Two times for your mind: Jose Vadi is the first guest wit to write twice. He's originally from the 909 but has spent time in Washington, DC, and makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. This makes him, undoubtedly, an All-American Thick Wit. Like Forrest Gump in The White House. Don't drink the Dr. Pepper, Jose. Here's his second posting. And a new flick of him. Holler Black youngins.
******************************************************************
it was a night for walking and thankfully i was in oakland.

an evening for aimlessness, i found a new pizza spot, walked through some construction sites (why not?), checked out all the graf pieces on Valdez by the basketball courts, even saw my friend's name on one of the backboards...and then i passed by this bus stop on grand and harrison --



however pissed, i knew i had to just get my eracism kit together. it erases racism. literally. not like the slogan on the t-shirt, nor the record label, but like some actual wax-on-wax-off-racism-shite. peep --



there's some sponges and a dry towel in there for cleaning purposes as well. you don't want the city to think you're dirtier than the filth you're trying to erase.

here's the skinny: spray, scrub, clean. three steps, no more n-bombs dropped at your local bus stop. i'm not the biggest advocate of non-gang-related-graffiti removal or incarcerating taggers (or calling them 'taggers'), just as i don't advocate skate stoppers, or any form of city-sponsored public defamation that makes the city only uglier, however more 'safe' in the process. but i am an advocate of taking things upon yourself and doing something, or at least trying, and however general or vague that may sound, it becomes quite specific when encountering something like the subject of this blog: a bus stop.

7.98 counter-clockwise swipes later...



...i quickly and reluctantly realized that my custodial activism did very little to change the world. at least not immediately. i would have had to put out a press release that someone wrote something i didn't like on a random bench in oakland and that i had the gusto to make a change (which is bullshit), which would all probably garner more attention for the unknown author who might play off the whole incident as "just joking around" with a sharpie en tow. maybe i ran back with a bag full of cleaning products for the hypothetical parent who would have to explain to his inquisitive child what the N-word really meant. all in all, yes, it was a selfish act -- i was wiping out an opinion that I deemed racist and appalling (which it is) and just did not want to see that in the neighborhood where i live.

to be honest, even by attempting to make a change, i was still slighting some part of my social conscious. i used a few sprays of Formula 409 and Ashby-Bart-Windex to erase the sharpie scribbles. a quick google search revealed how Clorox, who owns Formula 409, was named as one of the "dangerous dozen" chemical companies, according to the Public Interest Research Group in 2004. so there's my small contribution to the global warming problem, in the name of eracism.

eventually i had to ask myself, If the words were the same but somehow bent toward the absurd and sarcastic, would i have laughed it off as comedy and walked past? If the dialogue was surrounded by a speech bubble and the 'artist' indicated that the white commentators were saying such racist lines, that it was their speech bubble, would i have deemed that opinion okay?

the odd thing is that this scribbling on this bus stop was contextualized to contemporary events, but mixed with old racist ideologies; theologies that have taken generations and bloodshed and entire wars to even attempt to reconcile on paper as law, let alone see the effects resonate in our daily thoughts as Americans. even white supremacists are contextualizing their movement in response to the 2008 election, many believing that Obama's possible victory will be the catalyst for a white uprising.

political or politicized public art has always had an effect on the populace -- look at the controversy Banksy started when he hit up the West Bank. If you know anyone from Cuba or who has visited, they will tell you about the murals decrying capitalism, one of the few places where you will see DEATH TO IMPERIALISM emblazoned and unscathed on a public wall. granted, these types of images are state-sponsored, but nonetheless public visuals that are imbued within the minds of the daily populace. and on a local government level, go to any small suburb from my hometown in southern California, the Inland Empire, and you will see banners in most towns with the names of every kid from that town who is fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. how can't the images we see everyday outside our doorstep affect our perceptions and opinions?

as i was walking home, a man with a green jacket that i believe used to be once white and new asked me for change and i apologized and walked by. at the end of the day the only thing you're left with for sure is not the effects of your actions, but whether or not you acted in the first place. i walked home realizing i would much rather garner my merit badge for liberalism by applying 409 to AC Transit property than giving a buck to dude by the lake. and really, what did i do instead? what replaced that five second exchange of dollar-bill-to-hand? i took a picture of the lake. and walked away. with a new found sense of confusion/guilt chased with whatever accomplishment i could hear swishing from my man purse with every increasing step i made steadily, towards home.

