Beware the “Ides of April” – A Poem of Dedication
Back in 2002, the mother of a friend of mine was murdered during a robbery that took place at the store her family owned. At that time, this was one of the first experiences I had involving death and though I’ve only met the woman once or twice, seeing her daughter (my friend) deal with the tragedy was an oddly influential moment for me. To this day I always remember April 15th as the day my friend lost a mother but began taking steps in becoming her own woman.
In 2003, when I first started recording I released a song called “Four Seasons Later”. It was an ode of respect, paid in dedication to my friend and her family. 3 years later (2006) I was compelled to redraft the whole thing, and the end product was something entirely different – a spoken word poem called “Ides of April” (a somewhat obscure reference to Ceaser). I discussed the piece with my friend Jacqueline, a fantastic musician and singer from California, and the next thing I knew, she provided a piano instrumental that moved me to record the poem. Last but not least we salvaged some of the lyrics from “Four Seasons Later” and produced the reprise of the song, which Jackie sang hauntingly and beautifully. The track eventually found it’s way unto my mixtape released in 2008, In Transition.
Last night I quickly put together a video, paraphrasing and highlighting the words of the poem/song. I’m not entirely sure why 9 years later this event continues to move me, but I found it appropriate to re-share the song via the new video. From a technical standpoint, there are a lot of imperfections on both the audio and video fronts, but it isn’t now, nor has it ever been about creating a perfect piece of work. At the end of the day the event(s) that inspired this were ugly and horrific but it has ultimately produced beauty via the lives of the surviving family. I share a similar sentiment about this piece; it may not be the prettiest, most polished work you ever hear, but I believe it to be honest and moving in it’s own right.
And so I hope this may inspire you too.
RIP – 4/15/2002
I’m A Douche, and Here’s Why
I’m not saying I’m a douche because I think I’m the biggest tool ever. Just that I have acted as one before. And neither am I trying to fish for compliments or affirmation of the contrary. The reality is we all feel, and cause others to do so as well. Sometimes these are positive, joyous, intense emotions of elation and other times it’s a mixture of gut-wrenching, pain inducing, acidic bitterness. Polar hyperboles aside, its our complex emotions and interactions that make society what it is.
On that note, today has been an interesting day of reflection. For those of you unfamiliar with twitter they have something called trending topics, basically a listing of the most commonly tweeted words/subjects by all users. Today one such topic was “#thatswhyyourmyex”. Now, this isn’t really the proper forum to explain the syntactic formatting and purpose of a hash tag, I’ll leave that up to the pros. But let’s keep it simple and say that phrase was a vehicle for everyone to share the negative causations behind their romantic break ups.
Interestingly enough, the subject caught the fancy of one of my ex’s. And well, let’s just say she went to town on the chumps that have hurt her over the years.
Yours truly included.
An Evening of Ponderance in Providence
Providence
Allow me to preface this stream of a consciousness rambling I call a blog post by saying that this is a candid, impromptu exploration of my faith. For those of you who are uninterested in the subject matter, I can’t blame you if you skip on to another post of this blog (there are many that do not explicitly deal with the topic). To be quite frank, this post is more for me than anyone else. I personally hate it when my friends get all self-righteous and preachy, throwing bible verses all over social media but never living it out in real social situations. So I try to do the opposite. To do more than I say; but I’ve realized sometimes it’s just a guise to allow myself to have less to be publicly accounted for.
More Talent from the DMV: Introducing K-Prime
I keep saying it over and over again, but it’s been a blessing to have the opportunity to meet and befriend so many talented individuals. I honestly do believe the DMV to be an underrated area, with so much talent but not quite as much wide-spread recognition that many of the other areas in the US have to show for. Case in point, K-Prime. This guy is one half of the duo known as Black Sand and is a more than capable MC himself. He doesn’t quite fit the mold for a feature on a-Tunes but I still wanted to make sure I do my part to share his work with you all. Peep the following two tracks, the first being a remix of a Lupe track K-Prime did in honor of his own birthday, and the second is a new single featuring Karima Scott on the vocals called “Watch Your Step”. The latter song in particular is a doozy, so don’t sleep!
For more on K-Prime, visit his site or hit the kid up on Twitter. Tell ’em GT sent ya! haha
I’m Laughing With You, Not At You
No joke, I love laughing. (See what I did there… ahhhh 😉 ) But in all seriousness, I’m a silly guy. (Did it again!)
OK, I’ll stop that. Anyway, I truly do enjoy a good laugh with my friends. I’m the type of guy who is always making wise cracks and encouraging outrageous behavior for the sake of some good old clean fun. Case in point, see the following videos. These were all taken roughly 12-18 months ago, and were up on Facebook but I figured enough time has passed where those involved wouldn’t be too mad if I shared them with the rest of the world. What can I say, I’m easy to please.
My buddy DK agrees to smell two of our other friend’s feet for a free meal at Waffle House. Was it worth it? Filmed August 2009.
My friends and I pay our ode to HIMYM’s Slapsgiving by celebrating Slapsmorial Day Weekend. First, a little fishing and relaxing, then some pure, unadulterated, slappage. Features music by Seriously. http://seriouslytheband.com/ Filmed May 2010.
Our friend J decides to take a punch from VA. She’s a girl, what’s the worst she could do right? No edits this time. Just raw footage. Filmed February 2010.
Hope I was able to bring just a little entertainment into your life =). No one was hurt in the filming of… eh, who am I kidding, we were all kind of hurt in some form or another.
Gifted Thought 