Dear White People...

One in the Chamber...

Strange Light is so Right...

Ooops he did it again. The king of poetic sex appeal, cathartic reveal and squeal is back at it again with yet another ingenious foray into the land of don't fence me in...and being the uber fan that I am, I had to speak on what I know of this project and share its undeniable coolness with you.




Strange Light is narrative in the form of not only poetic verse, but dance and music taking its title from an "epic" piece Brown was commissioned to write by the Noord Nederlandse Dans collective, a contemporary dance company in the Netherlands. 
The 14-member troupe took Brown's "theatrical texts," set them to music and dance, and then performed the resulting piece in Europe and Canada. Brown was thrilled by the result. On his website, brownpoetry.com, he calls the piece "a cosmic love story and an autobiographical gut-search" that's "clarified in the light of a new-found personal vulnerability."

When a person dies, he believes, it is because poetry has left the body. It follows, then, that the very essence of life "is poetry vibrating within the body." "Strange Light" tells the story of one such poetry-powered person — "a man with strange light and tiny blisses."

I mean damn, tell me this shit isn't magical?

Brown vows that this will be his last poetic work, opting to move closer to family and focus on a new medium, playwriting. As promising as this sounds, after I've read his final work cover to cover and  mused about it for several weeks following; after I've removed it from my bedside table and put it on the shelf to accompany his other works, I will , and this is the God-honest-truth, shed at least one tear knowing there may be no other volumes to share company beside: Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife, I love You is Back, and  Scandalabra. 

Brown remarked recently,"I really feel a change happening in America in regards to people feeling empowered to put on their unique and fun art shows, including poetry, especially poetry." 

I hope you know that has a lot to do with champions of expression who do so with as much undeniable originality, vibrato and aplomb as you do sir. 

Brown's advice to aspiring poets, shared on his website, was simply this: "pour passion into your craft, work hard, and let the words take you to impossible heights — and beyond. If you write poetry, imagine it beyond the page, beyond the stage, and then bust your butt to make it happen... You can do it."

Yes we can! 

This message has been brought to you by the people for Derrick C. Brown for President in 2012.

pick up his latest work and shed a tear with me at: http://writebloody.com/shop/products

You Should Know...

Kimbra

If Bjork and Esthero had a daughter it would be this chick.

She's got just enough electro soul to champion the sound we all fell in love with when Esthero dropped her sick debut album Breath From Another. And she truly carries on the 'wicked little girl' legacy by being defiantly imperfect in her perfect little nitch. But when it comes to her aesthetic and the sheer refusal to fall into one genre, you know there would be no place for Kimbra without the trail blazing of one patit Icelandic wildcat who taught us all that growling is in fact vocal acumen, when done right.

But all that just peaks your interest. What will enthrall you is the poetry in her words and her ability to be very much her very own artist as she references all the great artists who'v influenced her in some form or fashion. Its like a tribute to that genre bending, sometimes b-girl, sometimes experimental, sometimes totally memorable and soulful female vocalist. And I have to say, she makes me so glad that this strange-wonderful-fearless-fierce lioness-but always female tradition will continue.

More about the artist:

Kimbra Lee Johnson known mononymously as Kimbra, is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and guitarist. On 29 August 2011 she released her debut album Vows, which peaked in the top 5 in both New Zealand and Australia, and number 14 on the Billboard 200 in the United States. Kimbra is featured on the 2011 single, "Somebody That I Used to Know", by Gotye, which has reached number 1 in over 20 countries including New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and United States.

In June 2010 Kimbra's first single on Forum 5, "Settle Down", was released. She had started writing the track four years earlier – it was finished with François Tétaz. The music video was directed by Guy Franklin. On December 10, 2010, the Australian 'indietronica' group Miami Horror released their single, "I Look to You" featuring Kimbra's vocals. Kimbra also starred in its music video.

Early in 2011, Kimbra's song "Cameo Lover" was short-listed as a finalist for the 2011 Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition. In March she issued "Cameo Lover" as her next single, its music video was released in April and was directed by Franklin. On July 15, 2011, "Cameo Lover" won the songwriting competition, ahead of third placed song, "Somebody That I Used to Know", written by Belgian-Australian musician, Gotye. Kimbra went on to sign to Warner Bros. Records New Zealand for distribution in New Zealand and Australia, as well as a worldwide deal for other territories with Warner Bros. Records in the US. Kimbra was featured in Gotye's single, "Somebody That I Used to Know", which was mixed by Tétaz. Tétaz had recommended Kimbra to Gotye after a 'high profile' Australian female vocalist had withdrawn from the collaboration. The single is a commercial success charting nationally and internationally: it has reached No. 1 on the Singles Charts in over 20 countries including Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, and the US. The single went 9 times certified Platinum in Australia. The success of the collaboration resulted in Kimbra's singles "Settle Down", "Cameo Lover" and "Good Intent" (which was issued in August) also charting within the ARIA Top 100 Singles Chart.

On August 29, 2011 Kimbra's debut album, Vows, was released in New Zealand and September 2, 2011 in Australia. In its first week of release it charted at No. 3 in New Zealand, No. 5 in Australia and No. 14 in the US. In its second week, it rose to a peak of No. 4 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Australian producer 'M-Phazes' produced Kimbra's track "Call Me" and assisted on other tracks onVows. Kimbra won the "One to Watch" award at the 2012 Rolling Stone Awards and has collaborated with Mark Foster (of Foster the People) and DJ A-Trak on the track "Warrior", which was released. On April 14, 2012 she performed "Somebody That I Used to Know" with Gotye on Saturday Night Live by April 18th  the track peaked at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

For more about the artist visit: http://fuckyeahkimbra.tumblr.com/

and ya don't stop...

the secret...

shout out to East L.A.

