redfall2020

[redfall2020]

[redfall2020]

[redfall2020]

#lonelypenguin

[redfall2020]

I’m the only one the planet earth who even understands what love really is...

[redfall2020]

#redfall2020

[redfall2020]

#redfall2020

[redfall2020]

If you have multiple kids by multiple men and ain’t married none of them your religion isn’t christian it’s ho....

[redfall2020]

I was in elementary and we lived in this house on G avenue. A duplex. And behind us was this little boy and his mom and dad and I used to go play with him sometimes. He had the entire collection of these toys called “MASK” that matched the cartoon TV show. He was in a grade lower than mine. His mom would give us snacks and we could reenact the entire show right after watching it. Sometimes we’d change the ending so that the bad guys won. One day his mom started complaining about niggers and having to be around them. Then she looked at me and said “not you Rico, you’re one of the good ones.” And she smiled at me.

I looked around and their house was clean. The cookies were sweet and the milk was cold. Her dad wasn’t home. The house wasn’t filled with trash like mine, the refrigerator didn’t have rotten food. So I swallowed my pride and smiled back. And my friend smiled at me. His dad would be home soon and we’d get to climb in the back of his pick-up truck.

We went back to the toys and this time we made it so that the good guys won. My friend and the good nigger.

[redfall2020]

[redfall2020]

For my friend C. L.,

A goth girl from Mexico who was stranded on the middle of Oklahoma with me. The first person I met who was proud not to fit in. Her only rules were:

1) never call her “Carlingas” because that was the nickname the kids used to tease and bully her with in Mexico...for being fair skinned and pale. Not like the others.

2) I must listen to her music. Somehow she found out about #smashingpumpkins and #Nirvana before anyone. She was like that. She knew all the stuff before it ever came on the radio. It was like magic. I much preferred N.W.A. and Ice-T, but good music is good music.

We both were fatherless and we both lived with sisters who got on our last fucking nerves. We both liked Daria.

Then I went to USC and she went to Georgetown but we talked and mostly talked about how we were cooler than everyone else sitting stuck in Oklahoma. Her running off to DC and me running off to Los Angeles. Then she got sick and she kept calling me complaining. One day she called and said cracked a joke “ do you know anyone white Mexicans with extra bone marrow?”

She got cancer.

Not even 21.

We met in Oklahoma again and she was bald and fearless. She didn’t hide it. People stated. We talked about how much cooler we were than everyone else because we was tried and ran out of money, but we swung for the fences. And then she asked me to take her virginity before she died. She didn’t want to die a virgin and I didn’t....it was too big of a burden. I could not bear it. She didn’t speak to me for a while after that. But she got over it, and then told me don’t hit on her sister when she was gone. I told het don’t talk like that, you’re going to live forever in your twenties after all. Leukemia isn’t something that vodka can’t cure.

I went away to Alaska after that, working at a military base pretending the Russians were invading. Some secret project. She called and said she was dying soon. I told her to hold on until the project was done. I needed the money. She said she would try.

She died before I saw her again.

I skipped the funeral and stayed in Alaska to finish the weapon project. The Russians never invaded and congress defunded the weapon.

[redfall2020]

I loved Ben Folds Five. “Whatever and Ever Amen” was dying to be sampled with all those pianos. And what kind of rock band has pianos anyways? Then “Brick” came out and it blew me away. Who was this girl and what was this brick?

Finally, years after it had left the chart Ben Folds revealed the story behind that song. It was devastatingly haunting. He sung about it though.

I’m nowhere near as famous as him... yet 😉

But here is the story behind one of my songs.

I wrote this song “End of Message” from the perspective of one of my mom’s live in boyfriends. His name was ‘Golden Kelly.’ He taught me to tie my shoes. He also taught me that monsters were men. I stoped him from beating my mom to death in elementary school. We got evicted from the trailer park where the incident occurred. His parole was violated and he ended up in McAlaster State Prison, where he eventually hung himself. He wrote my mother a letter before he committed suicide. My mother cried and I felt guilty. They were both monsters in their own way which is perhaps they were a perfect match.

This is song written from what I imagine his perspective was. What does a horrible person say and feel when he’s in love? And is his love valid?

I made the song while living in a suite at the Tokyo Dai-Ichi Hotel Grandmer in Okinawa, Japan for a year.

I hope you find the time to listen to and it enjoy it.

[redfall2020]

It’s matter of perspective.

In economically disadvantaged areas, especially, black and brown ones, police are not forces for good. They are agents of destruction that often push families on the margins over the edge.

I get negative feedback because I served in a uniform but it’s a different one. You can’t tell my anything about the system because I saw it fail me and and people around me on a daily basis growing up. I also did the absolute right thing, what they teach you in elementary school as a kid, and not only did nothing happen.... things got worse. The police came into my trailer after I called, saw the destruction, debris, violence and madness ...violated someone’s parole then left with a half-ass done job. There’s nothing else a 10 year old can do to save himself. It’s a takes a village to fail so miserably.