Today's Thickwit is an entrepreneur, political organizer and style genius. He writes today about his burgeoning enterprise and social movement, C+. He likes more old school jams than he cares to admit and hob nobs with first graders and future first ladies alike. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you thank you, you're far too kind. A legend in his own time-- Christopher Mueller.

*****************************************************************



I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how its going to begin.

The Matrix ::

What is this "matrix" we so often speak of? Ah yes, the system. That perpetual treadmill that is so difficult to step off of. No need to waste time defining it, since we seem to have this intuitive sense of what that system is, though a comprehensive definition is seemingly elusive, since the network that binds the matrix together is so shrouded in darkness. How, then, does the matrix maintain?

Culture ::

Our capitalist system survives by (among many things) the existence of a capitalist, consumer culture. This consumer culture acts as a design to living and is patterned for interpreting the world around you. In other words, it is constructed specifically to serve as a lens through which you come to interpret and understand your reality.

Brands ::

Brands develop pseudo spiritual meaning systems by appropriating human qualities, emotions, characteristics, and ideals, attaching compelling visual and sound elements, and associating their symbols with them. Ultimately, in a consumer society, this mediates our ability to construct authentic identities and communities. We are a nation of Saturn Families, Safeway Club Members, Nike Athletes, Toys R Us Kids and Starbucks Communities. We consume to belong, and as an outer-directed people, we come to reflect and project the images that exist most immediately in our visual landscape.

Imagemakers ::

Our ability to construct an attractive appearance is done with First World advancement, yet our inner world is impoverished like the Fourth, Fifth and Six. We are an outer-directed people, trapped so close to the surface that we have become exiled there. We cultivate a pedagogy of exteriority, but where does that leave us? Commodity rich and spiritually poor.

We Live to Work. We Work to Consume. We Consume until nothing is left. And it all goes back in the box. We are masters of the Monopoly Board, bored out of our minds, mind's eye wide Lasik surgeried shut.

So what is the answer?

(among many)

See Plus.

See More.

See Beyond Context.

Enhance our vision.

What we visualize is what we become.

"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." - Jon Berger, Ways of Seeing

The thought process gives rise to actions. If it is behavior we hope to change, we've got to revisualize and reframe the images and ideas that govern that thought process.

Vision as an ancient metaphor for human spiritual insight, has a history so robust, that it doesn't need much explanation. I was blind but now I see. Seeing the light. Where there is no vision the people perish. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. These are just a few examples of how vision comes to signify transformation and enlightenment.

Even your favorite rappers spit it to you. Jay-Z says, "I wish you insight so you can see for yourself." Nas says, "As I grow yearly, I can see things more clearly, thats why they fear me." The metaphor is everywhere. Think about it. Look for it.

C+ = See Plus. C+ is hidden in the form of a letter and a symbol because we have a tendency to look no further than the surface, proving a mediocre sense of symbol literacy. What did you think C+ meant? Maybe a letter grade? Maybe that computer language?

In retaining the philosophical depth beneath the letter and symbol, C+, we hope to begin a habitual process to question all images and seek the meaning beneath all surfaces. It is our belief that seeing beyond the boundaries of difference, to see the commonality of "us," and the humanity we all share, will begin a process of social and cultural transformation, in a very positive direction.

Are you serious?? ::

We know its an ambitious idea. We also know its a bit contradictory to house such a progressive idea into such a regressive entity, a brand. But you have to experience the game in order to have any idea about how to improve it. If it were up to us, we'd have written a few books, but not enough young people read. We'd have developed a school curriculum but not everyone has the privilege to attend quality schools. And besides, we're so much better at cultivating ignorance.