East Los Angeles from Steve Saldivar on Vimeo.

an American Dream...

4 stars ****

At one point in “A Better Life,” an emotionally resonant film about how we live now, the director Chris Weitz opens a scene with a pair of adorable, gap-toothed little girls belting into karaoke microphones, giving their charming all to a song with un-self-conscious gusto. He then cuts to three bald men, crammed tattooed arm to tattooed arm on a couch, who are beaming at the girls with barefaced and shared delight, lighted up by the grace of children behaving like children. It’s touching and startling to see these men show such tenderness at this innocent spectacle, especially because all three are gangbangers.

What gives the scene punch isn’t that Mr. Weitz has the ostensible courage to show that gangsters delight in their children like everyone else; their humanity is a given, as is their visceral threat. Rather it’s the ordinariness of the interlude, its everyday quality that makes it so good and points to what, at times, distinguishes “A Better Life” from the overly blunt social-issue tract it could have easily become.

For the teenaged Luis (José Julián), an outsider hovering at the edge of the room and watching the children sing while he shyly cozies up to his girlfriend, Ruthie (a vivid Chelsea Rendon), this isn’t a gangster’s paradise. It’s a place of conviviality and safety, of loving fathers and doting mothers; in other words, a home.

Set largely in East Los Angeles, an area that doesn’t often pop up in movies except as a scary, nominally exotic backdrop (or unless Cheech and Chong are going up in smoke), “A Better Life” involves a struggle to hold onto a home of one’s own. For Luis and his own father, a gardener, Carlos (Demian Bichir), that means the United States, though home is also — as laid out rather too neatly in the sentimental script by Eric Eason from a story by Roger L. Simon — the relationship between father and son.

For Luis, who’s all-American from his birth certificate to his accent, Carlos isn’t just his father, he’s also a periodically embarrassing ambassador from a foreign land, a Mexican immigrant as seemingly unassimilated as he is undocumented.

“A Better Life” is a blunt turnaround for Mr. Weitz, whose previous gigs were at the helm of “The Golden Compass” and the last installment in the “Twilight” juggernaut. “Compass” had its moments, but “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” was dutifully impersonal hack work, and it’s hard to remember what happened in it or to care why it did.

The same can’t be said of his best films (both directed with his brother, Paul Weitz), the exuberantly vulgar comedy “American Pie” and “About a Boy,” a near-seamless adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel. It’s unusual for a director to scale down again as dramatically as Mr. Weitz has with “A Better Life” (that polymath Steven Soderbergh makes it a habit), but it’s done him good.

There are hitches, including a narrative structure that mechanically keeps Carlos and Luis more or less apart, laying out their worlds — Carlos awake, Luis asleep, Carlos at work, Luis at school — until the strands are braided together, and the two have become one. A single father, Carlos worries about his son but is so wrung out by dawn-to-dusk labors, rising with bird songs and jackhammers, he barely seems to know him. When offered a chance to buy a truck, he sees it as a path to the promised life of the title. Mr. Bichir, a Mexican actor with a long list of credits in his country, and Mr. Julián (who was 16 during the shoot), are both very sympathetic, and they hold your attention despite some awkwardly directed patches.

Mr. Weitz at times struggles, including with his actors, and the film’s scale doesn’t always fit its story; all the crane shots and a score performed by the London Symphony Orchestrasuggest he hasn’t scaled down enough. Yet he also gets plenty right, including a school that could be a prison and a shabby bungalow with old paint and a verdant garden.

His Los Angeles looks like the real deal instead of a tourist’s postcard, and in one memorable scene Carlos rides in a truck and watches as its richly diverse, multi-everything population races by. Later he takes Luis to a nearby rodeo, where they listen to the oompah oompah of norteño music in a place that looks like another country but is just around the corner.

As is sometimes the case with movies that take on civil and political rights without force-feeding the audience, “A Better Life” plays the human interest angle hard. It tries to put a lump in your throat and a tear on your cheek (it succeeds), pumping your emotions doubtless in an attempt to look nonpartisan. “We don’t really have a political agenda,” Mr. Weitz told NPR.

O.K., sure, there’s nothing political about the hardships endured by a Mexican immigrant eking out a subsistence living as a gardener in Los Angeles, mowing lawns for jittery white ladies and motoring around without a green card or half a prayer. It’s just a story about a father, a son and the bicycle — oops, truck — that helps bring them together. If you say so!

A BETTER LIFE

Directed by Chris Weitz; written by Eric Eason, based on a story by Roger L. Simon; director of photography, Javier Aguirresarobe; edited by Peter Lambert; music by Alexandre Desplat; production design by Melissa Stewart; costumes by Elaine Montalvo; produced by Paul Junger Witt, Christian McLaughlin, Mr. Weitz, Jami Gertz and Stacey Lubliner; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes.

WITH: Demian Bichir (Carlos Galindo), José Julián (Luis Galindo), Dolores Heredia (Anita), Joaquín Cosío (Blasco Martinez), Chelsea Rendon (Ruthie Valdez), Nancy Lenehan (Mrs. Donnelly) and Tim Griffin (Juvie Officer).

By MANOHLA DARGIS

The New York Times