And There She Was...

The coolest sister she has calls her sissafran, so for short we’ll call her Fran. Far from the family, but always aspiring to be, her immediate lineage resembles somewhat the surface of the Camdens (ref: 7^th Heaven). With that said, this woman is Fran Camden. True grit, crazy like a fox, smarter than everything above-average, and has a glare that could give a non-smoker cardiac arrest. Let’s leave her alone for now, and get back to it later.

The night is somewhat young, and you can hear his voice is a lil’ bit younger. Not the fact that it’s young age-wise or high pitch, but in the vein of enthusiasm. This kid has the f----kin fire. He’s waited this moment for years, perhaps his life even. Sweat, dreams, cash: all spent in the name of an art form that suits an outlet for his mental livelihood and day-to-day miscues. When you look Mike Lipset in the eyes, he looks like he will cut you. His eyes have the frow of a bull dog, truly not giving a f--- and the one who will finish the fight rather than start it. I’ve seen this before and it strikes no fear in any fiber of me, but what sends chills down my spine is the history in his pupils. I don’t know Mike’s background, but aside from his stare staking action, the stare also parlays he has cut someone before. People that aren’t afraid to do shit… are nothing to be afraid of. It’s the m-----f-----ers that’ve done it before and have absolutely no problem taking to you with fist, blade, or bullet at any moments notice.

Getting to know Mike, you’d quickly conclude he’s not the type. His stare however communicates different. The dichotomy is still beleaguering, but I do my best to stay on the same page with him, and this is it. His night has come. The 18+ crowd of escapists, impulse, and live fast instinct raises their hands in sync with his call and response. The Minnesota girls either gyrate to the beat as if Burning Man had just been kicked off, or stand and give him the same killer stare back. It’s moving. Mike’s moving. The moment is moving, and he’s brought us along for the ride. You gotta be thankful for gritty-ass artists like Mike. His ambition is just getting started and you can’t help but respect the fire he has to offer. Mike Lipset’s Levelheads Mixtape release party at Hell’s Kitchen… yeah, I was there.

Quickly had to bounce to 1^st ave for Get Cryphy. Anu’s always spoken about it, but I never took her word for it. Met up with Ryan K, Riley, and a few other national caliber poets outside the joint. Tried to get in, couldn’t. Door man says they’re at capacity. C’moooooon, I have money, don’t you want it.

Na. 1^st Ave’rs could give a shit less if you had the cure for cancer at the door. The building shuts it down like Fort Knox. Years ago, I use to be a bouncer at 1^st Ave. You take a code of the samurai for that place. Soul before cash. Defend the establishment at all costs… even if that cost is you. Jea, if any door men were to take a bullet for their club, they’d be the door men I’m staring down right now. Quick, he’s not looking. I raise my wrist as if I already have a wristband, and pass by like a ghost.

Boom, I’m in. Bodies clashing, bass blowing through the wet air, ganja blowing through the wet air, and there she was… at the bar. Arch-nemesis, the devil herself, “Ms. Shin” we’ll call her for now. Backstory: Ms. Shin and myself collided like a bitter old loveless marriage in high school. Never took the time to get to know each other, just hated each other. Senior year we tried to make a treuce, she asked me to Sadies. It was on, but later we called it off. Possibly we could look each other in the eye and mean it when we say "even if you were the last person on earth...". Or not. Last we spoke, we were out for coffee, walking with her 3 year old daughter around Medal Park. Again, somehow the hatred lives on. “Don’t you have a bar and a kid to tend to?”. She quickly cuts back, “Don’t you have a show to do in Wisconsin?”. Wasn’t a dig, but the way Ms. Shin says it… you can just tell she’s going for the throat everytime. The way she said it would make any musician feel ashamed for ever setting foot near Wisconsin. I don’t know how she does it, but she does. She could spite volunteer work in Africa, and make people feel guilty for even thinking about joining the Peace Core. Mutant power, cold queen… or both. We’ll never know, but when she aims, hot damn she always hits. I grin. She grins. I ghost away to the entrance to catch Ryan K and co. still outside not trying to find the cure for cancer. Get Cryphy, more than my scene, and I’d stay for the party, but not tonight. Promised a friend I’d meet her somewhere, sometime in the city. Meh, can’t quite call it “friend”, more a friendly acquaintance.

The text is in, she’s at The Nomad… and I know where this is going. Coolest sister Fran has, we called her La Mark. I always liked LaMurk better, so we’ll go with Murk on this one. Murk texts she’s at The Nomad. Seeing she’s never in Minneapolis, I book it down to the West Bank. Step out the taxi with my bright orange Michael Kors sweatshirt I bought in Brooklyn for $20, and a tie that’d make me gay in Mpls, but fresh to death in Brooklyn. Meh, I’d rather dress Brooklyn in Mpls, than dress Mpls in Brooklyn, right? Door man/Bartender Shad greets me at the door. “You’re in for it tonight”, he cryptically murmurs. “I know”, I think back to him. Shad, quite possibly the bartender with the most swag in Minneapolis… partially ‘cos he’s from New Orleans. (Sidenote: If you’re ever at The Nomad, ask Shad to make you a Hurricane. Only cat in Mpls that can do it like New Orleans. Hot fire.)

