This is where it gets good: an ode to Erykah

I've discussed, previously, my love for Erykah Badu and the culmination of that love in cross stitch. Well, I've recently purchased her record, New Amerykah, Part Two: Return of the Ankh, on vinyl, and inside is this ridiculous introduction that I just fell in love with tonight:

It says:

Introduction: 

I am a rather plain girl. I've always been a rather plain girl. Now even today, I have the upper body of a long armed twelve year old boy and can go unnoticed or get lost in a crowd when my 'light' isn't on (I have the controls set to manuel). My face is unique. Everyone's is, I guess. My eyes are set far apart with puffy eye lids and natural under bags. My nose is missing it's bridge and resembles a rabbit's. I have a large top lip that is broad and flat from the front view. My bottom lip is smaller and pink and often chape from biting it. That may be hereditary. I think my mouth is upside down. I am awkward. Still, I am amazing. At least in a drawing I am. It's good I consider myself a spiritual being first, man or woman second, Black or White 3rd, Jew or Gentile. 4th, and pretty or ugly 5th. I'm just rooting for the Good in us all, basically. I don't know much for sure, but I think it is safe to say that I am an artist. You could say my religion was art if I had to choose just one. It's hard tho because they're all so nice. That's my tongue and cheek kind of satirical way of saying, though I live the 'laws', I am no judge.

My tale is a simple one. It starts off like all the rest... There once was a beautiful prisoner, I mean princess. She longed for a brave knight, a gentleman. One with courage and honor and decency. But in a cruel world such as this, men like these were scarce indeed. She had a lot more than most, this princess. She had hope. The ability to see things the way she dreamed them. She could invision the exact moment she would be delivered from her _____ (fill in the blank). She set out like the alchemist to go and meet her destiny but got bored, and decided to plant a garden along the way. It was an amazing garden... purple and black and white and golden. There was one particular tall pink flower that stuck out in the weeds of this garden. She noticed it there, but didn't realize how much taller and bigger than everything else it had become. It was beautiful and mysterious in it's freedom, but everything growing around it seemed to be struggling to survive. It was as if that flower was drinking up all the water; sucking up all the sun. It was allowing nothing else to grow. I even think she (the flower) was unaware of her surroundings in her attempt to merely survive. And If she could indeed think, I doubt she would wish harm on anything or anyone or even know what harm was. She probably knew even nothing of her own fate. I imagine that she, like many things in nature, was just living for her own purpose and knew nothing of severity NOR humility. The princess named her IMPATIENCE and just passed her off as another beautiful thing that grew up out of some careful, dedicated hard laborious act of her own careful planning. But in fact, it was just the opposite. IMPATIENCE had grown tall as a result of... well, simply out of neglect and poor management. She (the princess) had no control. The End. See, in this story I am the princess, the flower and the prisoner. For the sake of understanding this twisted tale, I guess I could just call her (the princess), AMERYKAH. After all I am a product of it's thinking and understanding.

Over time I have become comfortably numb; purposely dumb. I have been programmed to move on command, to long for animated fairy tales that resemble nothing familiar to my experiences. I think I've always lived in my head, more than out here in the 'real' world. It's been the lab where much of my anxiety was first created (what to think, how to think, what to believe, what to be happy about, what to be sad about, what is appropriate, what is not accepted by the group, how to speak, what is proper, how to love, how to dream and so forth). Yet and still, (one of my grand mama's terms) I am a bundle of light energy looking out of myself from the top, hovering over myself with the compassion of a good mother for a child learning a thing for the first time. This is where it gets good. I have somehow managed to stay woke even in the warm womb of complacency. I am here. This is now. I am evolving.

                 I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say but there is a story deep inside these words, to which there is a happy ending, of course. But not without happy mistakes first (I heard that somewhere). She grows. Welcome to the mind of Amerykah. (keep up)

I admit, I have enough cynicism in me to find this sort of proety (prose + poetry. if that's not real, well, it is now, to me.) more than a little cheesy from time to time. But I find that Erykah can say most anything and I believe it. Like she's straight-up and sincere in a way that most mainstream artists really aren't these days. She's a quirky little thing, and I love her!

So I share this with you all for just that purpose: to share something I find uplifting and beautiful. And, well, I would LOVE to try to embroider Erykah with an afro of a plant like the one growing out of that crazy robot brain, maybe with an extra special excerpt stitched in.. We'll see in time if this dream ever passes into reality.



Also, if you're looking for a hilarious and crafty Valentine, check out Subversive Cross Stitch's 2011 Valentine's Day Doilies!

 I'll take the top one.