City of Legends

I was going to show solidarity today with an organization that has asked its members to pick a day and do a single-word blog post, but I got sidetracked. Maybe tomorrow.

I got a note today from an old friend, praising the tracks they had heard off of Evangelist, most notably Kitabu, and pre-supposing that the title cut to the CD was going to be an expression of anger or remorse.

Ha!

First off, I don’t have time for anger in my day…I get angry, when I must, for seconds at a time. You can blink and miss my anger (be thankful, it isn’t pretty). My view of the human emotional palette is that it contains three primary colours; love, rage and fear. Love has an outward vector, by its nature it is dynamic, as it generally means there must be some kind of flow outward to express it. Rage (or anger) and fear are different, you can bottle those up inside until they eat a hole in your intestines. I have enough forces acting against me in the universe, I try to keep those two (rage and fear) out of my life. They are disabling elements.

No, Evangelist is more an expression of how powerful love is and the aspects of love as they impact us. I speak of the futility of not loving or of loving for its own sake, but not with anger or fear. It’s an interesting cut.

I got slapped around a bit yesterday by the Mad Gypsy herself, Karla Frances Sasser, in the course of a wide-ranging discussion of our former involvement and why it didn’t hold. It was interesting to find out that she and I hold different definitions of what it was, and different perspectives on what went wrong. Then we discussed the empath’s role in finding disastrous liaisons. Empaths should not touch. Anything.

Took a long lunch and took in Wanted.  Very nice, although not for the children.  Back to work.

Already getting comments back from my previewers.  Susan Sonnen praised the clips, but singled out Kitabu for special praise.  I figure several will go that way, Kitabu has a purity to it, the other two may suffer a bit from over-production (just wait until you hear Evangelist, the track).  I will be most interested in seeing how the people who live in Africa feel about it. 

See, getting the tracks out early paid off…had I waited until the deadline, a mere 80 minutes ago, I most likely would not already have feedback.

Very weird patterns of access the last few days on my sites, very weird.  I can say no more without making some people get alarmed as to who is up to what, but it is intriguing.  Me, I just keep my re-entry surfboard heat-shield side down.  I get through by accelerating.  My adrenal cortex is pumping 12 Molar nitric acid by now…and I am beyond getting used to it, I think I am addicted to it.  Barring an emotional jolt on the level of a thermonuclear blast, not sure I can alter this arc.  Besides, it focuses my mind and keeps it off the withered limb still clinging to the third rail of emotion.  I feel like the keyboard runs at the end of Karn Evil 9, Movement Three.

Love is the greatest of all things, but without the will to use it and live it, it’s just a word.

Traded Van Morrison lyrics with Karla by SMS while waiting for the film.  Took me down a bit.  There is still a great beast within me, angry and confused, and I am not sure I am bleeding him off fast enough.  I get flashes of anger when startled, when the control slips.

Kitabu is done.  Not as epic as the original piece I was working on, but more to the point.  Maybe one day (broad hint) I can finish it the way it deserves to be finished.  But, I listen to it, and hear that it is good.  So, we’re down to just two more tracks to tweak for Evangelist to be done.  Damn, this baby has been a slow train coming.  I note at least one blog that used to have the video for Darfur up has deleted their post about it,

I went and caught the early morning showing of Hancock.  Not at all as bad as some critics had lead me to believe.  A bit uneven here and there (a good writer (hint) could have fixed it).  Will Smith is solid.  Charlize Theron.  Sigh.  What is it about South African women?

I am batching it this weekend, just me and the dog and hellspawn that claims to be a cat when the rogue demon hunters show up for it.  Anyone coming to whack me, please make sure the dog gets walked until the body is found.  I would hate for her to suffer for my sins.

We interrupt the sex and sorrow to release the new lyrics for Kitabu, jointly here and on the Amomancer blog. I sat down with my original lyrics, and threw them out, as they were woven into a tapestry of the other lyrics. Not the first time or the worst reason I’ve had to throw out lyrics, but annoying. I will probably get shot at for the "legacies of pride" line, but pride cuts both ways, those who have something to be proud of (Mandela, Tutu) and those who do not (Amin and Mugabe) but would puff out their chests anyway and take pride in their sickness.

I wanted something that captured the texture of Africa, as well as the turmoil and the complicity of silence, of indifference (no, I am not being metaphoric here) of the West. For better or for worse, this is what came.

Kitabu

land of dark and green and gold
where diamonds rise and weapons sold
become the arch for hot hearts cold
to the pain of a sullen midwife.
Africa! Mandela! Amin! Mugabe! Tutu!
legacies of pride and those who died
fighting for something more, inside.
where both fates and hates collide
in challenge to all new life.
Africa! from the Sudan to the Cape!
from the grass where rose our species
to the killing fields of the disease
of human greed and human need, please
let us not turn our backs on this strife.
Africa! Hadeda! Zebra! Elephants! Lions!
Jesus weeps for the slaughter and the pain
that falls in a dehumanizing rain,
and for our indifference, we wear the stain
as surely as the madman with the knife.
Africa! land of passion and hope and dreams.
land of passion and hope and dreams.
land of passion and hope and dreams.
a book as timeless as it is enigmatic.
but as beautiful as it is bloody.
and as worthy as any grace under heaven.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
special thanks to Aubergine, for the inspirations.

I was pondering the final tracks for Evangelist last night when I stumbled through my drafts folder and hit a minor miracle.

