Christa Bell

HAPPY NEW YEAR: IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

2007-01-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

the new year doesn't begin officially for me until january 17th, my birthday! so, on my birthday eve, let's take time for a little reflection on what i did last year: I WRECKED IT!!! woop!! woop! congrats to me for making 2006 a stellar year in the history of years!

1) i headlined my first international spokenword tour (wordmedicine 2006) and had my first patron who paid for the whole damn thing!
2) i wrote my first one-woman show, "COOCHIEMAGIC: A SPOKENWORD MUSICAL COMEDY featuring my beatboxstra
3) i fell in love no less than FOUR times (the last time was with a digital yogi i met on myspace, and the time before that was with this amazing poet via text!)
4) i reconnected with four of my bestest friends from my bay area days: lake louise, s. horton, and t'kalla as well as my ex-soulmate k.s.k.
5) i organized, by text message, and three days before i went on a ten day vipassana retreat, an entire spoken word benefit for the national orginization Common Ground for victims of the Katrina disaster, starring: rives, tallam acey, roger bonair-agard, xero skidmore, iyeoka, and new orleans slam master asale devon. WHAT??
6) i attended two, count 'em, TWO vipassana retreats and got my soul right for the new year.
7) i left pc world and bought a mac!
8) i lived in nYc for almost three months!
9) i vacationed in the hamptons (woop! woop!)
10) i watched every episode of the sopranos, lost, the L word, desperate housewives, prison break and the flava of love. what can i say? i'm a cultural critic.
11) i'm going to save the next few spots for amazing things i did but can't remember tight now.
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shoutouts for a year well done go to:
-heidi jackson who single-handedly organized my tour and my life for the first six months of the '06. i couldn't've done it without her!

-all the slam masters all over the country who invited, housed, fed, picked me up, made sure their audience bought my merch, loved me and loved me some more and put up with my occassional bouts of divaliciousness! special thanks to kealoha of the hawaii slam who taught me how to swim, and in the ocean no less! also to taylor mali for issuing my first official invitation to feature in nYc way back in 2005! (nathan p., formerly of the nuyo, says that he was first but taylor wins cuz he put it in WRITING! which isn't a diss to the oral tradition...i'm just sayin, a brova was organized about it!! lol!!)

-my little sister who always let me know that if i ever ran out of money, i could always get down on my knees and beg her for it!

-imani and iyeoka for encouraging me.

-mo browne for being a great friend and for listening to me bitch and whine about other people being negative-lol!

-timeca briggs for agreeing to direct my show the moment i told her i'd written one.

-michael cirelli for having my back whenever it was time to cut a nyucka loose!

-thai freedom ford for her down-ass hospitality.

-mrs. mali for being a wonderful new friend and for making me feel special by including me in her bomb-ass world!

-my mom who housed me for two months during the summer when i couldn't take new York city anymore even though i'd sublet my apartment through august. and also for supporting me so much that she could write me off on her taxes if she wanted to!

-jennifer lisa vest for being crazier than me! lol!!

-denise cooper for taking care of my home while i was gone.

-THE DUMBA ARTS COLLECTIVE!! oh my god! the only place in nYc that felt like home.

-the spirits of the planes, trains, and automobiles that got me to and from my destinations safely and on time!
voici dance for writing a grant to bring me to florida!

-all of the amazing artists, healers, fortune tellers, spiritualists, intellectuals, memoirists, story tellers, lovers, yogi's, geniuses, foodies, musicians, professors, massage therapists, novelists and poets who inspired and supported me on my path.

RIP: alice coletrane, octavia butler, james brown, ronald isley, coretta scott king, ed bradly and lou rawls!!

this year is gonna be amazing and i'm very glad to be here!

more later...cbell

Analog Love, Digital Yogi, Meditation, Grief and Growth

2006-12-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

it's four am in seattle i am too heartbroken to sleep and have been up all night. ten days ago i returned from doing a vipassana satipathana retreat (the satipathana course is for old students only) to discover that everything in my life had shifted to the left and many things had fallen away as i let go of old sankara's (deep rooted complexes) while there, and in so doing, released a host of people and circumstances born of these complexes.

