The Early Bird Catches the Poem

I woke up hearing your brain buzzing,
   It sounded like a lawnmower
Or perhaps it was like a landscape crew
   Deploying their leaf blowers
Disturbing tranquility in the neighborhood,
   I could hear all your thoughts
Clearly, you were lining something up
   Troubling and mischievous

Oh, I hear you say, it must have been a dream,
   You were still sleeping
But lying next to you,
   I could tell from the way you were breathing
The gears were starting to shift,
   As if you were deciphering a puzzle
Leaving me to wonder
   What a girl has to do these days to get a cuddle

What is it this time? Another poem? Really!
     Or is it that godforsaken novel?
That you seduced me with all those years ago.
     I always knew that you were trouble
Now I see you, lost in thought, contemplating,
     Long before the crack of dawn
With sleep in your eye, yet acting
     As if you want to catch the morning sun

You're having an affair with the muse.
     That's right, I know your shady ways
Don't smile at me. I'm the other woman,
     Who's lost her man to constant wordplay
You'd best shape up, you know
     If you want to keep me in the marital home
Don't laugh now, how dare you. What's that?

"The early bird catches the poem"

Early Bird, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Body and Mind by Heavy D

  Your body's here with me
  But your mind is on the other side of town

• Early in the Morning The Gap Band
• You Can't Turn Me Away by Sylvia Striplin
• In the Morning by Omar
• Earn my Affection by Amel Larrieux

  Put your back into it

• The Other Part of Town by Horace Parlan & Grant Green
• Soul Inspiration by Anita Baker
• Good Morning by Gregory Isaacs
• Conception by Black Thought
• Love from a Distance by Beres Hammond

Or alternatively Close to You by Maxi Priest

In my defense, it was the excitement of the winter solstice that stirred the mind that morning but it seems I was misconstrued.

See previously in a similar vein: Quality of Life and The Stereotype

File under: humour, life, culture, observation, perception, Creative Process, language, whimsy, marriage, poetry, toli

Writing log: December 21, 2022

A Blade of Grass

It's a minor eccentricity
That, I must recognize
Or perhaps an affectation,
  That I now no longer mow my lawn
And so early mornings you'll find me in the front yard
On my hands and knees pulling up blades of grass

'Twas the old man who lives in the park who encouraged me
To continue my tribute to Sisyphus's boulder
Having found me hand weeding that evening
He was quick to point out the classical analogy
For the task promised to be never-ending

He noted the more common name for the wild knotty grass
I was striving with difficulty to pluck with arthritic hands
Exquisitely adapted to our soil, and fittingly named:

Eternity grass

...

Now a connoisseur of the various types of grass species
The commercial ones, much loved by our Latino brethren
Lawn care is a quintessential family business in America
Putting entire families - villages, through school

At church the Belizean grandma would pray for God's strength
A catch in her throat, pausing before she started speaking,
Strength to sustain the impact of the merciless summer heat
They were all out there, outdoors, dealing with clients's landscapes

Amen, I joined her in prayer, solidarity and admiration
And wonder too, contemplating infinite vistas of grass

...

At one with the earth, inclined towards the textures of the soil
Tempered ambitions, comfortable with this uneasy life
Returning fortified with inspiration to these blank pages
Settled and finally ready, clasping in my hand a blade of grass

Soundtrack for this note

• A Blade of Grass by Keith Emerson
  I prefer this quiet piano piece to the original band version from Emerson, Lake & Palmer

...

The book is done.

This note concludes another collection of toli, my fifth collection of poems, written over the course of five months in 2022. Hopefully it will escape hypertext into physical form sometime soon. As usual, it is an article of faith, the hope that these pieces might resound long after they were conceived (years even) but such is my asylum.

I call it A Comfortable Unease. Start your reading with High Tech Luddite

File under: life, Creative Process, culture, observation, perception, whimsy, poetry, toli

Writing log. September 25 October 9, 2022

On the Death of a Poet

That’s fine dude, I'm not mad at you
The masked man's video footage revealed the poet's last words

Some men can't bear the thought of not being feared
And, faced with an incandescent smile instead of a stare,
He fired three shots in rapid succession
He let her know who was who

In his own way, he dispensed some American home truths
Call it the imperial boomerang, that obscene point of view
Visit America before America visits you

I couldn't bear to watch the clip of the death of the poet
But from the still, I could see in her smile, the sense of bemusement
And knew all too well what would have happened, later, when she got home
That that masked man - puff, with his big weapon
Would end up as a minor character in a poem


After Renée Nicole Good


See previously: Prone

File under: grief, blood, outrage, murder, USA, crime, violence, rogues, culture, observation, perception, creative process, hatchet job, The Rough Beast, poetry, toli

Writing log: January 10, 2026

The Synthetic Shadows of Marvin Huxley

Apropos simulations and simulacra... I am catnip for the blues and, for the past few weeks, have been simmering in a thick stew of female blues singers - because, well, that's what one can do these days... Which leads me to the curious case of Marvin Huxley.

Or should I italicize "Marvin Huxley", a music producer who, like me, is enamored of 1930's Delta style blues and has now, at length (and perhaps controversially augmented with AI), delivered an album-length blues fascinator, Shadows of the South

Branded as an "Independent Lo-fi Blues and Jazz Funk Music producer" from Adelaide, Australia, I see and hear what gets him off, it's an aesthetic I am deeply sympathetic with. It's also an aesthetic just out of an uncanny valley, leaving me deeply conflicted.

My introduction to Marvin Huxley was Suits Stitched in Shadows and Lies, which was somehow recommended by YouTube after I'd exhausted my go-to playlists of Etta James, Big Mama Thornton and Memphis Minnie. And, well, listen for yourself.

(Putting aside the visuals - which were a later discovery and par for the course in this our generative timeline), I didn't know where to start with the music, I was confounded.

Then, one click later, there was A Dollar's Worth of Skin, which was similarly disconcerting to the ear. Synthesis, compression, homage at once, and fruit of a strange alchemy.

