Quoth

From the mouth of Octavia Butler:-

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

Quoth

“There’s a tendency among white musicians and audiences to take retrospective solace in nostalgia, the halcyon days of rock and pop when they still held their innocent lustre and life was more swinging, sunny and simpler. There is a certain kind of white fan who prefers black music of a certain vintage and is uncomfortable with its present day mutations. For black musicians, black audiences, the past is not a halcyon place – it was a time of open racism, of civil rights struggles, of systematic disadvantage and everyday humiliation. Why hark back to that? The present’s not so hot either, come to think of it. The future is where it’s at, the future from which white audiences are often prone to flinch. Hence Stevie Wonder’s Arp and Moog adventures, George Clinton’s Brother From Another Planet schtick, Lee “Scratch” Perry, A Guy Called Gerald, Detroit Techno and the early embrace of Kraftwerk by African-Americans, and the whole, electric underground push of black music from Go-Go to house, hip-hop jungle to grime and footwork.

“[Sun] Ra’s teachings might lead nowhere but his musical example is practical, vital and of the utmost, enduring relevance. He is the Grandfather of Afro-Futurism.”

– David Stubbs, Yearning for Impossible Escape: Sun Ra, Afro-Futurist Godfather (The Quietus)

Advertisement

Quoth

“The advent of electronic media and the information age has had a profound impact on social interaction and cultural identity. We have found our notions of consciousness, our perceptions of reality, and our daily lives altered and reconstituted by this technological change. Electronic technology, especially digital, seems to have pierced the protective bubble of fixed racial and ethnic identity by making it easy for us to create physically detached screen personas that transcend social realities. Yet in spite of the current cultural climate, which we like to believe has released us from the constraints of identity, the mechanisms of exclusion still persist.”

— Michelle-Lee White, Afrotech and Outer Spaces (via afrometaphysics)

Keris Myrick – Game Changer

CBC’s radio show The Current featured Keris Myrick in their Game Changer series in November 2011.

Keris Myrick is in Toronto Friday 13th June – one of six world renowned speakers at the conference: Psychosis 2.0.

For years, she was told to lower her expectations and focus on her condition. Keris Myrick has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. She is also the CEO of Project Return Peer Support Network. She supervises more than a hundred people. She says the intense, high-profile nature of the work actually helps her manage the symptoms of her illness.