Step Right Up

If you were to guess that the flurry of activity around here lately had to do with me getting the itch again now that the draft has finally left my grubby hands and flown overseas to people like designers and copy editors, you would be correct.

You don’t need me to tell you that writing is like running, or weight lifting or whatever other questionable endurance sport you might partake in. Use it or lose it, and I took my damn sweet time recovering from the process of writing the book (Level 56 on Grand Theft Auto Online, email me for my Gamertag. Get at me, dog). But then ideas for things to write about start to percolate and the longer they stay in there the longer they fester until the process of expelling them from my brain is lacklustre and disappointing. Not unlike passing a bowel movement.

As for how I’m feeling now that it’s out of my hands, the wonderful Julieanne Smolinski summed up that feeling with more precision than I ever could.

My favorite part of finishing a huge writing project is realizing it is the worst thing ever created by man and throwing it down a well.

— Julieanne Smolinski (@BoobsRadley) November 7, 2013

Yup.

None of this is to say I’ve been completely slovenly the last couple of months. I continue musing about whatever nerdery comes to mind over at 22 Pages for the University of Toronto (latest are here and here) and I also branched out a tad by tossing some pieces to the folks over at The Same Page on, oddly enough, the 40th Birthday of Hip-Hop and the release of Grand Theft Auto V (do you think I’m developing a niche here?)

As well, my friends and colleagues at 22 Pages Khaiam Dar and Alex Correa have collected the first volume of the webcomic they started in 2011, Smells Like Maturity. If you’re in the Toronto area, swing by Red Nails II at Jane and Bloor for their release party on November 15. I wrote the introduction, so if you’re a Ferguson completist, you’ll want to pick that up. Writing it turned out to be a bigger deal than I was expecting it to be, but I’m really happy with the piece, and for the opportunity to toast those two jerks on the occasion of making their longtime dream come true. Of course they’d release their book six months before mine comes out.

So that’s what I’m staying up to, friends. It’s a moment of respite from book madness as it moves to the production phase, but I’m sure you’ll be inundated with Dilla-related content as the book nears release. For the moment, I’m just enjoying the relative peace and trying to figure out how to stumble my way into being a quote-unquote “writer” instead of someone who wrote a book once.

Kind of weird to think now about how that struggle is what this blog was meant to document in the first place. .

“So, how’s the book going?”

It’s a reasonable question. It’s about the halfway mark of this adventure I’ve been on. I’ve read a pile of books, a stack of articles, reached out to and spoken with amazing, brilliant people, I’ve listened to Donuts and the records used to create it at least 75 times front to back [and that’s likely a conservative estimate].  So I can certainly understand why people ask.

Doesn’t mean I have any fucking clue how to formulate an answer.

But I try. People are being polite, taking an interest, and I’d like them to pay for the thing when it comes out, even if they have no intention to read it and buy it out of courtesy. I’ll take it. The popular answer, as in the one I go back to again and again is the ‘oil tanker’ response.

See, oil tankers actually consist of eight to twelve smaller tanks within the ship. Keeps the cargo from slooshing around too much, which could compromise the ship’s balance; less movement = more stability. My brain currently feels like an oil tanker with a single tank: production techniques, Soren Kierkegaard, the Kubler-Ross scale, Albert Camus, different approaches and opinions on late style, Roland Barthes, the epidemiology of lupus; all these things are just rolling around clumsily from one end of my brain to the other. I’ve given numerous lengthy and sensible ideas to the showerhead as I prepare to face each day, but this hasn’t translated into as many words on paper as I would like.

Put it another way: late last year the webcomic Toothpaste for Dinner put up a single panel gag called ‘The Creative Process.’

That seems accurate. We’re well into the ‘Fuck off’ segment of the program, far enough from deadline that panic isn’t on my back yet, but it’s waving at me from just over the horizon, a box of tissues in its twitchy hands.

And that’s fine, because I know it’ll get done. The structure of the thing, what I wanted it to accomplish, has been loosely in place since I began, a requirement of the proposal. Scenes, fragments, caveats and addenda are floating to the surface with more regularity than they once were; you can’t have all that material swishing around in your brain without something coagulating into something usable eventually. It will get done. It might have more academic meandering than the heads will want, and not enough for the theory kids, and maybe it gets savaged on Goodreads and the Stones Throw Message Board, but it’ll get done. If you’ve been with me a while, friends, you know that’ll probably end up the most surprising victory of all.

So keep asking the question. It’s good, it keeps me focused. Just don’t expect me to have an easy answer for you.

Remembering Heavy D

It’s interesting how news of a death hits us in the digital age.  Before the 24-hour news cycle and social media, news of someone’s passing used to smack like being hit with a 2×4.  Now there’s this creeping dread as the rumours hit Twitter, speculative stories hit the web and you wait with a sink in your stomach for the inevitable confirmation.

