@hausorpheus SOWEDOIT is going down TONIGHT! #afrobeats #dancehall #hiphop
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Janaina Medeiros

@theartofmadeline
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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Jules of Nature
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we're not kids anymore.

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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One Nice Bug Per Day
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@johnorpheus
@hausorpheus SOWEDOIT is going down TONIGHT! #afrobeats #dancehall #hiphop
Levelling up at Haus Orpheus presents...MEK A NOISE Every 1st Thursday we uplift and get down! (at Art Square Gallery & Cafe)
TONIGHT! Haus Orpheus presents...MEK A NOISE We go DANCE. We go SING. A MAD MAD TING!! #afrobeats #trinidad #caribana2017 (at Art Square Gallery & Cafe)
Smashing the Patriarchy comedy style with my partner in crime @missriegz TOMORROW NIGHT! Haus Orpheus presents...Life in the Diaspora Art Square Galley 9 pm... #afrobeats #comedy #spokenword #sowedoit (at Art Square Gallery & Cafe)
BLACK STAR RISING mixtape is here! #WeyYaCallDatTing video in bio🇹🇹🇳🇬🇬🇭
Afri Fashion
Photographer: Queendomali Azania
Instagram @queendomali_
Atlanta Ga
Model : Montez Davis
http://queendomaliphotography.tumblr.com/
Wey yuh cawl dat ting? #videoshoot #vibes #torontolife
Squad so 🔥🔥🔥 #videoshoot #blackstarrising
How I became an Alchemist
I ‘woke up’ for the first time when I was 6. This is how it started: boy me had been sleeping serenely, I imagine. Little black limbs tangled. Ill fitting shorts and shirt clinging. Nestled in the Caribbean heat with my cheeks salty as I had been crying. I woke like a dawn, both slowly and suddenly. There was the picture of white Jesus in his halo praying. The sound of the bush birds signing in the bamboo. A cool Trinidad breeze softly rattling ten million leaves. And then with a start I popped upright. My tiny heart pounded. My little nostrils flared. I remembered: my first atrocity.
It all started as a fight with my older brother Junior Aly. Like many such fights of sibling rivalry the cause did not matter and still to this day is not remembered. Yet in the pathological mind of 6 year old me it made sense to win. Being the more scrawny of the two I lost. Batted away and pinned down like the big lazy grasshoppers I used to chase on my way to church. Being the prouder of the two I would not relent and took the conflict thermo-nuclear: I poisoned his fish.
Junior’s fish lived in an oil drum, cemented at the bottom, with the top 3rd removed — a Third World aquarium. The green murk bloomed with goldfish and baby coy and aggressive Japanese fighter fish. This was my target. I poured the entire bottle with the skull and crossbones label into it. That thick black liquid we knew simply as ‘disinfectant’. I’d watched it kill crapeau (toads) with just a few splashes. It worked so fast you could follow their last few hops and watch them go. So I knew as certain as Kobo (vultures) flocked in tall trees that every single fish was doomed.
My punishment was equally devastating (in my mind anyways). Miss Excelly, our wise grandma, knew precisely how to get me: I was now not allowed to go on the excursion to San Fernando that afternoon. The smell of the sea, the rolling topaz water, the palpable excitement of the trip, none of this would be mine. So cruel! I wailed. I begged. Gushed up rivers of remorse to no avail. At last I passed out exhausted and forgot that fish, excursions or brothers ever existed.
Until then when I woke up suddenly and remembered everything. Dashing headlong into the street I saw that the big mini vans we called ‘Maxi Taxis’ were being loaded for the trip. I ran, arms swinging, for what seemed like days. When I went back to Trini in 2011 it turned out to be not that far at all but my legs were shorter back then. I arrived at the junction only to see the Maxi Taxi turning the far corner, leaving me stewing in diesel and disappointment.
Then I did what most people would consider a second act of madness: I ran after the mini van.
What child would do this? Heart thudding with stubbornness I ran and ran and when I could no longer run I walked and when I had passed the streets I knew I kept walking and when there were no houses I kept walking and sang to myself surrounded by the teeming jungle. Never turning back even when the sun began to fall and the veil of the horizon grew darker. Finally, the deep of the evening descending, I found myself at the edge of existence. A southern Trinidad night is pitch black but never silent. It is filled with the million voices of insects, frogs, snakes, grasshoppers, night birds hunting — a great seething chorus of the unseen. This terrifying choir finally, along with my weariness, sapped the fight right out of me. Little me wept.
