h. Play

“Happy birthzzzzZZZ”

Thirty years old ala old school with family. I had this idea of throwing a party at my place letting everybody write on the walls but I was too busy falling in love 10K kms away. Sorry.

This picture makes me smile and sad at the same time. Smile because I remember my grandfather getting grumpy while we would make him go to his bed for the afternoon nap seeing that the wine and the champagne had some effect on him. It’s sunday of course he can have all the alcohol he wants, one of the last funny stuff he can appreciate these days.

Sad because this picture –and pictures in general- are sure not enough to describe someone. Here’s my grandfather so silent, so sleepy so like nothing special. I remember him as always having some joke or some funny thing to say. Like I would make fun of him and he would just look casually at my grandmother and say “punch your little son on the head please” so that it would always crack me up.

it’s like pictures are not enough. Videos are silly. I’d love to only have the sound of him during some dinner or something when he was not at 10pills/day (Parkinson’s). I have some ninja recording from 10 years ago, it’s quite amazing. It makes you feel the past like nothing else. No filters, no photoshop. No pretending in front of a camera. Just naked people minds communicating. Raw Past.

Anyway at my birthday Raymond asked me to come to see him in his bedroom. “I want to ask you something son”. I was thinking about getting him something, like some cakes from the north of France from where he comes from or some diapers because uh, it’s part of his life now.

He asked me with his sweet and soft tone voice “Could you write me on a paper the name of your girlfriend please?”

“Aww sure, I’m gonna do it right now!”

So I wrote it on a post-it with my best handwrite style possible.

v e r d e l l w i l s o n.

I think he couldn’t understand when I was talking about her (you). He may not meet her (you) but he knows what is going on. All stooped as he is, he heard the smile in my voice saying those two words.

I’m watching MJ’s funerals in L.A. Streets are calm, it seems like the entire city is watching it too.

Michael Jackson from my french countryside point of view.

He was so all over the medias in the 80s, even in my little village in the middle of France. I forgot about that.

The big memory is of course the 1982’s first broadcast of his video clip of Thriller in Champs-Elysées, a french famous tv show at that time. It was scary as hell for my little age but the dance part was so amazing I couldn’t stop watching and listen to this grawl synth and thick bass sound with claps and percussions.

More than just an amazing blend of groove, horror and dance, watching this man was something very special for me: I had no brothers, no black people around me, all I had was Diff’rent Strokes, Sydney on TF1 –a black dude introducing african american music in France, especially hip-hop- and Michael Jackson. The last one was so above everybody, he couldn’t be no more than a reference to me.

It was awkward because I was feeling that either you’re black and invisible in a village or you’re black and you’re the most known person on earth, ever. No real in-between.

Either you’re the supreme or you’re nothing. Either you entertain or you don’t. it gave me infinite hope and fear at the same time.

Now that I do music and play his songs regularly, now that he has passed away I can feel how influential he has been on me. I mean if I look at my 80s tapes, there’s MJ and MJ. BAD has been the soundtrack of my ten-ish years. Everytime I was starting to walk her street I would synchronize my walkman on Man In The Mirror intro and smile while throwing her some croissant at her window. Her father was kind of racist. Maybe the first materialization of that feeling I didn’t know about. I was ahead of that.

Al Sharpton MJ’s funerals speech was right, MJ did a lot to make me feel that I could be at the top of the world even if the world was totally different from me, physically. Giving and sharing love has no such barrier. It was kind of The 80s message. And the messenger, with his glove and his famous moves was Michael Jackson. RIP.

Allez un petit post en français. Pour la faire travailler un peu :)

Période folle. Mon poignet droit est en feu de tant de souris, de clavier et de basse. Excitation extrème, malaise profond, temps qui passe super vite en même temps qu’affreusement lentement.

Bien sur, plus de détails dans quelques temps. Oh putain.

Donc ouais un nouveau titre.

Un petit workout aussi. 2 en fait. J’irais bien jusqu’à 999.

Et quoi d’autre… Je finis le website de ma boite, j’ai reçu mes business cards, Les jeux? Ouais ça avance.. No comment.

Et sinon je suis amoureux like, you don’t really want to know.

Hiiiii

I love that word. I think it’s a really important one.

Scarcity is the problem of infinite human needs in a world of finite ressources.Yeah it comes with about everything in this world.

From that, you find yourself doing things you would usually not do when not having issues of lacking something. You adapt to a new situation and that seems to be good for a lot of stuffs.