Everyday we are bombarded with visual messages. Those messages piece together to form our perceptions of the world around us, ultimately governing our behavior. Again, improving the quality of the image, improves the thought process, which improves the actions that arise from that thought process. We thought to slip our ideas into the conversation, since the language of consumption seems to be the most proliferated.



So we began a project, called C+, based on the universal sensory experience of vision. We seek clarity in our sight. We seek a more worldly, humanitarian perspective. We seek to break old paradigms, and uplift new ones. We seek to re-frame our visual dialog. We seek sight beyond context. We seek circumspection. We seek to beautify our visual landscape, and to diminish the overwhelming clutter. We seek to construct new, positive imagery. We choose light over darkness.

We serve you, in hopes that you will seek forward progress with us.



The product is a conduit for an idea, and the enterprise of selling the product sustains our dialog with you. What were once the building blocks of our creative identity and imagination, now in a new context, become a metaphor for visual enhancement. Have a look.



A New Beginning ::

Improvement begins when we question the assumptions that form the foundation of our worldview, to deconstruct the perceptions we have, to challenge the limitations of our vantage point, to see beyond the surface of an image, to seek alternative perspectives beyond our own, to look past the boundaries of ideological divisions...to seek clarity in our vision.

Re-visualize your notion of what is truth, and bear witness to it, in all its neckidness.




I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world...without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries...a world...where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

It all depends on how you see it.

C+



visit C+ Jewelry to participate in the effort to reframe our visual dialog, and for some fresh jewelry.

The night is dark before dawn. And day is coming.

Bear Witness.

C+

Dalia Rubiano Yedidia is a mixed(up) kid who likes matching, organizing--not of the Excel spreadsheet variety, and has an unhealthy yet loving relationship with fried foods of all kinds. She has made a habit of (un)inhabiting multiple places that she desperately uses as remedy for her perpetual feeling of lack. Having moved 8 times in the last 2 years, she currently finds herself in Chicago, writing for the first time in a while and loving sticky summer. She is painfully insightful and an uncanny judge of character. Dalia is the epitome of thick wit. Curvy and no holds barred, we're honored to have her featured.
*****************************************************************
Some artists control my inspiration thresh-hold, altering every book and movie and song and image I ingest thereafter, like the first time I witnessed the witching hour and watched the sun wash out the stars, or excruciatingly realizing that my mom, like the rest of us, surrenders to pain and mortality sincerely, quietly . After the 7th grade or so, these geniuses, with crippling thoughts that they manage to generously share and poignantly impose, have rarely been musicians. However, using up my one-time only 'free pass' to write about a dead rocker from the 60s, here's my ode to Jimi Hendrix and his supernatural power over me. Go ahead: add it to the list. Diverging from one of our favorite pastimes as writers, which is one of the most common motivators for us to actually get down to business and write for once, I am not trying to 'stroke the ego' combining my nimble fingers and fast internet connection. This is not Dalia trying to subtly scream the "oh-my-god-let-me-tell-you-all-the-reasons-why-I-love-him-more-than-you-
and-am-more-familiar-with-his-discography-than-you-ever-could-be-and-am-
far-superior-to-any-other-fan-because-I-know--that-he-hated-trimming-his-
toenails-and-was-allergic-to-night-shade-vegetables [eggplant, tomato, mandrake, and the like]" type of intellectual masturbation. Nope, my relationship with Jimi, though it does include a number of rotations around the sun since the first time I heard Voodoo Child, has nothing to do with a hardcore authentic pure fanatic blood-spilled-willingly history. I've only owned one album of his my entire life, and, inflaming my already infamous rosy cheeks, it's a compilation.

