First off, pomp and circumstance to the DETROIT PISTONS, winners of the 2004 NBA Championship. It’s good to be a winner again. Shoutouts to the whole squad…Rip, Ben, ‘Sheed, Mehmet, Tayshaun, C. Billups, L. Hunter, Mike James, Elden Campbell, Coach Brown and even freakin’ Darko Milicic.
And also, Happy 33rd Birthday Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971-1996)…that’s my play cousin.
Now back to the lecture at hand…I want to talk about something that in my travels through academia and the ghetto I’ve come across in droves…people who are deep. You know, those people who always seem to be just that much more complex than anybody else but upon closer investigation really just aren’t saying much of shit. Those folks that constantly parade to places where they snap instead of clap, spit hot fiyah over jazzy beats, and wear clothes made of hemp that have pictures of Bob Marley and wear dread caps and earthtones and suck on flavored twigs and wear shells and wax poetic about everything that the rest of us don’t give a shit about though we should because they wax poetic about it and are deep and we don’t realize how deep their deep is leaving us all in deep shit…
(*DISCLAIMER: THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE MIGHT BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME…GOOD,WE GOT THAT OUT OF THE WAY.*)
So I’ve always wondered…are these folks really deep? Or is this some facade that the rest of us place upon them? What the hell are they really talking about???? Are they talking about anything??? And if not, hell, is there a guidebook to being deep??? Today…the guidebook is officially officialized so that the intricate ignomalities of the sun’s beautiousness may descend upon those that don’t know, don’t show, or just don’t care what’s going at the open mic or cipher or college campus or Common CD (cuz that shit was deep). Ladies and Gentleman I present…
PANAMA AND SWEET RIKKI’S GUIDE TO YOUR INNER DEEP…A STEP BY STEP BOOKLET FOR YOU TO GET TO YOUR INNER POETRY OR INNER-CONCIOUSNESS OR WHATEVER DEEP PEOPLE CALL IT NOWADAYS (that’s a deep-ass title)
1. The first step to finding your inner deep is to realize that you too have the ability to be deep. But you have to WANT to be deep too. Now this isn’t easy as I know the ability to wax poetic (sidenote: you have to begin weaving words like reality, society, wax poetic, or anything that rhymes with reality into your everyday speech) isn’t easy. I recommend reading any book that Common has shouted out on CD and also obtaining numerous books by poets you’ve never heard of…cuz they are all deep and deep people know who other deep people are…its a gift. Also…read the newspaper…fuck it read everything and become cynical about it all.
2. Attire. Now this is kind of tricky b/c under normal circumstances you can’t tell a book by its cover. However, with deep folks…its a little easier. Deep people don’t wear stuff that normal folks wear. They tend to wear army gear or earthtones and t-shirts of revolutoinaries and Malcolm X and Bob Marley and headwraps and shells in dreads (note: locks are not a sign of a deep person…lots of folks have dreadlocks…but a shell in the locks is a dead giveaway) and ankhs and silver rings and just tend to be very much into the “natural” look. You know that look that India.Arie (with her deep ass) and the whole neo-soul crowd (with the exception of Amel Larrieux and D’Angelo) seem to be into. You can’t just show up to the deep meeting being deep in a throwback of Magic or Jerry West or DeVante Swing.
3. You have to find more deep people (cipher). In essence, a deep person with no home is lost (that’s a deep concept, think about it). He/she needs more people like him or herself to be around b/c well, you need other people to recognize you are deep. You can’t just go around calling yourself deep. That’s dumb. You have to find at least one person, uncoerced, to call you deep in order to be officially deep. Also, upon finding other deep people like yourself, observe the group. There is always that one person who is head and shoulders deeper than everybody else. You want to know how to spot him/her? He/she is that person that NOBODY understands for shit, but ironically still seems to be enlightened whenever he/she speaks knowledge. They always speak knowledge. Cuz knowledge is key. Deep people have knowledge because they know that deep people are knowledgeable enough to be deep and therefore they must spread their knowledge to other deep people or else their depth will go away and then they can’t go to the open mics no more and say shit like “the sun is beautiful when it jumps the moons sexual being and reality becomes a fallacy that the love of two souls must endure…after the hurricane”. We’ll call the most deep person the Darius/Dariusella Lovehall of the group. That’s your target. You must strive to be like Darius Lovehall or your true depth will never be reached.
