Mami Wata

Signs were everywhere: Mami Wata on exhibit at UCLA's Fowler gallery.  Me and Oteezy had to go witness, so we left Inglewood and headed north on the 405. We arrived and walked across campus. Music streamed from an outdoor concert in the ampitheater in front of the museum. We entered the dark chambers of the gallery and the first thing we saw and heard was the sea broadcast across an entire wall. We stopped dead in our tracks because something unnamable was calling us: back to life...back to the vulva, back to the sacred space from which all things rise up in funkiness.  We were moved and moved again through the space taking in breath, beadwork, altars, paintings, assemblage, iron and wood sculpture of artists from places like Haiti, Sierra Leone, New York, Nigeria, Cuba, New Jersey, Brazil and Gabon. Artists who were compelled to create and consecrate Mami Wata's presence in the world. Our bodies are made up mostly of water as is the planet. Get it? We are bathed in her nourishing fluids as we develop in the amniotic sac that sustains us. No doubt we need water to hydrate lest we shrivel and sucuumb. It is the liquid of lushness that makes the creative juices overflow in the morning or evening shower. Water is healing, especially salt water which is why we add Epsons or sea salt to a therapeutic bath in order to draw out the toxins that tend to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of the mind/body cortex. Like dirty laundry, we must shake up the crud that clings to our psyches,  doing our best to purge it from our selves and our cells which are ever beginning, transforming, retooling, refreshing. The old self falls away and a new self emerges in a higher state of consciousness. Nothing is constant but change. Every day we rise we have a chance to reinvent who we are in relationship to what we do, moment by moment or in the words of Lauren, the main character in the great late Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower..."to shape God" or in Mami Wata's case, shape the Goddess within our best self.  

...Con los manos

Just rolled in to LA from San Diego about 9 a.m. Cruised down last night with Otim to make our  presence felt at the 7th Annual Illfonix soiree (KSDS 88.3 FM)  hosted by DJ Sachamo and crew. We arrived right before midnight and entered Kadan's on 30th and Adams in Normal Heights. The joint was jumpin' and we made our way over to the sidebar to get Sach Boogie's attention. A big smile lit up his face when he realized me and Otim were in the house. Later

he confessed that he had just talked smack about Otim's no-show (he sorely misses him). But Otim bees on his grind and it took several calls and gentle nudges for him to bounce outta his slave at Copy City in the Crenshaw district. Not that he minds the work, but his creative genius is wasted on running the spot. "How you gonna print up obituaries if you ain't got paper?" he said when we finally got on the road. 

...back at Kadan's ranchero, I hugged Sach ( ain't seen him in a coon's age) and he pointed over to a spot near the dance floor where Michelle was standing. I went over and in one swoop grabbed her and hugged her tight. She had just blown in that evening from Chicago O'Hare for the weekend celebration. No doubt, she was h-a-p-p-y to see me and Otim as we she--and we did our best to dance the night away, which you couldn't help but get your groove on listening to the dope dj's Sach had assembled. We caught up and got down on the dance floor along with Tinquer, Kanesha and none other than Zach Kolo from Cameroon--sportin' a Cameroonian national jersey and (you gotta love it) white patent leathers. Sandra was cuttin' up the dance floor and later that night I told her when the dj's play she becomes the music. Much flava that gyrl has in her petite mainframe. Yukimi strolled in looking like Oxun in an ankle length tank top dress. The talent in the room was overflowing and all the party people got their groove on until the bartenders shut it down.  Lovely...

We got a few zzzz's before getting back on the road. I drove (so Otim could sleep) listening to Toni Allen's Lagos No Shaking and Laila Hathawy's newest joint thinking about the beautiful things we do with our hands: Snap shutters, draw designs, vibrate vinyl, caress keys, create change. At our highest we are creators in and of the universe. How is it then that the world is mad chaotic? Our challenge, as the great late artist Romare Bearden said of his fragmented assemblage technique, is to "order chaos." I believe that and take up the challenge to compose and produce from the ashes. Think bird: Charlie Parker, fried chicken and the Phoenix rising from the cleansing fires that have direct purpose in transcending madness. Look at your hands. Create.