exactly 39 days before i took my ninth vipassana course in six years, and four days before the last mercury retrograde period of the year, i met a beautiful yogi via myspace with whom i fell madly in love. i should say here that we never met. he lives in shanghai (with my friends i referred to him as, among other things, "the only brother in china"), but the fantasy of spiritual partnership is a strong idea and he fed my craving with his beautiful letters and daily telephone calls and the promise implied by his insistence that he's been looking for me all the days of his life.

i didn't know how i would write about the end of our romance, which was also the end of my attraction to unavailable men, until a friend wrote to me today to give his condolences around the crashing of my digital love and to inquire about the process that led up to it. following is an excerpt from the email i sent to him only a few hours ago regarding what happened for me while i was on my retreat and what i found when i returned home:

vipassana is the meditation i've told you about that
you learn at the 10-day silent retreats
(www.dhamma.org). it's ancient therapy that goes
deeper and is much more efficient than psychoanalysis
or any of the modern therapies i've experimented with.

there are three parts to the technique: ana pana,
which is a meditation on the breath that is done for
three days so that you can sharpen and quiet the mind
enough to learn vipassana. then there is the
technique of vipassana itself which i will explain to
you by phone (although it's experiential and pretty
much impossible to get intellectually.) and then
there's metta which is a healing balm you apply during
the last two days of the retreat which acts to sew
you back up after the extremely intense work of
digging out sankara's.

sankara's are, in essence, deep-rooted complexes you
have about yourself and they are related to the karma
you've acquired over many lifetimes. during the
practice, these sankara’s, which you have stored in your dna, manifest themselves as
sensations on your body. the technique teaches you to
be highly aware of these sensations and to observe
them equanimously, that is, peacefully and without any
aversion, as they come to the surface of your body and
pass away (for example, a sankara might manifest itself as an itch on your nose that is so itchy it is painful. you must observe the itch peacefully without doing anything to quench it. with this observation comes an experiential understanding of “anica” which means change. everything changes. all sensations are transitory. nothing lasts forever.) in this way, you are able to allow old
karma in the forms of hurt, abuse, trauma, neglect,
addictions, abandonment’s etc. to come to the surface
and pass away. this is the basic teaching of Jesus’
"turn the other cheek" philosophy.

to elaborate further, the usual habit pattern of the mind is to react to the
old karma, that is, slap me and i'll slap you
back! the fundamental problem with this is that
everytime you make an action, whether it's "good" or
"bad" you plant a seed (as you sew, so shall you also
reap) and the basic karmic doctrine is that every seed
manifests as fruit when the conditions are ripe for it
to grow. so what you do with vipassana is create a
still place free from both craving and aversion to sensation so
that your deep-rooted complexes have an opportunity to
come to the surface and pass away without any
interference from you.

next is what is most glorious and beautiful about the
technique, but what is also sometimes the most
confusing and painful, although ultimately beneficial:
as you practice and let pass these deep rooted
sankara, your external circumstances automatically
change to reflect this, immediately and often in unpredictable ways.
for example, a major sankara that i passed during my
last retreat was the belief that my father never loved
me. now, whether this belief is actually true or not
makes no difference to my BELIEF that it was true.
i've believed this for many many years and this belief
has resulted in me attracting a particular kind of man
(and there are quite a few other things this belief
attracted, but that's another email). my beautiful
john (shanghai surprise) was this kind of man and when
i got out, he had been, in essence, removed
from my cipher because the deep rooted complex that
had brought us together has now been removed. i knew
while i was still at the retreat that he wouldn't be
in my life anymore because i felt him so entirely
dissolved, but it is still difficult for me in the day
to day reality to know that i will most likely not
ever talk to him again. it's like someone i loved
dearly had a terminal disease while i was on retreat and has died. even though it was the best thing
for all parties concerned, there's still an adjustment
period to the new reality.

at any rate, over the six years that i've been
practicing, i've been able to release many, though
certainly not all, of the complexes that i've
acquired over the years and built my reality around.

i can explain this better if you like the next time we
talk.

