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Of course.

It’s a sobering world…

Where the cloning is rampant through music and fashion and our kings do no exceptional act nor speak of too noble a word. Yet here we are, front row center clapping and basking in the entertainment of it through the afternoon leaning to the dawn sky evening, waiting for a respectable time to start a brand new bender we’ll regret in the morning while thinking about whether you just had sex with this girl.

But this scenes boring.

This seems corny and the list gets longer for the things I must conquer only rivaled by a pile of lists of random shit that bores me. Like you and you. Like picking teams. Like choosing sides. Like, crews aside, my boozing streak is enough to make ten men lose their pride and drown their sorrows in a Jameson pool. And look where that’s gotten me… Back of a cruiser, cuffed like a goof by a trooper not laughing cus I’m passed the old thinking that me being trapped in the station is cool because I know it’s not. I’m not one of the group. I’m no roughed up diamond nor toughened mime. I’m no lessened soul but I’m a lesson learned and an impression burned in the minds of the streets best kids who ingest my words and say, “That’s that shit” when it bleeds their system. And their investments earned.. in me, that is. See, we bad kids and breeds of less, are cold like days you can see your breath. And I told them, “Baby, you got this”. From the floor to top floor corporate office, I’ve done nothing but tell them they’re more. More than me. More than my dreams and for damn sure more than these mistakes. But who cures the doctor or uplifts the clown? Because whether or not I can see the stakes I’ll be the first to never fold when the chips are down. When the dust settles we turn rock from how the sediments got since it’s hard to coach yourself something that you’ve never been taught. But shit I play these cards like Tony Larussa and don’t complain cus life’s as hard as what you’re supposed to go through. A bad patch is just a catch 22 that you need to go through until you reach that clear. It could be a fate you won’t face or even see in a year but the destinations dictated by the way that you steer. And these kids praise me like I’ve raised them for years, though when I’m near I’m distant like the fisherman away from the peer. But I’m no preaching statue nor a leech for stature. I’m no teacher, pastor nor cheer’ed champion. I’m a smooth mistake and a graceful fall. I’m the cruelest place with the coolest walls and a reason to stay and enjoy this rain. I’m the writing that’s righting my pain to posture. I’m the night sky grazed by the greens of pastures where shepherds lead the lesser to a flame to foster. And I’m changed by the winds of my whirling ways, swayed by the whistle of avoiding strays, and suddenly considering the importance of my urgency. I haven’t made one mistake I haven’t learned from purposely. And if only some of this lasts, then let this be the last word from me – that to live fast and die young is less a statement than a certainty.

(As they applaud the last performance and the bowing for each person,
I stood up and closed the motherfucking curtain.)

Love&Above,
- Bryan

Absolutely worth the entire listen.

via

Blackberry is down for the count… again. And the world is going crazy.

As news hit me this morning I was reminded of a post I wrote almost 2 years ago about the same global issue of not having Blackberry service.

See the original post below.

Love&Above,
- be.

(2009 Blackberry outage. Not a big deal either.)

Holy Shit! Blackberry Messenger is down! Aaawwwww, HELL NAH!

So, I was on Lakeshore, driving east and about to turn onto Bathurst, when my Berry went off. It was the homegirl Nikki just sayin “Whassup”. So I hit her back real quick (after I pulled over and turned off the ignition to the car, Mrs. Officer) and wrote, “Ehhh”. But then, guess what!? There was no “D”. And then you know what?! There was no “R”!!!! There was no ANYTHING! Just an arrow! An arrow? Yeah, an arrow. You know, like the bullets that they used to use in Robin Hood? That’s all I had. But I don’t even wear TIGHTS!!! What the fuck!?? What if her message was important?! What if her “Whassup” was about to be followed by “… with you being chosen as Canada’s Next Top Model?” or something and I was missing my opportunity at vanity and celebrity at it’s Canadian finest?! Something must have been wrong with her phone..

But as I drove over to LiveStock to check the family and pick up some “$$$”, and as we all huddled around to not talk to each other and stare at our BlackBerry’s, we all collectively typed an imaginary “OMG! WTF! GTFOH!” Because, as you guessed it – BlackBerry service was down for ALL OF US!!!!

