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The Mystery of Chessboxing
One of the most important things in life, I have come to realize, is simply seeing what is possible. It changes your perspective on absolutely everything to have even the smallest taste of how life could be lived, or ought to be lived.
Been back on the East Coast for the past week, after over a year spent in Babylon. Okay, so the West Coast isn’t exactly torturous; it’s actually been a hell of a lot of fun and an extraordinary place for me to get my shit together. But I guess it has been a little bit like being in exile. Exile can be really good for you though.
But so can coming home.
Over the weekend I bought “The Wu-Tang Manual” by the RZA at the urging of my friend Drew. Unbeknownst to either of us, we each had independently been getting heavy into early to mid-nineties hip-hop. I feel like I really “get it” in a way I never have before. That book has been an awesome read (although it could have benefited quite a lot from a better editor) as it has consolidated a bunch of different threads I have been following on my own. And looking at the RZA’s business model and its intersection with spirituality and a heavy emphasis on self-mastery have been incredibly inspiring. I have been cribbing a lot lately from how he master-minded a world-wide takeover of hip-hop by creating an umbrella under which his group of friends and artists could work towards one another’s mutual benefit. I will be rolling a lot of what I learned from them into the organization I will be building around this whole musical concept I have been going on about for the past few months.
This past month was about mastering “mathematics” as the RZA might say. I learned all about the roots of habit-formation and how to finally reform myself as a person so that my intentions and actions might be aligned. Now that I have achieved that lasting harmony, clarity and tranquility, I feel as though there is nothing that isn’t within my power. In that, of course, lies the recognition though that none of this is actually “mine” at all. Everything that has happened to me has been gifts laid at my feet which I have had to struggle against myself to be worthy of. And close to my heart I have kept the constant lesson: gifts given to you are meant to be given to others.
This next month then will be about setting up the mechanisms by which others will be given those gifts. They are little like a hot potato: if you hold onto them selfishly for too long, you will get burned. The tongues of flame which descended upon the Apostles were meant to be a fire which ignited the whole human race. My vision is perhaps a bit less grandiose than all that, but I plan simply to start with the people closest to me and go from there. The people who have filled my life with all manner of moments, from joyous to sorrowful, are people of vast talents and tremendous love and if I can give back only a sliver of what they have given me, then I will be able to rest easily when my body is offered back up to the earth from which I sprang.
The fire is spreading. The earth under our feet is moving. We will all gather together again before you know it. And when we do, the world will tremble and dance before the weight of our joyous song. Wishing you all a beautiful Fall. September has always been one of my favorite months. May you rise again on the other side.
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September 4th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I forget, did I ever show you this guy RAMM:ELL:ZEE?
http://www.gothicfuturism.com/
http://www.gothicfuturism.com/rammellzee/01.html
September 4th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Yep, several times! I could never get into the language used in those documents though. It is too “artsy” for my tastes. One of the things I like about RZA’s book is that it is totally straightforward in its language. Maybe even a little too loose at times, but it’s still cool. I feel like with a better editor/ghost writer that book could have been taken from decent to classic status.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
d’oh!
I’ve been meaning to get a copy of this ‘Hip Hop Decoded’, too:
http://www.amazon.com/Hip-Hop-Decoded-Black-Dot/dp/097723570X
September 4th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Well, I’m up for getting a hot potato and passing it on, not sure what it means but sounds like somthing I’d want to get involved in. just lettin’ you know.
Ted
September 4th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Woah! I just wrote poetically about “leaving Babylon” in my journal 2 days ago. Here is the exact line:
We will withdraw from Babylon. We will open our eyes by escaping from seeing, we will open our minds by transcending thought.
I am going to start noting all these great coincidences on this site.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I just scored a bunch of Public Enemy from my cousin-in-law last week, so I’ve riding the early-90s hip-hop wave quite a bit lately myself.
I’ll have to score that book now.
PS: I like the ambiguity of this line:
September 5th, 2007 at 10:00 am
It wasn’t meant as being ambiguous at all
September 5th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
And yet it is.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
I don’t see what the hell is so ambiguous about it!
September 6th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Fall as in downfall, Fall from Heaven, Fall from Grace etc.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:57 am
the nephilim fell too.
anyway, here`s something that i think you will like……..
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1335457258713529539
September 6th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Here goes my vague recollections of something I saw on TV. A long, very well made documentary on the PBS stations about a playwright from the 70’s. He was the son of an author and was thought to be dead. He really suffered a head injury after falling off (or being pushed off) a bridge at the artist compound where the plays were staged. His life seemed to be a living enactment of parts of the Apollo/Dionysus whatever you want to call it. (That’s much more precise than it sounds.)
