"tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace"
I loved the classics that my brother Melvin had for me; the Shakespeare and all that. My favorite was Macbeth, Act Five Scene Five; where he's sitting up in that castle, straight up ghetto gangster, talking about life full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But even if life is full of sound and fury, hopefully it can signify something. Hopefully I can get my significance on. Hopefully I can be like the great blues man Robert Johnson, sitting up at the crossroads, sound to the east of me, fury to the west. Hopefully I can go straight ahead, follow the north start, like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, get my significance on.
"nobody gets out of this life alive"
Speaking of picture shows, have you ever seen the movie Black Orpheus? It's a great flick, one of my top favorites of all time. Orpheus is this guy, good-looking man, very romantic, and he can play just about any kind of tune you want on the guitar. He's got that samba bossa nova thing goin' on. But he gets into a little confrontation with death and death wins just like death wins every time. You know you can't fight against death. But what he does is, before he dies, he gets himself an apprentice, a young boy, and he teaches this little boy how to play the guitar and he tells this little boy that if he plays this one particular tune just right that he will have the power to make the sun rise.

So the last scene of the film, I'm going to set it up like they do on the Johnny Carson Show, so the last scene of the film Orpheus is dead but the little boy has his guitar and he's sitting up on a high high mountain down in Brazil. It's beautiful. And he's playing the tune that Orpheus had taught him with the Glissando and Arpeggio goin on and the boy has a little girl next to him and she's dancing - she's beautiful. The breeze just blowing through her skirt, she has power in that movement, that's the power of the people in that movement, the movement of the people, that's what Ziggy's daddy called it. What's Ziggy's daddy's name? Bob? Movement of the people.

Black Orpheus
So the little girl is spinnin' and grinnin', and the little boy is strummin' and hummin'; they're workin' it out sister to brother, brother to sister. And before you know it, before you can say the words get up stand up, the sun just comes right on up, just like that. It's beautiful; it's so beautiful.

And there is a lesson that can be learned from the Black Orpheus and that lesson is death will win, death will win every time, you can't fight against death but there is an opportunity to somehow circumvent death by passing a heritage on to the next generation. Just ask Ziggy.
See I used to think that I could somehow outmaneuver death, that I could somehow outwit death, but I don't believe that any longer. I mean I no longer believe that I cannot be killed. Nobody gets out of this life alive, definitely not Huey P. Newton. That why I tell my comrades, hey brothers, hey sisters, you're only gonna die one death, don't die a million deaths worrying about it.

I'm just trying to laugh at all the funny things that happen on the way to grave and I guess the funniest thing that happens when you die, everybody wants to bring you flowers but they don't want to bring you soup when you're alive to help keep you alive. And I'm saying, when I died, I don't want flowers, I can't smell flowers where I'm going. I want my soup; I want my soup.

See these people always just wanted to believe in the image that they created of me but they never really wanted to believe in me, doin' the things that I really felt were important to me. But that's ok, they're afraid, their parents didn't teach them right, politicians afraid to communicate, social workers afraid to socialize.

And they just want to put me up in a kind of box and I realize they Huey P. Newton will never get out of that box but it's not something that causes me problems any longer; it's really truly not, cause you know what my motto is.
"out out brief candle" Orson Welles as Macbeth
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, that thing my brother Melvin taught me, the Vincent Price recitation, Macbeth, Act Five Scene Five, sitting up in that castle, straight up ghetto gangster, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace; from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death; out out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Copyright 2002 Luna Ray Films, LLC. All Rights Reserved | Design by Fresh Karma