Then, there were also the earlier experiments, say Goodbye America Blues, which is more evidently artificial with its vocal sampling of an unknown singer and filtered guitar. Still, I kept listening, eventually casting the effort as a blues fascinator despite the synthetic content.

Sidenote: The Sister-in-law has written at length about the real thing. We should all listen to them. The emotional labor and the craft:
Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage (Refiguring American Music) #CiteBlackWomen

In any case, here is an album that is soaked in this aesthetic, devoted even. A studio creation, perhaps, but it is a creation nevertheless. A high-tech creation of lo-fi blues.

Or more precisely, it is a recreation from someone "who loves trying to recreate those old sounds using vintage style instruments, samples, compressors and effects". Homage and chimera, then.

When I read "The guitar recording was degraded to evoke the brittle warmth of a 1930s field recording", I couldn't help but think of Pete Rock or DJ Shadow crate-digging and similarly jacking for beats.

Or say Q-Tip on the needle drop.

There's a racial angle perhaps (or a cultural appropriation take, some might say), but I won't venture in that direction, only the music matters to me.

Still, who gets to write "a love letter to the lost ghosts of American blues music"? Not for nothing do many bluesmen sing that Blues is a Feeling. (see Lightnin' Hopkins, for example)

And in a year where the movie Sinners has dominated the cultural zeitgeist, it is worth asking whether you can have a Delta blues revival, with full-on lyrics, gritty vocals and all, that is synthetic rather than authentic.

(Sidenote: to that point, Buddy Guy's new album Ain't done with the blues is also out)

Still, the music nerd in me wants to deconstruct the work. Where do the voices in Shadows of the South come from? What studio trickery was used? What equipment? Or, perhaps more tellingly, what prompts were crafted, if some of it is indeed AI-infused?

But then, stepping back, I also want to ask: who made the field recordings that we all venerate? Who was documenting the blues back then? Who was promoting it? And who now basks in the sounds of earthy blues?

But that's me. I can listen to a blues mama merely humming for hours on end. Further, the stakes are low. To add or not to add to the playlist, that is the question.

It seems to me that the visuals highlight the artifice and perhaps even detract from the music they are intended to support. At the same time, they do underscore the mood and point to the story of the clever lyrics. Also: they are great conversation pieces.

(A reminder that my favorite video accompanying a Funkadelic song is a juxtaposition with a Russ Meyer film, You Scared the Lovin' Outta Me by Funkadelic)

But I wonder what Marvin Huxley would come up with, with say a Lizz Wright in the flesh, after hours in the recording booth. Or maybe, to push the racial angle, what would a project with Alice Russell on vocals sound like in comparison?

In the same vein, one wonders if people want to listen to the blues or if blues-adjacent or blues-influenced will suffice. Certainly in these streaming days, there are many for which the simulacra will suffice as background music. Reserving the experience of the real thing for live settings. One wonders...

Anyway, the album is not all fetishized retro action. The rest features more modern beats, albeit still blues-inflected on the surface, even when veering into trip-hop territory. That growl in the vocals is a constant, and those guitar licks. Sounds of nostalgia.

I can see the twinkle in the eye as the album was released. But who knows how it will be received? I do know that this listener was left chasing shadows tying to decipher this conversation piece. Let me know what you think.

Shadows of the South by Marvin Huxley

The album on YouTube (spotify version) and a few highlights. For the first three, I suggest a blind listen before venturing to the videos.

• Suits Stitched in Shadows and Lies
• A Dollar's Worth of Skin
• Goodbye America Blues
• Sunday Prayes and Monday Chains
• Silver spoons and broken backs
• Shadows of the south
  The title track sounds more modern than the rest of the album.

P.S. Hey Marvin, tell me more about the makings of this album.

P.P.S. Pardon the title of this piece, I'm a sucker for such things.

This note is part of a series, One Track Mind. See previously:

You Voted For This (And Other Songs)

Elections don't make for great subject matter for music (or art in general). They are typically uneventful in most countries. And most would rather sing about love, conflict, loss or betrayal. Audiences don't favor the banal when escapism, gossip, or spicy takes are available.

Still, there is a certain strain of art that emerges when elections are contentious, or if the personalities involved are striking in some way. The loss may hurt more, the win might be long overdue, or against all odds, the results might be shocking...

Joy, shock, upheaval or outrage rightly deserve an artistic response. In contrast, the poet of the quotidian lives in considered penury, envious of her more successful peers.

Hands down, the greatest artistic reaction to an election is B-movie by Gil Scott Heron. It starts with the immortal line "Mandate, my ass", and goes on from deconstructing Ronald Reagan's 1980 election to painting a pointillist portrait of a nostalgia-ridden USA (said nostalgia endures).

Beyond the biting poetry, set to that militaristic bassline, the performance benefits from its panoramic scope that moves beyond Skippy's loss, and RayGun's ascension, to a cold-eyed assessment of the wider culture.

(His band would soon be renamed the Selective Amnesia Express.)

The song, B-movie, like the earlier Winter in America, continues to resonate due to the range of his ambition and careful economy of the execution. The sparse musical arrangement is just the icing on the cake.

The prescient lyrics, of course, diagnosed, at length, Bush 2004 and Trump's MAGA appeal:

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia
They want to go back as far as they can - even if it's only as far as last week
Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards

But if B-movie is sui generis, what about the more routine reactions? Sticking to music and what is available on YouTube music, and focusing on the USA, I give you a representative playlist of twenty songs that cover the past twenty years. As usual, I have a few thoughts (call them liner notes)...

• You Voted For This, a playlist (YouTube, Spotify)

The most recent reaction songs started right after the November 2024 US election. The most typical response contains the expected mix of disgust, I told you so, you've made your bed, now lie in it, this is your mess etc. In short, schadenfreude, anger and fear prevail.

While I understand the impulse and there's certainly the urge to react, politics remains a contact sport. One wonders: what is the intent of all this sound and fury? What is the underlying theory of change?

Anger may motivate to wrath while disappointment often leads to depression and disengagement. Perhaps the idea is that even though writing in righteous anger, or singing the blues, may not change the world, their palliative relief is very welcome. Perhaps we should look elsewhere for change.