love (and some tears and sniffles),

christa

The Mind of Christa Bell

2006-09-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

here's everything i've read so far this year. please note the absolute randomness:

the secret book of black girl magic, by christa bell
peace & blessings for dummies, by christa bell
enlighten your coochie!, by christa bell
proverbs (from the bible)
all the websites and blogs re. beyonce
liner notes to all the ROOTS albums (?love is hilarious)
lyrics to "spirit rap" by astarius reiki
seeing the unspeakable: the art of kara walker, by gwendoloyn dubois shaw
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, by dave eggers (better late than never)
the bone people, by keri hulme (again)
pathologies of power, by paul farmer (sike. i bought it and read like, three chapters, because i saw that roger was reading it.)
woman, an intimate geography, by natalie angier (ibid-but this one i'll finish at some point)
godel, escher, bach: an eternal golden braid, a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of lewis carroll, by douglas r. hofstadter (DOUBLE SIKE! note to self: ignore all book recommendations from jeremy richards. this is his "light"reading.)
at least 20 entries from the women's encyclopedia of myths and secrets, by barbara g. walker
lots of entries from witches: an encyclopedia of paganism and magic, by michael jordan
song of solomon, by toni morrison (again)
fat girl (a memoir), can't remember authors name
kindred, by octavia butler
fledgling, by octavia butler
parable of the sower (again), by octavia butler
writing down the bones (natalie goldberg)
wicked (but only the first few chapters)
the selected poems of james tate (poems)
my mother's body(again), by marge piercy (poems)
the moon is always female, by mary oliver (poems)
the subtle art of breathing by asha bandele(poems)
said the shotgun to the head, saul williams (long-ass poem)
the abundance book, by john randolph price (40 day prosperity plan included)
writing with intent, essays, reviews etc. by margaret atwood
a clockwork orange, by anthony burgess (first time. horrorshow!)
the prodigal summer, by barbara kingsolver
enchanted love:the mystical power of intimate relationships, by marriane williamson
some book of essays about rumi can't remember the name of it
the fifth sacred thing (a novel), by starhawk
wild like that good stuff smellin strong, by tish benson (poems)
the autobiography of benjamin franklin
the alchemist, by paulo coelho
on the art of poetry by aristotle (weeeeelllll...not really...but i have it. stole it from a friend)

not very impressive-eh? maybe there's more...will let you know...cbell

Family Part One

2006-09-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

my family is hilarious and the funniest thing about them is that they think i'm the one with jokes. i'm in san francisco right now because two months ago nonnie, my grandma who is 81 years old, decided that she needed all new furniture. her entire house is baby blue and white, her two favorite colors, from the carpets to the faux french blue velvet sofa's, covered until very recently in plastic, to the dining room, bedspreads and bath towels. my mom begged me to come with her to help get rid of the old furniture, clean out granny's garage and keep her company partly because granny, who is evil as the devil, is the bane of everyones existence, except mine. lawd chile she LOOOOOVE her some "princess christy-love," a fact that mystifies everyone in the family as i'm the pagan slut with no children, marriage prospects or mortgage and who, they all suspect, is a flaming lesbian because otherwise, wouldn't one of them have seen me with a man in the past 10 years, not to mention she's always talkin' about women?

so my mom booked our non refundable tickets and two days before we were to fly out, nonnie mentions casually to my mother that she's changed her mind, she doesn't think she needs new furniture after all but she's mighty glad that her only child and favorite grand daughter are kind enough to visit an old woman like herself who's kinfolk all live in n'awleans, that is they did live in n'awleans til that hurricane came and wiped everybody out (keeping in mind that all of my family fled the area before the disaster hit). ARRRGGGHH! so i'm pretty much stuck here until next thursday. am trying to make the most of it, furiously recording the hilarious diatribe against the world that my grandma spews with her every waking breath, bless her heart.

things you should know about my grandmother miss mayola maybanks-davis-simon;

though she's black as a bowl of prunes, she's been using bleaching cream for the last 60 years and expects to turn "light skinned" any day now.

she spends $80/jar on anti-wrinkle cream that she slathers on at night and attributes her perfect wrinkle free skin to lancome. i once tried to explain melanin to her, but she just pretended like she didn't understand me. this trip, my mom and i convinced her that oil of olay works just as well.

her first husband, my grandpa louis, who lived 85 years on planet earth, never believed in space travel. he believed that the US travelling to the moon was a big hoax on the american people. (to what end, he never explained).

her second husband, whom we all called "uncle sy" said to me on his deathbed, "when i die, i'd ruther come back a white mule than a black anything! that's just how bad they treat us. you don't know how they treat us."