It was called Kitabu, which is Swahili for "book" or "story". The original draft is unusable as my collaborator on it has absented themselves from the project and I am neither a thief nor a presumptive (vampire etiquette, remember).

But, in light of the abomination of Robert Mugabe and the fact that, although already socially attuned to that region, the past several months have personalized the chaos and dread, violence and deprivations of the African continent, often visited or magnified by the evil of corrupt men heading corrupt regimes, I decided I need to make a stand.

As such (heh heh) I will be preparing a final track for the Evangelist CD, entitled Kitabu, which will be a protest song about the corruption of the Mugabe regime and the moral cowardice of the West, which has been a silent partner to murder, rape and madness. I have stripped it down to my original words, and am writing additional stanzas, while enhancing the music, which was solely mine to begin with.

I will release it to the web sometime next week, and ask that those who can and will distribute it by whatever means they can.

I was sifting through the works I have been composing over the last few weeks. There’s a lot, a lot. An interesting melange of anger and fear and lust and love and pain and joy and hope and despair and the human condition. Some fairly well writ material, I am pleased to say. We’re creeping up towards 17,000 works in the catalog now. That is almost the equivalent of having written a poem a day, every day, since I was five years old.

Can I quit now?

No.

Poetry never deserts you, lies to you, betrays you. It never says one thing but does another. Poetry speaks the truth, without regard for agenda. I think of the scene in All That Jazz when Victoria Porter is up in Joe Gideon’s apartment and she asks him if he thinks she has what it takes to be a star. He clenches his fists because he can’t lie to her about THAT, and tells her no, realizing at the same time it probably will derail his whole seduction strategy.

She rationalizes it away and sleeps with him anyway. But he was willing to not sleep with her, in order to keep his integrity in the moment.

I’ve never lied to a protege, no matter how pretty or willing, and told her she was good when I knew she wasn’t. I have been fortunate enough to be involved with some remarkable writers. People with the power to shine like the sun and roar like the thunder. That few have lived up to the potential I have seen in them is no insult to or indictment of them or me, some choose a different path. I don’t think a barber or an office worker or an ice cream salesman is less than me, just different. There are days I would gladly trade my place in this life for theirs. Gladly surrender. Trade it all for one honest kiss.

Trust me. I believe in surrender, I just can’t find anyone to surrender to. I have tried, really tried. At least a few times. But I keep hearing that "I know what I said and I know what it sounded like, but it was said in the moment and I had my fingers crossed anyway and…" speech that tells me that poetry is still my only earnest mistress and master.

I am anxious to see more of the TVC2008 entries, anxious to see more of what people see in their heads when they hear my words. I am coming to pieces trying to finish the Evangelist CD. In part, because there are a half-dozen unfinished tracks I cannot complete for various reasons, either AWOL collaborators (Kitabu) or production delays (Aubergine) or a sense of incompleteness (gotterdamerung). This may be my last CD for a while and I want it right.

I hate shutting down peacat, especially with at least two external authors in line to publish through it, but I see no moral or ethical alternative. I am trying to feel my way through a complex labyrinth, but I am making headway.

Henry Plantagenet was right. But I am not quitting. Not on poetry. Not on life. Not on love. I can’t let the disease of other peoples’ complexities hobble me, taint me and take from me that which I require to do what I am required to do.

So, buckle in, people. And get ready for some Crazy Ivan turns that will reap the whirlwind. Daddy’s home.

Wow.  And I have more to do tomorrow.  But got a lot done.

Fixed my issue with the graphic on the bog.  Which involved learning more about WordPress than I ever wanted or needed to know (shaking a mocking defiant fist to the South-East).

Got the Radio City of Legends and Bookstore up and running.  Placed my absurdly massive order for books for the tour.  My publishers like me now, they really like me.  (I know it is still 2-1/2 months until the tour, but I do not want to make the mistake I made before the Love Gods tour that saw some of the books showing up after I had hit the road, we ran out of some titles!)

Did some serious work updating tags.  Correction, adding tags.  I do not rewrite history, that is intellectually and emotionally disingenuous.  I just have about 2200 postings that have never been tagged.  And I promised someone I’d get around to it sooner or later.  So it’s later.  Ah well. 

(Listening to Alanis Morissette being bitter and surly.  She wears it well.)

Did some major consulting work.  Have more to do tomorrow.  Did some engineering for the album (I call them albums still, you have a problem with that?) and laid some new tracks.  Dropped about a half a billion EntreCard cards (more like 150-200, but it felt like a half billion).

Damn, Matthew Sweet just fired up Girlfriend.  Love the guitar licks on that.

Bear suggested I actually perform a few of the logistically simpler tracks at some of the appearances.  Yes, he means for me to play the folksinger, the balladeer or to rock out with my cock out.  Would the back row please move back…a little more…that’s fine.

Hmmm…I know I could do "the taste", "the right set of lips", "Darfur (Jesus Wept)", "Strange but Beautiful" and maybe even "I rained poetry".  Not so sure about "Brisant Revelations" unless we can get a full band, there’s some maniacal guitar and drum work on that  piece that deserves proper treatment.  I’d love to do "Beasts of Legend" but that damn thing is longer than a python…but to be able to do the tiger-bridge live…that would be sweet.

Maybe "Eros V" if I can get Selke to do her backing vocals live?  And maybe, if the stars align and the Gods will, "Kitabu" might one day be finished.  I’d show up for that, damn straight.

Maybe.  As it is, some mornings it is still tough to rise…