Found Object

Evening Rendevouz, Norman Lewis (1962).

Found Object

Swing, Sam Williams (1969). He means that kind of swing.

Found Object

Death of Cleopatra, Edmonia Lewis. This is the mothership connection.

Found Object

Just rolled out underneath the skyway in Desert Palms. Was that a smoothjazz cover of "Natural High" I heard as I made my exit? Soul poetry is errywhere.

• "Natural High," Al Campbell.

P E A C E

Found Object

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (2008). He's perpetrating deep. Dig?

Found Object

Unidentified Artist, Head of a King, (1525-1575).

Found Object

Edmonia Lewis, Bust of Longfellow (1871).

مصرمصر

We were digging for threads through the house -- the devilin archeology, 'spose. In one of the back corridors, under stacks of newspapers, we found a clip of bullets that taught us another thing about the unnaground: You dig deep enough into the ground you reach outerspace; you dig deep enough into the past you find Great Black Music, ancient to future.

We been wanting to tug on this thread for a long time, but we 'a begin in the middle.

We first came across Greg Broussard late* in the game, during M.I.A.'s pre-pregnancy tourstop in Dogtown. It's hard to remember back that far, but the recollection is that the show ate him up: too much space; not enough time. But there was something big, even if it was buried under all of M.I.A.'s momentarily big personality/sound system. And it was good to see him fresh, not packed into some oldies tour like Artis Leon Ivey, Jr.

Chaboy threw down his back in the day tracks. The kids got their feet off the wall a few times. They wanted to hear it, even though they never had the opportunity to remember it:

Pyramids are Oh so shiny
The women here are Oh so cute
The freaks are on the floor now
Dancing to beats that I compute

We listened hard and heard all this back-to-afro-futurism stuff all at once. It was like Charles Ives, you know: at the crossroads where all the parades come together. You could hear the Sun Ra. You could hear the Earth Wind and Fire. You could hear the Burning Spear, calling the children of the ghosts back to homelands free of oppression.

We are not sure, now that we listen backwards on this clip where that homeland is, but I think it is somewhere on the dancefloor, somewhere near the serpentine fire.

• "Egypt, Egypt," Egyptian Lover
• "Egypt Strut," Sun Ra and Salah Ragab
• "Little Egypt," The Coasters. Listen for the chipmunks coming in at the end. Fo sho, ma bro.
  
• "Nights Over Egypt," The Jones Girls.
  
• "'Mid the Pyramids," Clarence Jones.
• "Serpentine Fire," Earth Wind and Fire

I been reading recently some of Stanley Crouch's hateration (more on that later his genius self gotta give it up and find some love for all of us and not just the 10th that he's in; it's an ungenerous way of life). He needs listen hard to this and find a new path to the crossroads, one that brings all of the 10ths to the future through the past.

P E A C E

* N.B.: We got to admit that when we're devilin' we are always late, we're always falling behind. That's the way.