i feel safer on a clean bus feel cleaner on a safe bus feel darker on a bad day feel badder on a dark day bad bad girl can’t stay awake no more she sleeps on the ground / park yr ass! park yr ass on the grass for today can’t stay awake randomsoliloquie dancing with nikki she tells she tells me she tells me things that i would like to know how she knows me and loves me babybabybaby buh buh love bug give me a sigh / love shrug are you in my dreams tonight? i’m willing to bet are you in my happy place? no lemme guess at the gym?! i picture you in every place every city of the world
CWTTY+ by (Liv).e – Review
In the midst of the ongoing nightmare that is the COVID-19 pandemic, (Liv).e released the gorgeous Couldn’t Wait to Tell You…
It knocked my socks off. I watched the entire livestream of the album release party. My partner, who I was living with at the time, soon became sick-to-death of my endless re-listening. It struck a big chord with me on an emotional level. Imagine my delight when this little EP, CWTTY+, drops exactly a year later.
The opening track (“_21”) represents the elusive “final track” of the album, hence its name. It’s got a delicious samba feel that makes you feel like you’re floating. The lyrics are about a romance that just didn’t quite work out, although they said it would work out in the long run (“he said if i could only string along”). You’re left with the feeling that although it might not have worked out, holding on to that lover in their head was still worth it.
The second track, aptly titled “Lessons Reprised,” reworks track 5 from the album in a trippy little number.
Which takes us to the third track, “Winter Songs,” where Liv.e reminds us that “real niggas don’t freeze up,” not even in the wintertime. There are themes of insomnia, hustling, and being cheated out of your money. It actually recycles lyrics from Track 9 of the album (“Cut To The Chase”):
lovers will be slipping and sliding… artists will be bopping and writing dreams will be streaking it’s frightening i gotta.. kite on my house phone and its waiting on lightning i mean.. i be waiting on phone calls like.. what are you on.. you got my money? y’know? i be tip toeing on ice..
This brilliant interweaving of the album into the EP is outdone only by the Little Beaver reference on the next track, “Party Life,” which references the famous track by Little Beaver, “Get Into the Party Life.” Liv.e makes her influences known to those paying attention, and those steeped in hip hop history will recall the People Under The Stairs’ sample of the same track. Liv.e’s reference is particularly exciting because she’s bringing the old into the new through lyricism and paying respect to the elders.
Tracks 5 & 6 are special too, but not the way the first four tracks hold a special place for me. Track 6 is a beautiful and psychedelic send-off to one of the best albums of 2020. Get into this party life!
letter to a friend
i dream about you a lot. i don’t tell you because i don’t want you to get the right idea. when i take journeys in my dreams sometimes you will accompany me and sometimes i will encounter you on the way. you never say anything. i wonder if this means you’re talking and i’m not listening.
twilight of the dolls
at dawn when i can trick my brain into thinking it’s dusk and vice-versa how joyous it is to know we die so that we may live i will not meet you again but how joyous it is to know i would die for you every day people are already fleeing this place even as they flee toward it they are only fleeing through it the way one moves toward the threat bright light//white heat the fight in-flight
two steps into luv
i’m stepping into luv i’m choosing always always will luv you always always
i set the stone down, finally kept the pieces i needed skipped the surface tensions and fortunes built in caverns and conflict was in vogue again
set still in the palm of trees in the mirth of oceans in the fabulous generosity of strangers
of parks, glory holes, escape routes and pudding of deserts both moral and and finite
set upon the rocks, dashed wrecked. no one tells you stop diving. take off. nobody tells you.
when a feeling hurts you have to listen
when a feeling hurts you have to listen otherwise who knows what pinpricks devour you like so many locations on a map saturated and bubbling up on each other
when you feel slighted u oughta take a slight pause so as to not react reacted far too often my body fatigued by watchfulness it’s better to pause
it’s better to wait and see but to wait and see is to waste what we call time but what we call time isn’t really time it’s one time a real weird time huh? soft time mixed with hard time our shoal time our time at sea u could say tho they are saying in sea these days
my time is not tho yr time is not tho her time is not
tho
time is not
tho
time is not
tho
is time is not
Review of Reviews
Why can’t you just talk about yr favorite parts? Always false concern. You didn’t make it.
Make it new: “Quotation is a sign of humility.”
Falsetto stains yr voice. Careful now. “But yr so lovely when yr delicate.”
I’m so not. “But isn’t it sweet to try.”
I don’t follow.
Theory by Dionne Brand
“There are multiple reasons why I find myself in the situation of not having completed my dissertation; on the other hand, I believe one ought to take stock of one’s own bullshit.”
Theory, the latest novel by Dionne Brand, begins and ends with this footnote. The unnamed, ungendered narrator retells three romances over the course of writing their dissertation: Selah, embodiment of beauty; Yara, the altruistic playwright; and Odalys, the faith-healer. Through these relationships we learn more about the narrators ambition and their struggle to complete their dissertation.
This is a funny book. Often you are laughing at the narrator for their folly, their lack of intuition and self-honesty in relationships, be they collegial or personal.
But in some ways you are laughing at yourself. I think one of the major themes in this book is how expectations in the family and the university shape our love lives in turn. When one is negotiating with professionalizing ambitions at home and at work and, yes, in “love,” where do you turn? The narrator is constantly qualifying their opinions, revising their statements, taking back judgments of character. So in one light, it’s no wonder they never finished the diss. But they make a good case for themselves:
“At the root of the problem are the quotations and references. One is not allowed an original thought. I asked the committee: Does Derrida keep quoting everyone before him to make sure he is right? Does Spivak have to array around her all the dead philosophers and theorists to prove her credentials for speaking? And finally, there’s no reference for what I want to do. Why can’t I simply speak without having to have that speech legitimated by god knows who?”
won’t you put on your gambler jeans
won’t you put on your gambler jeans
tease me a little bit
you sit in the dirt and spit
intuit the portal that is my waist
for a minute
they met in the aquarium
where fluid is sexuality
they met in the park.
one had on that beautiful half-smile
who brought paint and painted each other.
one couldn’t draw
she couldn’t picture herself
if abu-bakr ii made it over here
is really a matter of opinion
but it still says a lot
about yr imagination
Aida Rends 