My Life in the Global Village—Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter
by
Marvin X (El Muhajir, the Migrant)
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"Don't beat yaself, Jackmon, enjoy yaself. One day at a time, one day at a time...."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, from One Day in the Life, a docudrama by Marvin X
"Marvin X is the most free Black man in non-free America.... Courageous and outrageous, he walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal."
--James Sweeney
“There are more people who love you than hate you, just know that, Marvin X!—A Black Woman
Every day is a holy day to me, yes, a holiday. Every day is a party and a prayer. I don't pray five times a day in the traditional Islamic manner--I can't do anything traditional or orthodox, orthodoxy is not my style. Fa salli li rabbika! (So pray to your Lord!).
Because of my spiritual practice, and there are those who say I am not a Muslim. For sure, I am not Sunni, if anything, I am Nation of Islam, thus closer to the Shiites and Sufis, especially the Suffis in the West African revolutionary tradition of those who fought the colonialists and neocolonialists. Put me in the camp with the Senegalese Sufi BAMBA, the Sufi Saint whose holy city, Touba, is more sacred than Mecca to many West African Muslims.
Many Super Sunni Black Muslims have never heard of Bamba or any other West African Muslims, going back to Ghana, Mali and Shongay, the Islamic empires of West Africa. Yes, those Muslims who traveled to America before Columbus; those Africans who created the University of Timbuku, while the Europeans were in the Dark Ages, especially until the African and Arab Muslims conquered Spain in 711 when Tariq crossed the straights of Gilbratar (Gebal Tariq, mount of Tariq) and spent a thousand years in Moorish Spain, and would have conquered Europe until stopped by Charles Martel in the battle of Tours, France.
When we talk about religion and violence as Karen Armstrong has done in her latest book by the same name, we know how the Muslims called prayer on a pyramid of Christian heads in Moorish Spain. We also know the Christian Crusaders were knee deep in blood when they conquered Jerusalem. Fasalli li Rabbika! Murder is murder! Somebody hep me! (James Brown)
I pray going out and coming back to my house, something I began doing during my life as a Crack addict. I soon learned coping is the most dangerous time in the life of a dope fiend, most especially during "tweeker's hours" or that time of night after twelve in the morning when one is often broke or with only enough for that last high, but a time when one is severely mind altered and can make mistakes in judgement. Once I bought a rock off the ground because it was in a plastic bag.
I got it from a person I knew but I asked him to make it right the next day. He asked what you gonna do about it, kill me? Go ahead, I've died five times already. I did nothing but a few weeks later I saw him with a brand new face someone had given him. Allah is God! Everything goes around comes around. Better ax somebody as they say in the Big H, Houston, Texas, yeah, down in the Dirty South!
So one never knew what was going to happen in the street while getting dope, e.g., one could get killed, robbed, tricked with bunk dope, any number of things. I was always happy to make it back to my space after navigating through a mind-field of wretched, scandalous Negroes as I noted in my monologue to the docudrama One Day in the Life ("The most powerful drama I've seen," said Ishmael Reed). In the TL, the dope dealers weren't always Black, often they were Vietnamese. "Yeah, ma nigguh, I got ice cream, ma nigguh, ice cream!" And Castro sent his Cuban rejects to the TL, for a while they had the best dope. Cuban unity had them soon opening shops on San Francisco's Market Street, doing legal business.
Numerous times I was indeed robbed, bum rushed, beaten, teeth knocked out, forced to remain in the dope house at gun point, knife point, etc, but I made it back. Sometimes my friends and/or fellow dope fiends were dumbfounded when I stopped to pray before leaving my room (most often a funky, wretched Hindu Hilton, i.e., SRO ( Single Room Occupancy hotel room). I had to explain to them I was putting the amour of God around me. Dope fiends didn’t care about me praying, long as I hurried up and made the run into the wicked TL).
