A Poet Named Matt and Hood Rats

One of my closet addictions is MySpace. I have discovered fantastic musicians on the site and I can't live without music. Most of them are recording on indie labels and never get air play. Matt Diff is one of those. I found him because a piano player from Yugoslavia asked me to be his MySpace friend. When I visited his site, I clicked on another musician who looked interesting. She had a message from Matt. I clicked him and voila! Isn't cyberspace wonderful. As he says on his web page, Matt Diff is first a poet. Is he ever! But his singing reminds me of Dylan and Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie and Bob Seeger and America when America was innocent and still believed in itself. Matt has some of his work posted on this link. I can only compare his writing to Whitman. I have old recordings of Whitman reading his work. Matt's 'vision' of America is so Whitmanesque, it's eerie; almost like he channeled the guy....
http://cdbaby.com/cd/mattdiff2
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There's an ice storm headed this way and since I won't be going to the pool, I walked before leaving work. I changed from slave rags, which is what I call the "Dress For Success Office Look," into Joe Boxers, my favorite Steve Maddens (black with silver stars) and a pink hoodie. Had to have my floor length Italian knit black wool scarf. It was liberating to be at work in those clothes! More and more, I'm loving that pink mp3 player that I stood in the freezing cold for, at 2:30 in the morning the day after Thanksgiving.
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Another week is almost gone and I've accomplished nothing to get me closer to moving and getting out of Bubbaville. I'd better get it in gear or I'll be stuck here another year. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
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The other night I watched PBS and Henry Gates (the man who brought Black History to Harvard and went on to write scads of books and articles and be interviewed by just about everybody). Well Mr. Man was tracing the roots of some mighty important folks, Miss O being one of them. Miss O found out through DNA testing that she has nary a European drop of blood in her. But much to her disappointment she is not ZULU, just a latent member of some tribe no one ever heard of. At some point in the program, a historian told Mr. Man about a Black man who left the free north and moved to slaveholding Virginia. Well Mr. Man must have lost himself for a minute because he said, "You mean to tell me that nigga left the free north and moved to Virginia." Can I get a self righteous drum roll. Black folks need to stop pretending they don't own that "N" word. I say own because when you appropriate a bit of madness; like the Aunt Jemima head rag and the "N" word you then own it and by owning it, you strip it of it's power. Oh, you don't erase the evil. Because we all know the debbil procreates but the madness no longer has the venom to wound and kill as it once did. When Mr. Man said the "N" word I was not nearly as offended as I was when he repeatedly affected a downhome ghetto, Um jes folks drawl, kinda like what Miss O does when she wants to convince all of White America that she really is Black but acceptably so dontcha know!!!! The rats in da hood don't eat that cheese....Nitey Night