Hey! Lookaway

'95 was a very good year. Yep My older sister graduated from high school along with the flyest people I knew at the time excepting L. Yep but I know she agrees with me. We loved the class of 95'. Great young black music was inspiring me and others. And there was this group from DC that I caught on BET and I loved them. They sang "Hey Lookaway" Who remembers QuestionMark Asylum?



On a related note, I came across clips of poetry the other day in the mess that is my bedroom in my FT Greene share. I didn't know the scope of my love for the words. I guess I must have forgot. L used to speak about forgetting herself. She asked me to remind her. I did my best. She was grateful. I'm a natural born cheerleader with a photographic memory of other people stories but mine go unscribed and I can't access the memories, sweet or bitter for the life of me, literally. For my own life. My freshman dorms coated with cut outs from magazines, colored in and out, glued, patterned and artfully arranged in my cluttered Spelman dorm. LLC 1 room 213. Shout out to all of Di Lambda Chi, past present future. But Georgia Douglass Johnson, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and a cavaclcade of others framed my very exisetence in that old familiar space, my own private not Idaho, a little unlocked asylum in smack dab in the middle of the SWATS.

Looking back, I see why I am so determined to write. Why the words should make a career since the have literally circumscribed me.

Some choice words from my fav poet:

The Crazy Woman

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."

Other Interesting Quotes:

"The mother of all frustrations is ambition" ~Paul Rodriguez

"Freedom is having nothing left to lose" ~Janis Joplin

"I never felt like I was really worth the oxygen that I breathe until I became a performer then I got a lot of validation from the audience."~Margaret Cho