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Reflections

Autophysiopsychic Partnership

Writings of the Yusef Lateef Quartet

by Yusef Lateef

BLESSED IS THE MAN who walketh alone in dignity, and solitarily standeth in modesty, and sitteth reclusively in sublimity. Hydra-headed loneliness, like an endophyte, incessantly bids the mind of man to traumatize. At times … during periods of detachment … man shall taste the unaesthetic disease of sadness, like a lonely tower hidden and decaying in the bowels of despair. Comfortless is the congregation of the forsaken, like watery fluid from the guts. For loneliness is an infectious dystrophy to man. WHY DOES THIS heathen remoteness deceive man’s senses? The forsaken and depraved of the earth take counsel together against the opulent and rapturous spirit of man. Let us purify their feverish condition and sever their cords. He that sitteth as an alien shall suffer anguish of the mind; the lonely butcher shall have him in derision. Then shall he mock him in his fury, and vex him in his labyrinth of loneliness.

A LONELY HEART is prone to declare the decree of disgrace, and, in so doing, affect a disgruntlement in the mind. Ask the forsaken for amity, and they shall give you dysesthesia of the most violent type. Thou shalt indict them for maladministration of your soul. Thou shalt wish them arraigned for malfeasance of your mind. Be wise now, they have their existence only as the forsaken and the depraved. They serve only the distempered spirits as a putrid amniotic fluid. Let them perish from your mind, lest they awaken fire-immune beasts, kindled by an encephalitic warmth to incinerate the middle cell of your head. They are more numerous than the wars of Carthage, and frequently rise up as psychoneurotic entities to agitate the soul. Yes, they are many.

THEY WAIT TO inject their venom into your soul: unsocial-belladonna, troglodyticaconite, disconsolate-strychnine, single-corrosive sublimate, ancharitic-arsenic, and more of the same.

YES, LET THEM perish from your mind through the loving remembrance of the Divine, the only shield against the blue vitriolic abuse of loneliness and the uplifter of your mind. They can cause you to cry due to denying you affection, and when you weep, they rejoice in your excruciation.

YES, THEY ARE the congregation of the forsaken, like mental tumors, consisting of dilated or oxalic oriented blood vessels perpetually depriving some soul of wellbeing.

PERHAPS IT WOULD be better to sleep eternally; sleep might give them access to your dreams whereby they could effuse excremental fluid into the interstices of your nocturnal cells.

ARISE, O LOVING remembrance of the Divine One, shield me: for in the past, Thou hast smitten all the enemies of the Blessed: Thou hast broken the tumultuous teeth of the seducer of the lonely.

HEAR THOSE WITHOUT company, deserted, desolate, and lonesome … how in silence they duel with the irritable internal secretion of loneliness. Hear their silent voices that occasionally utter a twinge of pain, with a lisp.

O YE CONGREGATION of the forsaken, how long will ye inhabit my domain? How long will ye revel in the evisceration of man’s psyche, and how long will ye seek to lease his soul?

STAND IN AWE! I know you have no heart; it is only through mine that you communicate, suggesting unsavory perceptions of hurt. Offer not your rueful allusions for they are isotopes having the same number of protanopia in the nucleus of the spiritual eye and they effect the same atmospheric atrophy in the soul. GIVE EAR TO my chant, O Divine One! Consider my lonely exile and meditation. Hearken unto the utterance of my silent cry. My voice shalt Thou apprehend, for Thou art The All Hearing, though the congregation of loneliness attempts to seditiously impede your help. I know that the companionless shall not stand as eternally convicted felons, condemned to execution by these highly venomous, elapid snakes, for like Acanthophis Antarcticus, they keep their own Death-Watch.

O DIVINE ONE, refuse me not Thy protective shield. Leave me not as stark prey, as in a death-trap, exposed to the inimical usurption of loneliness and his perversive plan. Debar me not from Thy sacred shelter. Guide my steps not into the abiotic abattoir of loneliness. For his dwelling is absonant with death rattles, and decorated with morally tainted deeds; the rooms have damaged and inoperable furniture, and the presiding flowers are in a state of being grieved; the decadent pantry only has within it a poisonous mushroom of the genus amanita and spices of abnormal and scrofulous content; the windows permit no light to pass through, for they are covered with a thick mucus-like substance … like that which is found in the throat of a person immediately preceding death; the slivered and lascerated beds are harbingers of miscarriages and dionysian escapades; the pathogenic air, when breathed, causes a chafing lethargy, in that it harbors spirochaetotic bacteria that are injurious to man, and dog, and even swine and cattle.