I had come to the border of reality. A void as vast as space. Big enough to contain all the terrors and potential of life itself. This was the first time I remember being conscious that I existed as a separate thing from the world. And that this existence was very small in a Universe that was very big. It is the origin story of my inner life: my second birth. And it began with a mean spirited, selfish act of mass murder.
I didn’t know this then but I would frequently return to this borderland in my head: this place of terror and clarity. In time I began to see it as the place where my true self lives. It is a well from which I frequently draw and drink the wisdom of what I am. The greatest lesson: that our awfulness can often bring out our best. It amazes me that I have journeyed over continents and decades and can look back and still find myself rooted in that moment and its alchemy; its power to transform.
So I blamed the whole thing on rastas. When a random car picked me up and took me to the police station I claimed I was kidnapped by Rastas who had then dropped me on the side of the road. Of course no one believed me but it was worth a try. Apologies to my Rastafarian brothers and sisters for the slander (Jah Bless!). Yet perhaps until the moment I die the power of facing the void will be a constant guide: my black star shining.
This sweet alchemy is, in fact, the only thing I can offer you
Tune in to CBC 1's Big City, Small World right now! #bacchanal #jouvert http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/toronto/big-city-small-world-1.3409164
Radically Me
The first time someone was racist to me I was thrilled. I was 14 years old, fresh from the Caribbean and confused about why playing 'football' in gym class involved strange names like 'quarterback' and 'wide receiver'. After my third time crossing the line of scrimmage early (a concept everyone assumed I understood) this Italian kid looked over at me and yelled: 'THIS NIGGER KEEPS GOING OFFSIDE!' My inside voice was like: 'I think I've just been racisted. YES!' Overjoyed to finally have an experience to go with the idea I burst out laughing.
I always think about this when some white people say: 'Why is it always about race? Can't we just all be equal? Why are you always bringing it up?' The answer is, of course, if it doesn't happen to you it in fact does not exist. So it's easy for a white person to think: what's all the fuss? Not so easy for those of us who have to deal with it on a daily basis.
For a visible minority on an average day you get constantly confronted with things that suggest - sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly - that a) you're fundamentally different b) and not in a good way. My recent favorites happened at a party last month where I didn't know anyone. The guy who's birthday party it was asked me: 'What instrument do you play? Duh! What am I thinking? Bass of course. All black guys play bass." Or his girlfriend who wacked me in my arm 3 times, each harder than the last, in an attempt to make me come to her so she could introduce herself. After trying to ignore her I turn and she declared: 'you two are the only people I don't know here.' The other guy is Indian. We are the only two dark skin people there. This kind of thing happens so often that I automatically go to my white people acting stupid toolbox.
My choices are:
1. Give the answer they want to hear. Outcome: you feel sub-human but the encounter ends quickly
2. Point out that they're being dumb in a not so friendly way. Outcome: they are confused about why you're so mad and think you're a jerk
3. Point out that they're being dumb in a funny way and laugh about it. Outcome: they are still confused but think you're a nice guy.
None of these are good options. Often out of desire to fit in (when you’re younger) or lack of desire to deal with the weirdness you choose option 1 just to make them go away. Tension gone, friction dissipates. Harmless right? BUT what are the effects of doing this 'tell them what they want to hear' for decades day in/day out from adolescence into teenager into adulthood? What happens is you start being less yourself. In order to not cause problems or be seen as an asshole or play into stereotype traps like 'the angry black guy' you start disassociating from your instinct to be fully yourself. In other words: you reject parts of yourself that are inconvenient. Over time those feelings, thoughts, ways of expression and drives towards fairness become harder and harder to access. Until like a spiritual amputee you exist only in the boxes the false narratives have made for you: you internalize the walls of your prison. A bit abstract? Let me give you an example:
At the play 'Black Boys' which my friend Tawiah Ben-Eben M'carthy co-wrote and starred in they asked a simple question to the audience: if you were the first person in this theatre would you feel comfortable sitting front and center and 'claiming the space'? Most of the white folks raised their hand. Most of us minorities did not. I started to raise mine but then had to admit that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. How is this possible? A guy who can get up in front of 10, 000 people and sing songs has somewhere in his mind decided that he had no right to claim a prominent seat at a show he had a ticket to? Somewhere along the line saying what they want me to say had by a consistent, subconscious process become a box that hemmed me in. This terrifies me. It is easy to fight against someone that comes up to your face and calls you a nigger - I still laugh on the rare occasions when this happens (and it still does). But how do you combat something that slowly, covertly, over years and years erodes your self worth, your self respect, your sense of dignity?