(enter music from “PSYCHO” here.)

What were we to do?! How were we gonna communicate to each other?! How was I supposed to notify everyone on Twitter of my whereabouts, including the psycho stalker motherfuckers who try to find out every step that I take?! Maybe I should have picked up a bull horn!! Or better yet, maybe I should have picked up a bull by the horns and rode my way through Toronto with a megaphone telling everyone what I was doing in an up-to-the-minute Play-By-Play style! No. It’s too cold for that! What was I to do PEOPLE?! So many choices to make…

But it all happened too quickly for me to react with such swift decision making comparable to Steven Seagal in any one of his multiple multi-thousand dollar grossing films. So I stepped on the gas and sent my ass home with a quickness.

The thoughts were racing like kids to a heroine sale:

What am I missing?! Who’s doing what on Facebook?! What random religious broadcast message encouraging me to spam the BBMs of hundreds of my friends or suffer the striking hand of a God who forgives all and loves us equally was I not receiving thanks to this horrific downtime of RIM service?

Panic.
Panic.
Panic.
Panic.

This is insane. This is too much. This has gone on for

WAY

TOO

LONG!!!

Then as I came into my house, I started cooking. I sat with a coffee struggling to come up with a solution for not being able to send emoticons and ridiculous jokes about poo to people I never speak to in person. I mean, hey, I’m pretty smart. I’m kind of intelligent. And contrary to the photo I’ve used for this post, I’m pretty damn handsome. Handsome people are ALWAYS the ones with the best solutions right? Right? C’mon, help me out here!

So the sauce was ready. The penne cooked just right. And my couch whispering sweet nothings to me from a distance like, “Bryan… come sit on my face…”.

I made myself a plate of pasta. I sat with the TV on UFC Unleashed. And I watched Clay Guida while I ate a plate of delicious. And in the mix of it all, the frustration, the confusion, the itching and redness… there was silence.

Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe this is the best thing we all could have asked for during a time of interaction and enjoyment of one another’s company. Or maybe it’s time for me to finally switch over to an iPhone.

Do you remember when there was that huge blackout in Toronto? Well, this isn’t as big a deal as that. We still have running water and electricity. We still have phone use and the internet at our homes. We still have shelter, food, clothes on our backs, and things to be hopeful for and happy about. And arguably the only thing we don’t have is a consistent interruption that we tend to pay more attention to than the things we should really always be grateful for.

The world’s not over. Relax.

Love & Above,
be.

what’s happened in my world that’s made me this?
what’s made me some pillar of mental health, like morpheus, with 2 pills, split? i was spit, shined and swallowed, drill bit ripped pine and hollowed to become an instrument or horn for the audiences, toot. a comedy, philosophy, artist with a long winded speak like my whole ambiance was flutes and the lungs i had to blow the hot air of worth was weak. i am the heir to hurt and please spare the crown of thorns and cross. short of the distance walked with piercing pine, i bleed to try to get a point across, for heaven’s sake. this is a sigh, sore sight and sign. this is my start, pace, sprint, pant and pause.

what’s happened in my world that’s made me this?
i’m decayed man and matter, slain, sucked dry and patted down for fuck-knows-why but a possibility i may be holding something worth selling. my soul holds an angst and pangs so compelling, so awe inspiring and depressing, that the release, flow and whole regression is worth it’s shore line in swelling. or an equivalent cost, i am sure. any significant talks i endure with peacocks, preying beasts or flocks banging doors still feels like cancer. my brain loads, cocks and aims soon as the knock has gone away. and yet still I answer. standing at attention like this war with my tensions hasn’t got me foolishly praising a flag of popularity for a crowd who doesn’t care. so i act dramatic and masked for the sake of laughs and being so civil, it’s funny. strung out, hung from all ends, widdled and marionetted like a ventriloquist, dummy, who barely has said shit. blah, blah, blah. well, this path has well proved pathetic.

what’s happened in my world that’s made me this?
have i not stood the balance for the earth and these spins? these days, evenings, events spent drained, heaving and hell bent on advancing my time from birth to nearing death? this is remarkable only in the sense that i say, i say, i say: while you are not worth your weight in words or pence, you may be weighed and sunk, made a lump of coal or coral from an aura of being dense, selfish and unpleasant. and i found i flounder more, more a shellfish and grounded, or quail form of pheasant, inciting smaller flocks flights to heaven while they all stare to the eagle to free their people. well, we have not wings nor a clue why a caged bird still sings.

