It was 130 degrees YESTERDAY in Santa Clarita, California.

That's Los Angeles. Antelope Valley. Magic Mountain Amusement Park and vicinity. I have friends who live there.

Yes, I'm alarmed, but again not surprised. And I got a extra feeling this won't be the last time for such monstrous heat.

I suggest folks to start getting disaster kits: water, batteries, flashlight, cash, radio, canned foods and can opener and your favorite bottle of wine. I'm not talking doomsday here, but it's pretty clear it's a time of consequence and transition. Better safe than sorry. And for you Cali folk [or anybody else experiencing 110 degree plus temperatures], a bottle of water and canned goods will come in handy if you're driving in heat like that and you car goes beserk and leaves you stranded.

Until next time,

Keith

Yesterday afternoon. Thursday. At about five p.m. A severe thunderstorm came rolling through the Fort Green vicinity and let me say this: NEVER IN MY LIFE have I EVER experienced a storm like that. And I'm originally from the Midwest with tornadoes and thunder and floods every spring, but THIS was different. I was nervous. I was speechless. I locked myself in the bathroom, kneeled on the floor and just waited and hoped and thought: WHAT IS GOING ON? I felt endangered. The lightening was INTENSE. Extremely intense. I could hear the voltage. I could hear it hitting nearby buildings [including mine that resulted in a bright red glow somewhere outside my kitchen window. And the thunder: it was explosive. It sounded like a nuclear war. IT WAS NO JOKE. It was APOCALYPTIC.

Three weeks ago, my dad called and said a storm had passed through Cincinnati that shook the house. He said, NEVER in his life had he experienced a storm like that. And at that time I remember thinking if my dad is commenting on a storm's intensity then it must have been rare and wild. Then just last week, my agent Steve Simons from Los Angeles called me for some normal update and within his brief conversation told me he was in NYC for a play and got caught in the most violent storm he ever experienced. [And he said he was raised on the East Coast and he doesn't remember anything as violent as that]. A few years ago, one of my aunts said there was no global warning [or a hole in the ozone]. She said it was the devil and Jesus was the only true answer to fight the falsity of global warming. And I remember thinking: Oh, people are so disconected from the earth. And that's going to be their downfall when Greenland starts melting and the polar beers start drowning and when one of the most violent storms in the history of NYC sends a neo-bohemian brother to the bathroom in refuge.

All I have to say is: LIVE, LOVE and don't be surprised by anything. It was a 120 degrees in South Dakota last week; and 112 in St. Louis a few days ago... Don't be alarmed; just PREPARE and go see INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

Until next time,

Keith

In the last few weeks I've been overwhelmed with living and not able to subscribe to the scribbing of my day to day. It was hot. For a good week. A few days it reached 100 degrees and one day I saw lightening touch down less than 60 feet away. Oh, then I moved, to Fort Greene, BROOKLYN. My new apartment is much much better. I feel like I have an apartment as opposed as living in the basement of somebody's home like some second-cousin in transition between jobs or wives or a pack of Winstons. However, I have discovered I have the most recently renovated apartment in the 8-unit building [and the nicest] and I'm not sure how well that sits with the tenants who've been eager to tell me they've been living here since 1983 and that Zipper or Bipper Revels or some such mystery man lived in my apartment for a "long time" and of course I quickly just removed myself from the insanity by a gentle "Well, it's nice to meet you."

Fort Greene is cool. The convenience and trees are heaven-sent. However, it's becoming quite a haven for happy 9 to 5 hetero-couples and mothers with high-end strollers. Gone are the days of the bohemian hippy artist [neo-soul or indie blonde] amock in Fort Greene. Things are becoming very resolved and nicely packaged in the latest Abercrombie and/or Essence flavor. Which is all good, but it doesn't ring of progressiveness and open-mindedness. Dare I say things feel a bit "hip yet conservative".

Until next time,

Keith

What do you do about RACIAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Yesterday afternoon I hooked up with my really good friend Said. We met at the arch of Washington Square Park, we walked over to the West Village for a dish of Penne with broccoli and zucchini at this Italian foodie on the corner of Carmine near 6th Avenue, we walked back to Washington Square Park and sat among the squirrels and the students and the perverts and the insane woman who was wiping mustard on the trees and who had a whistle that would put a Yankees referee to shame.

