Michael: This fragment is a fifth level mature artisan – second life thereat. George is in the power mode with a goal of growth. An idealist, he is in the moving part of intellectual centre.
Body type is Venus/Mars.
George’s primary chief feature is subdued arrogance and the secondary impatience.
The fragment George is fifth-cast in third cadence; he is a member of greater cadence four. George’s entity is five, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – this is a cadre mate of Arvin’s and Merlin’s.
George’s essence twin is also an artisan and he has a sage task companion.
George’s primary needs are: expression, communion and power.
There are 10 past-life associations with Arvin and 14 with Merlin.
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Music is a language and Jazz is the language of a people; it speaks to no one else like it does us. No other music readily restores one’s humanity and sense of self like Jazz does. Interestingly, when a student at ballet school, I lived the most famous quote uttered by Diana, Princess of Wales in that Panorama interview that she gave to Martin Bashir: “There is no better way to dismantle a personality than to isolate it.”
That is why during my two hellish years in Winnipeg, the music of Jazz is what saved me. Interestingly enough, three musicians I looked to during that time more than any others; years later, I would discover that they are all cadre mates: Natalie Cole, John Coltrane and George Benson.
With the passing of cadre mates Natalie Cole and Roy Hargrove, it is high time to celebrate and pay homage to George Benson while he remains focussed here and now.
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Keep on flying right whether in the most blissful of dreams or the waking state’s unforgiving grittiness… then again, it is also maddeningly beautiful!
Bright and early Tuesday morning and it was off to Oxford Circus in search of more art.
No faking this; the hustle is fucking real.
As I poured through this joint, I recalled my advice to the London cab driver whilst crawling along Pall Mall two days earlier.
Well if Daddy Warbucks’ little girl ain’t toothless, what is one to do but vacuously laugh with every breath.
As though I had just walked in on the most malodorous dump, I was out of this dive in a New York minute.
As I came up out of the Underground, I felt as though I had just endured a room whose stench was dirty ashtrays, liquor and coffee. Once at Hyde Park Corner, I made it to Apsley House, only to discover that it was not open during the week. Took the time to breathe the crisp – though not cold like Canadian – air with Hyde Park’s trees’ transitioning foliage predominantly apricot-coloured.
Vauxhall Tower (St. George Wharf Tower.)
Arrived at Pimlico and the air was comfortably cool; so nice to have a brilliant sunny day for a change. Nonetheless, you can bet your bottom dollar that I was protected by my extra thick-lensed black shades.
After working almost exclusively at nighttime and since before that when in the theatre, I have developed a genuine sensitivity to sunlight. You cannot convince me that we are not much too close to Sol for comfort. So to Tate Britain I was returned. After the scam that was the Klimt / Schiele, I was not rolling the die on Turner Prize 2018.
I went into this exhibition with zero expectations. Like the British Museum, I love the gift shop at Tate Britain as opposed to Tate Modern’s. I was on the hunt for unique gifts to purchase; this ticketed event was a gamble.
You cannot begin to fathom the degree to which I was wowed by the breath of this artist’s genius.
Remarkably, there was no end to this genius’ vision.
There is, throughout his art, movement and fluidity with the greatest grace and attack.
This is a colossal retrospective and his talent was unmatched.
The sensuality is breathtaking.
Every painting was a newly discovered masterpiece.
The breath of his work is astounding.
What a truly marvellous discovery.
His work left everyone moving through the exhibit in a state of harmony. There was such peace and serenity in each salon and every salon had some wow moment masterpiece.
One key element of his art was that each work was hung in the spot-on perfect frame.
Masterful!
For me, Edward’s genius epitomises where dreams and genius merge and produce the most uplifting art.
Quite simply, there are no words.
Besotted.
The moment that I laid eyes on this tableau, I immediately thought of Francis Bacon.
Breathtaking…
Now, this is Art, Next-level tapestry. The fluid sensuality is overwhelming.
This is everything.
I would gladly have paid thrice as much to view this exhibition.
