a black man or black woman could escape; wherein a black man or black woman could be made over if they so desired. a space that made black bittersweet, turned a nigga into something human, made the whiteman vulnerable, beatable, made hoodoo a charming necessity, even made bad luck the evidence of some luck. he created space in his blues, a space so empty it qualified as love, & as love creates out of nothing, out of nothing daddy re-created hard-headed women, no-good cheating men, stack-o-lees, hard-hearted hannahs, spell-casting two-heads & bad-assed suckas who would cut u if u stand still, shoot u if u run. he recreated female love objects of every shape & kind–heavy-hipped mamas & long-legged gals, blackberries, honey bees & wing-spreading angels who could make a hog get up & leave his slop, make a lazy rooster crow for day, make a tom cat fight all night long or make a preacher ball the jack. out of nothing, he re-created a pleasantly distorting mirror into which those rustic local blacks could gaze, applaud themselves, laugh at their own dark comedy or become resigned to inevitable tragedy. regular musical therapy every friday & saturday night – until that fateful tuesday morning when blue jesus, while scraping cotton in his daddy's northwest field, met the real deal – de original lawd, & he with his bludgeoning love battered my daddy about the crown of his head, shocked him with his electrifying spirit down to the soles of his feet, knocking him senseless. & when he came to, daddy was singing a brand new song...
mama, a son grown old wonders ... what forces shaped u without/within; made u who & what u are. the world, they say, convulsed with war shortly after yr nativity. did planet-wide human folly rock u in yr cradle? or merely announce yr birth? did u with infant tears mourn francis ferdinand, curse the hun, or in fits of colic criticize wilson. were u even viscerally aware of san juan hill? or did worldly turmoil play itself out anonymously on the landscapes of yr soul?
mama, a son grown old wonders why u made such an ironclad covenant with god & so early? one that pushed u through the open doors of the church at five; that kept u lifelong from dancing & drinking rootbeer & wearing pants – ever near the cross, close to calvary's mountain. i know daddy well enough through his stories, his self-adorning exaggerations; through my memories. but u, ever less than self-disclosing, put up a glass to be looked through darkly. u are my enigmatic sphinx; keeper of the riddle of my own life.
mama, a son grown old wonders what the world seemed like to u growing up. did ubiquitous racism really try to pry apart reverends grandma & grandpa? to keep them – she, african black, he, cherokee light – from riding together on southern trains? did anyone u know get lynched? was it strange being raised by two preachers? or growing up with aunt clara, so voluble, so intrepid, so different from u? what ever happened to uncle lucius? no one ever talks about him. were u a happy child & teenager? did u have lots of friends? or did jesus suffice?
mama, a son grown old wonders why u went to paine college? was there something in the name? a promise of expiation, perhaps? did that colored church school in augusta shield u from worldly ways or present u with the temptations u so religiously sought to avoid. what did u learn? what about yr rumored boyfriends there – frank yerby, a writer of romance fiction & benny mays, a future college president? did u outgrow them? did something go amiss? was platonic love enough for them? or did they flee from the taint of yr goodness?
mama, a son grown old wonders why u became a teacher? what drove u? something more than a love of children? what did u give? something of yr self? what? were u different in the classroom than at home? did u smile a while; give yr face a rest? stand up straight? elevate yr chest? i've been told that u were a model teacher. i saw for myself that u were good. is it true that female teachers, when u started, couldn't smoke, drink, wear make-up or appear in public in the company of any man but their brother or father. how did u manage the change?
mama, a son grown old wonders about that covenant. was marrying daddy a part of the deal? he was a preacher true enough. a triple threat; could preach, sing & pray. what drew u to him; he to u? was it contract or contrast – or both. he so black & u so red & fair; he so mississippi & u so georgia. was he to u the sinful world redeemed? i know he seemed the son of man. when he preached, the devil quaked; when he laughed, the thunder rolled. did his homiletics hook u? or did his physicality send u swaying like a willow in a soft wind.
mama, a child grown old ponders the acts leading to my making. were these, too, in the covenant? did u shout, cry out loud? what words did u use; whose name did u call? or were u mute. did u feel good or guilty? could u make love to my daddy & still be faithful to god? did u read the fine print? did u get value for value? is god an honorable contractor? why, then, did he smite yr firstborn sending u into a headspin of recurrent catatonia? speak to me my beloved sphinx. let me solve yr riddle & live.
