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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

And so the gigs begin...


You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.
Rita Dove

Busy week. Busy good. Not busy like work, busy like art....So much happening, hardly have the time to write about it...poetry, connecting, moving, meeting.

On Friday, I performed some poetry in Mica Valdez' Native Storytelling class at San Francisco State University to a large class full of deer. I double-thumped them with first "Names," and then "Somebody Forgot to Tell Somebody Something"- two poem-stories that tell some disturbing tales about conquest,colonialism, slavery,  racism, and Indigenous survival. I did not see any of the deer fall over but suspect that as soon as I turned my back one or two might have toppled...

Later that night I performed at the Mallinalli showcase, along with some other righteous poets and MCs. Nazbah Tom, Madeleine Clifford/MADlines, Acacia Woods-Chan, Bernadette Zambrano, and Mica Valdez were in the house.

Friday was the last day of my wonderful Mallinalli Media Artists Residency in Oakland. I had to say goodbye to the spacious mansion and its lovely hostess, Mica Valdez...and hit the road.

I spent a couple days with the talented fiction writer Michelle Remy and attended the Idle No More protest at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco on Sunday. More on that later...must go write. That Impossible  album is not going to write itself. My goal for this tour is to write at least 4 hours every day. Sometimes I write with fellow artists, sometimes I write alone. I have books to finish and I intend to finish them...