That’s what I was feeling as I rode the streetcar last night and learned about the passing of Dwight Myers, better known as Heavy D. He was 44 years old, ten years older than I am now. We will ignore that for now.

Last spring I did an episode of RadioPFG lamenting the disappearance of fat rappers from the hip-hop landscape. Writing the script to that episode I learned a couple of things about my relationship to hip-hop, how it got its hooks into me at such a young age.  Part of it was my innate fascination with rhythm and drums, but I really think another part of it had to do with rappers like The Fat Boys, Chubb Rock and Heavy D.  As a weird overweight kid in Southwestern Ontario, hip-hop was the only musical form that not only showcased artists that looked like me, but celebrated it. The philosophy of hip-hop is confidence, bragging and boasting, even if you had some extra pounds packed.  Heavy D was the best of them.  He didn’t ignore that he was a big dude, he wore it as a badge of honour. He called himself the Overweight Lover and made songs celebrating his love of beautiful women.  Riding the crest of the New Jack Swing Era of the early 90s, Heav busted out dance moves better than some dudes half his size.

That was just his own career.  He played a role in the careers of so many artists: cousin of Pete Rock, as an employee at Uptown Records he hired a young intern named Sean Combs who brought Mary J. Blige to the label.  He gave the Notorious B.I.G. his first extended verse on the posse cut ‘A Buncha N*ggas’ in 1993.  He wrote the theme to In Living Colour. You know you remember him keeping the crowds at bay on the Bed-Stuy stoop in Biggie’s ‘One More Chance’ video.  He did tracks with Janet and Michael Jackson. He returned to performing at the BET Hip-Hop Awards last month. And we all thought we’d have him for much longer than we did, because who drops dead at 44?

This was his last tweet, sent hours before he died.

http://twitter.com/#!/heavyd/status/133793313668071424

Which is fitting, because I always was by him.

Origin Story

Scintillating Tales! Only 10 Cents!

It’s the money shot of any superhero narrative: the story of how the hero came to be. How he earned his powers and what motivates his mission of justice.  I thought with such an increase in interest for the Song A Day adventure, I would try to answer the question I’ve been getting asked more frequently.

What the hell does ‘Poetry for Gravediggers’ mean, anyway?

You Love Us

Has a song ever changed your life?
Did you ever wonder how?

A story of music and comics, told in two parts with multiple divergences.

Tools of the Trade

Always a pile. Always.

If you’re like me, friends, the only thing you like more than writing is reading about writing.  In fact, sometimes that’s actually preferable: you can feel connected to your art without actually facing the horror of trying to create some.  Since I started working in book retail, I’ve read and purchased dozens of books on writing craft, and my product knowledge on the genre is actually one of my lesser known gifts ar work. As the folks over at Flashlight Reviews  have recently corralled what they consider the best books on writing, I thought I would share five of my own. Since I only recognize two on that list and have read none.

Thing is, there’s two approaches to a book on writing craft: a nuts and bolts how-to, filled with practical points and techniques to remember; and a more touchy feely, granola, dirty hippy, ‘get in touch with your artist’s spirit’ type of book. They both have their place, and I’ll be recommending titles from both styles, but in the interest of full disclosure you should know I have a strong preference for the former variety.  Shall we?

Sucker MCs Should Call Me Sire

Down With the Kings

“You’re home, aren’t you?” she asked me.

I didn’t even speak, I just nodded as Dalia mixed into LL’s ‘Around the Way Girl’.  Within the next hour we were standing at the front of the stage, watching talented people pay respectful homage to the music they loved.  Some tiny guy delivered Biggie’s ‘Kick in the Door’ with an authority that would have made Big Poppa proud.  A bridal party destroyed Kanye’s ‘Golddigger’ like they owned it.  There was Tribe and Nas and Jay-Z.  It was summer 2008 and I was in heaven.

That was my first night at Hip Hop Karaoke.

Keepin’ the Faith

On and on and three steps ahead

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a person’s first art.  Not the first art they create, but that first art they embrace, independent of their parents’ influence.  I’ve mentioned here at least half a dozen times that hip-hop and rap captured my imagination at an early age, but what I’ve been thinking about lately is the type of hip-hop and rap that made me a lifetime enthusiast. If Run-DMC and the Fat Boys brought me in [I fully believe the Fat Boys were just as important as Run-DMC in exposing the suburbs to hip-hop], the Native Tongues were the acts who won my heart.

The Native Tongues were a collective of likeminded rap artists in the late 80s who ushered in what would now probably called ‘conscious rap’.  Anchored by the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, the Native Tongues provided an alternative to the political bombast of Public Enemy and the frustrated rage of NWA.  Put it another way: if PE was Metallica and NWA the Sex Pistols, the Native Tongues were prog-rock.

De La Soul was Pink Floyd. And ‘De La Soul is Dead’ was ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.