"You felt terror at the prospect of failure, of mistakes, of the criticism of others. So you became dependent on others and lost your freedom. Others now have the power to make you happy or miserable. And much as you now hate the suffering this involves, you find yourself completely helpless."
- Anthony De Mello. The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of. Image Books,1991. pg 139
"Reading can be part of an ongoing life program, empowering the reader to rethink present coping strategies, to try out new behaviours, new moves."
- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 99
Reading empowers all of us. We can see how characters have dealt with situations and what consequences sprang forth from their decisions. Thus, in the future, if we come across a similar situation or predicament, we have already had a little bit of a rehearsal in how to deal with it. That is only one way that reading can help us.
Gold thinks that we should read to also help us cope with things that have already happened. We can identify with characters and thus be removed from our own situation slightly.
As you can see from the label cloud on the sidebar, I have extensively quoted Joseph Gold here. His ideas about story and literature really speak to human experience and I am glad that I can share them with you here.
"Worst come to worst my peoples come first worst...come.....to worst worst come to worst my peoples come first worst come...to...worst worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Evidence)
"Yo, some people got good friends, at night I live my life right Intense, on the edge On the wild, I'm from the group where friction leads to fire Stack your bricks, the time is take your pick Do or don't, the track - Alchemist My life is good, I got my peeps in the mix, so..."
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Iriscience)
"I got worldwide family all over the earth And I worry about 'em all for whatever it's worth From the birth to the hearse, the streets, the guns burst Words I disperse are here to free minds And if mine are needy I need to feed mine"
"when worst come to worst..."
(Evidence)
"Set up shop and write a verse Actually 'what?', that's best come to best My lyrics take care of me, they therapy Get sh*t off my chest Extra stress, three-four over the score Different patterns of rhyming prepare me for war So next time you see us we'll be deadly on tour"
"worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Guru)
"Word up, if worst comes to worst, I make whole crews disperse You know it's family first Gifted Unlimited with Dilated Peoples Babu, Evidence, Iriscience And a shout out to my man Alchemist on the trizzack"
"worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Iriscience)
"I'm a glutton for the truth, even though truth hurts I've studied with my peoples on streets and in church We make it hard when we go on first Long road, honor of the Samurai Code These California streets ain't paved with gold"
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Evidence)
"Uh, I got them back, at the end of the day We could go our seperate ways but the songs remains, it won't change Got my target locked at range I might switch gears but first I switch lanes Without my people I got nothing to gain That's why"
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Iriscience)
Special victims unit, catalyst for movement Creates to devastate, since '84 show improvement Definitely dilated peoples comes first Cross-training spar, we raise the bar And we put it in your ear no matter who you are
(DJ Babu) "worst come to worst my peoples come first" "worst....come...worst my peoples come first" "worst...worst....worst....come to worst my peoples come first" "...my..my...my peoples come first "oh, when you need me"
- Dilated Peoples "Worst Comes to Worst" from the album Expansion Team
"Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls."
He launched his First of the Month project earlier this month with a video and single for "All My Life." He will be releasing a new song again on February 1st, and continuing this pattern for the rest of 2010.
By the end of the year, he will have released 12 songs that will be sitting in an album in my iTunes.
I've decided to support this project because I really enjoy his music. I have yet to purchase any of his albums though. I have enjoyed them for free and I feel a little guilty about that.
I think any Ivan Ives fan should support this project since it will only cost us 99 cents a month. It makes it manageable to support an artist for an entire year and actually purchase the music that we love.
I see this as being the future of the recording industry. The old me would lament that this is the death of the album. But I don't think this necessarily needs to sound that death knell.
I really enjoy his Iconoclast and NewSpeak albums and I'm sure by the end of the year, I will also enjoy his First of the Month album.
So here is the video for you to check out. It uses some pretty cool stop motion animation and apparently took him two months to complete. If you enjoy this video, please go buy the song from iTunes.
"Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do. And if the person you're with doesn't want it, ya know, do yourself a favour and save it for someone who does."
- Nate Fisher. Six Feet Under. Season 5: Episode 6.
"Walt Whitman once proclaimed that 'great poets need great audiences.' For over thirty years, rap has produced more than its share of great poets. Now it is our turn to become a great audience, repaying their efforts with the kind of close attention to language that rap's poetry deserves."
