Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

Hiphop. A chain of transmission.

Despite all the drama and the beefs, the divisions, etc. - hiphop is a community. The divisions exist because even with all the hate, the fact is, folks had to be listening to each others' music to even take it there.

Less considered and more taken for granted is this: hiphop is connected. Lyrics reference other songs, other artists, common experiences ideas.

It's like auditory hypertext- each phrase might connect to a hundred songs before, a hundred songs since.

But only if you've been listening.

This sampling, electronically, this flipping back a phrase verbally, from before, new, twisted, changed just a little, this isn't plagiarism, it can't be - it's summoning spirits, it's repeating words of your lyrical "ancestors", it's forming ritual and prayer.

"Raise your hands in the air" has no need to be original, it only needs to connect you now, to then, to those before, and those ahead of you. When and where you flip it, it's like griots speaking their family lineages to the seventh generation, "...and here I stand, mic in hand."

This is the culture.

And this is the disconnect in how folks relate to it. They want a song, or a few songs, they want the lyrics simple, self contained. But they're never that- they're history, they're tied down, tied together, syllables taking middle passages across the dangerous oceans of passion, to rebel and find freedom broken out by screaming your name, your real name, or as real as it can be, with so little left, and so little remembered.

If you take the past away, we'll make a new past, stronger, better than before. We still speak the songs of our forebearers, even if it was just 10 minutes ago, because building family is what we do no matter how far away you move us.

Hiphop is a group endeavor. It is a community religion. This is the line between the practitioners and the appropriators - who still participates with the community - who performs with other hiphop artists, who brings them in, who says their words as well, because if "I shine, you shine"?

Hiphop is always a dialogue.

We can say the lyrics together because we know the song. Because we know -the- songs. Because we kept together, connected, tied by words passed from house party to house party, corner ciphers and turns of phrases spoken years before they got radio play and years after Clear Channel wiped them from the collective memory.

They say hiphop is dead, yet we keep raising it's spirit, saying it's names over and over.

"The job of resurrectors is to bring back the dead", and so, each MC and each fan, we do so again and again.

Hallelujah, put your hands in the air.

Farah Mendlesohn is interested in organizing a group of folks who might be interested in reading their ReMyths at WorldCon in Montreal in August.

If you're interested, please contact her with your name, a link to your piece, at farah.sf at gmail.

Kwai Chang Caine.

I was 6 or 7 when I first heard of you. I'm sorry I couldn't tell the ghosts had already taken you, but I also thought my dad was black, so I think you'll forgive me. I know you were half chinese, like me, and you were a perpetual foreigner, like me, and you lived in America, like me. I often felt like I'd wander like you, and I hope they don't put a ghost in my place as well.

Iron Fist.

Maybe they thought if they put a mask over the white guy we wouldn't see. But he took it off all the time to remind us that you were gone and a ghost was in your place. CoIntelPro must have somehow brainwashed Luke, because he didn't notice the difference, at least consciously. He fought a lot with the ghost, so I think he knew, deep down, it wasn't you. I like to hope that you made it back to KunLun and kicked it with the dragons.

Snake Eyes.

Unlike Iron Fist, they had enough sense to keep the mask on this one most of the time. I wish you got a chance to avenge your whole clan from this ghost that took over. They all rocked hexagrams from the I-Ching and got to star in dope issues with no dialogue. Every boy wanted to be you, because you weren't annoying like Quickkick.

Neo.

I know they say the ghost has some of your DNA, but they couldn't fool me. I knew it was a fake when he said, "I know Kung Fu" but really broke his neck while filming. After all, it took a lot of special effects to get him to compete with Lawrence Fishburne. They wanted Jet Li to work with you, but they wouldn't pay him enough to keep quiet about the ghost and got Collin Chou instead. We only watched the movie because we thought the ghost was a robot.

Goku.