(But perhaps I'm not the wisest person to opine on such matters, after all I've written 5,000 words on an html button, 7,000 words on a taxonomy useful idiots, and even 9,000 words on a bookmarked tag. What change did I drive?)

Every act of creation should be celebrated. Moving on...

The most impressive finding comes from the aptly-named band, Friends of USAID. Newly-formed in 2025, they fully embrace the satirical mantle. Opening this playlist is the just-released I Voted For This. A delicate duo, melding male and female voices, they add sweet insult to injury

Calm delivery, sample lyrics:

My cousin's kid caught the measles - I guess that's kinda sad
But at least she won't have to learn how slavery was bad
The crops are dying, the aid is gone, but I don't care 'bout that
At least I don't have to speak Mexican and hear 'bout them eating cats

The inspired band name highlights the Doge cuts that have decimated the mission of the eponymous agency. The artwork of the 15 singles they have released this year accentuate the effect. As do the songs themselves sample titles: Thoughts and Prayers, inc, Reverse Robin Hood (The Tariff Two-Step).

I hope that, like Randy Rainbow, they commit to the bit and continue to release more music. They have an album's worth of material already. We could all do with more biting satire to leaven the next few years.

More typical in the 2025 crop is You Voted For This Fool by Lazy Radiographer which reeks with disgust. The chorus: "You chose the fire / Now feel the cost / Watch freedom burn / While you praise the boss"

This Is What You Voted For (I Hope You're Happy) by After Everything continues in the vein of anger and outrage. It's rock-infused so less restrained. Lyric: "Sooner or later they'll come for you and you'll be the next in line". Bleach is the cover of their last album title A-Jax Everywhere

Is This What You Voted For? by Rhett Sawyer is more earnest and conciliatory, seeking to question and start a conversation. He's a country musician worried about his country and reels a litany of problems starting with "a land of the lost, locked up and poor", and carrying on from there

Cory Legendre is all bitterness in You Get What You Voted For - off his album, We Tried To Tell You (cover with Putin and Musk and a sitting Trump). Albeit looking at vote counts in the recent election, I'd hope the b-side would address those who didn't vote.

Lopkerjo has fully signed up with the resistance and has Nobody Voted For This, the titular track of his furious album... Still, methinks that Liz Cheney Hero of Integrity is where I step off (I would have added a question mark to that song title at the very least, but your mileage may vary).

Late in 2024, Me & Melancholy wounded by Trump's victory released We Never Voted For This. Working fast but protesting too much, I think. Who is the We he is talking about? I would rather point him in the direction of Antibalas's 2010 album, Who is this America Dem Speak of Today?

YaBoi Dirty is more philosophical with Who You Voted For. His is more a plague o' both your houses missive. The kind of demoralized outlook that would lower voter turnout - and perhaps that is the point of his intervention. Politicians are crooks, spokesmen for the rich etc...

Stepping back to 2022, we have part of Ben Frank's standup comedy routine which is riffing on political hypocrisy with This Is What You Voted For. The private sexual mores versus the public severe prudity. Cynicism about the bonafides of leaders.

Turn to hip-hop also in 2022, Mr Trumptastic released You Voted For Jb You Must Be Smoking Dope. He'd had enough of a whole year of Joe Biden's presidency and was looking forward to Trump's rightful return. One wonders if he'll have more to say for the current moment.

in 2021, Art Neuro, more punk than rock, chimed in with This Is The Stuff You Voted For taken from his Sadistic Ineptitude album. Not quite mellifluous, his is a rather acidic take.

Preaching reconciliation in 2021, JCAR93 weighs in with Come Together (Even If You Voted For Trump), trap rap noodling. I suspect The Beatles were more artistically successful being all sugary and omitting the snark.

In 2020 from England, we have If You Voted For This Then You Are Part Of The Problem by Dannydangerously, his grime flow is less outraged at Boris Johnson's shenanigans than of his countrymen's continued voting for the Tories. England was then the new epicenter of the covid pandemic.

In 2015, Me Time released You Voted For This. Again punk-inflected, and furious about the GOP's assault (presumably under Bush) on gun control, the EPA, bloody wars, corporate cronyism.

"Thank God we chose to back the GOP / The world is a wasteland / It's piles of grass, ash and sand"

Also in 2015, The Walking Toxins chime in with You Voted For Them. Angry at a fascist state that dropped the bomb (unclear whether it was Obama drones or Bush shock and awe that drew their ire). Like the music they produce here, they are not happy campers.

In 2012, Zygsville sound bewildered in Who Voted for This, a nice uptempo joint that one can do a line dance to. More musically interesting with some nice guitar licks. Giving the date of the release, I suspect Barack Obama wasn't his favorite but the lyrics are rather ambiguous consequently the song has legs.

In 2008, Beatnik Turtle whistles his acute observations on buyer's remorse, describing how the new guy becomes "the incumbent, he's got the peoples mandate, but he's passing wacky laws now, showing all his flaws and he's the guy that everyone hates. And all of a sudden nobody voted for this guy"

The humourous point is well taken about how partisans turn quiet when those they put in power screw the pooch. And, quite likely, this year we'll be repeating the observers are worried mantra.

Stylistically, then, the songs are mostly country, rock and punk, perhaps because I stuck to the Anglosphere. It's not easy listening as the singers are trying to provoke a reaction. Where we have hip-hop, the political commentary is a sideshow, braggadocio is a necessity in that form.

I do think that the songs with songs that broaden the perspective will likely endure but I appreciate the lesser works as fodder for the time capsule, cultural artifacts for later historians mining the zeitgeist of these trying times. I hope we make it to the other side.


