beats

Some fresh beats have come to my attention lately.

Kum Curek's blog features cuts so now they're actually tomorrow.

And check out Audiojack, these cats are amazing:
Latest tracks by Audiojack Official

four letter word or, do you believe?

Do you believe in love?

I'm still not sure that I do. Maybe. Possibly. I'm on the fence. I want to. It's scary. It feels so good and then it hurts, like the sweet bliss of nitrous right before the root canal drill.

*

An Ethiopian friend says he doesn't. But, he's young and a player so I think it's mostly a line.

Also, it depends somewhat on what you mean by love. There's "love" as in soul mates, one person you'll be with forever and do everything with and skip happily into the Hollywood sunset.

There's also "love" as in:

• the friend who says "call anytime day or night if you need anything" and when something horrible happens, she picks up the phone at 1 a.m.
• the one who remembers to check in on holidays or certain times a year because they know you lost somebody and are feeling sad
• sisters and nieces who are nutty and fun and would be friends even if they weren't blood relations
• people who take adventures with you, whether it's a late night photo shoot in a downtown alley or sidewalk dancing and then Five Point tater tots at 4am or checking out a young hip hop band that's so terrible that fleeing out to the sidewalk in the 20-degree night with no coat is preferable
• the dreamers, the poets and musicians and artists and photographers, who gladly stay up all night with you smoking and drinking and agonizing over strokes and beats and beauty and yet somehow also surf the mundanity of day jobs, of rent checks and power bills
• the handsome charming one who tells you everything, holds back nothing even when it's ugly or painful or sad, and couldn't be lovelier

PS: I saw this graffiti: I know your secrets and I love you anyway

tribe

On the longest night of the year, some classic Tribe Called Quest to make you smile:

the thing about it is

The thing about it is, it won't kill you.
Loneliness.
YES! this is one of those posts. I wish it wasn't. It is though. I feel like I have to write these things, because I feel them.
I feel it. It.
Like a stab, like a lot of stabs, the kind of deep anxious dreadful jabbing stab that makes you want to hurt yourself so you feel something else besides it. It.
Loneliness. Yeah.
It makes you wish you were dead, sometimes, or at least that your nerves were dead, so you didn't feel so damn awful much.
It's a space that needs filling, with gin or sex or hip hop or frenzied running around. It hits you that it's been yea long since someone, anyone, a stranger even, held you, hugged you, really grabbed on, and meant it.
*
It won't kill you though, loneliness. You'll live through it. You'll live to be lonely another day.
I imagine it away sometimes, like turning off an old television set, a bright digital flash consolidating in on itself like a collapsing star.

good stuff

From BusySmartyPants to you, some pages where I've been hanging out lately:

• Yeti vs Penguin -- super simple but so addictive
• Like to read? I mean, do you like to read a lot? kottke.org and longform
• Best 404 page ever
• Why does life suck so much? or not? ty Rob Brezsny
• Aaaaand, because my iPhone wrote "pass" instead of "pasa" 3 times in a row today (ffs, honestly), don't forget this one.

Happy Thursday, y'all.

what Africa sounds like

One thing I love about Afrika ya Mashariki is the constant buzz of activity. Everything has a soundtrack, whether it's music, conversation, dogs fighting, horns tooting, football on the television, a generator. That said, peep this short recording of a peaceful moment outside the Nam Hotel in Dodoma; the damn rooster was my wake up call every morning at 4.10.

outside the nam by busysmartypants

so this one

This picture is from late 2009.
I look dull, no?
Frustrated.
Lonely.

It was the beginning of seismic changes, of BusySmartyPants and solo days and nights, of gutting out stories and thinking too much about not thinking so much.
*
A photographer friend snapped my picture last night. She has an eye, let me tell you. This is so you, she said, showing me me, looking candid and direct.
This girl wouldn't know that one, I don't think.

sweet beats

Peep my friend thad wenatchee's new music video, made with love right in the 206:

yummy tummy time

Boy, it's been heavy around here. I heard three people utter the words "I'm lonely" this week.
One of those people was me.
*
In other news, I saw an amazing dance performance last night by zoe|juniper. Dancers in gold headgear, robotic and lithe, stunning. Two were naked, and barking. Another bit a scarlet leash.
While in Addis, I polished off an entire box of off-brand cocoa krispies. Nothing says yummy tummy time like chocolate cereal with hot milk.
*
Today's soundtrack, a BSP video, the view from a Tanzanian teksi:

if only

The shoe repair guy said, wistfully, No one ever brings me clean shoes.
I handed over mud-crusted boots that needed re-heeling and felt like a shit.
*
I love travel. The more places I go, the more I feel alive, connected, humble, curious, ignorant, desperate, hopeful, optimistic, realistic, fatalistic.
I hate travel. The more I go, the less I feel like staying.
*
One day I shoveled sand in a rocky Addis Ababa alley and sang Gershwin to a little girl who giggled and held my work-gloved hand. A passerby kissed my cheek and said she felt as though she were my sister, and I felt like the luckiest person alive.
And now I feel more deeply lonely than ever. I thought it was supposed to be the opposite.
*
For 6 Birr (35 cents), a shoeshine kid scrubbed my muddy kicks with soap and water. He didn't complain about dirty shoes. But, sitting there while he labored with a dirty rag and scraps of soap, I still felt like a shit.