granny not only believes that jesus was black, she also believes that he was lynched and "crucified" is a word white folk today use to cover that up.

she's cut my dad out of all the pictures she has of him and my mom together.

she subscribes to ebony, jet and essence and cuts out all the articles in the newspaper with pictures of black people next to them and sends them to my mom.

she makes pralines so good, your teeth fall out when you eat them.

but the best thing about her is that when the student loan people call her looking for me, she always says she doesn't know who i am or where i live. THAT'S LOVE!

and now, wisdom and words of advice from grandma:

"you too old to be marryin' for love. y'need to find you a man with some money!" (an interesting bit of trivia: about eight years ago, she tried to fix me up with a mortician who went to her church and i actually went on a date with him to shut her up!)
"i hate to say it baby, but you prolly gon end up wit a white man. ain't no nigger out there good enough f'you..."
"what? they don't sell girdles at victoria secrets?" (granny has been trying to convince me for years that i need to wear a girdle)
"you'd be so cute if it weren't for dem nigger knots y'got in y'head!" (referring to my dredlocks)
"y'know, you could make a good livin' as a (choose one:) post office employee, hair dresser, teacher etc."
"you a writer, ain'tcha? am i gon die befo' ya book come out?"
"as long as you happy, you can do anything you want to do."
"you don't need no man."

Things You Might Think

2006-07-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

BUT SHOULD NEVER SAY OUT LOUD!:

christa! it looks like you're getting FAT!, flow, "just keepin' it real" mentalz, my second favorite jersey poet (sexy ass BIG MIC is still my hands down favorite) last night at the nuyorican. so as a special guest, i read a new piece called, "she takes up space" that was inspired by a poet friend who saw me reading the memoir, "fat girl" by judith moore (a ferocious read) and who groaned, oh my god, you're not about to write a fat girl poem are you? please don't. you're too good for that. and the world doesn't need another fat girl poem...whatever. will post later...cbell

ps-in my honor, using only her eyes, rachel mckibbens threw a hood over flow's head, dragged him into the woods, tied him to a tree, poured honey all over his body and left him for the bears...

The Moth Slam, NY, NY

2006-07-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

went to a fantastic storytelling slam last night with a super-secret-famous-in-his-world friend who's name i will not mention because he's regularly and intensely stalked by crazy female fans of his love poems. as a matter of fact, i've been stalking him myself for months under the pretense of just "getting to know" him because his work is "so charming, so natural, so utterly without pretense..." a little flattery goes a long way with the famous-in-their-own-world types...but i'm a little nervous that somehow i'll slip and he'll recognize me for the crazed fan that i am. but hopefully by then it'll be too late and he'll already have eaten his daughters boiled bunny.

but back to the slam: i came in dead last, booed the hell out of the judges and was a very sore loser in general but had the best time! i'm not nervous anymore when i'm reading or otherwise performing on stage but last night was about unpracticed storytelling. no notes, no memorization and no one knew me. there were a total of ten contenders, pulled out of a hat and everyone told a first person story. for some reason i couldn't think of a first person story that wasn't already a poem and so i retold a fairy tale.

the theme was, "busted" and so i told the story of rumplestiltskin. remember the little elf (i made him a dred elf with a trinidadian accent which would've been hilarious if i hadn't been so nervous), who spun all the straw into gold so the farmers daughter wouldn't be killed by the king? well she eventually promised him her first born son but didn't want to give up her child when it came time to pay the piper. the dred elf decides to let her keep her child if she can guess his name, which she does by catching him in the forest singing (and i made this shit up on the spot!):

(to the tune of no woman no cry)
no woman no win
no woman no win
lil darlin gon shed much tear
my name is rumplestiltskin

BUSTED!

i went WAY over time (the story slam has a five minute time limit as opposed to the three minute/ten second slam time limit), i probably went on for ten minutes (there's this freaky little whistle thing that they blow when you've used your time and it totally made me lose my concentration). all the story tellers were fantastic! there were first person stories about going on an internet date and ending up in jail because the date lunged at a police officer, accidentally mooning parents through a van window, not defending a senile relative who swore she heard the story teller sneaking out of the house to smoke a cigarette, and getting caught shoplifting in the store of a client and then being rescued by the store manager!

the host, who's name i'm very sorry i don't remember, was absolutely hilarious once he got warmed up, but i think he'd be even better if the crowd gave him more energy to work with. for the most part they laughed and clapped politely, but my secret friend and i were the only ones in the audience crackin' jokes (when i booed the judges for my low scores, secret squirrel was like, "i'll cut you! do you know who I AM?") and generally being silly. and jennifer, the vannah white/ed mcmahon-ish co-host was a great sidekick, very sweet and wrote me an email asking me to come again.

good times and a round of drinks for everyone! more later...cbell

RATS!