“Meh, her sister told me to meet her here.” Shad opens the door, I step in. Dark as the bat cave, Dracula dark, organized noise sweeping through the room, couldn’t be a better way to end the night… why? We’ve already said it once before, but collectively let’s say it again all together now “And there she was”. Back turned at the bar, facing the side door, her head swiveled to the right to glance over her shoulder… Fran. Similar to the snake woman in The Golden Child, starring Eddie Murphy, her head swiveled over that shoulder like a damn serpent. Christ, the woman’s got Spider-Sense all of a sudden. Maybe she’s seen this coming as well. Did Murk tell her I was droppin’ by? Is that a question you idiot, they’re sisters? Wish I cared enough to listen to the questions fire off in my brain like Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room, for this I could careless.

Mind you, Fran is as important to me as I am to her. Nil. However, what is important is the last time Fran and I were face-to-face, volume raised past high and into the realms of “somebody better call the po’s, a domestic’s about to go down like the bonus round”. Last time Fran and I were face-to-face she looked the sight of unrecognizable, a familiar face gone more ways than straight, eyes empty, anger full as a dirty sink , and holding on to the final tangible piece you could record from our discorded past. Call it heated, trespassing, crazy, or me just trying to get my shit back, but the last time Fran and I were face-to-face, Clash of the Titans didn’t have shit on us, the beginning fight scene between Justice and Afro’s father of Afro Samurai was fluorescent pale in comparison, and clearly everything prologued to the moment, strangely, made it an appropriate explosion. Meh, but I didn’t come here to see her, came here to see Murk. And Murk totally knew we'd run into each other. Christ, when was the last time Murk wanted to hang out without Fran involved? Maybe Murk's as entertained with our interactions as any blood lusting UFC audience... can't blame her.

Always had an idea of how this’d go down… but was never in the cards ‘til tonight. If anything, it’ll be entertaining just to see if she breaks a glass and lunges at me right then and there, or acts stand off-ish and plays it safe. Fran and I could be apathetic, engaged, or absolutely unaware of each others presence in the same room, and we’d somehow still wind up at each others throats, be it attraction or spite. For more than a year, love’s been long gone, and I’m too apathetic at this point to give the woman spite… however, the last time we spoke is about to become microscopic compared to the next moments we spend in the same building together… (to be continued... when I have more energy tomorrow to type again.)

Arkham Cafe

The back of her neck reads…

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

There's a fourth line, but I couldn't make it out on a suddenly slowed brisk walk to the Spyhouse. She sat at a table outside the coffeeshop studying, Fifth Element in the background, beautiful October day upon us, and "...way the world ends" in plain sight. The barista's looking at me like she's just seen a ghost. Staring me down patiently on my trek toward the register, as if she'd been waiting all day, knowing this moment would happen, like Bill Murray trapped in the ever-looping Groundhog's Day, or a samurai who always knew this moment would come. Her sword replaced by cash register, my backpack in place of any shogun weapon I should've brought to the showdown. Her face absolutely motionless. I don't even know how she got the words out her mouth without it moving, as if she telepathed the english to my brain and we simply made the transaction through thoughts.

I want to take a moment to look at the word "odd". When I type odd, I don't mean Hogwart's odd, that'd be an understatement, I mean odd like American McGee's Alice in Wonderland odd. Call me schizophrenic, but everytime I walk into the Spyhouse on Hennepin Ave. I get this sudden awe of displacement, as if there's a portal at the door, where you're immediately not in Minneapolis anymore, and have somehow entered into the realm of a who-dun-it mystery. Everyone seems suspect.

I drop into my seat, where the gentlemen next to me is watching something on his laptop that appears to simply be a screen saver. Ok. Yeah. Sure. I guess those things are entertaining nowadays. Sometimes we get hypnotized by the moving color-burst in step with music streaming through our laptops, but perhaps screen savers are the new hypnotic... yeah. I break my bag out, notebooks, pens, parking tickets- kick my feet up in the chair across from me, and begin to write. The barista, not the same one that served me, phantoms from behind the cash register. When I say "phantom", I mean she quietly stealthed from there to here ( Really trying to kill the urge to say "teleported", but we'll go with "stealth"). Call me the one that flew over the coocoo's nest, but this chick straight phantomed/Quantum Leaped to my table. She put out her hand as if she were going to break the news to me that the hospital called and said my mother isn't going to make it. However, without effort she delivers... "Could you please take your feet off the chair."

