I am getting ready, trying not rush, but the seconds are falling quicker then gravity, time seems to sift through my hands like sand. Have you ever tried to move the sand at the beach, the lesson on wasted time is not something you can teach. Everyone has to waste their own time to get a hint of its worth. So I am always making up for lost time, minutes wasted kicking it with the in crowd, moments listening to my ego that told me to be loud, instead of to be proud. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I must have hit my head, I was not myself right now, I was in good health but beside myself, looking at my reflection without a mention of any recognition, dismissing my truest thoughts. Maybe my inner voice was drowned out by the media, or just the commercial blaring like “Let go my Eggo.” This apartment on Prince Street is not big enough for all of us and are ego’s, and are shoes and loud music and TV’s early in the morning. Me and my alter ego are meant to be, and no one can tell me different. I said it’s my ego, it is a separate entity. Fills me up, like morning already-made waffles, builds me up like an architect only to demolish me in the same breath. It tells me to not listen to my dreams, or even believe what I see, and to care what things look like more than what they seem. My ego goes around stealing my friends until I feel I don’t know any of them. I am music and music is me, but that’s not what my ego tells me. How dare a girl who is not a celebrity claim to be something as immense as music? It is now transforming into a little hater borrowing from the many people in its past who have bruised it. Some people have never even heard you sing, so how can you claim to be it, breath it live it. You are not on that level; you should settle never aim for an uplifting treble and rebel against your own aspirations by distrusting means. But this is just what my alter ego said last night in my dream. Because I fell asleep to the radio, with Beyonce’s song going on and on “Talk like this cus i can back it up, gotta big ego such a huge ego…” so that I envisioned the tune, lifted self portrait pictures of images gifted, only to shatter them if they mattered to me. I picked the wrong song to fall asleep to. Don’t get me wrong everyone, especially someone about to hit the stage has ego, and confidence that could use a boost, but just don’t kick yourself in the face in the process, so that you and your ego become two faced like a scene out of bat man. So my dream was full of split personality emcees, wearing masks like the Saint Lunatics, giving the audience a circus show, forgetting what made them whole. In this deep sleep a piece of the tent got caught a growing tree of life and the great big red room came crashing down. I had fallen asleep with my lap top on, so my dream had snippets of faces popping up with status updates, celebrities filling up dream interludes with twitter trending topics with nonsense to make a profit, buy my album amalgam, and blogs turned into frogs on lily pad poems in ponds of websites that just kept rolling. Then ‘Drake’ when I wake, echoed ‘I just want to be successful’ motivated me in the most restful way, who knows maybe it was the other lyric ‘hoes…I suppose’ that didn’t sit quite right with me. Disappointment is an understatement for the way I feel about men’s mention of women in hip hop. I can’t even say these celebrity dudes are ignorant cause their Geniuses they just drop the ball when in comes to having deeper then skin deep respect for women. But that’s the same old song, and if your still reading this I am preaching to the choir. With the exception of a few cool dudes everything on the radio wreaks for a need for a woman’s twist, if hip hop is dead, let some women recreate, get with a sister to bring it back to life. This plastically auto-tuned celebrity over night, claiming to be hard, but only singing about the club music, goes in one ear and then disappears. So I had to turn off the radio, lock up my t.v and throw away the key, shut down my super ego, which was not saving me. I woke up with the sunrise just to buy a few moments to meditate, enough seconds to elevate my mind and wind myself up for a long day. Getting ready in the mirror and squinting at my reflection which was unrecognizable. Since when did I judge my self worth on the idea of maturity, it seemed like absurdity but I knew I wasn’t dreaming, just wishing validity was reality. I promised myself I would never stop dreaming, stop singing and most importantly that I would stay in Never Never land and Never grow up, or at least never be all business and no fun like the womp womp wompwomp adults that nagged Charlie Brown. While I tried to stay humble my ego bragged, and when I was