Bonus beats: Your Mess by Omar, timeless soul, and an extract from Black Wax the film that featured a live performance by Gil Scott Heron of B-movie

• You Voted For This, a playlist (Youtube, Spotify)

File under: USA, England, election, humour, satire, music, review, culture, observation, perception, Creative Process, hatchet job, Buyer's Remorse, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: May 4, 2025

Such Is Our Asylum

A carapace of insight
Built incrementally and revisited anew
An exoskeleton of wordplay
Whose affirmation frames our point of view

A dense network of thought
Fleshing out an informational mesh
Such is our asylum
There's no time for buyer's remorse

Snap judgements galore, we write our own stories
Judicious case studies, arguments by analogy
Feverishly devising impressionistic narratives
Changing the frame with our oblique perspectives

It's a reflection of these fragments of identity
Collecting pieces of a dream in search of community
Crumbs of solace gathered from probing conversation
Forging liminal links while chasing word fugitives

And so we weave together strands of allusion
Erecting barriers of layered protection
A comfort suite of irrepressible storytelling
Refining the mesh that is social living

Toli Theme, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note, consider this a musical manifesto of sorts. (spotify version)

• Strategy by Archie Bell & The Dells
• Stories by Carleen Anderson
• Conception by Black Thought
• Searching by Roy Ayers
• Social Living by Burning Spear
• Weaver of Dreams by Kenny Burrell

See previously: Such is my Asylum

...

The book is done.

This note concludes concludes another collection of toli, my fourth collection of poems, a year in the life. I started May 2021 with The Lobby and ending on May 2022 with another covidious folktale. It took in tragedy and its aftermath in South Africa and Ghana as well as my usual meditations on small things. Hopefully it will escape hypertext into physical form sometime soon... I call it Buyer's Remorse.


File under: culture, observation, perception, strategy, creative process, writing, Buyer's Remorse, poetry, toli

Writing log: March 23, 2022

Head Nods - Toli Turns Twenty

So apparently I've been writing at this joint for 20 years
To all who've been reading, a head nod in your direction
An interruption perhaps to your regular programming here
A head nod, twenty years is worth a little commemorating...

I've found that, when it comes to the heart of the matter,
The typical toli intervention still adheres to the old formula
The ingredients are well known: some prose, a poem, and a playlist
I vary things as enthusiasms ebb and flow, even on technical topics

But it seems that poetry has taken over these past few years:
Even book reviews are escaping in virtual ink dressed in verse
The slightest thing sends me into significations and wonders
But the muse wills what she wants, who am I to question her?

The poetry started to flow, as it were, for want of a bolt
First a golden encounter (a hungry man offered me some gold)
Then a broken lawnmower turned out to be the proximate cause
Now, having settled into a groove, I've been steadily adding to the vault
Hell, I've got things scheduled out for the next six years and more

I tend to cover mostly familiar topics:
Small things, whimsy and dark matters
Albeit the arrival of parenthood affected the quantity of toli chatter
Some were concerned at the prolonged absences; I told them

"Sleep deprivation will only get you so far"

And trusted that the fallow years of writing would soon come to pass

I'm firing on all cylinders these days,
  Covering humanity's curriculum
Writing from the torrid zone,
 A far region of the mind under the sun

Meanwhile, I dream in hypertext.
 My books of toli all start with a link
So, again, a head nod in your direction, Dear Reader,
  Do let me know what you think

Head Nods, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Nod your head to this by Kings of Swing
  This is my jam - I've got a dance to this, catch me on the dancefloor
• The Rhythm by Kwame
• I got da feelin' by Sweet Tee
• Friends to the end by Wreckx-N-Effect
• Pump your fist by Kool Moe Dee
• Break ya neck by Busta Rhymes
• Higher Level by KRS-One
• The Line by D'Angelo

And I leave you with the Kings of Swing again from the golden age of hip hop: Nod your head to this

File under: blogging, appreciation, Head Nods, life, culture, writing, Creative Process, navel gazing, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 13, 2024

Soul Inspiration

I saw an opening, that was all there was to it
Soul inspiration, I guess that's what you'd call it
Still, I'm not quite sure about my contribution, it has to be said
But I thought that I should join in the conversation, even if it came in verse

Inspiration is like that, when you suddenly have something to say
A stray word, an odd image, and you're off to the races
You're not even thinking about how it ends
It's all about the pleasures of taking up a pen
Or keyboard, or phone or, of old, a typewriter
You've gathered the writing pad or, in extremis, the scrap of paper
You've found the requisite solitude, it can no longer be denied
The detachment needed is on hand, you've sharpened the splinter of ice

And now that you're ready, the idea simply glistens
You'd explain its beauty to anyone if only they'd listen
But now it's down to you, and you're on a mission.
Who knows whether it will be worth it in the final analysis
But, for the moment, you're finally past analysis-paralysis

It's down to execution at this stage but that is its own tale
And when, no doubt, you revisit it, you'll note the irksome detail
That you had discarded even as you knew that it would matter
That plot point, that loose rhyme, that woolly notion
That you knew later readers would brand as imprecision
The failing you thought you could overlook as you rushed to completion
The fleeting doubt as you faltered in your tower of Babel creation

But nothing is amiss, right now there's a creative abundance
You're merely reaping the wages of soul insurance
Remember, the muse wills what she wants
She, it was, that ushered you in this direction
Be thankful for these moments of soul inspiration

Soul Inspiration, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Soul Inspiration by Anita Baker
  I have been known to be transported, elevated even, into higher places when Anita Baker begins to let loose with Soul Inspiration. Expressions of concern even from onlookers at my ecstasy.
• Feels Like Heaven by Kenny Vaughn & The Art of Love
  The version I fell in love with was a cover from a college band, The Inspiration
• Lovely Inspiration by Maze
• Sweet Inspiration by King Curtis
• Soul Call by Kenny Burrell
• Sweet Inspiration by Sweet Inspirations
• Inspiration Information by Shuggie Otis
• Feel That You're Feelin' by Maze
• You're My Latest, My Greatest Inspiration by Teddy Pendergrass

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: Creative Process, culture, observation, writing, perception, inspiration, whimsy, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: May 5, 2021

The or That?

For 30 days now, I've been pondering a single word, whether it should be "The" or "That". There is music with each rendering, but the change of emphasis is confounding. Every day, I return to this puzzle, convince myself of a solution and make the change. "That" was today's winner.

But I sense defeat already, what will tomorrow bring? Frankly, the choice disarms me; either word adds nuance, and, clearly, it should be the one or the other. It wouldn't do to use a different construction, the piece would suffer. No, it has to be The or That.