Yet, something within my tangled hair and archetypical teen desire to belong is wrenched raw with each measure of precariously balanced guitar and drums that clasp their lyrics steadily, soothing my longing and confusion unlike any piece of writing, carton of McDonalds' fries, or execution of my frequent impulse to flee to a new city. My first exposure when I was five years old was not a random and beautifully romantic personal choice that we sometimes stumble across in our childhoods, and now share with pride on first dates or Facebook. Nope, it was actually an involuntary listening to Electric Lady Land via my older brother's tape player. How's that for a big bro watching out for his hermanita?

Since this un-noteworthy (and clearly undeserving of a piece of writing) primary encounter and subsequent purchase of the Jimi Hendrix Experience during my record-buying middle school days, Jimi has entered and exited my life quietly, and yet noticeably, many times. Growing up in San Francisco, my next door neighbor's ex-husband invented the Light Show, the ingenious visual orgy that mixes colors and fluid formations with music and pulsating body movements; an 'art experience' whose soundtrack easily included a Hendrix song or two. Naturally, Hendrix was on frequent rotation next door, in addition to the few tepid hits (comparatively to his full library) like Foxy Lady and Purple Haze on the local old white rocker radio station. And yet, as I non-challantly dismiss his popular anthems, I can't help but allow the little hairs that dot my forearms begin to raise just thinking about the guitar intro to the latter and its impending epic explosion of poetry and riff and mayhem.


He also became a facet of my daily listening and tonal memory to the Freedom Summer of 2007, where a good-friend-turned-more-turned-tragedy put, in my humble (literally, as you now know) opinion, one of his most powerfully written and gorgeously vibrated ditties, Bold as Love, on a mixtape dubbed the soundtrack of that Summer. While this majestic musical magnum opus of a mere 4 minutes is now quite obviously and painfully connected to a loss deep and familiar like July Chicago heat or the wrinkles around my Abuelita's eyeballs, I refuse to believe that this is the only reason Jimi affects me so.

Listening to him is an urgency wound into words too tight and fragile to mention. It is a change in mood, breeze, a captivating hurt that won't let go of the wrists and ankles; it is not easy-listening. Even as I lay here, attempting to write about music -- which we all know is like 'dancing about architecture" -- I cannot play him unassumingly in the background, fading in and out of my Sunday night thoughts that include calculating how long I'll actually have to stay at work tomorrow, or what the "..." really meant in that ambiguous text message from someone whose face I can't quite pull together from my Friday night excursions (?). No, Jimi demands complete attention of my body, my ears, my sensory memory and my willingness to surrender control. Digesting his vibrations is like watching the sunset fracture the Pacific Ocean from Taraval and 48th Avenue with Nano and his dad, a frantic, wired professor who trails off chaotically about how sunsets are one of those rare collection of moments that only get prettier as time stretches forth. He claims that only the older generation, bruised by nostalgia and dripping with the desire to impart knowledge, can truly discern them. The clouds fade into a limitless foam and the sky folds deep into its own routine of detaching and allowing night to cloak us with possibility.

I've recently found myself wishing life into a more linear course, only becoming more beautiful with each inch of time she reluctantly reveals to us. But somehow, while Jimi is just like the sunset and my unsatisfied youth, which currently lies within my unanswered--and typically selfish and implausible--prayer for a manageable life path, he is also the epitome of that capricious pattern of longing, knowing, mourning, melding, falling, and shaping that all of us are too familiar with before we even wake up each day, before we remember we are breathing. He holds me down in a way that is incomplete, vast; each bar is filled with waiting and fragmented disbelief, making it both unsettling and wholly transformative. No one will ever have me quite like he does, but then again, despite my certainty of his now familiar grasp, each chord beckons the nameless, spirals of seconds determined to unfurl. Until that twisted and bitter root called love finds its way into this half-step shuffle to complete that paradox, I'll have to keep giving myself to a rainbow like you.

Brave New Voices hits D.C. this Tuesday. Featuring 400+ young poets from all over the planet. They'll be joined by talented folks such Ishle Yi Park, Beau Sia, Rafael Casal, George Watsky, Sonia Sanchez, Idriss Elba, and two Bay Area Slam teams. Buck. Buck. Lickle Shot. Blau. More info.