I thought they'd never get you. Sure, you looked mighty ghost like when you went Super Saiyan, but I was ok with that because you always turned back to normal when you were done. I think they just couldn't deal with the thought of you being a superman from outerspace saving the planet. And you were so much more awesome than Supeman. You stayed popular for 20 years, but I guess, like everything, they're not happy unless they can claim credit for it all.

Aang.

They're trying to get you too. I suspect they'll do it, because, even if you are the Avatar, they have no elements, no heart, no spirit. That's why they have to keep stealing ours. Our stories and heroes are about mastering ourselves, but they can't see such a story unless they master someone else.

That's why they're ghosts.

I can't remember how old I was, 8, 10? I was young enough to go to summer camp, old enough that they'd consider putting us in canoes. If you wanted to go on the canoe trip, all you had to do was pass the "Swim Test".

You had a life vest, you jumped off the dock. You swam, doggied paddled, or whatever manner of aquatic locomotion you could pull to get to the other dock, which was only like 30 feet away. I watched kids jump in, bob back up, and at the very least, flail their way to the other side.

I had a life vest. How hard could it be?

I jumped in.

And sank.

Right to the bottom.

I think it was about halfway down that I realized the lifevest wasn't working. And wasn't -going- to work. It wasn't until I was at the bottom, on the sandy floor, looking up, that I realized I was going to have to get myself back up, somehow.

I grabbed the support for the dock, and climbed my way up, like a monkey underwater, to pull myself up over the edge, hyperventilating. The camp counselor peeled off the life vest and threw it in the water.

It floated.

Even now I love hanging out at the beach.

Just don't ask me to go in above my waist.

It doesn't have a singular church. It's a few thousand years of various traditions, beliefs, and worships, poured under one name because it has some similarities. Which is like saying Christianity, Scientology, and Flying Spaghetti Monster worship ought to go in the same book.

Like Islam, it predicted it's own absence- coming as a stranger and leaving as a stranger.

They call it Taoism.

And, accordingly, supposedly, anyone can be a taoist. All you have to do, is do nothing. Or perhaps have lots of yin-yang symbols everywhere and i-Ching hexagrams for bonus points. Don't have sex. Have lots of sex. Do Yin-Yang Yoga. Do Tai Chi. No, do real Tai Chi. Stand on your plastic Tai Chi Ball to increase your core strength and balance your chakras. Have lots of Buddhas around. Burn incense. Buy more books. Drink tea. Get a Chinese girlfriend. Read lots of books written by white people who have chinese masters who no one has heard of. Or better yet, Tibetan masters. Or better still, Taoist teachers who show up in their dreams to tell them secrets (Hey, I just dreamt I was a Jedi, can I start a Jedi Church now?).

Or. Maybe, talk to people with lineages. With rules and books and histories. Which are all really important and they can tell you why everyone else doesn't have the Tao right. And how you can't share these secrets with anyone else (it's universal laws, you, small human, hide them).

Me? I don't think I'll talk to anyone about it. After all, what can be said isn't what I was looking for in the first place.

False gold exists because there is real gold, somewhere.

Before people, there were dragons. They controlled wind, rain, storms, and even waves of the ocean. No one measures when people first came, but, at some point, an accord was made. The dragons lived in palaces below the water, and people above, and gods above that. The dragons "paid tribute" by bringing the weather on time.

Or perhaps the gods paid tribute and the dragons were kind enough to grant rains.

It's really hard to say, as people are the ones who wrote the history.

An empty palace sits under waves, abandoned. And storms come harder and more fierce every year. The dragons aren't carved of ivory and jade- they sit printed on napkins and club shirts. They do not echo with the roars of thunder and storm waves, but the voice of Eddie Murphy tinning out jokes to soften "foreign stories" upon ears.

Nobility, of the spirit and not of blood, knows that it's power is not in who it commands but who it serves, how it betters the world just by being. At one time, people sought monsters, not for the slaying, but to learn their truths.

If I meet one, I'll ask her if she has lost her history as well.