And I knew in my heart, even then, that had we not been little black kids in trailer park it would not have been like that. No one would of allowed kids to live in environment where failure is nearly assured.

As an adult I think, this is why we called it “ghetto” it’s the only apt comparison. But we had no D-day or allied invasion, we had to liberate ourselves.

[redfall2020]

[redfall2020]

“Promises given in the dark

Give way to hearts torn apart

So if you can’t completely love her

Please don’t even start.... “

- #piecesonthefloor

[redfall2020]

This week my divorce is settled.

And I’m happy to be done with that bitch.

I let her off easy.

But her conscience will get to her.

Everyone’s will. 💯

#redfall2020

[redfall2020]

Some ppl were shocked that I made it thru Marine Boot camp at 28 weighing 300 lbs and being a rather liberal, laid back stoner. The best instructor is experience. Waging a multi-year war before you hit adolescence to keep an adult felon from beating your mother to death will teach you a thing or two about patience, tactical engagement and choosing your battle space.Then there was the ever present homelessness. It’s a bitter teacher.

Some ppl I grew up with were shocked that I was really homeless. That I really was sexually abused. I’m going to skip her name because odds are she was abused too; she was like 18 or 19 or something. She didn’t come up with this idea on her own. I was in elementary school. We got kicked out of state subsidized daycare because my sister kicked a pregnant teacher so I ended up with this very disturbed young woman as my babysitter. Poverty leaves little options . A pre-Schooler attacking a pregnant woman, cops coming over for domestic violence calls...The so-called system failed me in almost every way possible so I had to devise my own self-defense system. Nearly everything and everyone failed me. It was a bitter boot camp.

I was put in this gifted and talented program and bused across town a couple of days a week. There were two black kids. The other black kid was a girl. She was well off, from the good part of town. This place called Sullivan Villlsge. Her clothes always looked new. I don’t think my teachers ever fully understood how gifted and talented I truly was.

I wonder if they were shocked at my good grades or shocked I appeared normal. And that’s the thing... there is no monopoly on intelligence. The doctors and lawyers and preachers kids, the kids with actual parents, have this advantage and they maintain it forever. It’s the ultimate privilege. It’s a head start that they hold over our heads forever.

The people at the bottom often have the most talent; You just never see it under the layers of dirt, dysfunction and thru the prism of capitalism.

I could barely afford the plane ticket to get to campus for college and I sent my mom money in from my student loans One one day I went to a guy’s house in my frat who lived in Palos Verdes. He was one of the down to earth guys. Like me he couldn’t me he couldn’t dance very well. His mom gave him a check for $50,000. Then we ate roasted duck. His parents didn’t speak to me and part of the dinner they spoke Chinese. I didn’t know ppl really ate ducks. I had only seen them at the public park in my hometown.

The game is rigged and written in stone and on your bones before you ever exit the womb I thought to myself. I got a losing lottery ticket from birth and keep looking at it as if it’s going to change.

But then the guy who’s mom gave him all that money flunked out school shortly after that. Seemed his parents didn’t really care and the money was just a salve on an open wound. He probably wanted them to ask about him and not write checks. He didn’t even want to go to college. He liked racing cars and lifting weights. People rarely ask questions.

We build more prisons instead of children services. We apply labels and punishments and devise programs and pronounce judgements.

And the old wag their fingers at younger generations.But they invented pharmaceutical companies and stock markets and credit default swaps and credit scores and babysitters and daycare centers and au pairs and boarding schools and RItalin and Prozac so they wouldn’t have to really deal with the reality of living.

We just swallowed the pills

[redfall2020]

I watched an interview with Wyclef Jean and Taleb Kweli speaking on the formers relationship with Lairyn Hill, he talks about being in his 20’s and taking matters of the heart lightly. He said don’t play with someone’s heart, its a fragile place. It’s not to be played with or trifled with or used for anything but love. It’s a not a place to teach lessons or presents illusions. All is fair in war but never in love.. people either die or survive a war; heartbreak reverberates in the cosmos and lasts forever. Hesrbreal reincarnates itself and pushes pain in future generations. You can survive a war with a shred of your soul. Heartbreak will hold on to you. You’ll carry it around it will...

There is something called broken heart syndrome. It remains a mystery to science. We make love songs and romantic movies and have an endless appetite for love and connection as humans, and it’s mystical and cosmic and beyond the comprehension of the greatest minds to explain it’s not merely chemical. Its not merely sexual.

It’s unexplainable.

There is no true definition for love. It just is.

Love falls upon us from abother dimension, another planet, another timeline or lifetime... and it’s the one thing you can never wash away.