The Grocery

When I enter Whole Foods I know I am there for their $2.99 64 oz almond milk. When I enter Trader Joe’s I know I will get my $30′s worth, enough groceries for a week and a half. When I enter the local produce store, I know that I may or may not come out with a sweet or fresh plum. But these are the breaks in the world of NYC food shopping.

For me it’s an almost an addiction that even if I am coming home late and there is a 24 hour place to gather groceries I will walk in to grab that box of cereal and bunch of bananas that I am running low on.

For those who understand there is nothing like entering a supermarket or produce store and coming out with the ingredients to make pancakes from scratch– flour, buttermilk or vinegar to “sour” any type of “milk,” eggs and vanilla extract. But it’s also knowing that you have that snack waiting for you at home because you remembered to buy animal crackers or that greek yogurt on sale. Or that you have something to eat for breakfast everyday besides toast.

For all the foodies out there especially those who can’t break the bank on eating out, I salute you.

Money “Matters”

For the past year…

The thing I want to yell out everyday to the person next to me (this
changes depending on the time of day and the day of the week), “I have no money! “
though I know very well that I am not the only one screaming this with
their inner voice. It is very hard to find solace in that knowledge sometimes.
That working everyday only keeps you a check and a few delay tactics
away from being out on the street.

The wealthy (check Jay-Z and Warren Buffet Forbes issue) is a group
society admires very easily despite the small percentage of the world
they represent. That’s because no one deep down wants to be a
have-not. That the old belief that working hard for someone for years
or decades will truly enrich your life monetarily and emotionally has
outlived it’s usefulness. That worked out for the Baby Boomer generation.

Unemployment Rate in the US.

Sidenote: When I heard Jay-z’s surprisingly optimistic view of New York minus all the grit during a new recession on that very popular song, I knew Jay-Z had left the New York of his past long long ago.  It’s not a knock on the rapper who deftly (not on his own) paved his way into a new tax bracket. So I have found myself listening to old Dead Prez songs and truly relating to the Roots overlooked How I Got Over wishing current  mainstream American music didn’t feel so hollow at times.

But tonight filmmaker/artist Leah Hamilton reminded tonight of the struggle that I am not alone in. That dark tunnel you walk through where money is just not there and things that you want to happen just are not happening. Not to ignore the small things that are coming together… small victories. May not be money or that gig but it’s something that will complete a bigger picture.

Stay up everyone.

Self-Publishing, E-Book Style

Today my longtime friend Steve sent me an email me a link from Gizmodo detailing Barnes & Nobles new e-book self-publishing service:

“Barnes & Noble just launched PubIt!, a new platform that lets individuals upload their opuses, sell them as real, honest-to-goodness ebooks in B&N’s eBookstore, and keep a decent chunk of the profit.”

B&N is not the first to provide a service like this to aspiring authors as Amazon already has it’s on self-publishing service that utilizes its own Kindle device for e-publishing. But Blurb really disappointed me with it’s pricing  and only had print services when I was using it.

E-readers are a growing method of reading books and this year has seen lots of devices beside the iPad ready to make it easier to read your favorite magazines and books. And the idea of setting up my novel or collection of short stories in such a quick way is enticing. Plus B&N a profit of 40 to 65% of your book depending on how much you sell your opus for with no hidden fees.

However I feel like with all the things digital did for music, the amount authors vying for attention will grow at rapid rate and standing out will require more than writing a Pulitzer prize caliber story.

Here is a direct link to PubIt!.

Music Musings Part 1

“I been here since the beginning
Beginning of time yo beginning of time
Deep in the mind of the ancient ones
Everybody love me like they do the sun
I shine at times yo at times I’m dark
You can’t categorize me, my mind’s a art
Inside my heart, it ain’t about climbing charts
I’m the one you roll with when your ride is smart
The change that came, the change that comes
I change with chords and I kick it with drums
Get blow with horns and did it on the one
Riffed for guitars, for the Lord I sung
Spun around the world at parties and weddings
Wherever I go I create the setting
You know me from lessons or your pops collections
Whether whole or half stepping I’m a blessing
Yo I am music”

– “I am Music” (Common)

Luisa Bastidas, violinist

I can’t say that i remember growing up around music, at least not until I was in the junior high period of my grade school . My parents did have vinyl but i can’t recall much except for that Thriller album cover or 45 singles like “Endless Love.” There are much stronger memories of Christmas songs being played on a record player , and gospel songs and hymnals in french and Haitian creole at the Baptist church I spent a good chunk of time in.