O YE CONGREGATION of the forsaken, your dwelling is a sickening brothel, an atrocious hotel, a psychosomatically disordered apartment, a rude residence, a house of horrors, a broken establishment, a restless corporation, an abhorrent partnership, a ruthless company, a brutal business, an orgiastic organization, a disturbing enterprise, and a home that is not a home.

O YE CONGREGATION of the forsaken, absolute demolition or absolute conversion is your only salvation. Can’t you see? Can’t you hear? The implication is that you prefer conversion, in that you seek the company of the seer.

CONGREGATION, now listen as neophytes should and, if you learn this lesson, you will become doers of good: through perversion of your existence, you have nearly destroyed your natural inclinations to engage in peace. You must help man. Don’t try to lease his soul. Don’t use his heart as a target for your brooding arrows.

AGAIN, I SAY you have no heart. You are only a concept within in the mind, but each arrow that pierces the target inflicts pain in heart and mind. This is because they are so intimately connected with the body and soul. Realize that you are a concept with a silent voice that makes suggestions to the soul of man. Man is your brother, therefore suggest savory concepts to him with a fraternal voice.

OFFER HIM CONCERN and care, for these are the type of offerings that transform repining into peace, and they replenish the soul. Give ear to his needs. Make not folly of his ignorance if you find his language strange or foreign. Stand eternally together as a Universal Brotherhood, dedicated to peace through an uncompromising internal commitment, for, in essence, a Universal Brotherhood is its own Peace-Watch.

TIDY THE CONDOMINIUM of your conscience. Make it an extenuation of the sacred shelter, and welcome all men. Guide them all into a peaceful refuge and let them hear a euphoric knell. Build your house of moral fibers, and aromatic deeds. Replace the grieving flowers with plants that are valued for their bloom. Be sure that your pantry has vital nutritional substances within it, and spices that reinvigorate the heartsick soul. Clean the death-rattle mucus from your windows and welcome the light. Sterilize all mental micro-organisms as quickly as you can. Have nothing in your house that maybe injurious to man.

ABANDON YOUR BROTHEL, exchange the atrocious hotel for heaven on earth, convert the psychosomatic apartment into an adjunct of peace, make the rude residence a rumpus room, and convert the broken establishment into a Universal Aesthetic Center for body, mind, and soul. Then man shall be BLESSED.

Coined Terms:

“unsocial-belladonna”
“troglodytic-aconite”
“disconsolate-strychnine”
“single-corrosive sublimate”
“ancharitic-arsenic”

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Something Else

Autophysiopsychic Partnership

Writings of the Yusef Lateef Quartet

Something Else
Yusef Lateef
Kenneth Barron
Albert Heath (Kuumba)
Robert Cunningham

Out of the modern age of artistic experssion, many with individual talents have sprung. Pop music, pop art, cybernetics, electronics, writing have all produced their phenomenon-taking something from the old, adding it to the new and then cultivating its own. Each with its following, seriously adapting, accepting and enjoying. And so it is with Mr. Yusef Lateef, the man with his own inventive, exploring talents. A musician’s musician, Mr. Lateef has among his many accomplishments mastered expressions in improvisations, technically and esthetically.

It was in Detroit where Mr. Lateef began his musical career while a senior at the Miller High School. Upon completion of High School, he toured the country with several bands, namely, Luck Millinder, Hot Lips Page, Dizzy Gillespie and others. He later returned to Detroit and enrolled at the Wayne State Universtiy where he studied music for four years, at which time he organized the Yusef Lateef Quintet. The group successfully performed a three-year engagment at Klein’s Show Bar.

Acting upon advice of Dr. Valter Poole (assistant conductor for the Detroit Symphony), he left Wayne to study under the masters. He attended the Teal School of Music for two years studying flute and oboe. Mr. Lateef studied under masters Charles Mills (composition), Harold Jones (flute), Harry Schulman (oboe), George Dufalo (theory), John Wummer (flute). Today Mr. Lateef has a B.A. from the Manhattan School of Music where he majored in flute, an M.A. from the same school in music education. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Music at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Written by Yusef Lateef, Kenneth Barron, Albert Heath (Kuumba) and Robert Cunningham. Published by the Autophysiopsychic Partnership, P.O. Box 1110, Peter Stuyvesant Station, New York, New York 10009.

