the other day i was thinking about how i write these entries, and how i write rhymes.. and i was thinking about all the linguistic things i do in my life
i was driving around town and i tried to pinpoint the time where i first started to like, or show an affinity towards writing in my mind i went back to high school, then i went back some more, then i went back some more.. and i came to the conclusion that i've always been like this first of all, i was put in school early.. sometimes i'd run into people who were a grade under me who were older than i was.. which was bonkers but one aspect of being put in school early is you learn to read at an early age i learned to read really early.. i remember one day sitting in the car with my mom and it occurred to me that i could read.. i was reading signs and things as we passed them by and in my own way, i took ownership of my ability that day moving forward.. in school i was always reading at a higher grade level than where i was at.. we used to do this game where we'd read a book one by one as a class and whenever you made a mistake then the teacher would let someone else read.. well whenever it was my turn the teacher would literally have to make me stop reading because i never made mistakes.. the book would just come to me and no one else would get a turn to read lol when i was in elementary i remember i won a school-wide spelling bee.. what was crazy about this was i remember when i won, i was like wow this is neat or whatever.. but my teacher who was this black lady, who was almost like a mom or an aunt more than a teacher- was SO happy i won.. like she grabbed me and hugged me and i was like "wow!" lol.. my sister was also really proud of me the next few years in middle school and high school i got no recognition for any writing or anything.. sometimes i wonder if some of this was discriminatory because my middle school and high school were like 99% white.. a lot of modern day racism is just quiet things that discourage you like people not giving you the credit you deserve i remember one time some kid drew a picture and said "hey james look here's a picture of you" and i looked at it and it was a picture of a person with a huge wide-nose and huge lips.. it was an obvious mockery of me being black and so i gave it to the teacher, hoping she would see the harassment but she didn't do anything about it its things like this that make me wonder about that school.. and i don't think it was the whole school but a few bad apples seemed to be in there.. if i was in her shoes and someone did that to a lone white kid in a black school i would stick up for the white kid, but hey i guess that's just me anyway.. when i was in this school i still enjoyed when we had to do definitions and use words in a sentence.. i used to KILL those assignments .. it was nothing to me to use a brand new word in a sentence and add humor in it or whatever.. once i moved to tennessee i got to overton high school.. this school was more mixed again and so there seemed to be less discrimination.. once i got to overton i started seeing accolades again.. i turned in a poem about "a raisin in the sun" and the teacher gave me an A and wrote on the paper that i have a real talent.. she wrote "WOW!" on my paper and everything this really kinda tripped me out because i wasn't used to getting any sort of good comments on anything.. i continued at overton getting some really positive feedback also one of my teachers beat the 5-paragraph essay into our heads.. this actually is a valuable thing.. its not so much that you will write 5-paragraph essays often, but it teaches you about structure and flow to writing also we learned about poetic devices and i ATE THAT UP, i thought all of that was so cool and i wrote the most amazing poem you've ever seen in high school.. i used about 10 poetic devices in one and made it a riddle, it was so good it was absurd.. making that poem tripped me out because when i was finished i seriously sat back and admired my work.. it wasn't like "yes i'm so glad i'm done with that stupid assignment" it was like "wow i want to hang this on my wall!" when i got to college i met my friend eric and i remember eric always saying he never cared about beats in music, for him it was all about lyrics.. eric had a big influence on me, i always liked to talk to him and pick his brain so when he said this i started listening to lyrics a lot closer.. doing this gave me a whole different perspective on music.. you can listen, or you can LISTEN.. if you LISTEN, you will see all the subtleties in the lyrics and inflections also around this time i got the 'eminem show' album and that had the lyrics in the booklet and that album really made me excited to write and to write with a real lyrical precision and mastery that album was lyrically bonkers i'd recommend it to anyone who really wants to study the craft.. i used to carry the booklet with me everywhere and i just soaked that thing up because from my perspective at the time, NO ONE was spitting like that anyway.. that pretty much covers my development.. everything after that stuff is pretty much trial, error, and execution.. and i still LISTEN.. and try to have fun with everything i write but that is my background in writing, lyrics, and linguistic self expression
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December 2012
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