So even now, I pray everyday, all day, when going in and coming back. I pray when I'm driving through the streets, especially when riding through San Francisco's Tenderloin where I spent so many years as a dope fiend, homeless, sleeping in allies, doorways, cardboard boxes, Transbay Terminal Bus Station, shelters.
These days when I ride through the wretched streets of the TL or Tenderloin, that multi-cultural ghetto one block from the affluent Union Square shopping area of SF, I pray and pray, "Oh, Allah, why did you save me from these streets? Why did you take so many of my friends but keep me alive and allow me to escape? Thank you Almighty God Allah, thank you, thank you, thank you. Al Humdulilah!
Now and then I would see some of the people I used to know back in the day. I wondered how they were still alive, especially the dope dealers. They had to be working with the police, just like the prostitutes who turn tricks with any John and with the pigs who get information from them on whomever. How these same dope dealers still selling dope?
Until lately, when I rode through the TL, I used to look for my friend and actor, JB Saunders, who recently made his transition. JB was multi-talented, actor, singer, but lacked discipline, the difference between an amateur and professional, although he got paid for acting but lacked discipline, something I had to learn from my association with Sun Ra when he worked with me at my Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972. We also taught together at UC Berkeley until they removed the entire radical faculty in Black Studies and hired what we call "tenured negroes".
Sun Ra scolded me about teaching freedom to my actors while he arranged the musical production of my play Flowers for the Trashman, renamed TCB or Take Care of Business (See The Drama Review, ed. by Ed Bullins, 1968). "Marvin, your actors don't need freedom, stop teaching them freedom. They need discipline! Not freedom, don't you see how free, wild and crazy they are? Stop teaching them that freedom, justice and equality. Teach discipline, that's what I teach my musicians!”
Freedom finally killed JB. I must mention the time I invited him to my room at the Jefferson Hotel in Oakland. JB spent a minute or two but said he had to get back to San Francisco because Oakland was too quiet. So even though I had dope, JB caught the BART or subway back to SF.
Before his transition I used to drive around the seedy streets of the TL looking for my buddy and often find him on a corner near Jones and Levenworth or Ellis and Taylor, by Glide Church which saved all us dope fiends from starvation, thanks to Rev. Cecil Williams and his wife, poet Janice Mirikitani, although a dope fiend cannot starve in San Francisco because besides Glide Church, there is St. Anthony's, Salvation Army, St. Martin De Porres and a few churches in the Black community.
One time I ran up on JB on a corner. It was the first of the month when dope fiends used to get checks, a day of high drama, Negroes and other multi-cultural dope fiends literally running through the TL coping and rushing back to their hovels. That day JB said, "Hey, Teach, let me bless my teach today." He went into a liquor store and returned with a half pint of Hennessy, "This is for you, teach!" I said thanks, JB. He said, "Teach, I got to go, got to make a run." I said, JB, I can give you a ride, but he said, "Teach, I can get there quicker than your car," and he took off running like Superman flying in the friendly sky without leaving the ground. Rest in peace JB! A true trooper!
Oakland rapper Hammer said, "We got to pray to make it through the day." I am thankful and thoughtful (Sly Stone song) that I awaken each morning with the breath of life. A few years ago a friend called me singing the blues. I told him, "Be thankful nigguh, you got up this morning. Yesterday I was at the hospital signing books in the cafeteria when a group of people walked in with respirators, they can't breathe, nigguh, so be thankful you can breathe. You need to kiss the ground and give all praise to Allah your black ass got up this morning!"
If everyday ain't a holy day, what are they, unholy days, days of sin and wretchedness, sloth and slumber? So I'm thankful and thoughtful. I'm having the time of my life, having fun living and teaching at my Academy of da Corner. Of course I teach through my writing as well. But it's fun. Sometimes life is painful, like death of a loved one or death of anyone, like the global killing fields happening as I write this Xmas Eve, 2015.