And we talked about race. Well, race and responsibility. Well, I talked and he listened.

A few weeks ago a fellow writer, black, was explaining the reasons why theaters won't produce plays written in a certain black aesthetic; he was explaining the only plays that theaters are willing to produce are plays that have white characters, or gay characters, or self-deprecating black characters. And I listened for about three seconds and then I said this: Why do people have such a hard time dealing with black people as human beings? The operative word being "BEING". Which, in my opinion, means alive and active. Why do people have such a hard time allowing black people to show vulnerability, to be sexual in any capacity, to question religion, to hate their parents, to love their pets, to want to travel to somewhere besides Africa? Why is black defined as simply a state of being that only and ALWAYS acknowledges social and political marginalization and the history of slavery as the source of eternal victimization? And if for whatever reason one decides to drift away from that acknowledgment and decide to what... question their grandfather's parenting, decide to read something other than Malcolm X, then their black card is revoked.

I don't disagree that a lot of theaters find that musicals and plays with music are bigger money-makers than plays that examine the complexity of present-day human life within the wide range of blackness. There is much truth to that. But to question the authenticity of blackness because one courageously explores the horrors of emotional abuse, their love of the Brady Bunch and Lost In Space, or even their perverse adoration of President Bush... is, in my opinion, unfortunate. And to use a word my mother often used, "stifling".

I told the fellow writer that I'm far more interested in writing from the truth of how I've lived and been shaped by all things, and that I hope the audience, no matter what race, will find comfort in my consciousness and go home and ponder the wide truth about who and why they are what they are.

Said listened and thankfully understood my point of view as we stood on the corner of University and 14th Street saying our goodbyes.

See, I was not raised to define blackness as the limit to which I can live my life. On the contrary, my mother raised me to define blackness as the great launching pad to spring forth from and embrace and battle ALL that's within this world!

Until next time,

Keith

A CULTURE OF COMPLAINT

A few days ago I was sitting with friends [old and new] at Pequeno—a trendy little Mexican foodie in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We had just returned from Queens where Body and Soul put on their annual outdoor House Party. Lots of people, lots of House Music, lots of sweat and chests and legs and piercings and girls throwing beers into guy's faces. I had a good time, but my friends didn't. They complained and complained. About the dated music, about the heat, about the skinny guy dancing alone in the pool of water; about the long line to buy drinks; about the homogenized crowd with blue-streaked hair.

So we left.

When we arrived at Pequeno, all was cool... That is until we were asked to wait for ten minutes until a outdoor table became available. But when the table became available, a party of four sat there. We, of course, immediately walked over to them with an "Excuse us, this is our table." They immediately and apologetically removed themselves, but my three friends found this to be a good enough reason to complain. About the heat, about white privilege; about the invisibility of blackness, about how Brooklyn's changing, etc.

After we sat down and ordered our soft tacos and chicken tostados, the complaining kicked up again: Halle Berry's lack of talent; Gabrielle Union's all-American smile; Maxwell's new found gayness; DeAngelo's bloated face and his "mediocre" voice; and Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth—one of my friends said she heard it was like a lecture. AND THAT'S WHEN I SAID: My God, it's a film about the implosion of our planet. How else can you convey the information that the planet is falling apart, SING AND DANCE IT?

I hate complainingng. It sucks energy from your brain and body. And in my opinion [I used to be a bit of complainer up until I realized that I was complaining in order to avoid dealing with my own truth and baggage], complaining is useless. It's a projection of one's own unresolved life. Because if you don't like ANYTHING then you got yourself a problem that the venom you have for the Truth about Global Warming or Gabrielle Union's smile will never be able to fix.

Complaining is the song of the victimized. And I swear, I hear this song waaaaaay too much!

My suggestion: Challenge yourself to be honest about who and why and where you are in the world. And like my good friend Hortense says, "STOP COMPLAINING AND PUT INTO ACTION THE IDEALS AND DREAMS YOU WISH TO LIVE BY."


Until next time,

Keith