The FiLatino's Irregular Blog

So yesterday Omar and I stayed up writing group pieces. I realized just how many issues we have to deal with as Colonized peoples, and people of color in America. It gets to be sad and unnerving sometimes. However, I have never felt better about this tour and this project. Workin through my issues, our issues.

On monday Omar, Bushra, and I went up to Yale to perfrom at the student of color orientation. It was really cool. Bushra read first and she was really funny and poigniant. She got the crowd all warmed up. I went second and really had a good time with it, they really responded well to my work, so I was happy. Then Omar went up and brought the house down with his set. They almost died when Omar did his Mango routie, it was great. Wecome to the world, Freshmen.
It was really encouraging to see that many students of color together sharing and having a good time. Especially post 9-11. But anyway it was a good show and even though it wasn't a Filatino event persay, It showed me that this tour is going to be the isht.

so me and ed met tonight. we're begining work on group pieces. gah. i hate writing group pieces. to do a group pieceswell takes 10x as much energy and time as a normal pieces. the end result is awesome and fun, but the process, man. the process. so we're getting together again on monday to review our results. more later.

Okay, it occurs to me that some of you may not know what I mean by group pieces. group pieces are, basically, collaborations in writing and or performance. the hope is that the piece ends up having the best traits of all the artists involved.

There are basically 3 processes I've worked with the easiest is where its a list poem and basically everyone fills in the blanks. When I was in feedBACK this was our staple piece. I live for is the best example. Everyone wrote the beginning of the sentence, "I live for..." and each of us filled in the rest. Then we put them together in a way that made thematic sense and called it done.

The second process that I've worked with is assignments. I don't have a good example of this... hmm... okay... here's a hypothetical example. Say Ed and I were writing a piece about Lechon. We'd split up the stuff we had to write about. Ed would write about the crunchy skin while I wrote about carving. Then Ed'd write about the sauce while I wrote about the sides. Cheezy example, I know, but it's 2:36 am.

The hardest process is of each person writing independantly, then coming to the table, sharing and seeing what works together. Then if sections need to be developed, people go off again and come back. Basically it's, in my opinion, the best way to work because it's a series of rewrites. The duet I did with Taiyo was like that. The problem is that it literally took from October 2000 to February 2001 to write 4 minutes. gah!

Okay, I'm going to go now, but I'm going to talk to Ed about making sure we each post 1x a week to this. What do you think? Email me Omar@SuburbanFabulous.com.

I just flew back from Detroit and boy is my mouth tired. That's not a joke. I just did a lot of talking. It was a coference for LCLAA, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. It was a very worthwhile trip. I got to meet a lot of very interesting and influencial labor leaders, as well as perform for a room full of Latinos. I felt good. It was also great that people knew about the connection that Omar and I are making with FiLatino. We spoke about the unity between the latino and Filipino community during the farm workers strike of the seventies. I can't wait to see how it affects my writing, and painting.