We look at each other for what felt like a millenium, soon broke by her turning away to work on whatever crime they're trying to cover up behind the counter. I get it, these chairs cost cash, and perhaps manners should be in order before someone has to tell me, but it was her delivery that got me... The way she said it with her eyes more than her voice, almost as if to intimidate if I didn’t take my feet off the chair, some method of witchcraft would be conducted to turn me into a pastry they’d throw into the day-old discount bin for tomorrow.

So, as I’m skeptically looking at the newly purchased day-old donut on my table, I remember the days of slaving at a coffeeshop, the ungrateful professors that would tip quarters to your efforts, the women that treated you like a peon from the nearest ghetto, the people that’d take a day and then some to decide what they wanted from the menu, the schizophrenics… Christ, the schizophrenics. One guy asked me to take a copy of his version of the bible and read it right in front of him. 48 pages of what seemed to be a finals paper written by Glenn Beck, I kindly declined the offer.

It’s situations like this that make me question what the f--- I’m doing spending 4+ hours a day writing in a coffeeshop, and if I’m headed to footnoting biblical text to a stack of 40+ pages, The answers never added up to a pat on the back or hand shake from the people that should matter most, but usually results in a random encounter of “Hey, are you that guy from that ____ (insert “Band”, “Commercial”, “Play”, or “Video” here). Wow, keep at it dude. You’re gonna make it someday.”

“Someday”, I assure you, will never come. And as cheez whip as it sounds, its due to the irrefutable fact that that “someday” is “today”. Staring across the street at Fifth Element, there’s flowers and cards in memorial and remembrance of the late great Micheal Larsen, and on my hard drive is a freshly uploaded video in memorial and remembrance of the late great Joe Sodd III. The point I’m getting at is, just perhaps I’m going absolutely insane, and the umpteenth day of writing songs and uploading content is beginning to make me feel like the baristas at this coffeehouse are conspiring to cloud the city with black magic. Don’t think anyone who’s written, performed, or created anything has ever conceived their labor of love with a smile on their face the whole way through. I’ll simply blank out sometimes and stare at the computer for what seems to be a few seconds- next thing I know, an hour’s passed. Maybe I and the guy sitting intently eyeing down the screen saver have more in common that I thought. 

Joe and Michael left behind a legacy of performance, moving works of art, and a life of commitment to the craft and their people. As artists, we’re all at the mercy of our work and somehow constantly creating the diorama for our memorial service. Tell me what’s the end you have in mind for the next move you make with that pen? What do you want to leave behind?

I couldn’t tell you the answer right now, but I’m going crazy for it at the moment. If life is worth dying for... it's also worth losing every bit of sanity in the process. 

Bon Voyage Iver

Usually we say "let the beat drop", but for this particular arrangement of music it's only fair to replace "beat" with "eerie-monk vocals". Voices ghost in like a Gregorian chant, one by one, then on to the dozens, it sounds like. Don't know if you remember the finale of 6 Feet Under, but it's like that- where the chick is driving cross the country chopped with a montage of each character's death. Whether it be old age, murder, health reasons, or just circumstance, this drive is broken up into scenes of each passing. Then the kick drum pulses. No snare, just a soft kick assisting the voices and acoustic guitar, slightly strumming offbeat. Record label Jagjaguwar would've re-recorded the whole thing, but they told the guy that it sounded so organic that they might as well keep it that way (say "bullshit" here). The record label clearly wanted to hold onto the recording cash to pool it for distribution. And somehow, throughout my in-and-out phases of Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, and Aerosmith, this quandry of music fell in my lap.

You have to listen to it while your driving, otherwise it won't work. Yeah, kinda like a spell you cast on yourself. Call it the incantation of denial or a disappearing act, but Bon Iver pulled off something magical while recording Lump Sum in his retreated cabin after being dumped by an ex-gal from North Carolina.

I can forget. Easily, we can forget if we'd like to, but it takes effort. It's not so simple as the maneuver of escaping an arm-bar or turning the other cheek, but you have to impress it with effort. And I'm not talking about the Christ-when-the-Twins-lost-like-a-bunch-of-losing-losers-to-the-Yankees forgetting... we call that denial... or the hard truth, but I'm talking about forgetting for the moment, cleaning the slate of your mind and confronting the fight for what it is. I accept this rock band is dead, and whatever happens after this will ultimately be my own doing. I wouldn't have it any other way: The Blend digging its own grave to stardom & infamy, Lazlo Supreme vying for buzz band success, and me... piecing together a mixtape like memories to a brain injury. Even in the death of this rock band, the rejuvenation is what I get butterflies for. Never have I stood on stage and felt so uncomfortable. The 200 demos of promo didn't show up to the venue, guitarist can't remember the dopest song we have, and I can't wait for the night to end because tomorrow promises better than this... as long as I keep my end of the bargain as well.

