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The Great Language Trip By Abby Bertumen The soul is fried chicken. Basement parties were thrown in ancient Eqyptian pyramids. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben carried rifles and killed kids. Time and earth are all but completely irrevelant if not connected with the universe. 5:00 p.m. Cornell Bookstore The Importance of Mylar Balloons and the Munch Market Early evening at Cornell University is a bustle of activity as students inbetween classes stop in the spacious bookstore to browse, socialize and eat. It's fairly warm out for late February in central New York, adding a new incentive to the people to stroll, not hurry, to look up and say, "Hi," rather than bury their faces in a scarf. Saul Williams is walking to the bookstore with C.A. Carlson, the Cornell Cinema coordinator for his visit. Williams's manner is easy and the two share a conversation, talking about how the open forum Williams just held in the Willard Straight Hall went and about preparation for his perfomance that night. Students who attended the afternoon session are already walking way ahead of Williams, wanting to be first in line for him to sign their books and--more importantly, for some--to converse with him. As Williams enters the bookstore, his philosophies of everything existing on the same level seem painfully surreal. Mylar heart-shaped balloons left over from Valentine's Day sag over a discount counter, the radio harkens the shallow sounds of the 80s and people race out of the Munch Market with their Pepsi's and candy bars. Can answers really be found here, co-existing with these things? Williams thinks so, but for now students still question this. And he his not afraid to answer. Sitting at a table stacked with his poetry book, "The Seventh Octave: The Early Writings of Saul Williams" and a book about the making of "Slam," the acclaimed movie that he both co-wrote and starred in, Williams is approached by the first person in line. "Everyone always says that everything meaningful happened in the1960s and that now nothing's happening," a young man comments as Williams signs his book. Williams is not afraid to answer. "This is a fucking millenium shift!" he exclaims. Blasting the Car Radio in the South--the Great Language Trip Since the age of 9, Saul Williams has wanted to be an actor. In the third grade, he joined a club called "Shake Hands with Shakespeare." The first play he performed in was "Julius Caesar." He played Marc Antony. However, he did not limit himself to this medium. "My hobby was writing rhymes, my career choice was to be an actor," he said, adding that when he wasn't reciting monologues, he was writing rhymes. The influential factor in Williams' hobby was hip-hop. He fondly recalls listening to breakthrough Def Jam artist T-La-Rock and his song, "It's Yours." He remembers opening up the dictionary and putting new words into his rhymes to try and imitate the complex style of T-La Rock. Other artists like L.L. Cool J. and KRS-One also compelled Williams to strive to be an M.C, All the while he still studied Shakespeare, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. Williams said he got involved in poetry because of a desire to touch hip hop's roots. Hip hop is a rhythmical, musical derivative of poetry, like the child of the traditional sense of poetry, poetry being the mother," he said."I grew up with the child and after a while I was like, 'Wow, you're really cool, I'd like to meet your parents.'" Williams attended Morehouse College in New York and was a Philosophy and Drama major. He then went on to graduate school at NYU to get his M.F.A. in acting. He says that he partly uses his education and poetry to satisfy a want that he does not find in hip-hop nowadays. "[I began writing rhymes] to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wanted to hear," he said, adding that, because of the power of music in general and hip-hop in particular, M.C.s have a responsibility to not glorify material things, to transcend them. "What hip-hop is missing is a lead vocalist," he comments. Williams said that the problem a lot of people have nowadays is that they tend to take language for granted. They underestimate its power, especially in art. "In all sacred texts, 'in the beginning' is the word and it is the word that has the power to call things into existence," he says. "The poets of this day in age are the wordsman, the clairvoyants, the seers, the soothsayers, the visionaries that are calling this new world into existence." People must recognize this importance, Williams says. "We become meddled in our small talk and our language that we seldom realize what we are saying," he says."Language can be like one great acid trip if you pay attention to it." Williams also says that language can be freeing, and change people's mindsets as they are exposed to it. One example he uses is his mother's love for James Brown. In the late '60s and early 70s, Brown's song "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" was very popular. Williams recalls his mother telling stories of how, when driving in the South, she would roll down the windows and blast the song as loud as she could from the car radio. Williams said the power of