This is most definitely for girls with hips. If you've got ten minutes, take a peek. Might help with that attitude you've been swinging around that neck of yours. Give your roommate a break. You'll feel better, I swear. Directed in part by my boy, Amari Chris Johnson.

Guest Thickwit Adam Mansbach is the author of "Angry Black White Boy," and most recently, the novel "The End of the Jews." He received a 2008 Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant from the Ford Foundation. Though he is not a girl with hips, he sure does talk shit like he is. Here is his LA times review of the latest book by John McWhorter (no relation).




*****************************************************************
Simultaneously smug and beleaguered, "All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America" raises the question: Who, exactly, is claiming it can? No one -- academic, artist or critic -- has made any such argument since roughly 1988. This puts Manhattan Institute senior fellow John McWhorter in the awkward position of playing provocateur to an empty house, and gives his prose the tone of a petulant undergrad being shouted down in a dorm lounge. It also raises serious doubts about his engagement with either hip-hop or the large body of scholarship about it.

"[M]any hold on to the idea that hip-hop is ever on the verge of lifting black America up in a political revolution," McWhorter announces, one that will "lift poor blacks out of ghettos and create a new day." His constant assertions about hip-hop's true nature purport to prove why this cannot happen. It is "about attitude and just that," "in its very essence, angry," "all about that upturned middle finger," "about being oppositional regardless of the outcome," "all about the 'I' doing the rapping" and "about quick thrills and settling scores, rather than reasoning, discovering, and building."

Finally McWhorter asserts that "being art, especially popular art, hip-hop is automatically disqualified from being meaningfully political." If this were true, the specifics of McWhorter's musings would be irrelevant -- even to him. Why write a book detailing the case against a particular form if you believe no art can be political? Why not do something else with your afternoon?

Theory aside, McWhorter's claims that hip-hop is inherently angry and individualistic are profoundly ahistorical. Born in the Bronx in the early 1970s, hip-hop was rooted in the desire to foment a sense of community in the wake of economic deprivation and governmental neglect. It fostered artistic collectivity and friendly competition and changed the face of a city broken into gang fiefdoms, allowing young people to move through the five boroughs with new freedom.

The idea that hip-hop in 2008 is "antiestablishment" and "by definition about protest" is equally perplexing, given that so much of hip-hop has embraced the trappings of materialism in recent years. McWhorter glosses over a complex reality in which rappers are record label CEOs and corporate pitchmen, small-business owners and schoolteachers. Where's the rage and oppositionality in that?



As simple as it is, McWhorter's thesis shifts considerably beneath his feet. How to reconcile hip-hop's political impotence with the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network's success in preventing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg from cutting $300 million from the schools budget? McWhorter does it by changing the terms of his argument: "[T]his money . . . is not going to make a significant difference in how well children are educated." So an effective protest is dismissed because McWhorter quibbles with its agenda.

Such sleight of hand is everywhere. McWhorter scoffs at numerous organizations on the theory that if they were effective, he'd know more about them. He divines the motivations of rappers, pronounces them facile and uses this as proof of their music's irrelevance. A complete litany of McWhorter's logical fallacies and unjustified dismissals would rival his book in length.

"All About the Beat" does not draw on a single interview, nor any discernible research beyond a cursory listen to an inscrutably peculiar grab bag of albums, mostly from the early '90s. Although he frequently parses lyrics, McWhorter's strategy is to isolate a line, then explain away its politics: "KRS-One thinks that the 'church and synagogue are all deceivin' us,' " he writes. "What he means is that we should be Muslims like him." Except that KRS-One is not Muslim. Rather, his lyrical critique of organized religion has been ongoing for nearly 20 years.

McWhorter's inept analysis continues. He interprets KRS-One's statement "I am hip-hop" to mean "[i]t's all about him," when the phrase is actually a cornerstone of the rapper's philosophy that hip-hop is embodied by all who love it. McWhorter concludes by noting that he doesn't "see KRS-One writing his own serious tome on hip-hop history." In fact, he has authored two books on the subject. KRS-One also spearheaded the Stop the Violence Movement and produced the all-star benefit song "Self-Destruction," which raised half a million dollars for the Urban League in 1989 -- a difficult act to position as lacking in activist intent.