Those damn cathedral-echoing voices dawn on the HBO Montage in your head. You can see it so clearly, I'd swear it was the windshield in front of me if I fell anymore delusional. The future. The future somehow pacts with the present and everything is a clear path of action & consequence. You see everything prologued to now. Not a single word of Bon Iver have I ever made out from this song, except for "all at once" and "so the story goes". That's it. Nothing else. I'm tempted to look up the lyrics online, but I'd rather rewrite them in my head everytime I listen.

Less a delusion, more an acceptance as the song goes on. Guitarist and Bassist must go. Reconstruction has to start. This side project with Reid needs to be taken as serious as my coffee addiction, as serious as I take the mixtape. Music is somewhat my lie detector for myself. I can tell when I'm absolutely being untrue to myself while on stage or recording. You can take that ethereal step back from your body, look at your image in motion, and think "Seriously. Toussaint, seriously. Negroe please. You're not fooling anyone with this emcee, frontman, bullshit bravado act. Think about what you're saying, and stop going through the motions." The show got better... way better that night, before this whole ride home thru the night while listening to emotional charges via Bon Iver started. You wouldn't've been able to tell the show got better, but for me, confronting that truth of everything that needs be after the concert, I could remember the exact coffeeshop, dates, reasons, and moments I wrote everything I was speaking. It'll disconnect and connect in a circle like that until the day I croak, I believe. As long as I step away from the lights, mic cords, and elevated piece of floor with the confrontation, then I'm fine. This damn music, ringing, like halo'd angels. It solidifies the truth for me. It's a damn annoying/ thankful reminder. The alarm that wakes you for the audition of your dreams, but wakes you from your dreams. Horrible analogy, I know, but think about it and maybe it works. My sense of humor isn't for immediate gratification, moreso the laugh-now-cry-later gratification... if there's anything gratifying to be taken from it.

I swear I can see Chase sitting in the car with me, along with my dad, and everything else amalgamed to a lucid dream of something subconsciously trying to speak to me. It goes from hard reminder to easy recollection. The hardest part now, is putting it all in motion once I land to Minneapolis. It takes a bit of submission to conceive all that needs be done. I love coming to terms of what needs, and must be done. Something very compelling about it, something not for words and simply for action. Matter fact, I should get to work.

Melissamatic (3/3)

Ange was nothing but vowels and uncontainable weeps on the other end of the phone. Couldn't make out a damn thing she was saying. She kept murmuring something on the other line... soon got to the point.

"Toussaint, Chase was hit by a drunk driver last night."

That faint fiber of hope warms your arteries for a moment that thank God he's not dead, only injured, hospitalized, gonna be alright, he'll make it, he'll make it, for sure he'll make it- Shit! I should go to L.A. to visit him bedside right now!

And then the inevitable continues as she says...

"He died."

... Which let me note that there actually are no words for the moment after being told your best friend has passed away. To try and apply diction and definition to the elimination of someone's life is an impossibility that we attempt anyways. For as many times as I've tried to informally document the space in time I was informed Chase passed away, the emotion has never become more consolable... just a bit more maluable to the category of "one of those things you deal with". Either way, the best I can give it right now is you become numb to the ground beneath you, the globe ceases to revolve, bridges collapse into the Mississippi, flames burst around you, but you don't flinch. Your debt, your woe, your worry, all meaningless to the gaping void growing in the left side of your chest. Staring at the floor never became such a productive activity. Your mind races like a schizophrenic film reel, bits and pieces of moments flash in an instant as it sometimes stops to scroll in slow motion, however there's never a moment that you can remember that goes by at the normalcy you recall it to be.

Ange goes on to give a few gruesome details I could've gone without, but I don't flinch. I thank her, hang up the phone. What I remember next is the absolute collapse, weeping while pressing my forehead against a wall. Pressing my hands against the cracked paint, pressing to move the foundation of the building to splinters so I can take a picture as to what it feels like on the inside. The pressing turned to punching, turned to weeping, turned to punching, turned to submission. I lean against the wall, wallowing in an emotional give-in, tapping out to God, or whatever higher power existing above the whole reality of it all, simply subservient to the moment.

His face, his laugh, all the tangibles, never again... Only memories... Brief memories... I hurry to recall each and every last one of them like pages blowing in the wind on the front steps of a court house, scurrying to get my case together before the final drop of the gavel, scurrying to remake this good friend in my mind before it all fades to black, before I forget. Wall punching commences, don't ask me why, these moments are heresay to what we truly mean to each other, to the fragility of the human connection, that if one of us were to perish from the face of the earth, someone else's universe would implode on notice. Hence we say "you mean the world to me". Chase meant the solar system, and before I could rupture any more of a hole in this poor wall that hasn't done anything to anyone, but keep a roof above everyone, Melissa quickly grabs me...

