Exploring: Saul Williams

Saul Williams aka Niggy Tardust… is profound. Stuck in his own world, never silent to the realms of reality nor trapped by its limits. Having attended Morehouse for acting and philosophy and then to go on to graduate from New York University in acting, Williams has dipped in every realm: spoken word, writer, poet, father, actor, musician, speak of the mind, advocate of the heart… explore his words... and create your own interpretations.

I fell in love with s√he in college. In which he explores love, and the birth of his daughter. One of my favorite pieces:

I PRESENTED
My feminine side
With flowers

She cut the stems
And placed them gently
Down my throat

And these tu lips
Might soon eclipse
your brightest hopes

Instantly I was pulled in and had to buy everything with his name on it. (Except I have yet to buy The Seventh Octave)

,Said the shotgun to the head…an example of the new epic piece. An ongoing poem... split and altered by pages, commas, punctuation, font sizes and color. Each page connected with the next in some aspect; however each could also hold its own space in time. As the pages count down... the energy and level of connection soars. He starts the book with this introduction:

*This book is the result of a kiss. A kiss that brings symbols to life and fear-based shortcomings to their symbolic death. To be kissed by a deity is nothing short of a miracle. The mind altering/altering effects can last more than a lifetime. Here is the account of a man so ravished by a kiss that it distorts his highest and lowest frequencies of understanding into an incongruent mean of babble and brilliance. He wanders the streets disheveled and tormented by all that he sees that does not reflect her love. He is a wandering man, sort of like a modern day John the Baptist, telling of the coming of a female messiah that he has known intimately. He is the babbling man you cross the street to avoid. He is the unavoidable end before the new beginning. He is a lover in search of a greater love. SHE is ONE and many: Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and creation; Oya, the Yoruba orisha of death and rebirth; the Holy Ghost, which is to say, the women restored to her place in the Holy Trinity. No longer ghost, no longer virgin, SHE is the mother of us all.

The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop, a complement of 7 sectioned poems, and then his personal journal pieces. Williams explores the realm of possibility of having to decipher 7 scrolls that were found in a subway. He leads you on his path, lyrically and literary, while you explore how words can ride beats, and emotions can spring rhymes so eloquently. This was a big time favorite for the men in my life that write, bless the mic, and need motivation to keep words moving through them. ( a dope YouTube!!! )

Works:
•The Seventh Octave, 1998, Moore Black Press ISBN 0-9658308-1-0
•She, 1999, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-671-03977-6
•,said the shotgun to the head, 2003, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-7434-7079-6
•The Dead Emcee Scrolls, 2006, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 1-4165-1632-8

www.saulwilliams.com


Quote...

"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding"
— Saul Williams (Said the Shotgun to the Head)