2006-07-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

somebody stop me. yesterday i bought rat traps at the dollar store to set in the subways here and am hoping to start a movement. i don't know if we just don't have rats and roaches on the west coast (i saw my first roach in california when i was 12 years old and i have NEVER EVER EVER seen a west coast rat!), or if they are simply well mannered enough to hide themselves when a lady approaches! the other day, a rat stared me down on the stairs leading to the union square f train. i was like, Shoo! Shoo! i stamped my foot and tried to scare it away then i walked up on it all big and bold, thinking that it would back down and let me pass, but the little MF just cocked it's head and stared at me as if i were trespassing! if he had a rifle, he would've shot at me! so i was like, fine, you can have your ol' fonky stairway, i didn't want to go home anyways, but then this man comes up behind me and he's laughing at me like, BWAHAA! don't you know that here, we share space with the animals? and then he walked right past the rat as if it weren't even there! so i scurried behind him (like a rat) and the whole time the lil bugger is just like, yeah, that's what i thought!

but i will have my revenge. and i know that's not very buddhist, killing rodents and all, so thank the lord i'm not a buddhist!!!...more later...cbell

Procrastination For Dummies

2006-07-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

this is how you stall a creative project:

1) go to the movies to see the devel wears prada and stay through superman, the break-up and the lake house.

2) decide that writing is dumb and poetry is even dumber and besides, how is a grown-ass woman supposed to make a living doing either? then research debt consolodation programs and, since you just saw superman, crystal technology. then look at mathematics programs at seattle central community college because you've always wanted to be a physicist and all the people you date are so maybe this is a sign that you need to stop sleeping with science nerds and become one. decide that you need to learn html so you can design your own damn website, look for certificate programs and html for dummies type books online. google an ex-sort-of-kind-of-i don't know what we were-boyfriend from 10 years ago who you heard joined some kind of spiritual cult in arkansaw that wears purple all the time and worships jesus (i know. cult and jesus don't normally appear in the same sentence, but you'd have to know my ex.) take a few moments to be bitter about that relationship. wonder about ex's in general, slowly and one at a time.

3) eat chocolate and drink coffee after doing neither for six weeks. this way you can achieve an extreme chemical high and then have a crash so depressing that you sleep 14 hours at a time.

4) call your little sister in california and talk about family members. patiently discuss all the ways in which the two of you are superior to everyone else related to you by blood.

5) blog

and if none of the above works, put on something sparkly and fabulous, run on strappy platform wedges to the subway and meet your girls in the city to see KURTIS BLOW!!

see ya!!

Black Girlz Rule NYC Arts Scene

2006-07-03T15:31:00.002-07:00

...at least, from my perspective. late last night, after watching the brazillians beat the hell out of the tamborine at a free concert in central park, i went to the danny simmons corridor gallery (344 grand avenue in brooklyn) to see the "I Witness" installation by rwandan-born artist, Duhirwe Rushemeza, the 2006 artist-in-residence at the harlem school of the arts. the installation, a "reflection and commemoration of the lives lost during the 1994 rwandan genocide," was one in which Rushemeza, "...remain(ed)silent for a 24-hour period carving out a pair of eyes every twelve seconds to investigate the breakdown of the statistics for (the) 1994 rwandan genocide that claimed the lives of 800,000 people. these killings occured over a 100 day period at a rate of 8000 people per day, 333 people per hour, five people per minute, and one person every 12 seconds..."

she carved with a teensy little exacto type knife filling in the outlines of large abstract shapes set against a sky-blue background with hundreds of sets of tiny little eye's. it was absolutely silent in the gallery space, out of respect for the act of commemoration, and she was facinating to watch: a graceful and thin wristed, burnt brown-skinned woman with a cascade of copper dredlocs wrapped into a bun on the top of her head. her carving was meticulous and methodical. she glanced up only once per group of visitors and she carefully looked each of one of us in the eyes before bowing her head to return to her work. every few minutes or so she would glance at her watch as if to make sure that her carvings kept time with the literal act of one murder per twelve second period.

