Earykah Badu's nude video -- What are your thoughts?

I heard about Badu's video and was intrigued. The video shows Badu walking down a crowded street and disrobing. It is the official video of Window Seat.  Before actually watching the video, I had listened to her Wall Street Journal interview where she discusses her philosophy of Baduism and 'Group Think'.

Let me just start by turning this entire thing back to myself.  :)  I have submitted half a story called 'They Say Love is Blind' both here and on Literotica.  The story was written several years ago, but as I decided to use it, I re-edited it, and made some changes.  I didn't think the story was all that good (the re-edit was a definite improvement!)  But as I read the comments I was utterly amazed at the positive and downright glowing feedback!  Amazed is an understatement...

Actually, I couldn't continue the story.  I was blocked mentally!  Let me just be honest here...the second half of the original story sucks.  Okay, I said it!  But it still has an interesting twist.  When I started reading the comments I thought that maybe I should pull back on the twist and begin shooting for what would please everyone.

I was so desperate for an answer that I started bouncing writing ideas off of my 15 year old daughter who was absolutely no help!  Then I remembered the Badu video and decided to read about it before watching it.  She describes something called 'Group Think' and like an epiphany I had my answer. The following is what Badu told the Wall Street Journal:

"Group think that's like a form of thinking that causes you to bury what you really feel inside to please the group so you won't be ostracized by the group.  It's a comfort zone that we create for ourselves, and I go outside of that comfort zone."

Wow, I was two steps from selling out. Earykah's words and video served to remind me that I am doing this because writing makes me feel absolutely awesome and sharing my stories with people who appreciate my brand of storytelling is even better.  Not everything is a hit.  But the challenge is to write something that pleases me first.  If I do it any other way then I am not being true to YOU or myself.


To Earykah Badu, thank you for working this out for me.


Now, off of me and on to Earykah.  Have you seen the video?  What do you think?  Was it bad taste because there were children present, or because it's shot in Dallas and recreates President Kenndy's shooting?  Does it make a statement about society that no one did anything but watch?

I'm just curious about the opinions of adults vs the kids that post to Youtube, who are pretty much concerned with the size of her butt.  Here is the link, sorry it's the censored version.

Window Seat

NUJABES RIP (February 19, 1974 – February 26, 2010)

Recently I did a musical post including some songs by a wonderful producer by the name of Nujabes.  He was a Japanese hip-hop producer and DJ who recorded under the name Nujabes. His alias was simply his name "sebajun" spelled backwards.

On February 26, 2010, Jun Seba was involved in a traffic accident upon exiting the Shuto Expressway late at night. He died at a hospital after failed efforts to revive him. He was 36 years old. (Wikipedia)

I've just discovered this artist who is prominent in a genre of music called 'chillout', or 'lounge'.  It infuses mellow jazz/asian sounds with subtle hip hop beats.  If you haven't listened to his music then take a moment to enjoy this incredible artists sound!

Pep's Nujabes playlist from YouTube.

Nujabes was a contributing musician to an anime show; Samurai Champloo.  Whenever someone on the show died they would play his song Mystline...RIP.

Works in progress...but take a sneak peek anyways.

You all have been great in sticking with me and the blog even though I haven't really been posting anything.  Believe me, I'm writing like crazy but nothing is getting finished.  So I thought you'd like to see some of the things I'm working on.  If you don't mind reading works in progress then you're welcome to take a look.  If you prefer waiting until the stories are complete I promise to post them here!

Just be forewarned that once I write a story I like to do a 'once over' which means what you are reading now may not exactly be the end results.

THEY SAY LOVE IS BLIND

This is probably not going to be the title.  You can throw out some suggestions once you're read this if you like.  Titles are not my favorite part of writing.  In this story we have a pretty, yet overweight black woman who is not satisfied with herself, her love life, not even her work performance.  She is perpetually late for work, having to rush and catch a late bus each day.  Soon she finds that there are some perks in taking the late bus; namely, a sexy white guy that fuels this shy girl's fantasies!

THE THROWAWAY YEAR

I'm convinced that every writer has done this; written a great story, and then lost it.  That's what happened when I FIRST wrote this story several years ago.  It was the best I'd ever written.  Losing it put me in a funk that stopped me from writing for about two years.  Very recently I was inspired to try it again.  It's not the story I originally wrote and I'm not sure that I like the changes but the other is gone forever and all I can do is move forward and tell the story the best that I can.

In this story a woman has wrapped herself up into her relationship with her man...and now this man wants to move on.  What would happen if you sacrifice one year of your life to accomplish all of the tasks that you put aside because it was inconvenient or just uninteresting?

Juicy; the novel (removed)

removed by author