Countless important things in science or art have been discovered or are born from scarcity, was it on purpose or not. Here’s my last experiences on that:

• No amp, no subwoofer: it means almost no sound with an electric bass. I did three weeks without it. Focus on fingers position instead of sound, focus on melodies instead of rhythm, paying attention to what I was playing and filling the notes in my head on the E string.. Back on my Ampeg I felt like sharper and stronger, able to do stuffs I couldn’t get back while in France. CA’s sun helped me too.
• Just a few LPs-I didn’t-listen-to-yet for this trip: yeah, sometimes it gets a bit boring but I made memories with this music that are going to be forever connected to those albums from Shock or Side Effect. I can feel the wind of Venice on some tracks or see the sun going down on others. I think the all “every music I have in my Apple brick” is pure BS. You don’t need that. Your brain cannot process that. You end up either not listening to new stuffs because you have your favorite old ones or either listening for the 6 millionth time to this particular song instead of this album you should dig more. Yeah scarcity pushes you to make fucking choices without ducking them. I know it’s hard.
• Having to talk another language for every primary stuffs –I need to pee, what’s your name again? No me recuerdo- forced me to be social. Not that I’m not but I had to whenever I wanted to or not. Which is good. I still need improvements though.
• Time: I met her in the middle of the first week. I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time windows to get to know her. “Two weeks left and no Kitt nor Batmobile” I thought. It made my ass move the hell out of my guest room, it increased my will to go all the way from “hi!” to “I miss you so bad I asplode kittens against the wall to make myself calm and comfortable”. I was damn right to do so. Now I’m stuck in France and it forces me to think. Think that really, I want to get back to her and L.A. because it’s fucking un-negociable.

Hey, thanks scarcity!

Little résumé of my bag and my trip.

Back monday, I’m still talking to people in english. I was biking and the guy told me “il y en a une ici une piste de vélo (sur le trottoir)” to what I answered “yeah but there’s one here too!” with a natural flow and US cali accent. He couldn’t answer me. And I was like “what did I just say? It was so automatic”

I’m not really back in fact. I’m hitting 30 years old monday and I didn’t do anything, nothing about that.

Yeah it was that great. I could talk about The Room, driving L.A., visiting SF, the best coffee of the world, scorpions and black widows, The Hills of Silver Lake, Santa Monica BBQs, eating tacos or ceviche, good french cheese on Sunset Blvd, smoking good and sweet pot, talking trend in games with big names..

That was too awesome. I took my chances in fact and it worked. I’m back in L.A. soon.

It’s like, everything is just logical. Totally random but still making sense. That’s life when it works right?

I have good personal exciting projects that are maybe gonna get me some noise or even a big job.

I have fantastic friends there.

And then there is her.

She can teach you, but you’ll have to charge.

The most amazing girl I have ever met. What am I doing here right now? I know dude, I know!

I have this memorie getting back often these days. I was 5 or 6 years old, in my foster family and things were getting good. Ok it was weird, I was kind of special, little black dude in a 300 pl white village. The first black I ever saw in my life was a little boy in the same situation that I was. He lived down two houses and didn’t stay more than a few months. I stayed 6 years.

Anyway I was starting to feel good and legitimate even. Then they were telling me things like “you know you don’t belong here right?” explaining to me that it would not be like this for long, that it was exceptional and that I’ll have to choose some parents.

I can remember that blues getting as huge as the entire oceans of this world. I would just stay in awe, looking at my feet, frowning. So what now? Street maybe?

Suddenly I had to think hard, to evaluate things like an adult. My foster ones knew that I was able to understand Iaw already asking questions. It was hard for them too.

So no choice. Move forward Harold. Think of the future and as you have no choice but doing things the best you can to make people happy and be thankful and stay with them, do it.

It’s in my skin and bones now.

The thing is, I can’t share it with nobody as a unique child. Of course I’ve been interested with people with weird pasts all my life, from my 12years old friend fan of horror movies with just a mother and a brother to friends with abusive parents etc.

Well I always find out that everybody has at least at a moment in his or her life or laying beneath, something someone fucking real to stick to and maybe rest a bit. In movies too. In litterature too. In all the culture, there is something not virtual to get a grip on and move on for people. As social mammals that we are, if you don’t have that, you are just using energy to avoid to go down emotional hell. I don’t.

That’s why I’m quite a control freak sometimes. Managing is a survival thing for me.

The other day in France I was having my little sister who can now have a conversation on family stuffs with interest, at my place. She can’t stop saying “my parents” like yeah, she’s really the child of my parents. But I could also share my feelings with her and it felt good. I wish I had someone to talk to these years, share with pain like Q with his brother or his father. And then his own son that he left in Sweden –Q had seven child from five women-, he came back at one point and they shared to tears.

I can’t do that with nobody. And it doesn’t seem to happen to others.

Doing so with a girlfriend is very temptative but a disaster. In couples sharing pain is maybe not a very good thing especially in my weird case. I’d rather not base a relation on pity. So I’m more in a position where I’m running away of those bad things.

All of that made me as I am though. And the result is not too bad.

I can only keep the blues away with music and love. They just ease my mind so easily no other things can. The first one is always around. The second seems to hide from me.

But when I find it, when I have it for real right here right now, it can’t be better. Ever.