The Ten Point Program

We should not be seeking a voice of a nation, a voice of a country.
But instead the voice of the individual, the voice of truth.
This may not be comforting, neither may it provide gratification or necessarily equanimity.
But instead the voice of truth and individuality may provide autonomy.
Definition and bare broken jagged edges in a society of redundancy and homogenization,
numbness and mutedness.
We need to define ourselves.
The Mercantile Library of Fiction in 1820 and Emory Douglas at The New Museum in 2009.
A Black Panther and the Merchants of stories...
My journey through thought and action.
Emory spoke of land, bread, housing and peace.
Emory spoke of education, justice and equality.
Emory spoke of 1968, 2008, Oakland, California, Harlem, New York.
The Merchants spoke of Thackeray, Douglass and Twain.
The Merchants adored story and its potential for transformation.
The Merchants created a temple for fiction.
Both entangled, locked together weaving narrative and ripping yarns,
retold and resold, packaged and placed, dissolved and divulged.
My journey on the back of Black Panther wandering through an oasis of prose.
Day fifteen, seize the time, the time is now!

Not My Kind of Pilgrimage

D.C. is lost on me.
So instead I refer you to a man who can put it more succinctly, Gil Scott...

Symbols of democracy, pinned up against the coast
Outhouse of bureaucracy, surrounded by a moat
Citizens of poverty are barely out of sight
Overlords escape in the evening with people of the night
Morning brings the tourists, peering eyes and rubber necks
To catch a glimpse of the cowboy making the world a nervous wreck
It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

May not have the glitter or the glamour of L.A.
May not have the history or the intrigue of Pompeii
But when it comes to making music, and sure enough making news
People who just don’t make sense and people making do
Seems a ball of contradictions, pulling different ways
Between the folks who come and go, and one’s who’ve got to stay
It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

Seems to me, it’s still in light time people knifed up on 14th street
Makes me feel it’s always the right time for them people showing up and coming clean
Did make the one seem kind of numb

It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.
It’s the nation’s capital
Got you feeling capital
Punishment is capital in Washington D.C.

Day fourteen, the memorial for the memorial.

It's a Diddy-Wah to the Sugar Hill

These images could quite easily slip through your vision.
They could very easily be categorised as yet more buildings in New York.
Although the sites these images describe are laden with vital history.
Therefore I think it is important to note precisely what these images depict:

A makeshift church site on a tree in Harlem.

West 135 Street, in 1921 the first block of apartments to be owned purely by African Americans in New York.

The original Harlem YMCA, an important community center and support network for the civil rights movement built in 1933.

The brownstone that W.E.B Du Bois first started writing and publishing the journal for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

The shop front that Marcus Garvey campaigned and ran the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1916.

Strivers Row.

The Abyssinian Baptist Church, now the founders of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, who invest new housing developments, new public schools and shopping centers in Harlem. Also the activist church was one of the first organisations to mobilise support for HIV and AIDS victims in the community.

Brownstones opposite the church.

The back of Strivers Row.
Day thirteen - hallowed ground.

The BB Blues

Crossing this monumental feast on foot
mortality and small insignificant humanity are brought to bear.
Concrete owns this domain,
tall obelisks rise from the dirt,
scraping clouds along their way.
An overwhelming sense of pace,
quickened tempo a deliberate menace.
This crossing is older than mine,
an indentation of water into land.
The island of a thousand bricks
has grown through language, power and lust.
As Kerouac once said...

I would I were a wave
and had vanished now
than bawl and blot
with pencils in screaming
rooms here on earth
so fool stupid blind

The Locked Room (after Auster)

The cloisters is the antidote to the city.
Seclusionary wonder, tucked away beneath the Bronx.
Beautiful gardens hosting a range of herbs and flowers.
A sanctuary for all that is European and medieval.
Housed in a building that is from 1930's America.
A homage to Rockefeller and his philanthropic delights.
Lets cluster together in the secret garden.
Day twelve - Mary Mary quite contrary....