Eyesocket Miracles

Take the mass out of your communication
We’ve got a cist of innovation
Standing in between
Our vitality and the self same entropy
That used to sustain our reality--
That fear that we forgot how to fight
Is blocking our throats
And catching the things
We might have swallowed
When we knew how to sit close
And close was comfort
When we knew the strings in our throats
Not only connected
Our brains to our feet to our future
But also connected us to our brother
To our dreams
The same ones that even now
Are trembling in our trachea
Too terrified to come true
In a world where lies taste like love
And truth only trickles from sinners’ tongues
And the ears are too timid
Or too tortured
Or too entranced
To transform

So take the masses out of your cords of communication
Burdened and Broken tongues
Sound so stale when spoken
So unceremoniously
And I aim to aim my arrow of community directly
At this misguided misconception of connectivity
Hoping only to hit those things we love most
Because my lines have yet to snap
Because the degradation
Of my poetry
Into commodity
Not only frightens me
But offends me
I am much more grand
Than these strands
Of snapped apart lines and limbs
Connected to the knee bone
Of people all over these over charged
Lines of super market powers
Because we’re forgetting that rib bones
Aren’t the only things that keep
Strong hearts beating
Because 200,000 times a day,
200,000 times our size
We reach out in all directions
To encompass any and every
Lasting thing that leaves us breathtaken
And brush our fingertips against
The fire that used to fuel our feats
Before we were fueled by fast food
And as many times as we pass through the flame
As many times as we force ourselves into the frying pan
We don’t burn out like stars past our prime
We have all the sublime startings
Of constellations
And the zenith of innovations
To tear our own locality in eternity
So I say it’s high time
To re-recognize our autonomy
And assert the authority
We were born to be
Because the truth of me
And probably the truth of you too
Is that we two
Grew not from seeds or misdeeds,
But from thoughts and dreams and beating hearts
And 200,000 miracles a day
Reminding us of the catastrophe of mundanity
And that ordinary is insanity
We were born to be so beyond burdened and bored
We were born to be blazing
And beautiful
And brilliantly
Shining out of eyesockets
Are those dreams of schemes and gleams
Of all that seems beyond our means
I follow them every day like lighthouses
Because I still feel the edges of the universe
With fingertips
There is stardust under my nails
And darkness in my fists
And oceans in my eyes

Waiting like summer
Wading like sons too far out to sea
Wafting like sunshine
Come down to dance
To the evening song played by the beating breakers
They are having a party
Where the land turns to sea
And the solidity of a mentality
Learns fluidity
And flows easily down a throat
To let the swell surge again
With the floodgates open,
Maybe the rivers will flow home
And we can send signals along like synapse
Messages meandering with the current
Meshing and managing
To make it
Even without mechanisms and machines
We still have mystery and magic

Food Not Bombs: nourishing the front lines of social justice

Food Not Bombs shares free vegan and vegetarian meals with the hungry 

in over 1,000 cities around the world every week to protest war, poverty and 

the destruction of the environment. 

With over a billion people going hungry each day how can we spend another dollar on war?

Need It Keep It

So, I read about this the other day, and the goal of this organization is astoundingly modern and at the same time straightforward: let's make "giving" go viral.

The organization is called Need It Keep It, and the process is simple:

Read the letter in its entirety.

If the money in the envelope comes to the reader at a time that it can have a measurable impact in their life, they are instructed to keep it. In other words, "If you need it, keep it."

Whether they keep it or not, the letter simply asks that the recipient let us know, via phone, email, or through our guestbook, exactly if and how it impacted them.

If they don't need the money in the envelope, we ask that they simply pass the envelope along to someone else, ideally, adding a dollar (or more) to it, if they're able, and compelled to do so...

The organization was created by Don Compton, who started the organization by taking 100 of these envelopes and putting a single dollar inside of it, along with the enclosed letters. Already, the attempts at exponential growth of this idea of giving have taken hold, and the organization has started up its own website, along with facebook, myspace, and twitter pages.

http://needitkeepit.org/

I just found its simplicity inspiring, and saw potential for its presence here at UCLA.

K'Naan & J. Period: The Messengers

Free download! Killer 3-part project honoring Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, and Bob Dylan.


 

// FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE //  New York, NY (August 18, 2009) – Some artists are defined by their environment. Some redefine their environment. Still others push the boundaries of convention so fully that their influence is felt around the globe, and across generations. Their music compels us not only to dance but to think, not only to celebrate but to strive, not only to listen but to truly hear. Fela Kuti, Nigeria’s eminent musical activist; Bob Marley, Jamaica’s emissary of struggle and unity; and Bob Dylan, America’s reluctant Civil Rights song leader, are three such artists.

These are “The Messengers.

Today, August 18, 2009, acclaimed DJ/Producer, J.Period, and rising Somali-born MC, K’NAAN, are pleased to announce a unique and powerful remix project, paying tribute to the lasting legacy of these musical giants. Weaving afro-beat, reggae, ska, folk music and rock into this genre-bending musical experience, The Messengers stretches the boundaries of hip hop—and the mixtape genre itself. Remixing the classic work of Fela, Marley and Dylan, The Messengers captures the timelessness of their sounds and the continued urgency of their messages. The result, as fans have come to expect from J.Period, is like no mixtape you’ve ever heard.