this song and its influence on his mother has had a different, yet just as powerful, effect on him. "Thirty years, ago 'Say It Loud' was liberating, but now it's implicit," he said. Such evolutions in the effect of language has caused Williams to keep evolving, as well as encouraging other artists to do so. "I'm talking about taking stuff to the next level," he says. "To up the ante of what is to be expected of our artists." And people need not be afraid of not understanding, Williams adds. "I believe there are modes of understanding readily available to the public just as technology is," he says, adding that science fiction called computers into being by being written. Taking art to the next level is not a complicated process, Williams says, but "it takes time for people to feel free of themselves to freely express themselves. It's all about conquering our inhibitions and fears." To reiterate this, Williams described how in acting school "you can't teach an art form, but what you can teach is relaxation." The idea of art as liberating can also be seen in the movie "Slam" in which Williams plays a prisoner who finds his soul through spoken word. To make this concept more real, Williams, the writers and the actors scripted no dialogue for the film, rather they wrote detailed scenes and rehearsed impovisationally for nine months before filming. Williams says that part of people freeing themselves is getting over feeling intimidating by the artists they study. "I don't allow myself to have this 'awe factor' like with Shakespeare," he says. "I hear people not empowering themselves and I'm saying 'You can.' and 'If you don't, I will.' You can feel that moment--aiming to live up to the highest potential. If you don't do that, you don't do shit. "What we're doing is as important [as previous artists] in fact more because we are here now and must live amongst what we say. Word is bond." 'There is no such thing as metaphor' A week and a half before his Cornell visit, Saul Williams sits around a table with students in Ithaca College's DeMott Lounge. This discussion turns towards Williams belief in the lacking in hip-hop. A student comments on how he gets angry when middle class kids listen to and sing Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life." He feels that they do not understand. "We learn from entertainment in this country," Williams replies. "I don't have to go through a traumatic break-up to feel a Marvin Gaye song. We are one collective spirit. So the whole idea of remembering is just that. It's about making connections any way you can." The student says he feels both chastsized and enlightened. Williams adds that what he is looking for is balance, and the rid of categorizations. "There is no future at all in exclusivity," he says. "As long as those exclusive areas and categorizations exist, we will always exist under them and within them." After the performance of poems like "Sha Clack Clack," in which Williams addresses "niggas," he makes a point in saying that every one person is a "nigga" because there is a need to be free of exclusivity. "It's all connected, inter-connected," he says. "And we have made the mistake of trying to separate everything to understand, and then we forget how to get it all back together." Williams also places a lot of emphasis on balance in his poetry, partly because of his belief that the world is shifting from a patriarchal society to a matriarchal society--evident in the success of artists like Lauryn Hill and Madonna. Throughout his poems, he makes references to the moon and water (the traditional symbols for women) and the sun and fire (the traditional symbols of men) and places the two together. He also alludes to the number seven a lot in his poems, the sum of the three (another symbol of the female) and four (symbol of the male). Williams' versatility is a testament to his beliefs. He has just finished a book of poems, "She," is writing the liner notes to D'Angelo's new album, has just finished a symphony, is writing songs and recording a new album. He said he encourages other people to do completely different things, because they will learn how to apply it in whatever they are focusing on. "Through the struggle [of trying something new], you'll find a new approach. I just don't want to spend a day regretting the fact that I didn't develop some aspect of myself." Williams is freqently approached by young people who believe that the situation of art today is either too commercial and/or void of any social conscience. They often ask him how to re-capture an art form that is spiritual and socially relevant. "You don't convey it, you just live it," he replies. "There is no such thing as metaphor, everything is on the same level. There is no distinction to be made." Williams says that every decision is political which is why art, and particularyly music, is so important. Young people have elected to watch MTV more than CNN. And that is why he encourages people to be true to themselves not just in art, but in life. "It's how you choose to live in the small moments," he says. "I challenge you to speak the fuck up [in situations you disagree with], to live up to those heightened moments on the small moments." Abby Bertumen is a sophomore at Ithaca College. |