Then the memories got more vivid with trips to a friend’s home which was around the corner from my childhood home. Watching music video shows on cable which was absent from my home –ironically headed by a father who worked for Time Warner Cable. I was hipped to Rap City and Yo! MTV Raps and the infamous The Box. I began taping radio mixes and getting a great education on early ’90s hip-hop and R&B.

My second afterschool job and the opening of a record shop a few blocks away from home created a weekly habit of buying something musical, a whole album or a single.  My Walkman became one of my best friends, providing a safe place to listen to secular music and I enjoyed reading the liner notes.

The Walkman was replaced by a portable CD player in college and the tape collection was overwhelmed by my CDs. And college was a special time, a meeting of the minds with other music aficionados. And free music from record labels all because I wrote reviews for the school paper. An editorial internship at Vibe at it’s creative peak opened up so many doors to my earbuds-Jamiroquai, Stevie Wonder (yes i’m serious, before i only knew about the commercial work from the ’80s),  etc.

After college, my relationship to music intensified with my writing and editing about music and the culture surrounding it. Music magazines like Fader (before it became something different altogether),  XXL, Straight No Chaser, and others showed up in my peripheral vision. This was the early ’00s and the music industry was enjoying record-breaking historical sales, where almost anyone who dropped an album went gold. But it was also the time of “The Napster.” I had been trading mp3s with a friend via CDRs but programs like Napster and Audiogalaxy changed the game and how I viewed music. Essentially my musicals tastes changed and expanded actually making me buy more CDs that were not R&B or hip-hop.

“I – don’t want to – Go to work today – I ‘d rather – Stay home – And play -
video games- I wanna chill
(music)
But I gotta get up
I gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta get up
(repeat 1x)
Get up
I don’t want to go to work today
I’d rather stay home and play video games
I’d rather chill for real
I don’t know how you feel
But sometimes I feel like I’m
Workin’ for nuthin’ tryin’ to get sumthin’
Every where I turn there’s a bill standing out
Swim the river climb the hill
Complacency you ain’t gone get me no no no no”

“Gotta Get Up (Another Day)”– 4Hero Featuring Jill Scott

So much has changed since I bought my first 4Hero album in 2000. Right now,  my music history is being recorded online as I play it through Itunes, tracking my listening habits and recommending artists i might like.  I still buy CDs but mostly to support artists I know personally or the ones who have stayed consistent with releasing music that I like.  I am slowly becoming one those people who shuffle their music around and doesn’t listen to albums in full. I am still amazed at being able to carry around thousands of songs in a device smaller than my first Walkman and that after sellling so many records and made history, Big Boi is treated like an artist who has just come onto the scene. But hey, going 1X platinum is considered a big feat nowadays.

Blog This Blog That

Mos Def @ Afropunk Festival 2010

There was a point in time when I was an avid personal blogger–before blogging was know as blogging. All aspects of my life were open to the Internet public to judge and it allowed for lots of voyeurism. So much of it was purging of my insecurities and just random thoughts of my life and things that interested me. I abruptly stopped it almost 4 years ago–much to the relief of my GF– and converted it into a photo blog. Since then and since the acquisition of my Creative Writing MFA from Brooklyn College my writing has been non-existent.

Last week I had a long overdue phone conversation with my classmate and friend Chee Malabar and unlike me, he has been writing aside from working on his music. He reminded me that I should write again, that his writing is ten times better than what he wrote in school. Then there was that email from my Brooklyn College announcing actor James Franco MFA 2010. All these little things have led me back to this, the blog you are looking at. Enjoy hopefully, as I stumble back into my writing.

The Early, Middle, and Late Times of Jean-Louis Middleton (Excerpt)

Written during my time at the MFA program at Brooklyn College. It is another over the top slightly satirical story.

The Early, Middle, and Late Times of Jean-Louis Middleton

By Richard Louissaint

© 2008 Richard Louissaint

The story of Jean-Louis Middleton could be told as this: He was born, he lived, and then he died once at the age of thirty then again at the age of seventy. But of course, dying twice warrants more than a blurb in a newspaper obituary.