the impact was powerful in a contemplative kind of way. since she maintained her pace for 24 hours (she'd been at it about 10 hours by the time my friends and i got there)you had to wonder at the dedication of the the murderer's and also the sheer stamina it would take (physical and psychic)to both commit and endure such terror.

also of note this summer: kara walker at the MET using her silhouettes to dialogue with the masters about the meaning of black folk, water and the katrina disaster, imani uzuri's ground breaking musical theatre debut, "her holy water: a black girls rock opera" @ joes pub and other venues throughout the city, the collage art of kenyan artist wangechi mutu at the sikkema jenkins & company gallery as well as the organic, hand-dyed, paper and house paint abstract paintings of sienna horton at the DUMBA arts collective in brooklyn, which you can see by appointment or homegirl hook-up only.

hoping to see sara jone's bridge and tunnel on broadway and, of course, the color purple musical as well before i go back home late july.

How To Be A Rich Bitch In The Hamptons

2006-06-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

i'm trying to be cool about it but really, i'm wildly impressed. i'm in south hampton right now staying in a $25,000,000 "cottage" because some friends of mine are working this summer as "organic chefs" for the daughters of a russian billionaire. a few things: "organic chefs" is in quotes because neither of them really are. this job is on some "homegirl hookup". one of the "help" is a member of the new york crew and was in charge of staffing the house for the summer. she passed my girls off as chef and nutritionist and so, here we are.

the "girls" are russian socialites, 21 and 29 years old, who receive monthly allowances of $40,000 each (in addition to $27,000/month for food and around $30,000 for staff), and who call themselves "heiresses", have paid $650,000 to rent this house out for the summer (sorry, i can't quite resist numbers dropping, and since i know you're wondering, their father is worth $18 billion. daily intrest: $250,000,000) and, are, by all accounts, the two most boring people on earth. whatever. they let the help have the run of the place 3 days out of every week (including a three week on-site paid vacation in august) while they're off trading yachts and drugs in st. tropez with paris hylton (no. really. they do.) or hanging out on park avenue, and this, my friends, is where i come in. oh is it ever good being best friend to the "b" people.

how to be a rich person: first, one or two spigots in a shower is hardly enough to get you clean. seven is the minimum, but in a summer rental you can get away with five. after all, toes are just as important and worthy of full on jet blasts as shoulders. end body part apartheid now!

next, your refrigerator should be as large as your wealthiest servant's entire apartment. this is mandatory. if you have to ask why, clearly you are out of your tax bracket.

oh, and of course you must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a decorator to ensure that your home is devoid of any personal style or quirky originality. let your decorator, er, "home design specialist", convince you that plaid walls are fly and a maroon, olive and gold color scheme isn't wack.

don't forget the flatscreen televisions on every available wall surface to stand in as art. unless you're really rich, then, bring your uptown art to display at your summer cottage, but let it be bland as tofu and hardly worth the effort.

if you really wanna live it up, show the world that you, indeed, are runnin' thangs, from your luxurious bedroom, scream the name of one of your staff at the top of your lungs as if you were being plundered by the saxons. when she comes running up two flights of stairs, gasping and panting prayers under her breath, collapse on your floor dramatically and pout softly, "i'm staaaaarving! make me something to eat?" this really happened.

and lastly, to really earn the title of "heiress" don't know how to plug a toaster into an electrical outlet and flop your wrist helplessly while fumbling with the cord and asking, "how does this thing work? oh forget it. just make me some toast!"

yes. i am hating a little. and what have these rich bitches done other than offer me a beautiful writing retreat, away from the city three days a week (three weeks in august) for the rest of the summer???...clearly i need to work on my judgement and compassion. ok! sheesh! a little bit of grattitude would be in order as well..more later...christa bell, poet and socialheavy

Phoenix & Mesa, AZ

2006-05-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

...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...