4. You have to be able to speak intelligently about anything and everything. However, you don’t have to make any sense whatsoever. In essence, you have to SOUND like you know what you are talking about even if you have no clue. We have a term for this in un-deep society, bullshit. You have to make sure your bullshit sounds better and is more concretely impregnable than anybody elses. You don’t want to be in the cipher, or on stage at the open mic and say some shit people can call you on. NO! You want to finish with your poem (cuz deep people write, but we’ll get there) and you want somebody, who obviously didn’t understand shit you said but not smart enough to realize you didn’t either, to say, “that was deep!” This is your goal. To get the snaps or applause out of the audience. In order to be deep…like I said earlier, whether warranted or not, other people must think you are deep. Common said in a song…”just b/c nobody understands you don’t make you deep.” Well that’s true out in the world…however, at the right venue it does mean your deep. You know why?? I’ll tell you why. Cuz other deep people don’t want to be exposed as not really being deep. They can’t risk the embarassment of not getting your poem or of thinking it was really simple b/c maybe they didn’t get it. NO! They must all act as if what you said was profound and gave their life some clarity. They are required to think so, so make sure your poems make as little sense as possible…it makes you way deeper.
5. Love. Every deep person has been through some personal love hell. This is a requirement. Unrequited love. Cheating boy/girlfriend. Talk about soulmates must be prevalent at some point. In a deep person’s writings…talk of love must dominate at least 45% of the portfolio…b/c for deep people, love is the ultimate deep because it is the “intertwining of two souls melting into one anothers one another to form the cataclysmic reality (see how i put that in there) of fantasy and the fallacy is that love is blind when love sees all and be’s all in you and me and we all fall down to the point where love becomes poetry and poetry is love and life is love and ja said pain is love so poetry is pain and jello-o like because it is molded into form that takes no shape (deep huh?) and takes no stake in our state of being and seeing is believing…” It’s really quite simple if you just keep at it.
6. Every deep person writes. A lot. But nobody sees it. You must carry a notebook at all times that people know you carry but never see you write in. But on those special occasions when you are out in a park under a tree with your cipher (cuz deep people are strangely close to nature) you share a poem or two, set to the music provided by the Darius Lovehall who just happens to bring the guitar he can’t play but can repeat the same chord over and over which is pure poetry in motion. Make sure its about love (see #5) cuz women love deep brothers. The more heartache…the better the attention.
7. A vital component of being deep is thinking all the time. And not conventional thinking mind you…pontificating and pondering type thinking. Deep people think about shit that has no answer, like, “What if up was down??? or what if a square only had 3 sides???” They turn this thinking into poems that they write about (see #6) that they take to their cipher (see #3) to speak about (see #4). In their thinking they realize that it is not important to have any answers but to have all the right questions. Because truly deep people know that there is no answer to a truly deep question because if a deep question had an answer it wouldn’t be deep and then they’d be like everybody else but they aren’t like everybody else because they are deep and deep people think differently than regular people hence them being deep and why the rest of the people wish they were deep but aren’t because they answer questions instead of asking questions…liiiiiiiiiike…
REGULAR JOE: What is 2+2???
DEEP PERSON: WHY is 2+2???
REGULAR JOE: Huh????? What?????
DEEP PERSON: Exactly…think about it!!!
8. At this point…you start to realize, everybody else just isn’t as deep as you and your cipher. This is important. Once you get here, you are TRULY too deep for the masses and above everybody else because they are beneath you with their trivial musings about boyfriends and girlfriends. You’re talking soulmates. They talk music, you talk art. They see grass, you see the mother earth and all her splendor and beauty that society doesn’t respect and that the “man” (of whom I like to call Starbucks) is attempting to take from its people…which would be you and your deep friends because the rest of us just see grass, and grass ain’t deep.
Lastly, there are a few references one must have in order to truly be deep and have an appreciation for all things deep.
1. Love Jones, because it gave us Darius Lovehall and is the epitome of what deep people live for, and;
2. Either a Mos Def CD or the BlackStar CD, or hell anything Mos Def touches, b/c he is the deep man’s deep man, and;
3. Anything that Erykah Badu has done or has been apart of (ask Common, that’s a deep brother)…she is the epitome of what deep REALLY is.
Well, now you are ready to trudge off into the world of being deep and mentally above the rest of the dimwitted non-thinkers who just peruse through life without really knowing whats going on. Get ready to be deep…