A love poem, an ode
To the city that raised me,
To Los Angeles.
https://soundcloud.com/aacetera/where-im-from-spoken-word
I’m also excited to announce I’ve been honored by Urban Word Los Angeles (urbanword.org) and the City of Los Angeles as Los Angeles Youth Poet Ambassador and a finalist for the title of Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate. LA residents: please come out and support at the inaugural event in June at the LA Central Library. Thank you WP for all your continued support! One love.
Calm, I can think.
Contemplating, I can write.
Collected, I can speak.
But, damn, you put the flora to shame
When you steal away my abilities – to cultivate
Your soul flowers.
So I’m mesmerized tending to your
Twin blooms with these words
To nourish a beautiful garden of two.
I’ve always been reminded, “eye contact,”
But for you I’ve always stood
just around the periphery of your petals
Lest I fall down the rabbit hole
And wonder where I’ll land.
At night your luminescence
Glows upon blossoms
Dripping with intelligence and poetry –
The sweetest nectar of all.
And when I muse upon your morning dew
I find myself wishing only tears of joy
Would settle softly on
The petals of
Your eyes.
When we met for the first time
You and I were in a foreign land far away from familiarity
but we found traces of home in each other’s faces.
I think that’s why we became close –
I’m not sure.
You didn’t know I was at the lowest of lows
compressed between my chronic problem
and corrupted mind –
you didn’t even know when I told
you – or rather, gestured –
that I enjoyed your company
there was more pressing business marketing for my attention.
I even harbored doubts to make a counselor quit the job.
But though I stoked the embers of tainted thoughts
you managed to salvage and shelter some purity from my heart
I never knew was there.
So when we met for the last time
we wore smiles that covered grimaces inside
and we were way closer to New York than we were LA.
And when you mouthed those last rites
I saw hesitation light your image like falling stars
and you turned away –
I’m sure of it.
Because when I looked into your face
I couldn’t find my home anywhere –
and inside your eyes
was another person
I never knew was there.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day and — Hydeout Donuts month. I’ll explain.
February is a month I personally dedicate to two of the most talented producers in the industry, J Dilla and Nujabes, who incidentally shared the same birthday and who both tragically passed away in February (in 2006 and 2010). In their relatively short lifetimes, they were both able to revolutionize the hip-hop soundscape with innovative infusions of jazz and soul. Hydeout Productions is the name of Nujabes’ independent record label, while Donuts was Dilla’s ninth studio album released in ’06.
So every February I listen to their music religiously, and it’s like I go through a whole spiritual transformation in the process. The sensation is kind of difficult to describe, but let me try: it’s like connecting a fucking vacuum hose to the vault of all the positive vibes and feelings that exist in this sweet world and sticking the other end in my ear. BOOM. bap.
Today’s Weekly Fix features Jay Dee.
Regardless of what month it is, I would bump any Dilla track any day of the week, but I thought this one deserved a special mention. J Dilla has worked with many, many notable MCs in his career, but Common stands out from all of them. Their energies just matched perfectly; Dilla’s soulful sound jived well with Common’s conscious content and complex flow. I like to think to myself that in every track he produced, Dilla would leave in it a tiny part of his soul. Just enough to touch that of any listener’s. Every once in a lifetime, a talented MC will hook up with an equally talented producer and it’s an insta-hit. I think Common and Dilla’s collabs had much of the same vibe. This is a track off of Common’s 2005 album Be, which was nominated for 4 Grammys in ’06, which just goes on to tell you how influential Common’s powerful messages and Dilla’s smooth, mellow sounds were.
“Love is…” everything. This song expresses in pure, condensed poetry what love means to Common, but I’m sure he isn’t the only one who shares those views. It’s an emotion, it’s a state of being, it’s a lifestyle, it could be anything. It’s also something that’s much too complex to describe in words, but you can probably understand it through the medium of music (especially if it’s a Common/Jay Dee joint). That’s what this track is to me. Enjoy.
Weekly Fix #5: “A letter to the people, love always”
Domed Knowledge 