He played Frankenstein and in his photo wearing the Frankenstein makeup he had the EXACT same expression on his face that Anna Nicole had in the video wearing the clown makeup. Sometime shortly before or after her death I saw that video and jumped and I couldn’t help but wonder what myth she was enacting. I still haven’t come to a conclusion but I’m glad that people with a broader base of knowledge of the subject are on the case.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
That’s not ambiguous so much as it is people reading into it too goddamned much! But I guess I do encourage that kind of speculation.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Yeah, no kidding. It’s going to take us a little while to adjust to this new, straight forward, style of writing after a few months of symbolic, hard to figure out writing.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I didn’t think it was ambiguous at all either. Doubleuteaf.
My coincidences have been leading me to Staten Island lately, Sunday, looking for Black Carhart’s at Ice B Berg down on Broadway and thinking about Wu-Tang led me here. It was just there.
The city’s grip on us now is very very tenuous. Damn Wanderlust. They beckon. They beckon.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I really like this entry.
Way to be, Tim.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
well, the fact is that we are all being broadcast too.
i tell people to turn off the tv and stop reading the newspapers because eventually the programming wears off.
bobby b. asked me what are we going to do when we wake up though?
that`s what nietzche warned about.
and about reading too goddamned much into things………i have to ask which tim boucher is asking that question……..
September 6th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Very funny. I understand that I deserve that. But I mean seriously though, I wrote something about “Fall” and then used the word “September” right after it. I guess I just don’t see where the confusion really lies!
September 6th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I don’t think it’s confusion. Sometimes it’s fun to stretch words around and see what they look like.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
That makes more sense to me. I actually have something tangentially related to write about that with relation to Google search results and individual search histories… Figuring out how to hammer that into a deliverable shape currently.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Looking forward to the umbrella you make for us all, Tim. In the meantime, I’m workin’ on gettin’ myself together. Maybe I should go out West!
I wanted to share, though, that before you announced where exactly you were moving to, I found an envelope on the ground, folded in half, outside a bar I frequent. Picked it up and saw that it was addressed to someone named Boucher. My first thought was “Tim Boucher’s coming to New York.” So I guess I read too much in to that. You aren’t in New York.
Early 90’s hip hop has deep knowledge in it. And a lot of it is from the Five Percenters, who you’ve written about. Having recently interviewed the author of the recently published history of that movement (Michael Muhammed Knight), I find myself appreciating Wu Tang, NaS, Rakim and all those cats on an entirely different level.
Tim, I highly recommend Deltron 3030 to you. It’s the unsung gem of hip-hop and the times we’ve been living in over the past seven years.
Julia, for what it’s worth, here’s my take on Anna Nicole Smith:
http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2007/02/1...-sacrifice-the-other-goddess-worship/
Peace, all.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Hi. You’re in my bookmarks too. I forgot about you when I wrote the above. It’s hard to think at work. I still want to know the name of the look they had on their faces. If I can place it and where I’ve seen it before I’ll really be onto something. Now I’ll have to find that documentary.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/lossofnamelessthings/index.html
Found it!
September 7th, 2007 at 3:43 am
At the top of my Gmail: the Google algorithm’s are trying to communicate with us again.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070907/film_nm/losangeles_dc
I’m considering activating my search history in my Google accounts. If they have access to that information and are actively using it to improve their algorithms, then why shouldn’t I be also?
September 7th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Put it up on Sendspace so we can download it.
I’m ready to die, if that’s what you’re saying. Why do you think Biggie named his album that? If I do though, better make sure you have fully downloaded my entire site to re-circulate it afterwards cause this shit won’t stay up long.
No reason we all can’t win here though folks. Biggie knew what was up. Home crew loungin, no more public housing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noTvdpAYeHE
September 7th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I didn’t realize that was what I was saying when I said it, but I guess that was what I was saying. There’s a lot of that going around on your site laetly. It has a happy ending, sort of. It’s more beautiful and truthful than happy.
My Mom has a friend who went to Africa as a missionary got a fever and technically died. They built a coffin for her but she lived through the trip to the airport and back home. She spent the next forty years of her life believing she wasn’t doing what God wanted her to do which was to preach in Africa. My Mom passed along my observation that her work had been completed years ago and she had, in fact, died doing the work God had given her as a missionary.
Looking at it from that perspective changed her opioion about the whole thing and her and my Mom had a good cry about it. There’s a lot of Africa going around here lately too. The more African stuff you add the better things will be, you’ll see.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Yeah, I’m working on a piece about “sophisticated gangsterism”.
Africa unite!
September 7th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Tim–send me an e-mail so’z I know how this sendspace thing works.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Well basically you just zip a file, and then go to sendspace and just browse for it on your harddrive and then upload it. And then they give you a URL where other people can download it for a limited time. Just paste the URL they give you into here. Super simple. Still need me to send you a separate email?
September 7th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Nah. That should work. I’ll see how it goes!