She doesn't need to know, she didn't have to know, she just embraces me, because in these moments, words are irrelevant. We don't speak... comfort comes in no volume or tone of sounds, she lets her arms do the talking as to say "I'm here for you. Your universe has stopped, your pulse derailed, your heart paused, your everything taken away. I'm here for you". Yeah, something like that. I don't remember how I explained it to her in words what had happened after that, but I remember falling asleep as she still kept her arms wrapped tightly around me. Anyone in a relationship can attest to trying to fall asleep with your arms around your significant other is damn near impossible. You both lay there for several minutes, what seemed like a cuddly idea, turns into a sweaty nuisance. You both break the comforting hold turned to "ok I'm going to actually have to sleep at some moment here" death clinch, and let go. Somehow, this wasn't the same. We somehow sustained the embrace til the morning. I pressed my hands against the wall while I lay, again. Something with these things I wish I could push over to a pile of dust and broken wood... I'll get back to this notion later.

The next day Melissa took me out to sushi. A first encounter with what would become my favorite meal, a restaurant decorated with lavish colors, an up-close view of the chefs chopping away, and lighting that probably cost more than the joint's monthly rent. What of it, it was all gray. I couldn't smell, I don't remember the taste, nothing entertained the senses enough for me to shake the fact that Chase was gone. Again, I was numb until the food was served, and Melissa broke the streak of silence with, "I'm sorry- I don't know how to deal with these things- I just". A smile caught my face, as I glanced down to my plate and then back to Melissa. Here I was being so selfish to my own emotions that I couldn't see the woman sitting across from me was making an attempt to catch me in this slow motion fall. In response to tragedy, we sometimes go blind to others outside of us attempting to console our state.

Melissa and I were in a what you'd call a relationshit. The attraction was high... as was the volatility. We'd fight simply to engage in public display, she'd test my limitations to see how far manipulation could be taken, and I'd kick the limitations to the floor to let her know manipulation could be tried with the next guy... not this one. She once asked me to hang out for the day, which consisted of ridicule, being told I'm inadequate, and ignoring me where ever we went. This went on to the point I called it, and said I'm not putting up with this bullshit and left. She texted later that night that we were done, to which I responded "Nice. I'll be taking all my s--- out of your place. Clearly, if you don't respect me, you don't respect anything I've loaned you". Problem is, several of those loans, were couches. I mustered the adrenaline filled strength to launch 3 couches out of an apartment. Laid them on the front lawn, and said "I'll pick these up in the morning. They're not yours anymore". Again, I'd like you to recall the phrase "lesson learned" while reading. No, this is not how you operate a healthy relationship, let alone a shitty one. However, we were both relatively young to the idea of a working relationship and imploded when it came time to put down the pride. We were futile, Ken & Ryu, China & Japan, Iowa State & University of Iowa. BUT, when Chase had passed... none of it mattered.

The beef, the pride, the rivalry... never mattered less than it did that night. In lieu of death, all things considered, love matters most. Even the most ridiculous/tumultuous relationship can't sustain a grudge during loss of life. Why? Because simply when one of your peoples passes away, titles & semantics simply don't exist. And it's not even as if the shit had disappeared, because to say "our tension and stress disappeared" would mean to say that it actually had to exist at some point. For something to disappear means it had to have appeared and obtained existence. Funny part is, the realization came that the beef, pride, rivalry, the malicious bullshit actually never existed between Melissa and I. In relationshits such as those, you get so wrapped in righteousness that you can convince yourself all these bad things exist.

Chase's passing deconstructed a lot of illusions, and had paved a path absolution. However, with this came the previous notion I spoke of while pressing my hands against the wall. Something about the world that made me want to set it to flames, smile at the wreckage and walk away with my hoodie up. Never had I wanted to drink harder, test the boundaries of mortality, ruin promise, and sabotage my future, more than the next year of my life after news of Chase.

The next 365+ days were dark. Dark in the sense of taking delight in biking against traffic, defining what I'll be for the rest of my life, and taking on the ghosts of all things past; my father, Doc, music. I gained this ability to stare anything and everything in the face while standing on the edge of a dime and grin like a mad man. In some cases, this was detrimental, and in others it was proactive. Never had the approach to music and theatre been more fearless. That ability threw me off in terms of self-destructive habits, but at some point had to be honed to an advantage rather than a set back. Doting on Doc, there was so much to his demise that could've been taken as a negative, but so much that could be learned from it. All the addicts in my family have persevered to succeed in life from all angles. Sitting observant to the entirety of Chase, right now, I can't see anything but the good in his life, smile, humor, all of it. There's so much shit that we can pull out of death, and I don't want to sound Disney flowery, but unless you get control of what you learn from adversity, you will be that guy throwing couches out of his ungrateful girlfriend's house... not a way to be.