2006-05-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-04T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

poem

2006-04-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

she is convinced that love is a crusade
the sacred war that never ends
her hair is the flag
her heart, a horse
she rides
drooping
and fat
the armor didn't fit
she stuffs a soldiers rations down her throat
to pad her skin
the darts fly
and then the spears
the bullets pierce
her heart keeps riding
this is holy
what warriors live for
the chance to die in battle
the blood of the enemy clinging to bits of scalp
scrunched inside the dark
of heroic fists
crisping to ash
atop funereal pyres

stream...

2006-04-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

have picked up julia cameron's 'the artist's way' again and turned straight to week 5: recovering a sense of possibility, which is perfect for where i am today, for the first time really feeling the low after being high and on the road for three and a half months. my low looks and feels a bit whiney, like, i'll never be like...or have ...or go...or do....

the exercises at the end of the chapter are killer. they are an exploration and expansion of my relationship to the "source" i.e. god-energy that makes everything happen...some examples:

start an image file: if i had either faith or money i would try...list five desires. for the next week, be alert for images of these desires. when you spot them, clip them, buy them, photograph them, draw them, collect them somehow. with these images, begin a file of dreams that speak to you. add to it continually...

and

if i were twenty and had money...list five adventures. again, add images of these to your visual image file.

and

ten ways i am mean to myself are...just as making the postitive explicit helps allow it into our lives, making the negative explicit helps us to exorcise it.

and

honestly, my favorite creative block is...tv, over-reading, friends, work, rescuing others, overexercise. you name it. whether you can draw or not, please cartoon yourself indulging in it.

and

my payoff for staying blocked is...

and

the person i blame for being blocked it....

and

list ten things you love and would love to do but are not allowed to do. your list might look like this:
1. get regular weekly massages
2. travel to india
3. scuba dive
4. move to a bigger place

etc.

then the wish list: speed write 10 wishes....

am procrastinating doing the exercises right now, cuz i like being depressed and whiney sometimes...more later...cbell

the truth about meditation

2006-04-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

so...ten days/ten nights at twelve hours of meditation/day equals the complete script to my one woman show: Coochie Magic: a SpokenWord Musical Comedy.

this was the first time i broke the rules. i've done s.n. goenka's vipassana retreat 8 times over the last six years and this was the FIRST TIME I BROKE THE RULES! up at 4am and meditating until 9pm, but this time, during the breaks, i WROTE MY ASS OFF!! I wrote my first full length show and composed five songs in less than 10 days (because i really was trying not to write!) anis mojani started the whole writing thing by TEXT MESSAGING ME TWO DAYS INTO THE RETREAT AFTER I CLEARLY TOLD HIM THAT I WOULD BE AT A 10 DAY SILENT RETREAT WHERE I WASN'T ALLOWED TO WRITE!!! i have a friend who told me just before i went in that i needed a 12 step program for text messaging. he calls me "two thumbs and a blackberry", because of the long ass letters i text him every week. matter of fact, i curated the entire common ground benefit by text message right before i went on retreat. the beautiful thing about texting is that it's more immediate than email and less committed than a conversation...which suits my intimacy issues just fine...i can talk to you without really, well, talking to you.

back to my sript though... the shyt is hilarious. for the last six years i've been working on a project called "56: memoire of a black girls sexual coming of age" and i tell you, it's the never ending story. and the thing is, i've been so attached to telling the story as a book. but one of my master teachers has been telling me for years that when you attach yourself to an idea of how something is, you cancel out a whole range of possiblilities for what it could be. so, at the retreat, i just let go of my memoir being a book and it came to me that since i'd been excerpting pieces from it as spoken word anyways, why not just transform it into a theatre piece?? brilliant-eh?

anyways...am excited to see where it goes. will be testing it out this summer at workshops and open mics around nYc. i've never done standup before so i'ma take some of the monologues to standup clubs too...we'll see how it goes...more later...cbell

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

2006-04-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

this is my friend michael cirelli's favorite poem, and now i understand why i love him...

