Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Blown

For the last week, I have visited the website http://www.protegeimages.com/ just about every day. It remains an open window on my computer at work, even now as I’m typing this communication. I’ve never met the artist and I came across her site by a friend who’s engagement pictures shot. I thought I was coming here to look at incredible photos shot with an all seeing eye, but what I got was something altogether

♪ more beautiful than the well designed photographers web card
♪ more pleasing than smiling at dope photographs of life while enjoying “elevator music”
♪ more intrusive and reaching of a touch than I expected to experience

At first glance, you enter and there is her name, her proclamation of who she is on paper, then there are two portals into her-images and words (blog). I instantly chose images- pictures paint a million words (and I’m trying not to be so verbose these days—perhaps that’s why I haven’t blogged in a while; becoming a silent observer—at least for a month), and what met me caught me so off guard that I haven’t been able to get past the two gems that were inside this oysters mouth.

A percentage number shows as the photos load, but immediately I hear the voice of trumpets and one of my favorite conscious rappers, Mos Def, grooving to a real chill beat with a simple message:

“There is a way… no matter what they say…. Don’t give up, don’t give in…”

I’m floored, first from the dopeness of the track and simplicity of the message, but the way it hits my spirit is like blowing helium air into a balloon; it buoys me to a state of emotion that is probably likened to that of a weed head getting that good ganja and just sitting back

So, after being buoyed into an altered, alert, chill, empowered state of mind from the first song, the next one that follows renders me completely static. I cannot move, and I can all but smell the concert hall that this track was cut in, see the instruments, see the drummer on a basic trap set.

David Axelrod’s “Holy Thursday” begins and it is vaguely familiar to me. After a few seconds into the track I realize that it is the track Lil Wayne used on his Dr. Carter song on his last album. But this instrumental… my God, it is so pure, so musically sound, so geniously orchestrated and put together that I cannot leave the song. I can’t leave the page. And although the photos were absolutely fitting as a PowerPoint playing during these songs, these songs far overshadowed my need to watch the slide show anymore. It inspired me so that I had to pen how I was feeling:

Blown

Good music
Paralyzes my senses
Can’t breathe unless the beat reaches heart cavities
Don’t feel anything but strings ‘neath my finger tips
Smell only vinyl and sweat from bodies that gyrate to metered rhythms
Taste intoxicating doses of liquid trumpets and jello shots of sax
Hear only 808’s and snares, tapping out predestined paths of movement
See only hypnotic lights, smoky venues, and shadowed figures cloaked in ambiance

Good music
Makes limbs schizophrenic
Giving me paraplegic experiences on one hand
morphs limbs dexterous on the other
The length of the beat, melody proved too intense
Far too limited by the need of senses to sense its power
Yet driven to keep up with the cadences
And free body parts to dance with the wind
Free and unencumbered
Limbs jerk and flow, fast and slow
And I, I just go
With it

(For him, it’s smoking a black and mixing coke and jack
That buzz he gets, blows on me in contact
I’m High as a kite, when the beat is right
Feel me…)

Cause I love
Good music

10:21 AM
May 19, 2009

Inspired by Mos Def’s “There is a Way” and David Axelrod’s “Holy Thursday”


It continues to amaze me how simple we as human beings are. For me, it’s music and well put together word(s). For you it may be something else. But we all have our high. Simply put, Good Music is mine…

Since then, I have visited this site everyday, and have listened to these two songs non-stop at least for 2 hours each day. The “shooter” has an awesome eye, very nice work, but if her selection of music to accompany her images was her choice, my respect for her heightens by 1025 power because the photos take on a different life when accompanied by this awesome music!

(yes, I’m still listening to this now, and I’ve been typing this for about 20 minutes—just two songs)

For those of you who need some inspiration, may be stuck in a rut, needing a sign that things will be alright, visit the site, listen to the song: The Creator used this music to lift me. I hope it does the same for you…

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