Ultimately, McWhorter's project is about obscuring structural racism by focusing on individuals and their failure to meet his myopic definition of political engagement. He plays a shell game, belittling lyrics about police brutality as "complaining . . . to a beat" in one chapter, then taking rappers to task for not focusing on "the things that get black men pulled into the criminal justice system" in the next -- as if police and judicial racism were not two of those things.

For McWhorter, hip-hop may be all about the beat, but only because he isn't listening. "We will not overcome by sitting around asking 'why' with attitude," he writes, with typical self-righteousness. But how can we if we don't ask why?

Today's thickwit is Ruby Bing Veridiano Ching. She is a writer, poet, performer, and member of touring spoken word crew iLL-Literacy. Offstage, she is a television host, arts educator, and a g-mail addict. She loves fashion, dope sneakers, and listening to M.I.A. Her first book, Miss Universe, is set for release in the fall. She can run a lap around the lake without stopping for air.
******************************************************************
I didn't grow up an artist. I didn't even know I had any ultra-special talents until I got into college and discovered that my love for writing could take me well beyond writing academic papers and killin' it in all my English classes. I was med-school bound, like any good Filipina daughter was expected to be. I even enrolled myself in a four-year program called Health TECH all through high school, At 16, I attended medical terminology competitions geeked out in khakis, Mary Janes, and that uniform navy blue blazer with the caduceus emblem crisply brimming on my lapel, ready to kick ass with my badass definitions, son. Like what! Yep, I'll still say it was bad ass, even though there was nothing nerdier than my lopsided bun and that damned panty-hose they made me wear during competitions. Oh dear. I definitely do NOT miss those days.

I kinda looked like this:

There was only one problem with med school: math made me cry, and I stopped enjoying science after I quite watching Bill Nye. Plus, I get mad queasy at the mere sight of a paper cut. Eeek.

When I discovered spoken word in college, my parents considered it a healthy hobby. You know, I was doing my poetry "thing". When I abandoned my med school pursuits to be involved with my community, write poetry, and raise my fist all day, poetry suddenly became a nonsense activity. Imagine the horror on my mom's face when I came home declaring, "Hey Ma, I don't wanna be a doctor. I'm gonna be a revolutionary instead, become a poet, and work non-profit, kay."

She gave me the biggest "WTF" eyes and asked how I expected to make money for anything that had the words non and profit right next to each other. "What, you gonna work for free??" I calmly replied, "No, Ma, I'm just tryin to help my people get free. Nawmsayin?"

Since then, I've helped to create my spoken word crew, iLL-Literacy, and after some failed attempts working non-profit, decided to become a full time artist and pursue iLL-Lit more aggressively. Three years strong, I'm proud to say we've traveled the world and back, have connected with communities from different parts of the globe, and continue to not only push our artistic development, but to maintain the mission to spark dialogue on race, class, and gender with our peers and supporters. AND I'm making a living out of the very thing I love.

Granted, I'm not ballin' out of control or makin' it rain anywhere (yet). There are those rough patches when I'm struggling with an empty gas tank, crunching numbers to figure out how I'm going to pay the bills for the month, and tearing over the newest Balenciaga spring collection reminded I can't even afford the knock-offs.

From time to time, my parents will nudge at me to ask when I'll get a real job, and the question comes up: "Come on, Bing, is it really worth it?"

And I proudly reply, "YES. IT. IS!!!"

When I receive letters from other young people who tell me how I've helped them see the beauty inside them, I know for sure, that I'm doing what God is asking me to do. More importantly, this art has taught me how to love myself, be happy, and develop a healthy relationship with the world.

I know I didn't end up practicing medicine. But this art taught me to heal. So, YES, it's worth it. It's worth it all. And I'm gonna keep going, dammit. Watch me now.