Let me recall the cold December of 1968 when I interviewed ancestor James Baldwin with no heat in his New York apartment. He said, "How can they talk about the Prince of Peace while they bomb the hell out of Vietnam? Your condition proves they don't believe in Jesus Christ, just look at your condition! Ain't nothing else happened here but us, nothing. I applaud the black fathers who raise sons in this wretched land. It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"
Oh, Jimmy, indeed, the world has now gone mad, stark raving mad. Mass killing in America from coast to coast, in the hood, in the schools, work places, churches. I feel much like theologian Karen Armstrong. After a lecture on her recent book Religion and Violence, she was asked how she felt about the world. She said, "I feel dread." And so it is a dreadful time to be alive, and yet I wouldn't have wanted to miss this time. As my ancestors said, "bottom rail top." And Sun Ra used to say, "You didn't let me enjoy your gladness so I don't want to enjoy your sadness."
But we must understand the nature of war and we have been at war since we were kidnapped and brought to these shores to work for eternity for free. Can you imagine to work for life without possibility of parole? In war there are casualties, sons, lovers, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, downed on the battlefield.
At least tell your people and warn them we are in a fight with the true and living devil, in black face and white face. Have no illusions some of these nigguhs/Africans ain't devils. Who brought us down to the ships? AB would say, who, who, who?
"The king sold the farmer to the ghost....
In the Atlantic ocean is a railroad of human bones...!"
Read Dr. Walter Rodney’s monograph on West Africa and the Atlantic slave trade and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
But the war and killing goes on and on, even as I write there is bleeding around the world, throughout the global village, Syria, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan. Does it matter who the killers are and why they kill, for the net result is death. Does it matter if they are Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Yoruba, Communist, Socialist, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender. They all murder. As Dr. Armstrong said, sometimes they get high killing. Sometimes they kill out of boredom. Indeed, some years ago young brothers said to me, "OG, you know what we do when we get bored? We get our bulletproof vests, UZIs and ride through the hood shootin' nigguhs."
Yes, if the pigs ain't killing us, we killing us cause we bored or over some pussy and dick shit, or jealousy, envy and other aspects of our full blown addiction to white supremacy Type I and II (Dr. Nathan Hare). Guru Bawa taught about our addiction to the one billion ten million illusions of the monkey mind!
But you ain't gonna take the J out of my joy, devil! I live in the no stress zone. Very few things in life are really important, Aristotle said. I work hard, pray hard and play hard.
I am so thankful to see my children grow into adulthood, but even more fascinating is watching my grandchildren grow up. I never imagined grandchildren. They make us know eternity. And they say the damnest things.
I gave two of my grandchildren some money for Xmas, well, I told them it was for Black Day. My eight year old grandson asked, "When is Black Day?" I replied, "Black Day is everyday. And spend it with Black people." Now we are a family of smart mouth people, so my smart mouth grandson, Jah Amiel said, "Grandfather, a Black man invented Legos! So I'm gonna get some Legos." My daughter said, "Dad, he's just joking with you." While babysitting that night, he had told me original jokes all night, most fell flat, but he got me with the Legos lie." Of course his most famous line was said to me when he was two years old, "Grandfather, you can't save the world but I can!"
Now don’t think his four year old sister, Naima Joy, doesn’t have a smart mouth too. But let’s start with their mother, Amira, a lawyer (Yale, Stanford Law School). I once asked Amira did she know John Coltrane’s tune Naima? She replied, “Oh, Dad, come on, where do you think I got her name from?"
On the way home from attending a black version of Cinderella at San Francisco’s Fulton Street African American Cultural Center, Naima said, “Grandfather, can you come over our house and talk with me in the living room on the sofa for about thirty minutes?” You know I replied in the affirmative. How could I decline such a shocking invitation from my three year old granddaughter?
One day I was babysitting Naima and Jah at my apartment that has an absence of toys for children. She was looking for something to play with and found a plastic imitation plant with a baby polar bear on it. She said, “Grandfather let me see that.” I said, “Okay, but don’t tear it up and put it back together.” “Oh, Grandfather, I can do that easily, “ and she took it apart and put it back together systematically or easily. “Didn’t I tell you I could do it easily, Grandfather?”
by
Marvin X (El Muhajir, the Migrant)
"Don't beat yaself, Jackmon, enjoy yaself. One day at a time, one day at a time...."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, from One Day in the Life, a docudrama by Marvin X
"Marvin X is the most free Black man in non-free America.... Courageous and outrageous, he walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal."
