This is the rare night of no sleep. I've been sick all week and only consuming minimal coffee. Today, I felt better, ran errands - depositing money in the bank, running to Portland to get my Tascam portastudio 4 track back from the repair guy, running out to Beaverton to buy some TDK SA 90 tapes from some guy off of craigslist and so on. I had coffee at about 5 o clock - it was Valentine's day after all - so now I'm totally wired can't ya see and my thoughts have been racing all night as I lie in the dark.
I started watching a great William S Burroughs documentary on Amazon streaming. Holy shit, what genius that man was. His influence runs far and wide. I can't wait to finish it. I relate to every single bit of it so far and have a big appreciation for crazy ol Bill and his cadre of colorful beatnik and alt-culture geniuses.
One strange thought pattern that was running through my mind tonight was a clip of James Baldwin being interviewed on tv in the 1960s, how his rage was barely contained and yet utterly articulated in his response to the hosts or the panel or whoever. It reminded me somehow of the Nina Simone song, Mississippi Goddamn, and I realized that Baldwin, Simone and every non-white intellectual in the history of the USA must feel the PTSD of living in a traumatic society of inferior intellects who gawk at them and treat them like animal curiosities when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The immense frustration of being the wrong color of genius.
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