Phoenix & Mesa, AZ

...being in the desert reminded me that i haven't taken a naked trip since my girl sienna and i rode through joshua tree, disguised as sand nymphs, the summer before she was hired and i was fired (for showing up every day on "poet time" aka CP time) from the san francisco branch of anderson consulting, the accounting firm who shredded documentation of it's audits of ENRON.

i spent the first two days in AZ performing at corbet deans' venue in phoenix (which was probably the most integrated venue i've performed at in the south), and i also featured at the mesa slam, where mister crazy motherfucker, who had seen my show the night before at zoe's kitchen, got on the mic during the slam and ranted about how mentally deranged my "fans and groupies" were and something else about me (my work) being wack because i focus so much on women...i had scary houston flashbacks (you remember, the group of men who got up, turned their backs on me, and made an enormous show out of leaving the venue in the middle of my set, as the women screamed and cried and cheered) but actually ended up defending his right to rant on the mic about his experience of my work as a free speech issue. i think it was noam chomsky who said something like, either you believe in free speech for everyone, or you don't. you can't only believe in free speech for people who have the same opinions as you.

big of me, i know, but i was also a judge for the slam and scored his rant 0.0, which apparently wasn't low enough to keep him from advancing to the second round.

the organizers of the mesa slam were completely embarrassed (which i didn't think they needed to be)and apologetic but how boring would i be if no one ever objected to my work?...more later...cbell

Okaaay...

Alaska Airlines seats passengers in the following order:

1) elderly & disabled

2) people with children

3) business class

4) premier class

5) MVP and Partnership Airlines first class

6) row 6 (???!!)

7) rows 15 and higher

8) everyone else (i.e. me: row 12, seat C)

they will not let you cut ahead of anyone. if, for example, you are MVP class, you will be clowned loudly if you try to get on the plane when they call for Premier Class to board. after row six was announced, i just started laughing hysterically and couldn't stop. people were looking at me and i was like (to myself, because i'm only crazy in extreme circumstances) did they just say ROW SIX COULD BOARD? ROW SIX? WHAT THE HELL IS ROW SIX? DID THEY PAY MORE MONEY? ARE THEY MORE SPECIAL THAN THE REST OF US? ARE THEY BETTER CITIZENS, DO THEY REFRAIN FROM DRINKING AND CAROUSING?????? DID THEY MAKE THEIR RESERVATIONS FIVE YEARS IN ADVANCE?? WHAT THE HELL?

i read the prodigal summer while waiting. the whole thing. for real. later i learned that row six was the exit row. whatever dude. the only reason i flew alaska anyway was because jetblue, who does not enforce a class system for boarding, doesn't fly phoenix to seattle...more later about ARCOSANTI, my new favorite desert oaisis...cbell

CHOCOLOVE

good grief! spring is definitely here, and i'm feelin' it hard, but there seems to be a booty famine in this city that never sleeps and so i am buying chocolove chocolate bars because they have love poems on the insides of their wrappers...very desperate, i know:

from Venus and Adonis (Chocolove, Hazelnuts in Milk Chocolate. 33% Cocoa Content)

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth's soveriegn salve to do a goddess good:
Being so enrag'd, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse...

So soon was she along, as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
ANd 'gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;
And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,
'if thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.'

-William Shakespeare

giant silk moths live for sex

there is a giant silk moth, gorgeous as a butterfly, called a saturniid who's sole purpose in life is to procreate. get this: it does all it's eating as a catepillar and emerges from it's cocoon mute, without a mouth. it has just a few days to live, in most cases one week, so it's a race against the clock to mate before it starves to death. so the saturniid spends it's short life (or maybe seven days is an eternity to a silk moth) negotiating phermones, locating a mate, finding the right host plant and laying hundreds of eggs. can you imagine the urgency, the single minded focus that comes from knowing instinctually that the only thing you really have to do before you check out is have sex? and on top of it all, these moths are mostly blind as well so they find their way to their mates by way of scent. isn't that sexy? no mouth, no eyes, only scent and touch and desire.

don't steal this for your own metaphor...lol...no, i'm serious...more later...cbell

AA

oh, and part of being a fabulous new york rockstar is drinking expensive champagne and turning into an alcoholic which i've been doing since last saturday as i've had at LEAST eight glasses of bubbly since then. champagne is so very excellent and i feel so giddy and fizzy when i drink it, but i'm on the wagon now, as my liver feels like a crunchy brown leaf, and glass number eight wasn't nearly as happy as number one was. i've been trying to start drinking for the last two years now, but can't quite manage to maintain intrest. i was sure that by now i'd be on to scotch or bourban or some other movie starish weakness, but alas, i've failed once again at becoming a tragic alcoholic poet who all the women want to save...some things just weren't meant to be, i guess.