Zinnstrumentals: a mix tape dedicated to Howard Zinn

Check out this awesome, awesome mixtape by DJ Ian Head!  You can download the whole thing for free as an MP3.  Just control+click (on a Mac) or right click (on a PC) on this link, and "save as" to your desktop: Zinnstrumentals.

March 2010: Zinnstrumentals
DJ Ian Head
Just as many of us djs and producers look up to those who work and look outside the box, I believe in looking outside the so-called box when thinking about history, politics and society in general. So did legendary historian and author Howard Zinn, who sadly passed just a little over a month ago. His book "Peoples History of the United States" was his attempt to tell history from voices and viewpoints often shut out of history text books. I found it inspiring, as well as his belief that "neutrality" was basically bullshit; that if you are silent, you are siding with the status quo. In his words, "you can't be neutral on a moving train."
So this tape is a bit of an experiment - originally I was going to just do an instrumental tape of some my favorite beats, especially records often forgotten or overlooked. But I felt it needed something more, and so I dropped in some tidbits from various interviews with Zinn, who I believe was often overlooked himself. For someone whose book has sold well over a million copies worldwide, and who has been a commentator, activist and author for several decades, his passing drew very little attention in the media. Columnist Bob Herbert summed it up best, writing "His death this week at the age of 87 was a loss that should have drawn much more attention from a press corps that spends an inordinate amount of its time obsessing idiotically over the likes of Tiger Woods and John Edwards."
The records I pulled for this mix come from a variety of producers, and I tried to keep it obscure but dope, lots of underground 12inches that I feel are often forgotten. I've included a tracklisting of the producers below, in order.
The excerpts of / about Howard Zinn are from Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and Prison Radio with Mumia Abu-Jamal.
RIP Howard Zinn.
-- DJ Ian Head

Tracklisting:
1. exile
2. dj vadim
3. hi-tek
4. attica blues
5. kankick
6. portishead
7. asheru
8. no i.d.
9. madlib
10. da beatminerz
11. chief xcel

Thingloop: who needs to BUY STUFF when you can SHARE?

Art | Global Health Center at UCLA

My involvement with the Art | Global Health Center at UCLA began in the fall of this school year, September 2009. The Center was able to get Pieter-Dirk Uys - a well-known performer, satirist, and social activist from South Africa - to come to UCLA and lead a two-week workshop with a group of willing students at UCLA from various academic departments. I participated in this workshop and learned about HIV/AIDS facts, the negative stigmatization associated with HIV positive individuals, and the ways in which all of this can be helped. The group of students that participated in the workshop became the "AIDS Performance Team."

I learned from Pieter the importance of art as a medium for change, which I had previously been quite skeptical of. At the end of the workshop, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Bobby Gordon (Outreach and Project Coordinator for the Center) and the AIDS Performance Team put on an original show about HIV and AIDS. The show was creative, informative, and entertaining all at once. We addressed topics such as condom use, the stigma surrounding AIDS, the importance of testing, and more.

Since then, I have continued my involvement with the Center through volunteer work and even more performing. During Winter quarter, the AIDS Performance Team (which gained some members) created a new show called "When the Situation Gets Slippery". We went to three L.A. high schools with this performance, which included acting, singing, dancing, beat-boxing, and all the fun and informative aspects of Pieter's original idea. In the past couple weeks, Bobby Gordon has arranged filming of some of the AIDS Performance Team's work, which will be edited into a creative and original film. This film will allow us to reach even more high schools in Los Angeles and beyond.

The reason this work is so effective and so inspirational is because it is not just informative - it's serious, it's hilarious, and it's completely honest. The show gets students to listen in ways that a sex ed class never could, and they learn so much more.

The Art | Global Health Center involved in many other projects, and they are always looking for creative ideas or an extra set of helping hands. Below is an excerpt from their website about their mission and the ways they achieve their goals.

"Our endeavors are shepherded by the following guiding principles:

1: The Power of a Global Network of Artists

We aim to facilitate collaboration between artists and advocates working for the advancement of global health, strengthening public health interventions through improved communication via the international artists’ network and database.

2: The Creative Process as a Catalyst for Change

Our programs seek to create points of personal identification through art as a means to elicit empathy, understanding, and emotional growth through recognition of a shared humanity.

3: De-Centered Sites of Artistic Encounter

We aim to expand our audience into sites of encounter beyond elite spaces. These sites are portable, village level, street level; they reach all populations.

4: Education as Action

We seek to develop, implement and evaluate arts-based educational programs, taking advantage of the laboratory provided by UCLA to ascertain the most effective means to educate and empower youth in the battle against HIV/AIDS."

If you want to get involved with the Art | Global Health Center at UCLA, visit their website and click on the "Contact Us" tab at the top.

http://artglobalhealth.org/

Also, if you want to see a sample of some of the stuff I've done with the AGHC, watch this YouTube video that was used as an advertisement for UCLA Campus World AIDS Day.