POC ASSIGNMENT 6: THE VOICE(S) & Language - TD

Quantum Spit, Douglas Kearney & No Moon in L.A., Anthony A Lee

{Define : Quantum=is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction.}

I have never engaged with a poem like I did with this piece.  I read it aloud once and I caught the rhythm, I read it twice and the message became clearer, I read it for the third and fourth time and I felt the message in a rhythmic beat, it is now an unshakable poem that I hear on the radio hidden under a hype worn out record.

 I reacted to the poem from the first page, and by the second read, I realized Kearney was giving the reader a key/guide so we could follow the voices throughout the piece. This allowed the inner turmoil between the art of rap and the consumerism of the rap culture to take the lead in the lines. After a while, I identified who was speaking by recognizing the font, and I didn’t have to flip back to the glossary, which freed my mind to feel the tug of war happening between the artist and America. The battle of artist versus commercialism/consumerism present in this poem made me think of Kanye West. I felt ashamed for blaming him, I felt ashamed for not giving him more than a “that’s a shame” response as I Instagram watched his defeat. I could not shake the feeling, and remembered the voice of No Moon in L.A. by Anthony Lee. I re read it and realized it spoke to the shame I was feeling, “I wish now I had put my forehead to his shoes I wish I had pushed his bare chest against mine and held on…stayed there to see him through not just a year, ten years, twenty-more let him save my soul”. West, an artist I revered as one of the best before he broke in ½ and splinter into a skeleton of himself reminded me of the “beggar” in Lee’s piece. Like the beggar West to was given money to blow without direction, West once healed many through his words, like the man who had been a drug counselor before relapsing again. When he was a “real MC” I was supportive, now that America has successfully choked him I laugh at meme’s that blast him for his weird behavior, I never even lend an ear to his latest music. Instead I  repeat his album College Drop Out like he is dead and this was his final album. I play it like a homage to the rapper lost, but he is alive and Kearney provides a vivid , poetic description of what that struggle looks like from the inside out.

The fight is literally taking shape on the page as Kearney uses the font, word overlap ,brackets, italics, bold, style and grammar to simulate what a an actual combat between all the voices would look like off of the page. Kearney made the abstract real, by introducing voices on the page at the same time. An example of this can be found on page 112 where America writes  “DEAR MC:

DO IT AGAIN, JUST LIKE THAT!

AMERICA,

LOVE”

 At this point the drums are speaking to the MC, he feels the spirit of the drums…

“and the drums each remember my stories stories”

He is being drummed out of his hypnosis like stat into the true nature of his voice, America is upset that he is going back to “conscious rap” and yells

“YOU CHANGED IT!

-          AMERICA

HOLD IT

                        -AMERICA

STOP!!

                        -AMERICA
SAY IT RIGHT

                        -AMERICA”

America is literally speaking in between the written lines of the MC, trying to manipulate his lyrics which is crafted right there on the page as Kearney attaches words to the end of the MC’s voice, leaving no space for the MC to speak. America’s voice is bolded in all caps and “chokes” out the MC’s consciousness until the MC says

“…Choking…. I can’t make it out”

America is satisfied that the MC has been tamed again, and the voice of the turn table remarks “{…can’t stop..}{…it won’t stop..} {…and it don’t stop…}” – and echo of the 90’s tag line by Puff daddy- that remarks to the cycle of artist oppression

  America keeps the MC preoccuped with “ASSESS, TITTY”- tells the MC that “YOU CAN GO PLATINUM, GET A WHIP!”

                                                            Ghetto –whipped ? –Asks the MC( brilliant word play by Kearny to deliver a message)

                                                                        YES! Responds America

In the end America is a “crab holding onto the penis of the artist”, who based on the cultural of rap, the context clues, and the historical and contemporary system of white America pimping/ enslaving Black talent, is a Black male, from the streets, who as the Battle Rapper voices  “CAN”T MAKE IT OUT ON THE WIND OF NIKE” and sees rap as the only option.

And all the voices, the MC, the MC’s Manifestation and the Battle rapper repeat “Everything sounds like applause these days”. That line resonated with me as moment where all the inner voices, even the soul of the MC are lost without a compass to follow. I paralleled this line with the line in No Moon in L.A:

“ I don’t have any one to talk to

 looked down, arms a his sides, palms up

I said you  don’t  have to tell me

any more humiliating stories

 not for $5, Jesus Christ!”

 I kept thinking Kanye and all of the others lost under millions of lights. No one to talk to, no one who cares, and all we do is give $1.99 to ITunes to consume their work, not wanting to hear any more than what will entertain us.