Perversely, I note that the piece in question is scheduled to see the light in October 2025, leaving me 1,001 days to fiddle further and ponder the question. Another downside to having a large vault.

The or That? #Obsession

...

I was asked for more context, and actually The 9 year old had a similar problem in his grammar homework recently. Let's assume the choice is between something like this:

The X notwithstanding Y

That X notwithstanding Y

The or That?

...

No. I will not rewrite and remove notwithstanding. Notwithstanding stays. Don't get me started. Notwithstanding fought long and hard to get into this example. Notwithstanding has to be there. Notwithstanding your peccadilloes, we're talking about The or That here.

Also, no commas are coming into this business, would thou murder my prose?

Commas! Stay focused: The or That?

...

Pedantic! Yes, if you do the math, it would actually be 1,010 days not 1,001. It was poetic license. One Thousand and One Nights of editing; The or That as Scheherazade to my prose. Sue me.

My household is divided, at least the members I've consulted. I haven't dared ask the one who ran away when I last presented a poem. The others still tolerate my poetic inclinations but sadly have come down on either side of the coin. The or That remains unresolved.

...

Turn to verse...

The or That, that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler to aim for the consequential
To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against the declarative
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep...

I plead guilty to indecision but history will absolve me
Yes, admittedly, the word choice situation is arbitrary
A conceit, to be sure, I hear you say "Just publish already"
Throw caution to the wind, and trust your initial instinct
The or that? Really, no one will realize the distinction

No one is promised tomorrow, who knows what might come to pass
One thousand and one nights, let The or That be my epitaph
He who lies here pondered small things and kindred subjects
Whether The or That in the last sentence would be best

The or That? I daresay I plan to be a beliver
The emphasis notwithstanding the poem is a keeper
The or That? the declarative-determinative dilemma
That styling notwithstanding the poem is a keeper

The or That? a playlist

While we're at it, let's have a soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Dat Dere by Bobby Timmons
• The Word by Prince
• Gotta be This or That by Ella Fitzgerald
• Choice of Words by Vana Gierig
• This Here by Bobby Timmons

And throw in some hip-hop

• The Choice is Yours by Black Sheep
• So Wat Cha Sayin' by EPMD
• Words I Manifest by Gang Starr
• Hard to Choose by 9th Wonder
• The Word is Love by Steve Silk Hurley

And some covers

• Dat Dere by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
• Dat Dere by Oscar Brown Jnr

What say you, Dear Reader, The or That?

(and let's not talk about This).

Let's see what surfaces in October 2025...

File under: humour, language, Small Things, whimsy, absurd, obsession, Creative Process, toli

Writing log. October 11, 2022

Shock of the Familiar

It's uncanny when you first recognize a kindred spirit
When you find yourself in conversation with a long lost friend
Beholding that ineffable nous that immediately speaks to you
A substance and outlook that, you realize, tints your customary lens

For what is familiar to you, what you've long known as normalcy
Is not the same for others, rare are the cases of deep empathy
You wrote the tale of the lost stories in an attempt to find yourself
For it's not often that you recognize yourself on the book shelves

It's bracing to read them as they take you into their worlds, these writers
With their finely detailed narratives, it's the underlying story that matters
What with the shared love of limpid language and angular storytelling
We are children of Ananse, with words as music, lovers of social living

I have my tribe, masked in words, with whom I'm in episodic conversation
Members of my cohort who give me comfort with their singular discursions
Blood brothers and sisters, most of them badged as modern travelers
I don't need their likes or plaudits, their very presence is enough

Humorous anecdotes and elliptical notions thrown in for good measure
Unafraid to take our time and tell stories and let them take us where they may
There are distinctions for sure, I'm not one for some of their enthusiasms
Even when I disagree, I have a deep and specific connection with their artistic impulses

The long tail of community, kindred souls who risk and dare
We are normally dark matter, but clarifying with the stories we share
Each pushing our way towards the moment when you see your face in the mirror
But even with our undoubted self confidence, it can be the shock of the familiar

In a life of mixed metaphors: the middle passage and the torrid zone
I'd rather not face the challenge of humanity's curriculum alone
At once stranded mid-Atlantic, dislocation is our ultimate subject
A head nod to my fellow travelers engaging in the normalcy project

Evocative, a playlist

The Friends playlist would normally be my first port of call, but this note seems to require something a bit more angular and evocative. Taken mostly from Massive Attack and Portishead who frankly won the 90s and finishing with the incomparable Stevie Wonder taking flight. (spotify version)

• Teardrop by Massive Attack
• Roads by Portishead
• Hymn of the Big Wheel by Massive Attack
• Glory Box by Portishead
• Splitting the Atom by Massive Attack
• Strangers by Portishead
• Superwoman by Stevie Wonder

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: communities, writing, Creative Process, aesthetic, culture, observation, perception, appreciation, Africa, literature, normalcy, poetry, serendipity, Observers are worried, Comfort Suite, diaspora, reading, toli

Writing log: March 25, 2021

The Book Is Done

The book is done.

The book is done. As conceived, you've written what you wanted. No more fiddling.

The book is done. God knows, you thought this time would never come, it's a good feeling.

The book is done. You remember that you've said the same thing four times previously, that you've felt the same way with this one, felt the same confidence that you have a new creation.

The book is done. Of the pleasures of taking up one's pen, much has been written, but what about that other moment that you've just reached: the act of completion?

The book is done. You try to recall the original conception, but it's lost to you by this point. The muse wills what she wants, it was she that mandated the direction.

The book is done. Be it resolved, you'll ignore your inner editor, ignore those other gatekeepers, those interlopers on the journey to publication.

The book is done. For this moment at least, forget imposter syndrome and all those other inhibitions.

The book is done. Any typos and implausible scenarios are beside the point. Let's call them intentional misdirections, music to your fiction.

The book is done. Enough already, 45 poems and folktales should be enough, resist the temptation.

The book is done. You're the son of an editor, so you're always wary when someone presents what they believe is the finished article. "I'm done, here it is", they might say proudly and expectantly, and for good reason.