Never thought I would, but I definitely take steps back and wonder "What would Chase do?", "What would Chase say if he saw me now?". At a concert round a year ago, we were performing the song "Chase", wrote it after everything had subsided and I was actually able to take a pen to paper and confront it, and it felt different. We had played that song over a dozen times, but for some reason it felt different. Perhaps it was the neurons in my brain firing off in a pattern I'd never experienced before, or it was my ego surging to my front lobe... but I felt something. Joel, Chase's brother, had opened the show that night and was in the crowd while we performed the song. Hours after the end of the concert, Joel had texted me as I was driving home. When I checked the text, it had said something to the effect of "I really felt Chase was present tonight while you guys played your song." Hot damn, Joel. I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking the exact same thing.

In a round-about way, that explains the title of this blog. Chase was a big fan of Joseph Campbell, the author who coined the term "Follow your bliss". Meh, to hell with following, Chase that thing down.

Melissamatic (2/3)

I know, you're like "what the f--- did Angie say?", and I'll get to that, but for now we're going to Tarantino this thing to a few years before. Again with the "hmm, where to begin."

Feb. '05
We sat in a dank make-up room. I was auditioning the final female for a play I had written, Embarrassed in Rarig. As we were just finishing up, a white kid burst through the door like a jacked-up Kramer entering Jerry's apartment for the 17th time for the day. "Hey, there's a theatre company looking for- uhh, black males your age, wanna audition?". Uhh, excuse me lost white-boy wanna-be actor, I'm in the middle of an audition about something actually important in this building, for once. Why don't you run along and not bother me with your old-dead-white men play auditions, shiiiiiiiit I got an activist theatre group to push!

None of which I said, because the next words out of this white-boy's mouth were the magic words to get my attention in any conversation, argument, or chat chit over heard in a coffeeshop... But, before I unveil the magic words, understand that they are the most powerful words that will attract the ears, hearts, and potential deepest fury in a person's heart. WARNING: USE THESE WORDS SPARINGLY, FOR THE SECRET POLICE OF ALL-THINGS-WHITE MAY RAIN DOWN UPON YOU, AND IF YOU ARE CAUGHT SAYING THESE WORDS IN A ROOM FULL OF WHITE PEOPLE, OR BACKWARDS PEOPLE OF COLOR, YOU WILL MOST LIKELY NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN AND POSSIBLY WIND UP ON THE BACK OF A MILK CARTON, IN WHICH I WILL SEE AT CUB FOODS AND SAY "DAMN, COULDA SWORE I TOLD THAT M$^&$%#$F&$#@ER."

Take a deep breath and say it with me... "White Privilege". Yes, this kid hollered, the theatre company's covering sociological subject matter, sexuality, gender.. white privilege- "Excuse me... did you say..?". I think a light bulb may have cracked, an old white man may have started having an anxiety attack in the next room, and an alarm went off somewhere in Minneapolis alerting a group of passive aggressives to keep a radius of several miles from this discussion. No clue what I was in the middle of, but I had haulted it and approached the kid. "Chase Korte", "Toussaint, my name's Toussaint". We greeted each other. "Hey, call this guy, his name's Michael Agnew. He'll set up an audition for you". "Cool, sounds good, I'll do that."

Chase waved to the female auditioning and stepped out. Strange, how'd he know where to find me? How'd he know I was interested in this kind of subject matter?... How'd he know the magic words? Of course, I flashed back to all the arguments in Theatre History class, an amalgam of all the theatre majors shuffled into one room to sit down and talk about how white people were responsible for the invention of story-telling and theatre, run by none other than the infamous Mihal Kobialka. Now I've most likely misspelled his name, but at this point I fully give no ---- for spelling this man's name correctly. Him & I would duel constantly each lecture, I showed to, and challenge his theories on the Greeks and Romans being fully responsible for my artistic endeavors. Na cuz, I'd like to credit the Griots, the Harlem Renaissance, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and many others before me that had lineage or connections to the Greeks, and found a means to story-tell on their own. Theatre, story-telling is organic as the heart, and at the ripe age of 21, I wasn't about to practice any tact in letting this man know that I thought his theories were bullshit, and that we could possibly dedicate one week to not studying someone non-white to let myself and the other brown kid in room of 70+ that we weren't alone.

Clearly Chase had over heard the face-offs between Mihal and I. At this point, it was hard for me to hide in the theatre building without catching a glare or look from a white student somewhere from the corner of the building. Fast forward, I make the audition, I get paired with Chase on a touring theatre company that travels the country performing short scenes on race, class, privilege, sex, drug abuse, gender, and sexuality. Which then, after performing each scene, we, the actors stay on stage in character and discuss with the audience. These discussion brought tears, yelling, reconciliation, the worst, the best, the apathy, out of people. The theatre company was called the Gestic Theatre Company back then, but now goes by GTC.

