Sunday morning. I am thinking about Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Obama, the Citizens Group That Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan (Zaitokukai), over-farming of fish, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, genocide in Darfur, net neutrality, America’s prison industrial complex, the prisoners at Guantanamo for 8 years now? I’m thinking of all the problems I cannot even name because I can’t remember them all or haven’t learned of them yet. Deforestation, the continuing destruction by oil companies of land and water- especially worse in non-Western countries, young girls being kidnapped and made sex-slaves, people dying of drug overdoses, the complete destruction of the African-American family structure by prison, unemployment, poverty all over the world, the North Korean repression of its people, police brutality, capital punishment, femicide, gender inequalities, Josef Fritzl’s family.

I’m listening to a Quarteto em Cy album. It is sweet Brazilian music with delightful, expansive vocal harmonies that reach out to plait your disparate desires into contentment. The Sunday afternoon sun is streaming through the crystals and paper butterflies I have hanging from my south-facing window, sunlight is drenching the plants on my window sill, lighting my parquet floors into golden panes. The panes become angelic names written in a holy geometric script.  There is something special in this sun that will shine equally on anyone, that will not discriminate, that feeds our skins and communicates with us in the language of ultraviolet, hyperpurple. The sound of the sun is love. I am reminded this Sunday that the answer, perhaps to EVERYTHING (animal, vegetable and mineral) is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This, I think must be love… if you love yourself.

What is love? Thousands of years ago, people spoke of love and someone said this:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13)

Love,
Edoheart

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Jesus of All Niggers by Eseohe Arhebamen Now Available from Laughing Mouse Press

Laughing Mouse Press is proud to announce the release of Jesus of All Niggers, a collection of poetry by Brooklyn-based poet and performer Eseohe Arhebamen. Jesus of All Niggers collects thirty of Eseohe’s poems from 1998 to 2009, including two image poems. The volume is a half-legal saddle-stitch chapbook with color covers and color illustrations, and is available online from http://laughingmouse.net/books/jesus-of-all-niggers/.

Laughing Mouse Press is a small press that specializes in making art books in a broad sense – books that are art, books for artists, books by artists, books of art – by emerging authors and artists. The Press was founded in 2002 in Minneapolis by Spencer Keralis, and is now based in Littleton, Colorado. Their catalogue features hand-made books and collaborations between poets, graphic designers, photographers, and other literary and visual artists. Several releases are planned for 2010, of which Jesus of All Niggers is the first. View the complete catalogue, as well as event and artist information at http://laughingmouse.net/books/jesus-of-all-niggers/.

Jesus of All Niggers
Eseohe Arhebamen
ISBN: 978-0-9843248-1-1
60 pages, saddle-stitch.
http://laughingmouse.net/books/jesus-of-all-niggers/

Eat Me & Drink Me is an experimental multimedia performance-art, “Butoh-vocal theatre” work being jointly created by Eseohe Arhebamen, Douglas Allen, Jorge Rojas, Wura-Natasha Ogunji and Rosamond S. King.

The photo below is from a scene written by Jorge Rojas.

Project Website (itself an ongoing performance artwork) http://eatmedrink.wordpress.com/

An extension of butoh-vocal theatre workshops held by Edoheart (Eseohe Arhebamen) at New York’s multiple-OBIE award winning Living Theatre, our purpose as an ensemble stems from our multidisciplinary backgrounds in the arts, our united interest in experimental performance art and our own sociopolitical perspectives as persons of “other” categories. An allegory of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Eucharist and a reference to a function of celebrity in American mass media culture, Eat Me & Drink Me is a unique performance experience dealing with themes of perception, sacrifice and consumption.
(more…)

“Child Labor in Nigeria”

photos from Patrick Amanama

Child labour keeps children out of school. The effects of child labour in any society are poor performance and dropping out of school and exposure to theft, armed robbery, rape and drug abuse. (more…)