for no other reason

I was having a day of What's The Point?

What's the point of howling against the monster of empire? Of challenging people around me about their ignorance? Of speaking, writing, raging, hoping?

I picked up a book at random, from a box of old books that my friend was taking to donate to the library. I opened it and read:

Each of us must speak our truth to power and work for a freer and more equitable world, if for no other reason than to sustain qualities in our own hearts and spirits that would be destroyed by inaction and apathy.

From Prayers for a Thousand Years, ed. Roberts and Amidon

That makes sense to me. To speak and act, not because I know it will change things, but because it keeps me human. It's something I know, something I've said myself, but I keep forgetting.

juggling acts - and retreat

In my ideal world, here's how I'd use my working time:

75% - making creative work
20% - direct political action
5% - business and admin.

In the real world, here's where my time goes:

70% - business and production
10% - outrage, agony, over the horrors unfolding in the world (hand-wringing does not equal political action)
15% - numbing out and distracting myself
2.5% - political action
2.5% - creative work

Which is why I'm going on retreat next week. To drop down into the place of no email, no phone, nowhere to run, limited ways to escape from the terrifying reality of just meeting myself, and my own mind, and the empty screen. And the real work.

Drum Rider

Among the many mind-blowing experiences I had in Zanzibar was seeing Bi Kidude perform. She blew me away. I was jotting notes as I watched her, in the garden at Zanzibar's Palace Museum. That evening, and the next morning, I walked through Stone Town, her power and energy beating through my body, fusing themselves into a poem. I read that poem, Drum Rider, at my next two performances. It caught peoples' imagination, even those who hadn't yet experienced Bi Kidude live.

This morning, I had a conversation with the London-based producer of As Old As My Tongue, a forthcoming documentary on Bi Kidude's life and work. He wants to incorporate the poem into the film. In the next two weeks, I'll do a studio recording to send to him. It's the first time a poem of mine has gone directly to audio and screen, completely circumventing the page. But totally appropriate to the tradition of Bi Kidude's work.

sunlight, sky, water

Yesterday was my birthday. I took the day off to go to one of my favourite places in the whole world: Bass Lake on the Palomarin Trail in Marin, Northern California.

To swim in Bass Lake is an experience of pure, complete, and undiluted joy. Each time I'm there, floating on my back in the warm upper layer of water, while my legs stir chilled liquid silk below, I think:

This is how I'd like to die. Moving effortlessly through sparkling sunlit water, eyes full of sky and redwoods, breathing air like champagne.

still on the page

Photo by Jay Jao



How far can I toss the sheets?

APAture Party, Asian Art Museum, last week

Photos by Jay Jao