The book is done. You smile sympathetically but immediately start to consider how to break it to them that, yes, there has been an act of creation, but that creation is not completion.

The book is done. You're a hard editor of others, occasionally savage in your cuts and suggestions.

The book is done. You have a soft spot for yourself, you never have the same severity with your material. Oh no, could you lose this heaven? Is this sensitivity a delusion?

The book is done. As a writer too, you recognize that the moment when you think "I'm done" is not an end, but really just a beginning. Still, for now, you celebrate that feeling.

The book is done. This fixation on the book, the physical object even though there's electronic editions and, these days, more listening than reading.

The book is done. You're beyond the draft, you've printed it out with your concept cover, apt to be discarded. No more deletions.

The book is done. You've been consumed by it. Now you can get back to reading.

The book is done. Now you can catch up on the world. Time to put out some feelers.

The book is done. Steel yourself for the shadow of the naysayers. Also the inevitable mystery: will there be any readers?

The book is done. Hold on to the feeling even as you realize the moment is fleeting.

The book is done. Recognize that it is only an opening act, proofs loom, the fact checker and copy writer will undoubtedly be taking you to task.

The book is done. If you're lucky, you'll soon move beyond words and be discussing types and faces, artwork, and the book's mask.

The book is done. You're soul satisfied, more than a little exultant, that you cannot deny.

The book is done. Truth be told, you hadn't been planning this one. A detour from your arch concepts, funny how it crept up on you, the realization, on the sly.

The book is done. Writing starts with solitude, detachment perhaps, and a splinter of ice.

The book is done. Now you can repair those relationships neglected for the book, and try to make nice.

The book is done. You can't help yourself: you've started thinking about the next one.

The book is done. That's ridiculous. Focus on your wife, daughter and son.

The book is done. As in your hypertext dreams, you built out your world, threw in some Easter eggs, a few traps, and many erasures; and now you're spent.

The book is done. You turn the page over, close the notebook, and put down the pen.

The book is done. You name it final-final, click the Save button, compose the email, and then hit Send.

The book is done. You've reached the end, a moment of clarity, a brief pause for reflection.

The book is done. The moment passes. Enter the specter of The Editor, now come the complications.

Books, however much their lingering, books also must Come to an End. It is abhorrent to their nature as to the life of man. They must be sharply cut off. Let it be done at once and fixed as by a spell and the power of a Word; the word:

Finis

— On Coming to an End by Hilaire Belloc

Feeling Good, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Music, as ever, is my comfort suite; it certainly feels good. (spotify version)

• It Feels So Good by Grover Washington Jnr.
• Feeling Good by Nina Simone
• I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown
• Dr Feelgood (Love is Serious Business) by Aretha Franklin
• Feels Good by Tony Toni Tone
• Love Never Felt so Good by Michael Jackson
• Feels so Good by José James (ft. Cecily)
• Feels so Good by Dwele
• I Can Make You Feel Good by Shalamar
• I Feel Good All Over by Stephanie Mills
• The Feeling's Good by Hank Mobley
• That Good Old Feeling by Lou Donaldson
• Feel so Good by Sault
• Oh What a Feeling by Gregory Isaacs
• I Feel Good with You (Baby) by William Smith
• Feeling Good by Quantic Soul Orchestra ft. Alice Russell
• Feeling Good by Meshell NdegeOcello

Postscript

After writing the foregoing, I delayed publication as is my custom, and found myself fiddling further. I must confess that I wrote a few more things for "the book" as if to thicken the stew further. Physician, heal thyself, or rather, Dear Reader, send me an editor, I might warrant an intervention.

Postscript to the Postscript

I fear I am afflicted. I finished another book, this one written with furious intent over the past six weeks, I feel positively Dickensian. For fear of flooding the zone while I shop the previous one, I'll serialize the latter. We'll call it Toli Tuesdays - see if you can discern the theme in the coming weeks and months.

File under: Creative Process, book, writing, satisfaction, happiness, craft, poetry, publishing, culture, observation, perception, humour, Observers are worried, toli

The Shape of Dread

I wrote of The New Epicenter on New Year's Day 2021
In terror of what might befall my family in England
The onset of my sister's covidious symptoms
Came four days after she received her first dose
Of the AstraZeneca vaccine in February
Too late, in other words. 'Tis quite the pity

Up close and personal now, but unemotional, this nurse,
About the implications of this biological curse
"An occupational hazard", she quipped, of her profession,
She'd lost the race despite all of her precautions
Now it's up to medicine, luck, and her immune system
To face up to the struggle against the new variant

I can't describe the shape of my panic and dread
When she disclosed her condition. A shot to the head.
Oh no! My sister. And what about the boys?
Mother Nature, damn her, has dealt us this wild card.
Fear and worry were instantly etched in my heart.
Instead of sharing with her those light words and laughter
All I could offer across the ocean were thoughts and prayers.

Still, my heart also harbors a splinter of ice,
And I've stuck to my publishing schedule, with all that implies
All the while praying, as the days go on, and hoping against hope
That the macabre prophecy - I even mentioned a kind of hearse -
That I mooted in those stanzas of lyric verse
Wouldn't end up being a sort of obituary for my loved ones.
I've been sitting, paralyzed in fear for weeks now, a broken man.
I would gladly tear up these words, if only I could
To return to a different world but I realize that it would be no good.
Try as I can, to cut the Gordian knot of guilt and apply the knife
I'm also mindful that irony is the key register of African life.

The Shape of Dread, a playlist

A soundtrack to leaven this ongoing horrow show (spotify version)

• Not To Worry by Abbey Lincoln
• Livin' in Fear by The Bagdads
• Worries by Robert Glasper (feat. Dwele)
• The Moment I Feared by Slick Rick
• You Scared the Lovin' Outta Me by Funkadelic
• Running in Fear From Imaginary Assailants by Charlie Hunter
• The Moment I Feared by Tricky
  The whole Angels with Dirty Faces album is a harrowing soundscape, Tricky's remake of Slick Rick's cautionary tale is the very sound of dread.
• No Worries by Robert Glasper

See previously: The New Epicenter

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: culture, observation, dread, worry, family, life, health, England, disaster, coronavirus, pandemic, poetry, covidious, fear, guilt, irony, personal, Creative Process, Observers are worried, toli

Timeliness and Prescience

One part of my writing practice - a self-imposed constraint of the past few years is that I typically delay publishing. I perhaps took to heart too deeply that Gambian proverb: "Words are like bullets. When you release them, you can't call them back".