This was like nothing I had seen before and it far exceeded anything that I had expected. Truly beautiful. After dining on a late lunch in Pimlico, it was back to Bloomsbury for a nap before heading out into the evening.
Though I was rather looking forward to hanging out at Ronnie Scott’s, the idea of listening to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane (an entity mate) being butchered by some Israeli appropriationist was not exactly high on my must-do list.
Happy was I to be in the comfy seats at Barbican Centre Cinemas to watch a LIVE relay from Covent Garden of that evening’s performance of La Bayadère, which at week’s end I would be attending. By far, this was the most glorious of cinematic experiences. I could not believe the sight of Natalia Makarova when she appeared on screen.
She was now full-bodied as we mostly get on ageing. Last time that I had seen her was during a class we took together at NYC’s Harkness House ballet school during summer 1983. That late spring was the last time that I had also seen the ballet live; it was May 19, 1983 and my favourite dancer, the dimpled, shy and oh so sweet, Fernando Bujones was dancing the role of Solor.
As ever, thanks for your ongoing support and dream as lucidly as you want to…
As it is Jazz appreciation month, here’s to one of the most glorious elixirs that each time setting foot in my home – after experiencing racial animus in it myriad manifestations – takes me higher. Jazz is that one language, indeed, the only idiom capable of absolving the bile of being subjected to the ugliness that is the racial predator’s birthright.
Of course, like all addicts: drunks, crackheads, sexual predators – the racial predator does not self-identify and, like all addicts, is ever in denial and will angrily maintain his right to deny that there is a problem. So, since the racial predator does not exist; yet, for those of us for whom the racial predator is as real as the drunk, why wait for these marvellous boors to self-identify? There is power in labelling a problem for what it is and until one has a name for a malaise of spirit, one has no power because the well-armed and socio-economic top-baboon will always laugh his vacuous skull off whilst alleging one is crazy for stating there is a problem when there is not even a name for this non-existent problematic entity and speciously imaginary the racial predator.
Naturally, the one addiction – without fail – of the racial predator is ever his obsession with the culture of the prey he so loves feasting on. The most powerful word for the racial predator when dealing with Blacks is ‘NO’ in all its manifestations… and then, of course, you expect us to come home and settle for your apeing the culture because well… you can like that authentic-sounding sonic bleed-through from that queer parallel universe where Jazz allegedly has its roots in Klezmer… NO! Life is about callously being unpromising in one’s truth… and as has been oft declared – if you can’t sing Strange Fruit sorry, not having it.
This music is a testament to the spirit of a people who, despite the racial predator’s obsessive addiction, remains free, beautiful and ever soaring higher… Goodness, how could you ever fathom the depth and beauty of this music when you remain incapable of accepting and embracing our humanity…. your humanity?
John Coltrane’s Michael Overleaves to follow… breathe.
Michael: This fragment was a fifth level mature artisan – 3rd life thereat. Natalie was in the power mode with a goal of growth. She was a sceptic who was in the moving part of intellectual centre.
Natalie’s was a Saturn/Mars body type.
Natalie’s primary chief feature was stubbornness with a strong secondary chief feature of self-destruction which was primarily internally focussed.
Natalie’s casting is in the fifth position of the fourth cadence in the second greater cadence – she is a cadence mate of Richard E. White (he is in fourth position). She is a member of entity six, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – another entity mate.
Natalie’s essence twin is a discarnate artisan and her priest task companion was known to her.
The three primary needs for Natalie were: expression, freedom and power.
There are 12 past-life associations between Natalie and Arvin whilst there are 16 past-life associations with Merlin.
I am so devastated by this loss that I don’t even have the time to do the usual due diligence of listing credits.
So poised, elegant, admirable, fabulous, fantastic… could scat/vocalese just as stratospherically as Ella Fitzgerald.
From seeing her at Ontario Place’s Amphitheatre in the ’70s, whilst she did her funky soul diva incarnation, to the sheer brilliance of her sophisticated Jazz syncopation, there was no one else who could make me feel more fuck-all fabulous pride and take seriously this joint call being Black.