If I only watch one video for the rest of my life, it will be this one.

-

There’s something about knowing the difference between a suicidal gesture and a suicide attempt from a young age that has really shaped my outlook on people including myself. When you want to die and are willing to do anything to get there and actually do something to yourself that could have potentially killed you, the doctors say you’ve attempted suicide. When you want to die but for some reason are unsure about what it’s gonna take for you to get it done and are basically not sure that you want to die at all but you do something to hurt yourself that may not actually kill you, they tend to refer to it as a suicidal gesture. Most of the time this tells you that you feel like you wish you were not in the current situation you’re in, and that it seems like there’s less that you can think of to get away or solve your frustrations than the ease of just not being around to have to deal with them at all. In the early stages for me, doing this type of thing with Xacto knives and cigarettes was a genuine “cry for help” until I got a bit older and realized the conventional ‘help’ out there is not at all practical for the kind of help a person like me actually needed.

I know, the story’s getting old, I’ve tried to commit suicide x amount of times.
(Well fuck, it’s true. So as I get older, so will the story).

Today one of my co-workers asked to see the tattoo on the inside of my upper arm. I told her it had been there for at least a year and that it wasn’t new, then almost automatically had to let her know that the scar on my forearm wasn’t new either, it was from me being ‘knifed’. ‘Knifed’ because God forbid anyone thinks that this scar is my grown man version of a ‘cry for help’.

Considering so many people know about my suicide attempts, you’d think that a scar on my forearm isn’t much to be shy about. But my problem with the scar is not that it’s there, it’s that I feel as though people will look at it for something that it isn’t – and that’s some sort of way for me to say, “hey, I’m hurting inside, ask me about my scar”. I’m not 15, and this isn’t a new tattoo. You see friends, this scar is obviously not from me being ‘knifed’ by someone else. It’s from me taking a knife to my forearm to divert my mind from all of the ludicrous things it was putting me through about a year ago. I put the knife through my skin not realizing it was hooked like a talon, and it ripped more flesh off than I was expecting. I continued again, and then again, and then felt that wet feeling and stinging that’s so distinct of being ‘knifed’. The wound got badly infected with my refusal to go to a doctor, and with the help of my homey Gian telling me what I needed to do over the phone while in St. Martin, I spent 45 mins with a safety pin and a damp rag cleaning out all of the dirt, puss and scabbed blood from the open wound until a few days later it began to close and heal, leaving me with an earthworm looking scar across my left forearm.

I’m not Beyonce, Kelly Rowland or Lance fucking Armstrong, but I’d like to think that I am to a large extent, quite the fucking survivor. So why do I feel shame about a scar that says, “I know this isn’t gonna kill me, and that’s not the point. I need to be hurting right now from somewhere far more superficial than my heart before I actually do something that people won’t be able to talk about like it’s some fucking gesture, so I’m just gonna go ahead and gash myself open with this here kitchen knife, ya hear?” ?

Consider this – for every dude who buys all that fly gear and is gawked at and approved by all, seen as the fashion icon or local baller with enough of a sense of style to stay ahead of the curve and two steps beyond your last leap, and truthfully doesn’t do it for anyone else but himself, for everyone who’s at home doing 300 crunches and 150 push ups a day and would rather not get spotted at the gym by a partner, or spotted at the gym by a patron and still never gets spotted shirtless on the downtown streets, for every girl who doesn’t carry her yoga mat around or buy in to the fact that wearing Lulu Lemon immediately makes you a fitness goddess whose outfit screams “My lifestyle is in shape”, and just does the shit to really feel centered about herself, for every kid who finds it sickening that nowadays people actually want to dress like each others outfits to fit in when he would much rather dress like himself to fit out, and for every singer who still makes music because she loves it, because she wants to see how far she can take her own creativity, because she needs to cry out her demons and call out her dreams so that her anchors are off her ship and her sails can finally see shores, there is someone who has a knife in their hand, a cigarette cherry to their skin, a fist bawled up at their side, or a window about to be smashed, who needs to get their pain out somehow. And they need to get it out on their own. For themselves. And not as a cry for help; as a cry out of rage, as a cry out of frustration, but as a cry between them and their hearts that says, ‘I am not defeated by this, I’m still on my feet. But God do I need to take a seat for a minute. When I know I need help, believe me, I’ll ask for it, but right now go get me a drink, and something to stop the bleeding’.