- Adam Bradley. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. BasicCivitas, 2009. pg xxiii
"When universities made literature part of their curriculum, they had to turn it into something very serious and professional in order to justify its inclusion.
In other words, they created an “expertise” of reading; they cornered the market in “understanding” literature, and they made reading seem very complicated."
- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 313
A buddy of mine introduced me to this group when I was in high school. At first I didn't get it. I thought B-Real sounded like Mickey Mouse. I almost dismissed them because of his high-pitched flow. I'm glad I didn't. This tape really rocks.
This is one of my favourite songs by Cypress Hill "The Phuncky Feel One" and it dates back to 1991.
Enjoy!
B-Real
"Well I'm the Real one, yes the Phuncky Feel One Cypress Hill has come, any quest/just ask them Cause we are answering, any brothers that've been On the dick swinging, and straight gathering Enter the info, cause yo what you're in for Is a crazy day, strapped in a pimp mode Trapped like a prophet, but I still profit Even when you're off it, bank's in my pocket Cause of my music, what you call me chumpy? In my trade, the Tribe is known to get funky Hif is here to hack you down, Son is here to buck you down Joke's on you, if you're the biggest duck in town You got to relax, we got to kick back Brothers just sit back, enjoy me like a six pack As I let the rhyme flow, into the hook Yo where you getting took, but that's another story black
Cause I'm the Real one, yes the Phuncky Feel One I'm the Real one, yes the Phuncky Feel One I'm the Real one, yes the Phuncky Feel One You know I'm the Real one, yes the Phuncky Feel One"
Sen Dog
"Night in a stiff block, hanging up the pimp's jock Used to call me Pimp Poppa, cause I likes to hip-hop Cause I'm down with Cypress, illing well I might Begin to take your girl, your girl she's the flyest Flyer than the other broad, working off the pitched rod Isn't that odd, instead of saying my dick's hard It's not about knocking you, do you feel like clocking loot? Forget it act stupid little sucker I'll be clocking you."
B-Real
"With the right or left hand, duck they was still stand Troopers on the side step, bucks him down to death man With the greater lyric, if you can spare it Just an ass kicking, is what you inherit So don't try to snake off, you know I can't be shook off Why the suckers took off? Well that's another story black."
Chorus
B-Real and Sen Dog trade off lines here,
"Standing on the corner, close to the real estate Clones they really pull sticking brothers try to imitate Meaning when they simulate, but they can't stimulate Like a faded joint, stiff from the breath I take Make me act loco, they switching up my vocal Out to catch you so-called, MC's with a roll call Then you gotta close your eyes, you can't stand the sunlight There is just one light, the Tribe's bucking heads tonight Buck buck buck ya head! Sorry that red is dead Deader than a doornail, someone cold made his bed Didn't just break out, the sucker got cracked out Hit the pipe and blacked out, with the shit from back down So much more integrity, just another hooker Was a funky looker But that's another story black."
Chorus
- Cypress Hill "The Phuncky Feel One" off their self-titled debut album.
David: "Grateful? For the worst f*cking experience of my life."
Nathaniel: "You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well, let me tell you, it's not worth sh*t. Let it go...(looks up to the sky) Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine."
David: "Well what am I supposed to do?"
Nathaniel: "What do you think? You can do anything you lucky bastard, you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that?"
David: "It can't be that simple."
Nathaniel: "What if it is?"
- Six Feet Under. HBO television series Season 4 finale.
"Finally, we should live for being creative. What do I mean by creative? I mean trying to change this universe in which we find ourselves placed—trying to add good things to it, if possible. The universe, in the state in which we find it when we wake up to consciousness, is obviously imperfect and unsatisfactory."
- Arnold Toynbee. Seek Love, Creation, and Understanding in Constructing a Life Philosophy: Opposing Viewpoints, 2002. Excerpted from Surviving the Future, 1971.
I found this video by way of Twitter and I really wanted to share it here with you on Tube Tuesday. Here is a description of this amazing video, In this unmissable look at the magic of comics, Scott McCloud bends the presentation format into a cartoon-like experience, where colorful diversions whiz through childhood fascinations and imagined futures that our eyes can hear and touch. Scott McCloud also shares with us a life philosophy that follows these four tenets, 1) Learn From Everyone 2) Follow No One 3) Watch for Patterns 4) Work like Hell Anyway, I hope you take the time to watch this video. I highly recommend reading his amazing book Understanding Comics as well. Enjoy!