Natalie got to the very essence of who we, a proud noble people, truly are. Her album: Take A Look (1993) literally afforded me the grace and dignity to get through the most hellish experience of being in a workplace surrounded by people who haven’t a clue that they are crazy – a people who collectively render us as invisible and who relish at every opportunity the racially predatory thrill of talking about us and openly ridiculing us as though we were a weeble-infested bag of flour in the corner. These marvellous people for whom the gun is g_d incarnate and for whom it has never once occurred that we possibly could perceive them as crazy – crazy as in having invented something as absurd as Apartheid, crazy in openly gunning us down because well… one can, crazy as in busing, crazy as in building latter day landlocked Mayflowers whose hull hold a cargo that staves off the flowering of the next Coltrane, Tatum, Monk, Ellington et al… crazy as in harvesting a most strange fruit from poplar trees whilst crazily dressed up in the coward’s garb from pointy head to toe, crazy as in then having the fuck-all temerity to squat all over the culture and ape, ape, ape like crazy every thing we do culturally, creatively…. alas, who else but the crazy would openly hate you then turn around and ape everything you do from Jazz, to Hip-Hop, to Rap and all the while, like the truly crazy then somehow think that we never notice that they never ever have personal relations with Blacks… la Krall, Bublé and Eminem to name but a few readily come to mind.
Every day in Vancouver, for having survived and gotten one day closer to triumphantly getting through 24 months of workplace probation, it was to my lovely art-filled West End apartment that I retreated where this lovely beauteous-eyed goddess, Natalie Cole, would greet me with a voice that would truly embalm the soul from the bilious dissonance of the racial predator – those who haven’t a fucking clue that they are crazy… And how the crazy people love to laugh at everything.
Sweet and blissful dreams dear Natalie, you proud noble griot who came to remind us that we are the most beautiful lotus to have flowered from the hellish swamp known as the semi-feral well-armed racial predator’s paradise. What a positively rich, layered, textured, august life you accomplished…
A better place this world, a more grounded people we are, for you having chosen to be focussed herein at this time, in this place.
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*As I had always planned on doing Natalie Cole’s Michael Overleaves, they had not been done at the time of her passing and my having penned this impassioned tribute. A couple of weeks later when her overleaves arrived, it was one of the rare times that on receiving someone’s overleaves that I broke down crying. I always felt strongly connected to this woman – she was family. Here then, at this juncture, though they have been added previously and subsequent to this original post – it is now December 2016 as I change the copyright time stamp – are Natalie Cole’s rather august Michael Overleaves – Natalie’s overleaves are now listed above.
There are these little things that bind us for being entity and cadre mates… at the end of the video for Route 66 which accompanies this tribute post, Natalie Cole can be heard saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” This is precisely what fellow artisan and entity mate Attila Isaksen and I would repeat to each other as a greeting or when slipping out of inner musings after long pleasurable sexual play. END..
This has been the leap off point for many a flying dream and it has also been the way to best ground after truly momentous dream experiences. Sheer genius!
Without doubt, the strongest Diana Ross live performance ever. Poignant. Moving. Those large beauteous eyes mirror a lot of pain and rage during its performance. Again, if you can’t sing it because you know damn well you can’t, why bother wasting the time on the likes of you?
A true mystery to me it remains why when one hates Blacks with such unbridled passion, one would end up squatting all over Black culture, Jazz, as though it were the latest Settler craze. More to the point, there are no racially predatory persons creating Haida or Inuit art… and with good reason; then again, neither are expressions of Black creative genius. Culture is a non-negotiable.
Alas, there is the racial predator aggressively overrunning the culture then turning around and acting as though to somehow include Blacks in Jazz – which after all one has already declared does have its roots in Klezmer – is tantamount to the Oscars where every 3/4 centuries or so, one will deign to consider tossing a best actress Oscar a Black female’s way.