When Jean-Louis was born in the Jamaica, Queens hospital that also birthed all three members of RUN DMC – well that’s what legend says – the doctor, who after wiping off the womb juice that all babies come covered in, told his parents their son would die thirty years from today. Unfortunately for the doctor, and for Jean-Louis, his parents laughed in his presence but secretly called the police and had him arrested. He was never seen again.

As a baby, Jean-Louis was walking in four months, which forced his father, who had to quit his job as a nurse’s aid (he loved helping people) to be a househusband, to begin Operation Don’t Touch months in advance. This consisted of planting little gates by the stairs, leaving Jean-Louis more often in his playpen, and because his baby could move around more easily, making sure he didn’t touch the wrong things.

But Jean-Louis early mobility did have its advantages. His father didn’t have to carry him all the time and he relinquished use of the Baby Björn stroller and the hemp sling  given by his hipster brother who was big on speaking in Jamaican patios and quoting Buju Banton lyrics. “Walk like a champion  / Talk like a champion” was his favorite thing to recite and he told it to Jean-Louis every time he saw him.

Jean-Louis didn’t fall or tumble, except naturally for the first few days, then he was bouncing around the three-story house in Queens Village, NY. His father, who had gained a potbelly and a jones for Godiva chocolate, spent so much time chasing around his son that he lost the belly and gained a six-pack, and the stamina to copulate like a rabbit everyday with his wife, the superstar cable technician who could install a system in less than ten minutes.

My Favorite Beanpole (22nd Draft-Not Really) (Excerpt)

Initially written for one of my writing workshops in grad school, I wrote this hyper fairy tale/folk tale with how i imagined Haiti was like in the 70s/80s without ever set foot on that soil. Unfortunately,  it has not happened yet but the earthquake may force me to make it happen.

© Richard Louissaint, 2010

On an island shared by two nations, one Unlucky and one lived a bouncy, tree climbing pre-teen girl named Beanpole Daphnee. She was taller than her parents and had the body of a real-life Olive Oyl. Beanpole Daphnee lived on the Unlucky part but didn’t seem to notice one bit. She spent her days running around her village in the city of Gonaïves.  bullying the boys her age, throwing rocks at the stray dogs, and of course climbing the tropical trees. (Sadly, the trees would be cut down shortly afterwards to pay off some of the Unlucky nation’s debt. But like a carefree girl, she would find other things to climb.)

Her mother sold homemade snacks like cassava and fudge at the open-air market three times a week, and her father worked the sugar cane fields, and anywhere else he could use his hands and not his mind (as he had never learned to read). Beanpole Daphnee was happy on that island even when she got a beating, had to eat dry cornmeal with kidney beans 5 days in a row, or was embarrassed by her teacher in class for being lazy. It may have been hot day and night, and the electricity came on whenever it felt like it, but Beanpole Daphnee was a happy girl.

Then the evil son of the Unlucky nation’s dictator took over the day his father died and that day, Beanpole Daphnee turned 15. While his father was a cruel and calculated ruler, his son was even crueler and hired evil paramilitary men to terrorize his enemies – meaning anyone on the island half, including Beanpole Daphnee’s family.

The evil son had continued his father’s pact with the International funder for poor countries, CMF (which some nicknamed C Me Fail), and made it harder for hard working people like Beanpole’s father to find work in farm labor. The CMF forced the truly poor nation to borrow money they could never pay back, and had outside companies come and set up shop paying the people barely enough to live. So Beanpole Daphnee’s father began protesting CMF’s presence in the truly poor nation. This made the evil son angry and he decided to send evil men to Beanpole Daphnee’s home.

One early evening, Beanpole Daphnee was coming home from school, kicking rocks along the unpaved road that only imported SUVS and tap tap vans could travel along. Kervins was following close behind her even though she didn’t want his company. But the boy had a crush on her and she couldn’t get rid of him no matter what she did: threats, punches to the stomach, and alternate routes home. So she eventually gave up and let him walk with her, as long as he walked 3 feet behind her. As the two approached the village where they lived, she could see smoke rising and she ran as fast as she could. She pushed aside the crowd of neighbors and saw her mother crying in front of the blazing fire and being held back by Plump Gladys and Occasionally Crazy Gertrude. But Beanpole Daphnee didn’t cry or get angry – she stared at her burning house.

© Richard Louissaint, 2010