--James Sweeney
“There are more people who love you than hate you, just know that, Marvin X!—A Black Woman
Every day is a holy day to me, yes, a holiday. Every day is a party and a prayer. I don't pray five times a day in the traditional Islamic manner--I can't do anything traditional or orthodox, orthodoxy is not my style. Fa salli li rabbika! (So pray to your Lord!).
Because of my spiritual practice, and there are those who say I am not a Muslim. For sure, I am not Sunni, if anything, I am Nation of Islam, thus closer to the Shiites and Sufis, especially the Suffis in the West African revolutionary tradition of those who fought the colonialists and neocolonialists. Put me in the camp with the Senegalese Sufi BAMBA, the Sufi Saint whose holy city, Touba, is more sacred than Mecca to many West African Muslims.
Many Super Sunni Black Muslims have never heard of Bamba or any other West African Muslims, going back to Ghana, Mali and Shongay, the Islamic empires of West Africa. Yes, those Muslims who traveled to America before Columbus; those Africans who created the University of Timbuku, while the Europeans were in the Dark Ages, especially until the African and Arab Muslims conquered Spain in 711 when Tariq crossed the straights of Gilbratar (Gebal Tariq, mount of Tariq) and spent a thousand years in Moorish Spain, and would have conquered Europe until stopped by Charles Martel in the battle of Tours, France.
When we talk about religion and violence as Karen Armstrong has done in her latest book by the same name, we know how the Muslims called prayer on a pyramid of Christian heads in Moorish Spain. We also know the Christian Crusaders were knee deep in blood when they conquered Jerusalem. Fasalli li Rabbika! Murder is murder! Somebody hep me! (James Brown)
I pray going out and coming back to my house, something I began doing during my life as a Crack addict. I soon learned coping is the most dangerous time in the life of a dope fiend, most especially during "tweeker's hours" or that time of night after twelve in the morning when one is often broke or with only enough for that last high, but a time when one is severely mind altered and can make mistakes in judgement. Once I bought a rock off the ground because it was in a plastic bag.
I got it from a person I knew but I asked him to make it right the next day. He asked what you gonna do about it, kill me? Go ahead, I've died five times already. I did nothing but a few weeks later I saw him with a brand new face someone had given him. Allah is God! Everything goes around comes around. Better ax somebody as they say in the Big H, Houston, Texas, yeah, down in the Dirty South!
So one never knew what was going to happen in the street while getting dope, e.g., one could get killed, robbed, tricked with bunk dope, any number of things. I was always happy to make it back to my space after navigating through a mind-field of wretched, scandalous Negroes as I noted in my monologue to the docudrama One Day in the Life ("The most powerful drama I've seen," said Ishmael Reed). In the TL, the dope dealers weren't always Black, often they were Vietnamese. "Yeah, ma nigguh, I got ice cream, ma nigguh, ice cream!" And Castro sent his Cuban rejects to the TL, for a while they had the best dope. Cuban unity had them soon opening shops on San Francisco's Market Street, doing legal business.
Numerous times I was indeed robbed, bum rushed, beaten, teeth knocked out, forced to remain in the dope house at gun point, knife point, etc, but I made it back. Sometimes my friends and/or fellow dope fiends were dumbfounded when I stopped to pray before leaving my room (most often a funky, wretched Hindu Hilton, i.e., SRO ( Single Room Occupancy hotel room). I had to explain to them I was putting the amour of God around me. Dope fiends didn’t care about me praying, long as I hurried up and made the run into the wicked TL).
So even now, I pray everyday, all day, when going in and coming back. I pray when I'm driving through the streets, especially when riding through San Francisco's Tenderloin where I spent so many years as a dope fiend, homeless, sleeping in allies, doorways, cardboard boxes, Transbay Terminal Bus Station, shelters.