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart
By Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

BURNT

2006-03-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

i can admit when i've had enough. i've had enough. the WordMedicine power tour is winding down and i couldn't be more relieved...been on the road since january 3rd and leave for seattle by train today (because i need some time alone to write) and then, on the 22nd, off to b.c. for 10 day vipassana retreat...no performing, talking, debating, philosophising, writing or being "on" for 10 beautiful days...will hang out in vancouver with my fave people on earth afterwards until the 5th before i'm off to either nYc and long island university or salem, oregon and willamette college/university...only the shadow knows for sure...

have been asked to curate the spokenword component for a common ground benefit on april 20th in new oreleans for katrina victims. i've asked some of my fave poets to be down and so far, everyone except mighty mike mcgee will be able to come through...mercury is retrograde so really, this is a horrible time to be planning anything as important as a benefit, but clearly, nobody consults the stars anymore. not believing in merc retro is like not believing in spring. cycles happen whether you believe in them or not...at any rate, have to write a letter now to get an airline to donate travel vouchers for the event...wish me luck...or the proper alignment of stars...or pray for me...meditate...send good energy...whatever...thanks...more later...cbell

the ancesteral realm

2006-03-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

and speaking of getting high: in LA i met a cool ass poet named molly who will be connecting me with her mother who is a shaman living in maui...been wanting to experiement with soul retrieval techniques for a while and a shaman i know who lives in seattle was telling me that it is possible to access the ancestral realm in shamanic soul retrieval ritual and heal folk who haven't been able to complete the death transition.

you know how black people have a saying that goes something like, if you die poorly you don't stay in the grave? well, i heard a very wise woman speak a few years back about how hundreds of thousands of african's have died in states of trauma and extreme anxiety over the last 500 or so years that our psychic/spiritual realm is packed with these zombie like spirits who haven't been able to fully transition to the ancestral realm. and since there has been no mass healing or transitional or even acknowledgement ritual to guide them over to the other side, basically they are stuck in a kind of purgatory between worlds. we are haunted by spirits who aren't able to do whatever regenerative work ancestors do in the ancestral realm.

this makes sense to me. char sundust (the shaman in seattle) told me that it is possible to access this in between world and heal the traumatized spirits that live there. or at least access and teach enough of them to be healers so that they can do the work themselves. i'd like to know if this is true. so i'll be experimenting soon....more later...cbell

Mercury Retrograde

2006-03-16T10:03:00.000-08:00

WHY DOES MERCURY HATE ME SO MUCH??? i wonder if i stop believing in mecury, will he quit fuckin' with me...Mercury, the planet of communication and transportation is retrograde through the 25th of march and trans/comm is majorly jacked up in my world right now...my flight from LA to portland last night was delayed just enough to make me play the race card (and i NEVER play the race card!) on the customer service kid who was telling me, "sorry, it's not our fault. no you can not get a refund on your ticket. no you can not take an earlier flight. no you we can not switch you to another airline. no you will not be compensated for the performance you will miss at portland state university. no you can not speak to my supervisor. now please, step aside so i can help the other customers." to make a long story short, i staged a sit-in at the customer service counter until the agent found me another flight that would get me to my destination on time. wouldn't budge. just stood there and looked at him with, like, 10 people behind me in line waiting. so he got back on his little computer and found me a way to portland. LIKE HIS PUNK ASS SHOULDA DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!! (sorry...am rarely peaceful during merc retro...)

YAAAAY!! i made it! and the show was solid, but since i'm losing my voice and have caught some kind of travel bug from traversing 5 different climates in 10 days, have decided to rest in portland until the 18th and cancel 'a mic and dim lights' tonight back in LA.

the LA shows have been good, but the other night, at 'da poetry lounge' i was completely high on stage because i didn't think the cold medicine i'd taken was working so i took a double dose and then a claritin on top of that because my nose just wouldn't unplug!!

so right before i go on, i whisper to my sister, are you making faces at me, or am i just high on cold medicine?? she was like, OH MY GOD YOU'RE TRIPPING! HOW MANY DID YOU TAKE?? YOU KNOW HOW SENSITIVE YOU ARE TO DRUGS!!! but then she pulled herself together and was like, ok christa, ground yourself and focus. use the high, don't let it use you...so i'm up on stage confusing the angels with ghosts and trying to crack jokes between poems that are funny to me, but then forgetting the punchlines...coochie magic lasted for like, 10 minutes, because i lost all track of time, and then shihan was ready to pull me off the stage with one of those gong show canes because i kept going on and on...but apparently, i gave a stellar performance. solds lots of merch and was given major love all around...AND NOBODY KNEW I WAS HIGH!! wow...more later...cbell