in a dark watery deep a heartbeat, organically cadent, keeps mechanically cadent time, an oxymoronic rhythm life-ticks, death-tocks mutedly in amniotic space. muted too, the song of shapeshifting from not-so-human to all-too-human; from worm to man from not-i to i. the phylogenic music of growth; the melodic fetal interplay with the counterpoint & polyyrhythms of rushing blood, another's breathing & the drone of organic life internal.
awareness comes...
not through eyes sealed shut, neither through stopped ears or tasteless tongue, nor water breathing nostrils, but from without through skin bathed in birth juices; through the life sustaining umbilical, through the press of heaving placental walls & wave after squeezing wave of contraction.
then with the suddenness of insight.
light, floating free, telescopic vision viewing down, a bluish white cord scintillating with flashes of color, trailing down, down into the bloated, yellow-brown belly of a woman. sound, the scream of labor's pain, a husky male voice of command shouting "bare down, push!"
awareness...
cultural memory & more. i am. i am abiku, the oft born, who to the same family briefly visits & leaves; leaves the stink of death & grief. i am that. i am, too, that bloody issue breached & veiled forcing again the fleshy gates of the world causing pain only a mother can forgive; this mother to whom i cleave; whose spirit holds me fast.
vertigo...
is it love or need this force that pulls me down, into flesh, into life, into the pain of lungs filling with air; making me scream, making me sing...
music, over my head, divine; in my groin, profane, meeting, mating in uncommon coitus of melody & counterpoint. sounding in my heart's bedsprings, in my soul's cloistered cell, behind the twelve symmetrical bars of racial memory. my song, an abstraction, the wail of fatal spirit descending down into matter, into the prenatal wetness of birth canal, into the subjective chaos of infancy & early childhood, into the magic circle circumscribing unfulfilled, unregenerate substance; activating the latent birth gifts of the race; setting in motion a process to make the abstract, real & to make the song, flesh...
my song, enfleshed in africanisms, enslaved, bound to the harmonies & discords of europe – my song, a naked savage in a dying church, chained to a pew. how strange this integration of heredity & environment. my anthems reek of ragtime, my hymns of rhythm & blues; my offertory sentences are progressive improvisations, my doxologies, boogie-woogie tapestries. on the other hand, my jazz is littered with mysticism, my ballads belabored with biblical imagery, & much of the sex in my blues is exalted. how strange the body of my song. how will it mature? can it reproduce itself in the minds & hearts of men?
my song, heated red hot in the forge of the church, in the fires of adolescent love, then immersed to tempered hardness in the confluent neptunian rivers of rock & roll, motown soul & down home blues. my song, dissolving in acid, was neutralized & reconstituted by basic bebop, progressive & unfettered jazz. my song, a matrix wherein the dynamic interplay of polarities, male & female, them, traditional & modern, conservative & progressive, black & white resolve themselves, synthesize, build – my home in the woods, my house by the side of the road from which the forces of my selfhood are released.
my song, enfleshed with definite form & emerging from a matrix it has itself created, is released through the voice upon the world outside. my song craves an audience, critical performance feedback to assimilate, to evaluate; seeks a great musical work to serve, & ultimately to become. the feedback comes, sometimes harsh, sometimes exacting. & so begins the polishing, the embellishments, the distinctive touches for which i am to be known. my song, a lifesong, whose lyrics are a lifepoem; whose form, key, melody & harmonies are the sounds of a self unfolding...
having sung my song with power & conviction with every trick of technique, every embellishment of phrase that i know, have learned over a lifetime, i take time to reflect on the reviews, on the criticisms of my performance. i find my song wanting. it poorly communicates that ray of spirit within me, that which would vitalize its earthy contents. it seems devoid of significant spiritual experience. i must look for new material to incorporate into my song; that might ignite my own spiritfire to flux my worldly lyrics, my sensuous melody down to its basic elements; down to its rare mettle. over my head, i hear the music of the spheres; i hear a song of perfection...
i have found a new stage upon which to sing my song, i have restructured its melody, changed many of its lyrics, altered its rhythms. my voice has deepened, my phrasing more precise & my delivery has improved. i have learned to close that creative circuit, which eliminates the distance, eliminates the difference between myself & my audience. i can take the energy they lend me, step it up & give it back to them in an oscillating crescendo of emotive power; i can feel them feel what i am feeling. my song has grown as i have grown; perhaps one day it may become a part of a new world spiritual, an ornament or accent or a minor melodic passage, – & i, a part of a new world order.
