With all of the hype around Ahmadinejad’s visit to the fashion capital I thought it only fitting to give him the shout out as our Fashion Sleeper of the Month. The theme screams business casual. Slacks complimented with some sort of loafer topped off with a patterned shirt (pop that top button cause its casual right) and a sportcoat. The color scheme is earthtones that say, “Hey, I may be a sand rascal but I am also elegant”. I guess you can have your khubs and eat it too.
I’ve been hard at work lately trying to redesign the site. Here’s a taste of what’s to come….
Expect a fully integrated multi-blogger community, enhanced styling and functionality, and artist and author profiles, in addition to the stuff you’re already used to if you’ve been visitng the site.
Please feel free to comment on what you’d like to see on thegreaterminds.com ver 2.0. Get at us.
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I dedicate this to all the lazy afternoons spent reading the Onion during 7th period CWE… and of course to the emerald.
Girl, That Arena Ain’t Right For You
by Clay “Smoove” B
Seattle, why must you be this way? Have I not ridden into town upon my finest steed, with its pure-white, pure-bred mane flowing in the refreshing Puget Sound breeze, and lavished the finest of care onto your basketball teams? Have I not exerted the greatest efforts to make a wonderful life for us here in your beautiful homeland? Know that I will do this for you, even at great pain and inconvenience to myself, because I love you, baby.
Baby, let us come together like we did back in those golden days. Do you remember them? I do because you are the finest piece that I ever did hit. You know of what I speak. Do you remember how I would toil in the fields all day, cultivating and harvesting the freshest, certified-organic forwards and guards with which I cooked you exquisite championships? I do to, baby. Let’s go back to those good times.
Forget that nasty shack! It is certainly not befitting of your radiant beauty. You are an emerald queen and you deserve the most resplendent castle that the taxpayers can afford. Its bejeweled halls ought to be lined with the rarest metals and be lit by twinkling precious gemstones. Its seats, made with the softest Corinthian leather, should caress the buttocks of fans as lovingly as I caress every centimeter of your voluptuous, hourglass figure, Seattle.
Also, there will be both 110 and 220 volts of alternating current electricity.
But don’t think that I won’t put in my fair share, baby, for I will travel to the ends of the earth to collect the most exquisite building materials just for you. I will start here in Washington and quarry the finest stone with my bare hands. I will also quarry purely decorative stone such granite, marble, and limestone. Then, I will seek out the wisest of all of the masons of Rabat –which is in Morocco– so that they will teach me how to make the most perfectly rectangular bricks. I will carry them on my own back across the ocean into your front yard to clad your jewel-encrusted palace.
For the centerpiece, I will personally fell the most elegant teak wood from the Orient. Then I will mill it in my own precision workshop. If need be, I will purchase the exclusive services of Master Carpenter Norm Abrams. Finally, the wood will be stained with the blood of the working class for, as you well know, that is the richest and most beautiful finish that can be applied to naked lumber.
Speaking of naked, baby, after I finish building this dazzling palace for you, we will be finally ready to play ball. I think you know what I mean by this. You are so beautiful. I will gently set you down upon the highest thread-count sheets. I will anoint you with the most sensual oils and the finest spices from Zanzibar. I will also bring you a hot dog from the concession stand. Then I will hit a three-pointer. This will be followed by another three-pointer and then another. We will continue to score baskets until triple overtime if that is what you desire. As I remember, this is what you like. We will freak so explosively that we will have to take a short break at half-time to replenish our bodily fluids.
Then I will hit you from behind.
Baby, don’t you see how much I love you? It is only because of this that I wish to construct for you a magnificent house. You will understand if I keep the profits so that I may spend them on you at a later date, perhaps. Forget what was said earlier. Know only that I wish to be with you and nobody else.
Let’s get together, girl, you know my number.
an essay by haruki murakami published in the new york times. very simple, eloquent and inspiring
“I never had any intention of becoming a novelist — at least not until I turned 29. This is absolutely true.
I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.
The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.
I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.
A year ago in Boston I had dinner with the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez, and when I told him this story, he pulled out his cellphone and asked me, “Would you like to talk to Wayne, Haruki?†“Of course,†I said, practically at a loss for words. He called Wayne Shorter in Florida and handed me the phone. Basically what I said to him was that I had never heard such amazing music before or since. Life is so strange, you never know what’s going to happen. Here I was, 42 years later, writing novels, living in Boston and talking to Wayne Shorter on a cellphone. I never could have imagined it.
When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.
I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance†and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.
Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.
One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!â€
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.†I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.”
Haruki Murakami’s most recent book is a novel, “After Dark.†This essay was translated by Jay Rubin.
well fellas…ive been absent from our community of greater minds for some time, so i thought i would give a quick little update on the status of life affairs. Ive been chilling out in d.c. with fellow member eyecue for a few weeks now, kicking it and seeing what hots spots are unfound in this capital of capitals. Sweetness is set to join us late in the summer and pictures of our mishaps should be coming up shortly…also, there is a slight possibility that your boy might be transfering grad schools starting in jan to george washingon u. out here in d.c. so more updates on that soon….Respek
back in the days when i was young, im not a kid anymore, but some days i sit and wish i was a kid again.
Three fourths of the Consortium ca. late 2001. In fine form from the begining.
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“I’m in my twenties so a new Nas joint used to give me the chills” – Joell Ortiz