These days when I ride through the wretched streets of the TL or Tenderloin, that multi-cultural ghetto one block from the affluent Union Square shopping area of SF, I pray and pray, "Oh, Allah, why did you save me from these streets? Why did you take so many of my friends but keep me alive and allow me to escape? Thank you Almighty God Allah, thank you, thank you, thank you. Al Humdulilah!
Now and then I would see some of the people I used to know back in the day. I wondered how they were still alive, especially the dope dealers. They had to be working with the police, just like the prostitutes who turn tricks with any John and with the pigs who get information from them on whomever. How these same dope dealers still selling dope?
Until lately, when I rode through the TL, I used to look for my friend and actor, JB Saunders, who recently made his transition. JB was multi-talented, actor, singer, but lacked discipline, the difference between an amateur and professional, although he got paid for acting but lacked discipline, something I had to learn from my association with Sun Ra when he worked with me at my Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972. We also taught together at UC Berkeley until they removed the entire radical faculty in Black Studies and hired what we call "tenured negroes".
Sun Ra scolded me about teaching freedom to my actors while he arranged the musical production of my play Flowers for the Trashman, renamed TCB or Take Care of Business (See The Drama Review, ed. by Ed Bullins, 1968). "Marvin, your actors don't need freedom, stop teaching them freedom. They need discipline! Not freedom, don't you see how free, wild and crazy they are? Stop teaching them that freedom, justice and equality. Teach discipline, that's what I teach my musicians!”
Freedom finally killed JB. I must mention the time I invited him to my room at the Jefferson Hotel in Oakland. JB spent a minute or two but said he had to get back to San Francisco because Oakland was too quiet. So even though I had dope, JB caught the BART or subway back to SF.
Before his transition I used to drive around the seedy streets of the TL looking for my buddy and often find him on a corner near Jones and Levenworth or Ellis and Taylor, by Glide Church which saved all us dope fiends from starvation, thanks to Rev. Cecil Williams and his wife, poet Janice Mirikitani, although a dope fiend cannot starve in San Francisco because besides Glide Church, there is St. Anthony's, Salvation Army, St. Martin De Porres and a few churches in the Black community.
One time I ran up on JB on a corner. It was the first of the month when dope fiends used to get checks, a day of high drama, Negroes and other multi-cultural dope fiends literally running through the TL coping and rushing back to their hovels. That day JB said, "Hey, Teach, let me bless my teach today." He went into a liquor store and returned with a half pint of Hennessy, "This is for you, teach!" I said thanks, JB. He said, "Teach, I got to go, got to make a run." I said, JB, I can give you a ride, but he said, "Teach, I can get there quicker than your car," and he took off running like Superman flying in the friendly sky without leaving the ground. Rest in peace JB! A true trooper!
Oakland rapper Hammer said, "We got to pray to make it through the day." I am thankful and thoughtful (Sly Stone song) that I awaken each morning with the breath of life. A few years ago a friend called me singing the blues. I told him, "Be thankful nigguh, you got up this morning. Yesterday I was at the hospital signing books in the cafeteria when a group of people walked in with respirators, they can't breathe, nigguh, so be thankful you can breathe. You need to kiss the ground and give all praise to Allah your black ass got up this morning!"
If everyday ain't a holy day, what are they, unholy days, days of sin and wretchedness, sloth and slumber? So I'm thankful and thoughtful. I'm having the time of my life, having fun living and teaching at my Academy of da Corner. Of course I teach through my writing as well. But it's fun. Sometimes life is painful, like death of a loved one or death of anyone, like the global killing fields happening as I write this Xmas Eve, 2015.
