I WRITE BECAUSE I HAVE TO. Like a musician, I’ve found the ability that The ONE has allowed me to voice. Like a blowhole I can express myself. Others are still trying to find it. I'm afraid that others may never find it, but I have. Lemmie try that again: writing is like having extra appendages, instead of two hands, I have 10. Instead of two legs, I have many, instead of one way out, I have these appendages that create wings, so I'm not stuck on the ground, nor victim to whatever the air brings. That make any sense?
Keep going.
Look, you can't talk to me like......you talk to me.
Come on, get going, stat!
Ok. Writing: There is something very important about all of us, and that thing is HISTORY. Our personal history, and how that history exists within society and it's history.... The thing that makes that history important is that it allows us a measuring gage...and from that gage hopefully decisions can be made.... And those decisions are glorified best two ways: 1) by learning from them and evolving (hopefully for the better) and...
Just talk about why you do it, ding-dong.
2) By being able to pay attention to them and write about them, but not from a black and white perspective, but from the perspective that involves the pain, fear and effort in the acts that make up history.
Wow, deep stuff.
I can do that. It brings me great pleasure, even in the discomfort of handling the jagged glass that history oft time can be. Especially my own. Language is how we get to one another, and I’ve been allowed to express that language. It has become necessary, because it to some extent allows me to see myself and change.
Now tell me a little about your name, Mingus? (The author's name is...shhh.) There is a brief time lapse. We are communicating via IM. Come on, I don’t have all day, rat bastard!
I knew that I was more than I was being. I knew that I would be more than I am. I was allowed the vision of a gift along with my RESPONSIBILITY to the Lord of all. I could not see what i would look like, but the word MINGUS honored it.
So, Charlie Mingus didn’t inspire the name change? Or was it that Joni Mitchell album I saw at your apartment last year?
HELL NO!!!! NOT AT ALL.
Ok, jeez.
I don't even own a Mingus album if you've noticed.
True, cuz I did look.
…and Mingus is one of my LEAST favorite Joni albums.
Ok, ok, say it, don't spray it!
That was funny. I actually heard you say that line with a lisp.
Great. Now what's this I hear about your first chapbook? Who's producing it?
Whores in Harlem.
Whores in Harlem? What kind of fucking name is that?
Funny that you should mention 'fucking' and ‘Whores in Harlem’.
What can readers expect from your work? What do you themes do you explore?
Melancholy...melancholy is in everything we do. It’s in our hope, romance, togetherness and even love. It's the thing that keeps us grounded, especially when where a part of something that takes us off our feet sometime. Melancholy is a needed ingredient in our living.
Hmmm.
We want our loved ones to be able to share that melancholy, more so than having an answer for it. To be able to speak words, live words that keep us from the focus of melancholy becoming depression or some other overwhelming thing. Melancholy is a...gear. A speed. It’s one that helps us see the flowers, but allows us also a manageable speed to get where we're going, but not so fast that we neglect the things that are immediately around us, because before we get to where we are going, we have to be a part of where we are-REGARDLESS of our hopes and dreams down the road.
Nice.
A Poem by MINGUS
O’d to White Plains
And you say you are a lion
Living for Zion
How that be
When you look at my difference
Spitting irreverence?
Just a dirty cub eating out of the hand of mans misery,
Staring with judgment on this continent
So far away from your country – if it’s so good back there,
Then what the fuck you doin standin’ here, next to me.
Gal, thinking you’re a queen
Dirty eyes and mouth sing woefully with a rant at my colors as if you’ve never been,
When your hair is magenta, blond and a color I caint mention,
Like a tropical bird the sky don’t wanna see.
So lets have a fair game,
You stay yours, and I’ll stay my space
Because before I’m displaced, I’ll burn Babylon.
Lion you say your legs are strong, but you caint carry a cross,
Cause your boss is the desire of dollar,
Your racism measured in cubits of land,
How you a lion I don’t understand – unless of course
You base that on murder,
Yes I heard her when I went by
What she said made me want to cry because I knew I couldn’t say a word
Less I physically hurt her,
Got your man in slipper shoes,
Prints of leopards and tigers too
Driving accuras with inaccurate visions,
Make your money, buy your land, think you doin’ something untouchable by the man,
But what I don’t think you understand is the power of litigation –
Catch your accounts, pause your pins – then all a’sudden you like me again,
And then you call me brother – I don’t like you!!
American blacks just as wack always commin’ in the heat of Rosewood,
Boastin proud – talkin’ loud – doin’ almost everything instead of what we should,
Get a little – ostracize-teach your color another reason to cry-
and to tell the truth I don’t like that YOU,
so lets play a fair game and know in God we are not the same, yet the Lord of all has made us –
keep your wack and I’ll keep mine, maybe learn a better song in time,
so just to let you know – it’s not for show,
for I truly will burn Babylon.
This is my ode’ to White Plains Road.
M iN G uS 5/11/02