To all of my people…
Welcome To The Legends League.

-

Now back to my regularly scheduled program. I have some work to do.
- be.

I spent much of yesterday promoting the fact that I had a goal set to raise $10K in his name, but unfortunately I’ve been advised against the idea from a number of parties suggesting I gracefully make due with having good intentions rather than pushing good product and helping to provide monetary aide to either lupus research or the promotion of the arts for those who are not in the position to express their crafts due to financial restraints through the JDilla Foundation.

As many of you already know, having legal action taken against me is something that I’m used to, and adversity is something that I thrive heavily off of, but the sensitivity of dealing with a dedication piece for a man who can only watch while those who try to help benefit his cause and legacy are shut down again and again was too much for me to move forward with. Though I did my best to stand my ground respectively, plead my case thoroughly and be honest in my intentions with the people I was in touch with, I got the sense that this wasn’t a realm to be playing in. And while I am the type to stand up to a giant for the sake of proving you don’t always have to win to be the victor, the fact that Dilla himself is not present to speak on this subject put me in a position to step away.

The feeling I have over this matter is bitter. I am an artist and a designer, and often my medium is graphics on shirts. That’s my creative voice and that’s my way of living semi-eternally with those who support my opinions, creations and passions. I’m forced in this situation to suppress my true motivations to create and also to help those in need because of legalities, contracts, laws, hoopla and hoop jumping. It’s bullshit. And I’m not thrilled about this at all.

In my own gestures to try to go about this in the best way possible, I was met with warning signs from a number of sources. Some were friends, others acquaintances, others a little closer to the powers that be. And from all angles, my mind was slightly boggled.

In one email, I replied:

“I have a goal to raise $10k whether it’s for Lupus or the promotion of the arts for those who are not in the position to express their crafts due to financial restraints, and I will get there. If I hold that money until it’s time to sort out where it rightfully needs to be, I will. But what I won’t do is cut my passion for this short due to fear of what an attorney is going to pick apart about the design, knowing damn well that the law aside, you, me, Ma Dukes and Dilla himself would not be talking legalities when it came down to wanting to do good to benefit the creative and ill positioned.”

I was given the opportunity to give the funds directly to Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, and even in exploring this I was hit with more skepticism about whether my acts would be taken bitterly or not. Again, I was shocked, thinking that there are so many boundaries implemented when your intentions are solely to help those who need it. On the phone I referenced how people fleeing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were turned back by soldiers with guns. In a time of desperate need, it seems we will go in reverse toward embarrassingly desperate measures to refuse aide where it’s been terribly absent.

I’m still in shock over this all.

Tonight, during the emails and phone conversations, contemplations and decision making, I designed another tee. It’s not the shirt I was going to release today to commemorate the 5 year death anniversary of a man who’s work ethic I so strongly have tried to model my own after. It’s an entirely different one. It’s a design fueled from the frustration and anger with the way some of our passions are turned to pits of coal gone cold. It’s a reminder to me and for me that this whole ordeal is being overseen by those above us. It’s a piece that brings me back to the times when I sat at home in a tiny apartment with no heat or air conditioning, designing because I thought that my passions might be able to light a spark in the heart of someone else one day; during a time when all I had was my girl and an idea, and even while I was broke, I created because I knew I was born to continue to create as my grandfather did.

They can’t stop me from putting this one out. This isn’t between me and them really. This is bigger than us all.

Take it in.. and let me know your thoughts on this whole situation.

Detroit’s Angel by Bryan Espiritu for TheLegendsLeague
Inspired by Big Sean’s line: “Detroit’s Angel, I even got Red Wings”.

Rest in Peace J Dilla. Your work inspires my life.
Love&Above,
Bryan

#walkwithme