Im Saying…(live) from real8 on Vimeo.

Jim Chu is the creator of this online dance adventure – an epic story told through media of film and dance.  You can view episodes on Hulu.  Peep the most recent one Robot Lovestory below:

Time flew and now Muhsinah is making more music and a short film.  This is epic y’all.  “Dear _____ ,” – The Debut Studio Album + Independent Short Film By Muhsinah is on Kickstarter now and Team Muhsinah needs to raise $31,000 to fund the project.  Please support this work in anyway you can.

If you have at anytime lamented the state of music or even the absence of Lauryn Hill, this is your moment to do something about it by putting your money into action.

Afrolicious is pledging. Ann D! is pledging. Whatchu gonna do?

If you haven’t been to Freedom Friday yet, you need to come out and start your weekend off proper.  Since we started at the end of May, we’ve had poets, musicians, rappers and filmmakers share their hearts and passions with us on the mic.  USC’s South Los Angeles Report even came out and wrote a nice feature about the space.

It’s Wednesday, so you have some time to adjust your plans a bit.  Freedom Friday is this Friday July 2, 2010 at the Mercado La Paloma in downtown Los Angeles.

(PS: Our feature this week is Poet John Paul.  Check out his video!)

“I’m a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I’m also comfortably asocial — a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles — a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”  -Octavia Butler

I remember my life in chunks of books. First the illustrated Bible, worn after spending days in dark clinic waiting rooms flipping through the pages. Then there was the dogeared copy of Mufaro’s  Beautiful Daughters, highly illustrated, again, and lovely.  Middle school was a marathon of Sweet Valley High novels and Babysitters’ Club books and eventually there was Toni Morrison in high school (which I had to reread during college to fully understand what I was consuming).

The first books I bought in college were not for any courses. They were books I had dreamed of buying brand new:  C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.  Together, those books define a good chunk of my worldview today.  Throughout undergrad, I bought the rest of Octavia Butler’s books as I could afford them, and scoured the internet for interviews and meta conversations about her life and her work.

On February 27, 2006 I came running out of my campus apartment to a meeting with my supervisor in the housing office.  I was breathless, near tears and he was willing to listen, even if he didn’t understand.  You see, I had just read that Octavia E. Butler died from an injury in her home three days earlier.

Alone.

She died alone, but, from what I knew about her life, Octavia Butler chose to live as a recluse.  I don’t have enough personal information of her as to why or how much of a hermit she was, but she was comfortable in her identity. She certainly didn’t need this eager reader’s prying.

Octavia Butler’s work changed a part of my life that was stuck in between loving stories and loving science.  As I was developing a crude sociology of the department of engineering on my campus, Octavia Butler’s nuanced female characters were vampires, time travellers, space shifters and more.  And even though they were stuck underneath the umbrella of science fiction, their stories and circumstances were more real than most.

While people were developing religions out of her fictions (and missing the point, I thought), I was coming into an identity of what @MDotwrites would call a black girl from the future, like Lauren in Parable of the Sower and her daughter in Parable of the Talents.  Quirky as hell, but all right.

Today, whenever I visit a bookstore, I always look out for her titles on the shelves.  If there are none, I’ll go to the front desk and order at least Kindred, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Maybe the entire Xenogenesis series if there’s time.  I can’t tell you why I do this; but it’s important to me that her words are still around for someone to stumble on.

I have my own ideas about where Octavia Butler is right now. But I wish she were here so she can hear me and other hungry brown girls and women say, “Thank you.”

If you haven’t caught on (perhaps too busy trying to root for the Lakers, hmm?) never fear! I’ve got some music that will bring you right up to speed.  While checking out the video playlist below, let me know who your favorite teams are!  Mine are Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Brazil.

Viva Africa! And all her diaspora

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1F1004E117F732B

Earlier this year, Real8, a good friend of mine, came up with a vision to unite the voices of Downtown and South Los Angeles.  He’s an amazing emcee with a passion for the hearts of young people in LA. After seeing what it could be we finally got Freedom Friday off to an amazing start two weeks ago.

We have great plans for this venue and we had a bunch of great people in attendance. The turnout out was just right for the intimate nature of the performances and it was an amazing way to start the weekend.

Freedom Fridays are every 1st and 3rd Friday at the Mercado La Paloma near downtown Los Angeles. See you there!