Perhaps it's a reaction too against a recency effect in much of today's world. Many writers chase the new and shiny and the temptation of the public intellectual mill to opine on the brouhaha of the moment. Contra punditry is a motto of sorts.

The times when inspiration flows are exhilarating moments, I cherish them immensely, they provide great relief, if not gratification, from their opposite counterparts: the fallow days of creativity. Yet the latter are often a prelude or even sometimes, a prerequisite to the former.

When you are firing on all cylinders, everything comes easily, intuitive connections are made, and the writing practice is a game not a chore. Indeed it can become a compulsion, every conversation somehow ties into the fugitive thought you were pursuing earlier.

You find yourself up at all hours lost in composition. Narratives take over, you're in the grip of an obsession pursuing the muse.

Prolific is the adjective that is used when you are flowing in the zone. What is the writer's equivalent of the heat check?

I had a couple of stellar months recently and, as is my tradition, I simply saved the output for the vault. It's a kind of bank of ideas, or, rather, my wishing well of toli. The idea is to be able to dole out the work at a more measured pace.

Sometimes, the muse doesn't leave, so now the problem becomes that you start to have too much in the tank. Yet you don't want to give the audience whiplash and overwhelm them with the pace of your creations. So you find yourself married to your admittedly arbitrary constraints. Dilemmas.

The upshot is that my blog invariably features things authored months earlier. I made my peace with this as this idiosyncrasy helps me move to my own tune and I still manage to push boundaries in my own manner and time.

Still I do enjoy marking my beliefs to market, as it were. There's a lyrical tension my routine now presents between timeliness and relevance on the one hand, and prescience and substance on the other.

A strong idea ought to be able to withstand some neglect, to paraphrase Garcia Marquez. I enjoy tilting against the windmill of time.

There is of course the peril of the scoop and I have a few recent examples...

Losers and suckers is a turn of phrase that I hit on back in June, it's a phrase that is firmly in the news, and frothy too, as it was ascribed to a feckless president in September. Perhaps it was in the air back in June, when it stood as the punchline to that hatchet job bit of toli that came to me. Indeed throughout September, I was sorely tempted to bring it forward.

In the end though when The Justice and Secretary was published, it turned out that my worry about the defanging of my punchline was misplaced. Rather, it was timely and prescient that I had written about the rank corruption of the Scalias as they were quarantining after celebrating the ascendancy of another servant of capital to the Supreme Court in another case of winner's justice. Indeed I got virtual pats of the back for scooping the New Yorker and the like. The repercussions of the White House superspreader event were becoming obvious. Thoughts and prayers to the Scalia family and, as I put it, the tree of iniquity.

I had long ago said my piece about Jerry Rawlings in this joint, but couldn't leave it alone and wrote Truth and Reconciliation in September. Again, I'm glad that, even delayed, that I published it in November and, as fate would have it, a few days before the Flight Lieutenant died. I have no regrets about what I wrote but am especially grateful that it didn't appear post mortem.

The last one is about mink. In early May I started a piece about mink, initially titled The Mink Connection, as I'd been collecting links pondering the various avenues for viral transmission. At some point, it turned into a kind of alternate history of our covidious pandemic - the plight of workers in meatpacking plants and farm workers were of concern as were other small things. The minks would reappear with lucid logic into a dreamlike poem in August. Then, of course, the minks became commonplace, the scientists raised the alarm in Denmark. While the hypertext dreams escaped from the vault, The Mink Quadrant as now conceived remains unpublished, existing only as a playlist. Pity the mink.

Timeliness

Your notional prescience in prose
Early to despair and viewed as being too on the nose
The real danger of being dismissed as piling on,
And appearing as mere conventional wisdom.

For all it takes is the arrow of time
To separate the prophets and oracles
From the most banal pub dabbler
Precious blueprints of digital ink
Become newsprint to wrap fish and chips

A victim of self imposed constraints
Sometimes scooped by events but no matter.
You may call me Captain Obvious
But I remain my own gatekeeper

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

Soundtrack for this note

A playlist straight from the basement (spotify version)

• I Don't Mind the Waiting by Omar
• You can't stop the prophet by Jeru the Damaja
• Conception by Black Thought
• As Yet Untitled by Terence Trent D'Arby

This note was written on September 13 2020, links added in early October per the mink predicament, and November per the death of the coup maker.

File under: Creative Process, writing, culture, observation, perception, Observers are worried, toli

Hypertext Dreams

I dream in hypertext.
It happened almost imperceptibly
And hypertext thoughts and practice crossed over,
And begat liminal links to the undercurrents
   that move the slumbering mind.

And now the surreal order is met with page transitions
As the mind navigates the context switches.
Thankfully, there are no spinning cursors
In the nightly realm for this impatient searcher.

The saving grace also is that the back button endures in that territory,
And no gremlins inject popups of misfortune obscene.
Nor do parasitic trolls invade
   with their Greek chorus of chaos and anxiety;
Their robot armies, the comment farm factories, are nowhere to be seen.
I count my blessings.

As yet untainted, these hypertext dreams of mine,
They remain the soul's consolation.
Solace for the mind's edifices at rest
Defended in depth,
And readied with deperimeterization strategies
Contra clickbait and worse.

The last time my dreams were of any interest was when I was nine,
After about six months of living in exile in France,
When I realized that I had started to dream in French.

The content of dreams is, of course, of no great import,
But changes in form do merit the occasional navel gazing.

So for me it has been French (per Ghana must go)
Eros (a few years later, circa the onset of puberty),
And, sometime in middle age, hypertext.
My life in dreams, as it were.

The belated realization of my latter day tendency
Towards hypertext dreams confounds as a matter of neurology
But perhaps it might also explain a lot, goes a school of thought
If we consult the Austrians about the interpretation of dreams.

