Caps and bricks [Òkpú na ǹkpúmè]

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Sitting in the hood like community colleges
This dope money here is Little Trey's scholarship
'Cause ain't no tuition for having no ambition
And ain't no loans for sitting your ass at home
So we forced to sell crack, rap, and get a job
You gotta do something man, your ass is grown

Drug dealing just to get by
Stacking money till it get sky high
(Kids, sing! Kids, sing!)
We wasn't supposed to make it past twenty-five
Joke's on you, we're still alive
Throw your hands up in the sky and say
"We don't care what people say"

—Kanye West - We Don’t Care (from The College Dropout)

"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of hansom-cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
"By which I get my wealth—
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour's noble health."

I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.

—Lewis Carroll - The Aged Aged Man (or is it Haddocks' Eyes? I dunno, ask Wonderland Alice's White Knight)

My third child graduated on Wednesday. Three in and my Nigerian brain is still not used to the idea of all that pageantry just for completing secondary education. Despite being a fairly indulgent Dad, I think, I don't generally do well sitting on auditorium pleather listening to that horrible Elgar doddle, Land of Hope and Glory (AKA Pomp and Circumstance March #1) , which has the double ignominy of reminding me of English Rugby fandom. Doesn't help that this is a year when the UKers once again failed to bring a ceremonial guillotine to a coronation, so sod all their kingly jingles, especially those infiltrating a colony that kicked the Crown's arse. Hmm, though—and I'm just thinking of this for the first time—maybe using that tune to serenade its dressed-up GED wielders is actually a clever swipe of irony. OK! Well played, Y. Doodle!

Anyway, on such occasions, I usually just trade out in my head with the wise words and tune from Kanye West's The College Dropout. Kids, sing! Kids, sing!

Maybe the weird spirit of Boulder has its own way of tittering at such glitterings. Udoka, the graduate, got his pre-ceremony shoot pretty much photo-bombed by a stray yearling moose. The moose was tranqued and relocated the next day, and hopefully it didn't have parents around celebrating its moose graduation, because they can get pretty rowdy.

I do love Udoka, though. He's gentle and kind, makes us all laugh, and has a sneaky solidity to him. I'll never know how, as much of a pain in the ass I was as a kid (and do persist), I've been so fortunate as a father.

That's not entirely true; I do know part of the reason. We got very lucky with offspring #1, and he's been quite a phenomenal influence on the rest. Osi has always been great with kids, and not just his younger siblings. Neighbors always wanted him to babysit, and in his young life he's already had jobs to rave reviews supervising teens in Boulder's excellent Youth Corps program (which has them doing outdoor care and maintenance labor summertimes for a quite decent wage), and teaching engineering principles to school children through LEGO robotics programs.

Osi has done so much of the latter that he's decided to make his own business of it. It's fun to watch all this come together, especially since I've had a front row seat from its inception at home, over a course of many years. If you happen to be in the Front Range area and either have school-aged kids, or any connection to education, do check out Choccyblocks.com.

Oh, and the poem? Well, I always used to fancy myself as a teacher's terror, and yet I stood utterly in awe of the knave in "Haddocks' Eyes" (my favorite name for the poem, of the many given by the White Knight).

So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.

I think that properly rounds out my mock-cynical take on the edification of the young. Kids, sing! Moose, sing!

Hail Wendy and Luis!

There's been some lovely news from a couple of my poet friends on the Colorado western slope. Wendy Videlock, a superb poet and painter, and one who's always found ways to include me in events and projects, has become the sixth Western Slope Poet Laureate. She's done so much to expand the arts overall among the San Juan mountain communities, with fingers radiating into the Book Cliffs and palisades.

Wendy's predecessor in the post is Dr. L. Luis López, professor emeritus at Colorado Mountain University (you'll never be more jealous of a student's life than when you see one of the CMU campuses!) I've always enjoyed cautiously discussing poetry and classics with Luis—cautiously because I'm but a dabbler while he taught Latin and Ancient Greek at university level. This is a particularly elegant baton-pass.

Speaking of Western Slope things I recently recorded a guest appearance on the Emerging Form podcast on creative process, with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Christie Aschwanden. Rosemerry is my dear friend, my birthday twin, and a fabulous, highly sought-after poet with whom I've had the pleasure of performing many times over the past decade. Christie is an accomplished science writer whom I hadn't met before, but based on the conversation I certainly hope we'll have many other chances to chat. We mostly spoke about AI, and I offered thoughts from my perspective, with one foot deep in tech and another deep in the in creative arts. I'll of course have links and all that once the episode, well, emerges.

Sound selections

Vuma, the best track by far from the new EP by longtime favorite Meshell Ndegeocello, brings a joyful, South African vibe, courtesy Thandiswa.

I've really been digging on Gotopo since I discovered her lately. She is an Afro-Venzuelan talent, with heavy emphasis on the Afro. Sacúdete, the title track off her debut album, is a brilliant example, with its glitch-done-right, hyperkinetic funk, giving enough of an earthy feel to the Denbow-reminiscent rhythm to set it apart from the typical contemporary Latin dance hits.

Two of my favorite contemporary rappers Devine Carama AKA Kingtucky and Mickey Factz have a fun video for their collaborative track "Consummate Professional", off Carama's latest EP, "Trends Last A Season, Culture Last A Lifetime". Carama is a respectable heir to the more cerebral rappers of the 90s.

The Wu-Tang Clan saga continues with a guest spot from Redman, and a typically over-the-top video for a slick remix by Our Samplus.

For a bonus, I won't say much about the next track (by newcomer, to me, Jubilee Jackson) except that it will surely make you, as the title goes, smile. This is my summer wish for you, all of you, from Alices to knaves to White Knights to aged, aged men, and baby moose.

That's your bundle, good people. Well, just one more thing. I've now learned how long I have to live in a place before I meld into its sports fandom: about 25 years. I lived in Chicago during the heyday of the Bulls and in Dallas for the peak of the Cowboys, and I was left cold as a closet kipper in both cases, but I'm definitely eye-shining for these Denver Nuggets to get their first ever goofy ball-teetering-on-cone trophy, and fingers crossed, by the time the next newsletter is out, that will be a fait accompli. Rise up, The Joker!

Please do consider sharing this newsletter with others, and subscribing, if you haven't (button in the lower right). Ever new sounds for the listening, new plays on the field of words, fresh takes for tech's sake, with the side sauce of odd juxtapositions. Dá àlụ́-nu!

❧ Égwú 🪘 Ókwú ✍🏿 Ígwè 📡 Ńdụ̀ ❣️