On the road for weeks at a time, flying, hotel crashing, driving rental cars, and sharing stories, Chase and I began to become akin to each other. He'd jump into random song from a musical, I'd sing along. I'd strike up a random voluminous Samuel L. Jackson quote, he'd strike up a random voluminous Al Pacino quote. We played off each other well, so well, I had him take the lead for the first play I produced, wrote, and directed, Embarrassed in Rarig. More than a friend, Chase became my counterpart in art activism. Ask any artist that has a background in sociology or hand in activism, and not only will they tell you it's tough to organize, but it's damn near painful to find other artist/activists that they see eye to eye with. The several tours that Chase and I worked on, definitely brought us to realize we were in the same book as well as the same page.

After the first tour ended, Chase went to scrapping for small theatres getting paid 50 bucks per gig, performing Shakespeare to handfulls of folks that frequented the intimate theatre spaces. I bumped into him that next school year in Rarig, I said something off the cuff about white people (with a grin), whereas Chase quickly turned to me, back pedaling with arms stretched out in the air to prove his innocence saying, "Being white is only thing about me, man. There's a lot of things to me, and white's only one of'em." I think I laughed so hard I nearly missed the staircase in front of me to topple to an embarrassing injury. As a person of color, there's white people that crack race jokes where you can clearly tell they have no clue of what the f--- they're talking about, and then there's white people that crack race jokes that go so tongue-in-cheek it's almost like you give'em a wink and a smile just because they get it. Race aside, anyone knee-deep in sociology studies can crack those jokes and give the wink and smile, or any affirmation, that says "we all know the history prologued to now, and I'm not even going to begin to pretend we're all born on the same starting line in this marathon." Chase and a few other people at this time in my life understood that, and it was hard to imagine putting in the work to graduate without them. It was hard to imagine caring about college without these people along side, pacing the momentum and direction.

The plan was always to move to la la land, and score a made career in film acting. It's always been the dream, and Chase was first to take a shot. More than take a shot, he landed commercials, films, documentaries, the whole 9. The kid was a beast when it came to ambition, application, and audition. Just before he left for LA he came to see The Blend's first show at The Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. Afterwards, he flagged me down, put his hand on my shoulder and gave me one of those looks. The kinda look that says "Damn good show ol' boy", from one performer to another there's those compliments that only take a gesture. With that said/unsaid, I thanked him for finally making it out to one of our shows, and he was off into the night... and off to LA.

One of the strangest moments I can recall flashing to the past was the 2nd tour Chase and I made to Iowa State University in Ames, IA. We were always happy to perform at ISU because they booked 3 to 5 shows in a row, so within 2 days of acting, we'd make what we would've made in 2 months of 9 to 5 summer job bs. I was exiting the restroom when I heard Chase entering the room, singin' some song at random he had been humming sparsely throughout the entire ride.

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

He got all in my face with it as I was washing my hands, a bit of a dare the two of us would pull sometimes. We'd get in each others face close enough to freak the other out. The loser would either hault pushing his face into the others, or back away at the others advance. I wasn't backing down this time, so he went on singin' his song. "What the hell are you singing?", I asked. "Flaming Lips, man. It's good shit". I finished sanitizing my mits, smiled, gave him one of those gestures without words as to say "Well done asshole. You got me." I lost the dare, and pulled my face out of the challenge. He smiled in victory and slow danced to the bathroom stall. I laughed, "You're crazy, man.", as he kept on with his hummin' and singin'.

It's funny, I look back on those moments with Chase, and am in aww of how we played off each other so easily, so well, so frequently.

On my way to the performance, my dress shoes knocking against the well varnished floors of the ISU Memorial Union, I grinned.

"Love that kid", I thought to myself. "Love that kid."

Melissamatic (1/3)

For every blog, there's a name for it. And for this blog, I feel it's appropriate for me to tell the story of how the title "Chase Your Bliss" came to be. Kind of a long story, so we'll break it into three parts. Hmm, where to begin, how bout...

Feb. 07
It had to be the dead of night in Minneapolis, some 3am or even 4am-ish hour. My phone went off into the middle of the night, following the late hours, buzzing away repeating the same ringtone after ringtone. My girlfriend at the time, and I, were deep sleepers and it wasn't until the 13th or 14th ringtone that she woke up. She had gone to bed happy, but with her boyfriend's phone going off around 3am, ladies and gentlemen welcome to Monday Night Raw. If you have any intention of keeping a relationship from joining Thelma & Louise off the cliff, understand this is the type of activity that will turn a perfectly lax mood to a significant other waking like the dragon from Sword in the Stone.

