Humidity

The humidity is finally broken. It's a beautiful temporal cycle that I wish was as frequent as the turnover in goverments. But alas, the only chance for that is once every four years, and it seems like nothing has changed for 24 years now. Still, underneath it all, everything is always changing. And staying the same. Yeah, it was the worst of times, it was the dopest of times.
Full-blown Bloomsday Gemini stuff going on this week. I don't care if he is a Scorpio, but Robi "Draco" Rosa created an unbelievable space of change Wednesday at the Bowery Ballroom. He was Elvis, Jim Morrison, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and every Boricua who ever had a dream. And he spoke about it, laughingly, as if in an elevated haze of triumph, speaking to me like a brother. This was the best-rehearsed show I'd scene since probably Bob Marley. Not that he is a songwriter like Nesta, but the embodiment of the pathos, the passion, the honesty was all there.
I had been oblivious, but "Mujer Blanca" proved to be every bit the antecedent to "Living La Vida Loca." Robi, el Long Islander pero isleño: native language = ? but what does it matter when you're searching for that moment when all time is synchronized and Einstein is pointing to the way where we can revel in "spooky actions in the distance." (for further info, check out The New York Times > Science > Scientists Teleport Not Kirk, but an Atom)

Yes, Robi was "pointing" to a moment of revelation, as he alluded to when introducing Mad Love's title track, describing how the muse came to him like a shaft of light, the old familiar trope that magical Christian realists and various other recovering mofo's refer to. The fallacy of the modern world is revealed by these moments--when Robi describes the passage of spirit-thoughts into the world of the rational, he shows how they are disguised as the day-to-day experience of an ancient pagan intelligence that refuses to die.

Draco is perhaps our most talented charlatán, but the most beautiful thing about him is that he doesn't really care if we're following right now. He's just putting it down on record, and if someone wants to go to the Smithsonian 100 years from now and listen to Vagabundo, they'll know Robi was onto something...essential.

Nothing Happened on 6-11
So what are we to make of 9-11? What did we know and when did we know it was happening? That's the thrust of the completed Congressional report, which seems to put an end to all conspiracy theories by implying that Air Traffic Control + Air Force = jaded, stunned, disbelieving govermental agencies that were too flustered to react to early reports of the hijacking. So the great conundrum of our era remains: Did gov actually allow Al Qaeda attacks as part of some nefarious plot to put an end to democracy, or was it just gov employees' stoopid and sluggish reaction times that exposed New York to...the horror, the horror?
One point of view: It doesn't matter, because whether or not it was a conspiracy, almost every foreign policy action of U.S. gov in the postwar era has been a horrendous nazi inheritance, i.e., cannibalization of weapon-building and air-strike techniques, ostensibly carried out to protect the Republic, but winds up corrupting U.S. absolutely, or has it all been corrupt from the beginning?
Surely I can't answer that.

Nonetheless, Farenheit 911 might just become the most important American movie since Birth of a Nation. (Propaganda: Roman Catholic Church. A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.) I was recently amazed by my colleague Paul D. Miller a/k/a DJ Spooky's recent "remix" of Birth of a Nation. DJ SPOOKY that subliminal kid
Could reverse propaganda actually work for us? That's what Mike Moore is trying to test out. It's pretty interesting the way he's trying to make his case air-tight in terms of Western journalistic standards (which he learned in Michigan, which is no Wisconsin, I know Wisconsin) The New York Times > Movies > Michael Moore Is Ready for His Close-Up
Again, like Robi, it almost doesn't matter if what he's saying is the absolute Western truth (although according to those standards, it almost is).

Una Gran Noche en El Barrio
Sure, I'm a dilletante, but I got busy finding the truth Friday night in El Barrio again, chowing down at La Fonda LA FONDA BORICUA with Ricky O., calmly digging through the chicharrones, el arroz y habichuelas, the tostones, mofongo, and Barrilitos. The thing is, Ricky O. is on the mystical tip, and I feel comfortable with that, because, I believe in Chambao when they say

aunque la fe no se ve, ni quieres una prueba física
y visible de que existe un Dios, yo te digo a ti
que la fe solo se ve con los ojos de amor, love, love, love

At Carlito's, we checked out La 21 División and got into the same trance-state that Cachete Maldonado can put you in on a good night at Rumba en la San Sebastián. We are all besieged by pendejadas from time to time, when our energy is robbed by the piratas and the IMF and we might feel weak for a minute or two but we recover, and the drums lead us to where we need to go.

In the exquisite humidity, la humedad que nos nutra we made our way to Jake's which was packed with post-Nuyorican intelligentsia, reveling in the verse-atility of Papoleto. Estaba Gwillie, y Mariposa, y el hermano de Pedro, Diana Hernandez, Nicolasa, and Alejandra, who I met so long ago with Richie Perez and there was this moment of Bronx County Courthouse revelation as she electric-slid about in her dancer's black dress. Home was Cubuy and home was El Barrio again. Ricky was amazed that you could get a Medalla here, and he ordered several for the two of us. "Man, this is better than hanging out in Williamsburg," he said, and could Mara and Carolina be far behind?


I got bamboozled into a game of pool with Arlene, Debbie, and Melissa. Melissa seemed to prefer pinball, and there was this dude who kept saying, the last time I played was en la San Sebastián and I thought, I've heard this before. But he was cool. I was like totally inept. But it felt like the sun was coming up even though it was only 2 a.m.

And at the corner, the crossroads of De La Vega and La Taqueria, with the cabs flashing by like it was Avenue B in 1984, Debbie explained something about Eva de la O and Música de Camara, and how we're all classically trained like that. The inevitable commerce of Lexington Avenue smoothed it all out. We flowed downtown again, like a river in search of the ocean.

a pesar del tiempo
que estamos viviendo junto al mar
no descubrimos
lo que tenemos en realidad

una forma diferente de mirar
la cultura de su gente
la tienes que respirar