Let me recall the cold December of 1968 when I interviewed ancestor James Baldwin with no heat in his New York apartment. He said, "How can they talk about the Prince of Peace while they bomb the hell out of Vietnam? Your condition proves they don't believe in Jesus Christ, just look at your condition! Ain't nothing else happened here but us, nothing. I applaud the black fathers who raise sons in this wretched land. It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"
Oh, Jimmy, indeed, the world has now gone mad, stark raving mad. Mass killing in America from coast to coast, in the hood, in the schools, work places, churches. I feel much like theologian Karen Armstrong. After a lecture on her recent book Religion and Violence, she was asked how she felt about the world. She said, "I feel dread." And so it is a dreadful time to be alive, and yet I wouldn't have wanted to miss this time. As my ancestors said, "bottom rail top." And Sun Ra used to say, "You didn't let me enjoy your gladness so I don't want to enjoy your sadness."
But we must understand the nature of war and we have been at war since we were kidnapped and brought to these shores to work for eternity for free. Can you imagine to work for life without possibility of parole? In war there are casualties, sons, lovers, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, downed on the battlefield.
At least tell your people and warn them we are in a fight with the true and living devil, in black face and white face. Have no illusions some of these nigguhs/Africans ain't devils. Who brought us down to the ships? AB would say, who, who, who?
"The king sold the farmer to the ghost....
In the Atlantic ocean is a railroad of human bones...!"
Read Dr. Walter Rodney’s monograph on West Africa and the Atlantic slave trade and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
But the war and killing goes on and on, even as I write there is bleeding around the world, throughout the global village, Syria, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan. Does it matter who the killers are and why they kill, for the net result is death. Does it matter if they are Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Yoruba, Communist, Socialist, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender. They all murder. As Dr. Armstrong said, sometimes they get high killing. Sometimes they kill out of boredom. Indeed, some years ago young brothers said to me, "OG, you know what we do when we get bored? We get our bulletproof vests, UZIs and ride through the hood shootin' nigguhs."
Yes, if the pigs ain't killing us, we killing us cause we bored or over some pussy and dick shit, or jealousy, envy and other aspects of our full blown addiction to white supremacy Type I and II (Dr. Nathan Hare). Guru Bawa taught about our addiction to the one billion ten million illusions of the monkey mind!
But you ain't gonna take the J out of my joy, devil! I live in the no stress zone. Very few things in life are really important, Aristotle said. I work hard, pray hard and play hard.
I am so thankful to see my children grow into adulthood, but even more fascinating is watching my grandchildren grow up. I never imagined grandchildren. They make us know eternity. And they say the damnest things.
I gave two of my grandchildren some money for Xmas, well, I told them it was for Black Day. My eight year old grandson asked, "When is Black Day?" I replied, "Black Day is everyday. And spend it with Black people." Now we are a family of smart mouth people, so my smart mouth grandson, Jah Amiel said, "Grandfather, a Black man invented Legos! So I'm gonna get some Legos." My daughter said, "Dad, he's just joking with you." While babysitting that night, he had told me original jokes all night, most fell flat, but he got me with the Legos lie." Of course his most famous line was said to me when he was two years old, "Grandfather, you can't save the world but I can!"
Now don’t think his four year old sister, Naima Joy, doesn’t have a smart mouth too. But let’s start with their mother, Amira, a lawyer (Yale, Stanford Law School). I once asked Amira did she know John Coltrane’s tune Naima? She replied, “Oh, Dad, come on, where do you think I got her name from?"
On the way home from attending a black version of Cinderella at San Francisco’s Fulton Street African American Cultural Center, Naima said, “Grandfather, can you come over our house and talk with me in the living room on the sofa for about thirty minutes?” You know I replied in the affirmative. How could I decline such a shocking invitation from my three year old granddaughter?
One day I was babysitting Naima and Jah at my apartment that has an absence of toys for children. She was looking for something to play with and found a plastic imitation plant with a baby polar bear on it. She said, “Grandfather let me see that.” I said, “Okay, but don’t tear it up and put it back together.” “Oh, Grandfather, I can do that easily, “ and she took it apart and put it back together systematically or easily. “Didn’t I tell you I could do it easily, Grandfather?”