Getcha Holy On

in my real life, or, i should say, my past life in seattle that's faded to almost a dream over this last month, i'm the homiest homebody ever...i don't go out unless i'm performing and i don't have people over unless they are performing (wink/wink), but here, in my now life, my glamalicious rockstar new york life, i'm such the girl about town! look! that's me! at every art opening, film debut and poetry reading. every fabulous party, and restaurant. i even attended an amazingly beautiful wedding this weekend, something i never do as i usually find ceremony's of eternal comitment either excruciatingly boring or depressing. sometimes both. but this one rocked. (congrats taylor and marie-elizabeth!)

but now that i've been here two weeks, and i know my way around the city pretty ok, it's time to get back to work. talking to rives yesterday on the way to the catskils about poetry, spoken word, one woman shows and the (lost) art of storytelling it hit me that my show, coochie magic, really has no through story line, and i'd like to insert one. without giving too much of it away, i think the story will start with the etymolygy of the word whore (from the greek -i think- horae, which means holy) and tell the story of an ancient temple babe who fucked to get her holy on. there's an ancient tantric scripture that says something like, 'the more the yoni is used, the holier it becomes' and that concept is very central to the show. so a story that incorporates the idea of feminine sexuality as sublime, and women having sex the ultimate act of worhip. yeah. that's it....more later...christa

women in Spoken Word

the following are a few answers to interview questions posed by columbia university student marbre who is writing a paper on women in spokenword:

1) i see myself as a revolutionist (which means i get to make up my own words, and often do because so many of our most beautiful words, like revolutionary, have been co-opted by the establishment to sell their ideology. think Revlon and "Revolutionary Color!") i come from many traditions, but feel myself most closely aligned with the black/africanamerican field slaves who would sing songs of revolt and escape disguised as spirituals ("hush now, somebody's callin my name") my work is an attempt to sanctify/recontexutualize the experiences of women by bringing them to the alter of the stage. that it is entertainment as well makes it subversive. i also come from preachers and sharecroppers both of whom are reknowned story tellers of the black american tradition.

2) at this point, the primary concern of my work is the sexual, spiritual and emotional condition of women. everything i write and perform is within the context of the revival of the feminine spiritual consciusness on the planet. i talk a lot about women and the sexual experience in my work (especially my new work) because i believe there's a link between how a woman feels about her vagina and it's experiences and the influence she has (or doesn't have) on the world. my piece, "coochie magic" talks about how fear, shame and guilt around sex (the experience of which is located at the second chakra which is where our creative center lies) has a major impact on how woman asserts herself and her concerns on an economic and political level.

3) the tradition of call and response requires the audience to be awake! to actually participate in the creation and experience of art. american audiences are so passive. we expect to be "entertained" and hand fed our emotional experiences.

call and response, which is a spontaneous tradition of the african and african american cultural experience, requires one to be invested in the process. it creates an exchange between the artist and the communinty that ultimately supports and sustains the creative impulse in the lives of everyone participating in the exchange. to borrow a phrase from alice walker, i call this, "posessing the secret of joy". who doesn't feel more beautiful, sexier, more intelligent, more joyful and closer to the image of the great creator (god) after they've collaborated on some magnificent piece of art?

Poet-Love in New York

have been here since the 28th, when i performed at long island university with taalam acey, jive poetic, mo browne and sparla, as part of a "jam on it" show, and will be based in brooklyn, in an area called DUMBO for the rest of the spring/summer. new york is a beautiful...i'm living in the teentsy tiniest room in the history of teentsy tiny rooms at the back of my girl sienna's art studio in the HUGEST loft space/artist collective ever...we're making my room into a beautiful little cave of hot pink and turquoise, white candals, pillows baskets, and bright green bamboo stalks, since they don't need a lot of light, and bring good energy to any space.

already i've stopped eating sugar, been photographed by glamour magazine (get this-stopped on the street, with my girl from alaska to be photographed for the section of the magazine that's all about style around the country...guess who's rep'n nYc!? i called my style international, urban, bohemian goddess!...glamour asked me what labels i was wearing, i was like, um, you mean my purple aura? or the goddess pendants of yehmaya and lakshmi?), been asked to pose nude by a well known italian painter who has an entire show of nudes and NO BLACK WOMEN (haven't decided if i will pose or not), witnessed the most AMAZING, overwhelming, revolutionary and healing exhibit of kara walker's work -and poetry- at the MET, been turned away from a showing of basquiat's work (i wasn't on the list), discovered a new favorite drink (organic pink grapfruit and green algae...YUM!), grocery shopped at the new manhattan trader joe's, which, if you can believe it, had RUN OUT OF FOOD by the time i got there, and of course, fallen in "poet-love" love with (another) poet. what can i say? i love preachers (and every poet believes they are one) and engineers. my two weaknesses...and poet-love is so addicting.

it's concentrated and intense, wild like a dawn swirled with hummingbirds and bumble bees. poet love reminds me that i am just one syllable, just a note, in a world of full throated arias. and it stretches me, points me to the how of becoming a full sounding word (at least. real good poet-love shows you how to be a song.) it's mostly about having your heart touched with words and then also knowing that everyone being touched knows. yep. that's it.

this is about to be one heaven of a season...it's so late, i want to write more, but have been up since forever...more later...cbell