I'm a hypertext thinker, an aficionado of the link.
I believe that the search and the journey is its own reward.
I mint references willy nilly and forge connective tissue
Like my tribe of fellow travelers and glue layer people.

I craft ballads to the link,
Odes to that moveable feast of attention.
Never mind the perils of broken links
Or the dead ends of referential integrity,
I believe in failing fast and code on demand.

At scale, I trust that the density of my thoughts
Is served by promiscuous reading and widespread referral.
The joys of private annotation at once
   and curation in public at the other.
That the hypermedia imperative prevails is all that matters.

My chosen canvas is thinking aloud in overlay networks.
I'm unafraid to send readers on discursive journeys,
Trusting that the sorting hat and those oracles of insight,
The great rankers of pages and web sites,
Will properly value the worth of my thought.

So I'm unapologetic about the intertextual heft of my brand of toli.
It's liberating too that hatchet jobs can mingle with whimsy.
Those who can handle conceptual whiplash
   will appreciate my dark matter.
Pick and choose your fare from my buffet,
   slice and dice at your leisure.

I remain comforted that form is not destiny,
For at night when I slumber and lie in repose,
The pineapples and elusive beaches of yore
Continue to appear in my hypertext dreams.

The wayfarer's path is marked only at inception
There are no boundaries, there's only conception
Streams of thought effusive, how my heart sings
In dreams I revel in the joy of small things.

... The next night ...

Hypertext Dreams Part II

I now welcome these hypertext dreams of mine
The journeys to the far regions of the mind
Staccato episodes of nighttime discovery
The torrid zone meets manifest destiny
Cross ephemeral boundaries of trancelike impressionism
An elegy to fever visions unconstrained by euphemism
Passionate mantras sound while navigating lush sites
Caution, take heed of our insatiable appetites

Fugitive memories that escape the corporeal
With lucid logic, prehensile limbs grasp the surreal
Intangible connections made with timeliness and prescience
The gift of prophecy, your networks adapt with resilience
The poor beasts culled by the pandemic are farm raised mink
All protocols observed, behold the ballad of the link

The medium equates the message, it is said,
A typographical error made serendipitous truth
In dreams, reversals of fortune are rather the rule
Gremlins and parasites dance with abandon in consonance
With nymphs and angels their counterparts providing balance
Elaborate nocturnal scenarios staged for interactive display
Vivid experiences immediate yet forever elusive in the light of day

In dreams, we forge the outlines of the myths we serve
The connective tissue salves and the mesh protects
We discard the waking realities we daily observe
Storytelling as restoration, deserved relief from stress
Deliverance from troubles, these bite-sized victories
Dreaming wide awake on the pathways to normalcy

Dreaming, a playlist

A soundrack for this note that starts off with the quintessence of dreamlike songs, Prince's ineffable The Ballad of Dorothy Parker. As for the rest, I did mention eros in passing, obsessions are many. (spotify version)

Links of a Native Son

I'm a child of the web and came into maturity when Berners-Lee, Andreeson and Fielding's creation was unleashed and shaped, it is no wonder that I've succumbed to the hypertext temptation in my work and, indeed, in my creative process.

There is no set formula to what I write but I do sometimes discern a few trends in my writing. Liminal links play a role.

Annotating with links is akin to writing in code and laying down references and pointers. Hypertext serves to flesh out an informational mesh, a network of thought. It admits that one is not definitive but, also, that the story builds on prior iterations and arguments.

A carapace of insight built incrementally and revisited anew. An exoskeleton of wordplay and affirmation. Such is my asylum.

The archetypal toli intervention consists of snap judgement, changing the frame, case studies, and arguments by analogy. When weaving these strands together, I tend to play with which aspects I emphasize and, of late, satirical parables serve my purposes.

When it comes to form, however, the typical bit of toli might have some prose, a photo, and a playlist. Sometimes it's a poem or a play instead of prose. Sometimes a poem augments the prose or serves as counterpoint. I'm not wedded to form and the muse indulges my roving mind.

Oftentimes I don't get to a photo, I'm not very visual or much into aesthetics. Mostly though, I do seem to require a playlist to resolve things satisfactorily in my mind and consider matters closed. Photos and music seem to soothe things, a balm for both this writer and the reader.

A few times, I've found that the playlist says it all, and might be both the starting and the end point - the prose, if any, is mere decoration in those instances. Perhaps it's a pathology, but writing sometimes comes so easily that I might spend more considerably more time crafting the playlist.

This multi-media and hypertextual approach poses a dilemma if one presents onself as a "writer". Perhaps this is why writer is sandwiched between "omnivorous reader" and "music lover" in my bio.

Thus I'm comfortable presenting myself as a web native writer rather than a book "author". My terrain is hypertext and my "books" of toli so far have been online affairs. I remain seduced by the immediacy of hypertext.

A frustration that editors have with me is that my brand of toli seems to linger in cyberspace and often refuses to be caged to the printed page. Blame the link, I'm resigned to dense hypertext and the judicious link. The temptation of the annotation.

I've noticed, per server logs, that photos seem to help in the popularity stakes. It's not that I sometimes tackle harrowing topics that need trigger warnings or that my writing is especially challenging, readers like photos.

So. Photos might be a better way to get whatever point I need across concisely. Picture, thousand words... yada yada. Still, I'm not a visual person hence I'll always lose in the acquity stakes... collages and juxtapositions are the most elaborate I get. And as for video creations, well those are the stuff of dreams.

But maybe I'm fooling myself crafting narratives, most people simply don't read much or, indeed, deeply - we're all busy and attention is scarce. The metaphor of surfing the web endures even if the majority these days are rather scrolling through feeds and video entertainments. I count mercies that anyone engages with what I offer.

And I even got two poems out of it, such is my asylum

But enough of the navel gazing, my purpose with the foregoing was only to lay down a mood marker, to note the wayfarer's change in routine in this season of migration to the torrid zone.

File under: hypertext, dreams, thinking, Creative Process, culture, life, observation, perception, sensory, poetry, travel, writing, whimsy, Small Things, Observers are worried, toli