The Once and Future King

“You have substance; we just need to close out your academic career. We need to re-focus this obsession with making a “family”, and re-direct your energy to your pursuits in Black Studies.” I could do nothing but stand there, at attention like I’ve done at least million times before and hear my mentor, my lyrical blade master hit me with another right on critique. It was all I could do to fight back tears because he, she and they had been right. I had put too much focus on breaking a cycle, I had sacrificed everything not to be like my father and the biggest of these was my Black Studies Career.

Let’s be real here: I should have my Black Studies Department. I should have my Ph.D. There is no discernable reason that I should have not been mine. In reality,

“Only the mistakes have been mine”.

Yes I didn’t want to be like my father and uncles. Yes I felt that my sons should have a nuclear Cosby show like home. However, I shouldn’t have sacrificed an important component. Simply I can’t give them that if I don’t have a career. Hell aint nobody trying to be my wife if I don’t have a career. I don’t have to be a vulgar careerist, (more on that in a later blog) to be successful in academia, and I can achieve both.

With that in mind, I have decided to go back to the basics. I have decided to reacquaint myself with the early lessons which I have forgotten, I admit. But that lapse of knowledge can be very detrimental in a lyrical blade duel. So now it is me, Hare, Blassingame, Cruse. It is as I read on a website “a new negro with old ass books”. While I aint new, I am re-dedicating myself to my craft and going back to look forward. Over the past 9 years, my style has become too eccentric, to wild and I need to simplify it. I need to remember the simple moves and the basic actions to become more efficient. “The Dignity of Simplicity” is what the last rule states and perhaps I need to refocus on that.

The other reason I am going back is to find out what we may have lost due to time and ignorance. Could something be in those sacred texts that we have overlooked or was afraid to really study? Did we hide or intentionally forget someone so radical for his time that now we NEED this knowledge to get over the bridge. This is akin to someone discovering a lost sword style, a style that might have been misunderstood, a style that might have been so powerful that people didn’t want to even talk about it much less use it. This style has been locked away in a cave and probably discovered by a student who had achieved much but wanted to take it to the next level. Or to use another example is how the world of jazz was in an uproar when the Library of Congress found Coltrane and Monk in Carnegie hall. A misunderstood and unappreciated piece of work was now found for a world ready for it. Either way I am that student.

8 years ago, I colleague of mine told me “You are the best at this. You are pure. You are power”. At that time it was obvious even to a blind man that I was heir apparent to the Conference, the department, all that I surveyed. Long story short, I was the King. Mistakes, arrogance and joining Phi Beta Sigma cost me that birthright and my place.

I love to say that I am to Black Studies what Bleek Gilliam was to jazz. I do believe it is time that I re-dedicate my life to my craft as Bleek did to his.

I think it is time I became King again

And that is Straight, No Chaser

TLT