proud my ego urged to be more selfless and lag on my own dreams. A little game of catch 22 that I had no clue what the rules were to, or how to strategize to win so I just let myself give in, and pretend I did not love to sing. My life is a song playing as the record spins. Except every scratch makes the melody grow stronger, and the lyrics are unwritten but never end. The beat is in love with the lyrics but likes to pretend. The dj, she is magnificent, that universal mystic musing spirit. This is all remixed over and over, can you hear it? The melody is sampled remixed and reproduced. But then the record started skipping and wishing for the cuts to heal. The song cannot be mastered it is raw, free, and never complete. I am a dreamer and sometimes reality is not real to me. Maybe it’s because I have too many parts of self, that all make it feel that I am crowded when alone. I don’t finish my sentences or sometimes they run on. I tend to picture memories like movie scenes, those dramatic and detrimental to the plot of my day in black and white with the soundtrack spinning from strings that ‘Atlast’ Etta James, and Billie Holiday could hum to. I rewound like I had a flex capacitor, and hopped back to the future. Before I had internalized hatred, before I had ever spit spoken word into a microphone. Before I got my first pager, before they killed pay phones, and before I broke my promise to never stop singing and never grow up. After I was born, took my first step, after my first fight, my first light of a lighter to burn one lazy lifted day away, after picking up the pieces of me to stand on my own two feet. After history lessons taught me about amazing icons thought of as kings named Martin, and their dreams, and ladies on buses who stood up for their rights by staying seated, who got arrested but were not defeated and were idolised by every woman wishing for eqaulity as if it were a sweet smell like roses. I stood up in room 213 at Malcom X elementary when called on. I said loudly so everyone could here, because I could not for see my shadow so I must have been projecting, that I remembered the day I was born, I could picture it in my head as the words left my mouth, the altar in the room on Prince street, I knew I was born in Mount Zion hospital in San Francisco twenty minutes before my twin sister, but the memory was in that apartment. I remember my eye lids opening and thinking to myself today I was born. My memories compartmentalized like an organized old ladies pantry. In my mind it made sense that my ego could not be altered by any formation of flattery and my confidence could not be flattened by the sharpest heaviest hurtful words. After all, I am armed with anecdotes like ‘take those disses and hisses and throw them in an imaginary trash can’ might be corny but in environment of yo mama jokes and everything you do is picked apart, it works. Somehow some garbage managed to be ingested and I choked, neglected my wishes to try and mask my uniqueness which translated into forth grader is weirdness. After I said my piece the teacher nodded I sat down and heard, “very good imagination Wren, next time tell a true story.” Yeah that was the day I remember promising myself I would never become a stick up, stuck up, annoying, rude-ass, no imagination and strictly business, mean, bossy, no believer, non dreamer, grown up, no laughing: adult. But who made that promise was it my 8 year old ego, embarrassed by a comment about my share of the day, or was it me. Either way I only keep promises that are a key to a door, to open me to be free. The minute they start feeling like lock boxes I hammer them open and re-build again. So although I may never completely grow up and loose the kid inside of me, I most certainly will grow and spread my wings. My childhood memories and fingers crossed, pinky promises are like my own history book, like the roots to my story tree. Each branch of this tree learning how much it can bare. Some limbs breaking in the process too eager to create fruit, to have something to show for the minutes seated there, some forgetting that they are even alive and growing dry. I have learned about revolutions, now I’m moving to evolutions, and letting go of all I know, to grow. It is a new day and as I fall in love all over again with the lyric, “Birds flying high you know how I feel,” instead of never grow up, it is now, Never Quit. I Am ready to grow. -Wren
Wrenagade is a lover of all things Bay Area. An artist and a supporter of all of her cohorts in their artistry, Wrenagade is known for her brilliant visual art, her political and community commentary, her poetry, and for her unique singing voice. For more of Wrenagade in all facets, visit her site at www.wrenagade.blogspot.com