Out of respect and to keep things anonymous, we'll call this ex-girlfriend... Melissa, and Melissa was pissed. I woke up to getting muffed in the side of the head by Melissa's would-be closed fist, but I guess she felt like giving a little mercy at this hour of the night. "Toussaint. Wake up. Your stupid phone keeps going off". I grab the phone like a zombie and step into the living room, completely negligent of time, space, the fact my cash & prizes might be hanging out in the open for Melissa's roommates to take a view... but we're in the dead of night. No one's awake. Personally, I'm not even awake at this moment. There's only the rattle from the heater and possibly some other electrical device in the apartment maintaining the temp in the building.

The phone reads several missed calls from an area code I don't even recognize let alone have ever seen before. Upon first view of any area code calling you that you don't recognize, it almost feels like Mars might be giving you a ring to let you know the War of the Worlds is about to go down. Unfamiliary area codes are exciting though. Shiiiiiiit, I wish Mars was calling right now to let me know it's goin' down tomorrow.

Back to the phone. I'm confused, this could be good, this could be bad- but how could it be bad, what- is someone gonna tell me I need to pay my student loans now, or else. Yeah right, it can't be a bill collector or anyone I know- hold up, what if I'm in trouble with the law? Narp, I paid all those parking tickets for the Blend Bus, even the ones on tour... I think. So... I don't know.

SIDENOTE: In case you haven't noticed by now, Toussaint is an over-analyzing, meticulous, CSI forensic detective shoulda-been. I don't like to speak in 3rd person, but I think it's appropriate to do that in a sidenote. Moving on...

I can't figure it out so I just call. A woman picks up the other end of the line... crying. This is bad. I should've guessed it, but I talked myself out of it. We become so good at talking ourselves out of, or into, things, that we become surprised with the reality that was facing us the whole time. "Hello". "Toussaint, hey, this is Angie". "Angie! It's been too long! How's L.A.?".

What Angie had to say next had nothing to do with L.A. but everything to do with an event that would stop my heart for the next few seconds, derail my sanity for the next year, and cut a permanent alteration in the fabric of my life.

Enter the Silver Dragon

Once again in the land of dogs walking off the leash, misty rain, and the god damned best mocha know to man (Four Barrel Coffee on Valencia). I had the privilege of attending my best friend's wedding. Jeb and I go back to pre-Blend days. Before I ever put a band together, back when I was pleading to rock bands to to turn the volume down while I rap over their riffs, Jeb approached me after I had performed at the Lake Harriet bandshell. In classic Jeb fashion, he asked me if I wanted to work with him on some music, connect, network, take over the world. I was like "who is this crazy white boy"? Meh, got his number, he called me a few times, I dodged it, but finally came around.

When we met for the second time, I noticed Jeb's presence; declaritive, sincere, honest. He had an air about him that commanded the present moment without uttering a single word. We chatted about hip-hop here and there, and quickly jumped into sociology, white privilege, the relevance of hip-hop culture in the U.S. Since then we've worked through music, community organizing, and numerous crazy nights of debauchery.

Jeb's wife, Lian, had family flown into the U.S. from China, visiting the country for the first time. The reception was huge- I mean giant curtain with Chinese characters across it in the background, placed in the Silver Dragon Restaurant smack dab in the middle of Oakland's lovely Chinatown, 200+ seated, 10-course meal, folks from all walks of life (hikers, scholars, professors, musicians, bboys, reality TV stars, etc.) I couldn't help but take a step back and look at all of these people that Jeb & Lian have touched throughout their lives. I had a hard time believing I made it to the reception, after the last few nights out in SF, just to find the dude sitting across from me is visiting the U.S. for the first time in his life.

We danced, we drank, we ate shark fin soup, danced some more. and finally headed out on the town dive bar hopping with an amalgam of folks from across the country. Reflecting on it, this is what I want. I've always known what I want, but seeing it in motion puts you at grips with the reality of it versus what it looks like in your head.

It's not the ceremony, the dancing, the open bar, the 100$ per bowl of shark fin soup- the aesthetics are nice, but not the point. The point is being capable of loving with sincerity, genuity, and compassion enough to wake up each morning and chose the person your heart dances for... everyday. Still reflecting on it, I'm excited, because I know I'm capable of this, I know I want this, and I know that I am already in motion with it, driving right alongside it. It's truely not a thing of getting there, attaining it, or accomplishing a married life, but moreso practicing love everyday.

I'm damn honored to be Jeb's friend, and blessed to spend my time with so many positive folks, activists, and community organizers in the same room. It's been a trip, time to head back to Minneapolis, finish the mixtape, finish the album, tour the midwest and somehow find my way back... to here, Chinatown, Oakland.