My answer - the ideal I strive for - is to be Radically Me. To make the weird jokes that white people don't get. To use music and poetry and creativity to get fully back in touch with the far flung corners of my being I've been taught to refuse. To create spaces where minority stories can be told without needing to be filtered for white ears. To be aware and trusting and accepting to all people that have done me no harm. To actively hear other marginalized peoples - Native Canadians, minority women, LBGTQ people - when often their stories are even more denied than mine. To catalogue and actively boycott my own biases. To put faith in the differences that make us unique and by so doing unites us. To be Radically Me.And to - hopefully - laugh our shabbiness to each other out of existence.
Allies
Like many men, I’ve had a complicated relationship with women. On the one hand a gang of them raised me - usually single handed - with no men in sight. On the other hand this breeds dependency which breeds resentment and navigating that while figuring out being a man without a compass is a recipe for disaster.
Women are the heroes of my existence. Without their compassion, strength, determination, vision and wisdom I’d be useless. There was grandma Excelly begging family friends for money to buy my books and uniform for Presentation College - one of Trinidad’s prestige schools - which I’d only gotten into due to her tutoring. There was Auntie Joan, worry etched on her face, when I came home from school screaming and crying, traumatized and confused that first winter in Northern Ontario. There was my step mom Amy loving me like her own flesh and blood when there was no reason to. They have directed me in films, been my musical comrades, trusted me with their secrets and made almost every good piece of art I’ve ever done more magical. So why is it that it has been so hard for me to find love and companionship in them?
When all my homegirls started talking feminism I reacted the same way many men did: defensively. What did I do? Who did I oppress? Why does women being fully empowered scare us so? It seems to me that many men find women mysterious and even terrifying. Powerful in subtle ways we have trouble grasping. The only way hetero-masculinity teaches us to react to this unknown is as a threat, as something to conquer. Therefore we are conflicted. And much of our society is built on this silent urge to dominate what we fear might dominate us. Yet the cord of understanding that ran through my childhood kept me listening. And the more I listened the more I realized that I was part of something very very wrong: the gas-lighting, the constant undermining, the ever present fear of violence, the Great Lie of beauty that tricks girls into believing they are playthings before they are even old enough to process it, the whole rotten system tilted to see only breasts and curves (full disclosure: I love curves and am very guilty of this) and on and on. It reminded me of being black and always having to navigate people’s assumptions about who I was. Finally it dawned on me - women were my natural allies and they were under attack. And I was part of the problem.
I’ve learned men that we should listen to women because they have been listening while we didn’t have to - i.e. they know what we do not. We should prefer their voices and follow their lead for this reason. We should promote their interests because their success is the success of all of us. Above all we should treat them the way we would want to be treated: as unique individuals not walking cliches, as heads full of ideas not bodies full of fantasies, as voices crying out to heard, appreciated and accepted.
This I believe, makes us all better humans.
The Boy King
I had to talk myself back down from the heights; where I came searching for the mother I never had and the father that never had me. I filled the empty space they left with sex because it was the closest thing to loving myself - a trick the vacuum had not taught me. My lovers, baffled by this vacancy, threw up their hands and one by one gave up on the child who could not be loved.
So I gave my trust to art. To music. To poems. To endlessly re-creating pictures of the void. Painstakingly piecing together the shattered story of my existence. Art at least could not abandon me I thought. But then she too became a jealous lover: nursing my confusion while tearing the flesh of any that got too close. So I simply left. I gave up and walked away into the wilderness.
There I sat beneath the lonely mountain and gathered my healing in silence. And when hunger and solitude had purified my desires, finally I began to climb. Struggling past sheer cliffs and treacherous ledges. Wrestling with slippery turns. Sinews strained and determined. Wanting nothing more than to fall lovingly into the abyss and forget. My stubbornness and my self pity waged a savage war, and pity met its match. So I climbed on. I climbed until in a fitful sweaty dream I discovered that the thing I was seeking had been with me all along. I discovered the doorway back to myself.
And I was a mere boy. Thoughtful. Sensitive. Fierce. A child king. Running through the Caribbean bush with a guava branch scepter and a hibiscus crown. I had fought endless battles to surrender to this infant. I had come all this way to be exactly where I started.
Destiny, I learned, is irresistible.
Best Danny Brown interview EVER.
There’s nothing better than hearing Danny B and Joey Diaz for 3 hours swap old crazy stories of being heavily involved in the drug game. If you aren’t familiar with Joey’s work, he’s a phenomenal comedian, and I affirm he is currently the greatest living story teller walking the Earth.
When the vibe is so lit so lit #bacchanal #fete #jiggyaf (at The Painted Lady)
Vanity was a Toronto girl and Prince’s protege. 30 years later. Still hot...
An EPIC night. Bigups to all the squads that made it. We are in awe! #bacchanal #bacchanalfete