It Ended

“It didn’t end right with us.” - him
“But it ended.” – her
- Life television show 31 Oct 2007

This line stuck with me. Sometimes things end and it doesn’t matter how they ended. We can spend too much energy trying to make things right and our ex could care less. It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes. I know. I’ve tried and I thought it was the right thing to do. But to my ex, things were just over and the good ending didn’t matter.
Too bad!

The Best Investment

“The best investment I know of is charity: you get your principal back immediately, and draw a dividend every time you think of it.”
- Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings)

Happy Monday Everyone!

Hidden Symbols

“There are symbols hidden in places you would never imagine.”
- Brown, Dan. The DaVinci Code. DoubleDay: New York, 2003. pg 97

Story is Organic

“Gregory Bateson goes on to give his definition of story:

A story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which we call relevance. In the 1960s, students were fighting for “relevance,” and I would assume that any A is relevant to any B if both A and B are parts or components of the same “story.”

Again we face connectedness at more than one level:

First, connection between A and B by virtue of their being components in the same story.
And then, connectedness between people in that all think in terms of stories. (For surely the computer was right. This is indeed how people think)

. . . thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds, whether ours or those of redwood forests or sea anemones.

In other words, Bateson sees story as a form of all organic organization.”
- quotation comes from Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 79-80
- internal quotation comes from Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam: New York, 1980. pg 14.

We Can Make it Better

“Ladies and gents, gather round lets take an intermission
the industry is strung out, it needs an intervention,
Cam dissing Jay, they cleared Irv Gotti
Nas signed to Def Jam and Fifty signing everybody
and BET is on some other shit
They can Laffy Taffy all day but can’t play Little Brother shit
and if you buying it, they selling it
no 106 for De La, cause they said they not relevant
and that ain’t right, you’re either too soft or too thug
bottom line, I think the game need a group hug
need a new Busta tattoo, a new Snoop drug,
a new attitude called let the artist recoup love
but that won’t happen and I probably won’t sell (Nope)
cause I don’t know Nate Dog and I can’t afford Pharrel
and Paul Wall ain’t answering my call or my email
I tried to make it better but I failed, oh well.”
- EMC “We Can Make it Better.”

This lyric speaks to what is wrong with the hip-hop industry lately.

The outlets that play music or videos aren’t supporting good music

106 and Park is the flagship show of BET and it plays music videos and have performers on it everyday. But they are not representing hip-hop culture very well. They don’t play songs from artists that are actually saying anything. They play watered down pop music that is disposable. They don’t honour or support legends like De La Soul. It’s a crying shame.

Consumers aren’t buying quality music

Strickland raps that the songs being spun are either watered down with no message or just overtly violent and gangsta.

Unfortunately, I think this group is preaching to the choir. And even though the group members are all legendary artists, this album doesn’t seem to be selling very well.

The rap game is about who is hot at the moment

If you have a famous producer or guest artist you get played. But that shouldn’t be what rap is about. It never was before.

Artists try to make a change

No one is listening though.

This needs to change

Fans that have bought this album know the history and support the underground music. More people need to be aware of what rap music is and I think that it is up to artists such as EMC to help bring it back to what it could and should be

Stupid…Echoes

"You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain? And it just keeps sounding stupider? And you have to say something else just to make it stop?"
Angela on My So-Called Life

Fear is the Worst

"The fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And no heart ever suffered when it went in search of its dreams"
- Paulo Coelho “The Alchemist”

Good Advice! Happy Monday Everyone!