The same Black female whom, in this the new age of minstrelsy, Diana Krall in her invisible blackface can never proximate. However, this is about market share and having the right look and simply getting the lion’s share of fame and fortune for being born of the womb of the racial predator. La Krall who in the pop idiom would have never risen stratospherically to the heights she has; certainly, she would never have had more than a second album.
She is a marvellous enigma – an icon in that sense for what she represents. “I can get more market share than you” and that’s that. She is cold and sterile like the gun that gunned down way too many young Black men – like the gun that set Ferguson, Missouri ablaze – whose lives clearly do not matter to some. To see what a true fraud La Krall is – she who seemed nothing more than a venereal wart on Oscar Peterson’s arse, an arse which was too good to be wiped by mere Blacks when finally he was parked in palliative care – just listen to her do a damn good Joni Mitchell impersonation on her current album.
Sitting there at the piano, botoxed within a breath of being on view in her casket, La Krall coolly cops that ‘phuch ewe’ swagger she owns so well – just as Eminem does. Yes, indeed, it is all about money and as race ever trumps either class or reason, there she drifts through life in Bentleys where others, the real McCoys, can hardly afford a Lada.
Again, why should we Blacks culturally settle for a Lada when we can, by right, damn well afford a Bentley? Alas, who knows whether Cassandra Wilson is dead or alive anymore?
More than ever, these pale imitators no more give a damn about Blacks or Black culture than the next Klansman. Roberta Gambarini is the best impersonator of Carmen McRae going… nothing more. There they squat, this elephantine, oppressive presence all over Jazz, pulling an Eric Garner thereby suffocating and stifling the very breath of Black culture. Seriously, who are Emilie-Claire Barlow, Holly Cole, Sophie Milman but mirrors of the grudging contempt for which one holds Blacks and Black culture.
Never once did I, or Merlin and I for that matter, manage to gain entry into Montréal Jazz Bistro when it sat on Sherbourne Street. Indeed, the one time, we made it to George’s Spaghetti house, having previously tried to without success, was as the guests of David Tipe; the evening was cut short after a stranger wondered over to the table where we sat and in the midst of making small-talk blurted out something about ‘niggers’.
Without the support from the moneyed classes, there can be no arts, no culture. Racism is economics and the result of the focussed economic oppression of Blacks – all fostered by the demonisation, marginalisation and dismissal of Blacks, in particular Black males, by a cinema/television culture, the architects of whom are the same persons who squat all over the culture and would be so smug as to blithely claim on live radio that Jazz has its roots in Klezmer. Some alternate reality that.
Thank goodness there was a strong Black middle class, little more than a century ago, without which there would have been no birth of Jazz. No Coltrane, no Ellington, no Mingus and on and on and on. There has been a steadfast erosion to near obliteration of the Black middle classes such that anyone today without an awareness of music history would think it incredulous that Blacks should claim to be the innovators of Jazz.
Naturally, of course, the same cinematic agendum that would keep Blacks all but invisible and extinct when not risible, violent and or marginalised has never once seen fit to have cinematically documented the lives of any of these true geniuses of Jazz which one keeps claiming is a true American art form, yet until Michelle Obama took up residency in the White House, it had never before been performed therein.
Black history month is about celebrating and most of all it is about never for a nanosecond losing sight of who the racial predator is and despite Nikki Yanofsky – the darling little Montréalaise with the bought career – claiming, “Oh Ella we love you!” well to channel the very spirit of Frederick ‘Mr. Hat’ Jones, I declare, “Bitch please. Ella don’t give no damn if you can turn piss into wine. We ain’t having it!”
Sing Strange Fruit or just go make country music; an idiom, I might add, where you never see Blacks claiming ownership thereof or time-wasting patronising. After all, Country is the music of the very people about whom Strange Fruit was penned.
Alas, your racially predatory animus is so intense that you can’t but squat all over the culture, with total disregard, and thereby make it your own. Besides, what do you care what we think?
Go on, go ahead, let’s see you sing Strange Fruit with all the pain and rage as Diana Ross… to say nothing of Billie Holiday.
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Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul. 