Copyright © 1973 by the Autophysiopsychic Partnership. All rights reserved. First printing 1973. Printed in the United States of America

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Harlem Jive

Autophysiopsychic Partnership

Writings of the Yusef Lateef Quartet

by Robert Cunningham

Nigger you ask me if I know how to live!!! Is the Pope Catholic? Is a pig pork? Baby-sweets I’ve been living high on the hog since before you was knee-high-to-a grasshopper. Let Sugar daddy pull your coat to the happnins of the hour. A deuce a bells ago me and my main dog, a fine banana from the windy-city split for the apple in a blood red on red LD and if I’m lyin I’m flyin and Mona Lisa was manchild. We went straight to soulville. Lo and beho the first thing we peeped was my main man Slick Sam the black gonga man. He was clean as a chittlin and feelin’ no pain. The dude laided some green on us that was so clean and mean made you wanta screem – slap ya granmanny – somewhere there’s music how high’s the moon. My man put some down platters on the box and we listen to the voice of my master, Charlie Parker, “Autumn in New York,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Nows the Time,” OOO Baby OOO Baby Feels so good – Feels so good. Me, he and my lady started to move and groove, dinner at the “Y” Why not? the fountain of her youth. We just keep on keepin on 1-in-1, 2-in-2, 88 you 8 and I 8. Let it roll, let it roll, all night long. Don’t knock it someneelce will rock it. Try it you’ll like it OOOOPs I ate the hose’s thing.

Jive is a form of language peculiar to Blacks of the ghetto. Jive goes back to early slavery, to the people whose native languages had been taken away from them. Jive was our new language, jive was a code language, a way to speak to your brother and not be understood by the slave master, the overseer. Jive is a way to convert a cold rhythmless language (English), add some sing-song to it, add some rhythm, make it pulsate as do the native tongues of Mother Africa. Jive was a way to communicate when the police were on the scene and all you were doing was trying to get the house rent have a little fun and fry some fish on Saturday night. Jive was just away to tell your lady you loved her without sounding like Clark Gable. Jive was an attempt to have a language of our own, one that was not spoken by the white world. When jive terminology comes into common usage by white society, the terms used are rejected by the Black community; they are no longer secretive and therefore not as useful. By the time whites “get hip” to jive jargon it never seems to retain the meaning it had in the Black community. Take the word “ofay” which is used to mean white is now used by whites to refer to themselves. Very few whites realize the source or implications of this word. Ofay is a pig-latin term whose root is the word foe. When foe is translated into pig-latin we remove the f and add it to the end and add a, the result being oefa or ofay.

I was a heavy user of jive in my teens. I found it to be a language in which I took much time, thought and pride. But upon reaching adulthood and faced with the problem of being understood in the business world I was at a loss for words, words that I felt were appropriate. Since I have become aware of the need for precise communication in the business world I have been exerting a conscious effort to develop good English. I have a strong desire to be able to speak and write with clarity and precision. You can have all that jive.

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Dr. Hip Slick: On Hipness

Autophysiopsychic Partnership

Writings of the Yusef Lateef Quartet

Dr. Hip Slick: On Hipness
By Yusef Lateef

Ladies and Gentleman

There is a common impression that everything we think is hip, is valid. It is felt by many that to be hip is a fact of life. In the main, validity has its into it-ness. Almost all our common hipnesses are downnesses or are capable of being down at some time or another. As a rule that which is down or hip is that which is consciously present to our minds. Few of us ever ask ourselves, for example, what does it mean to be hip. Yet we feel, when uptight, that a hip solution is the answer even if we are out to lunch at the moment. And this concept is usually not a cop-out.

Bet let us imagine some insistent lame who whatever rap we lay on him continues to demand a reason for the reason. We must sooner or later, and probably before very long, be driven to a wig-out point where we cannot conceive any further reason, and where it becomes almost certain that any further rap would be an over-rap. Starting with the down to earth raps of daily life we can move from rap to rap until we come to some fact of life, which seems luminously down, and is not itself capable of being anything but evident downness. Beyond that there seems to be no further hip regress – only lame game. The hipness is constantly used in our downness, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.

Self evident hipness however, is not confined to those entities of thought which are incapable of proof. When a certain number of hip concepts have been admitted to the mind, the rest can be deduced from them; the downness deduced are often just as self-evidently-hip as those that showed without proof. All hipness, moreover, can be deduced from the university of life, yet the simple university of life such as it is, living, thinking and doing are just the phenomena of hipology.

It would seem, also, though this is more disputable, that there are some self-evident ethical hipnesses, such as the fact that we ought to pursue what is mellow.

It should be checked out that, in all cases of most-mellows, particular deals, dealing with familiar mellows are more evident than “most-mellows.” For example, the law of hipness states that nothing can both have a certain property of hipness and not have it. This is evident as soon as it is checked out, but then again perceptivity depends on what one is working out of.

In addition to most-mellows the other kind of self-evident hipnesses are those immediately derived from down to earthness. We will call down to earthness “truths of perception,” and the judgements of right-on-ness. But here a certain amount of dig activity is required in getting at the precise nature of the mellows that are self-evident hipnesses. The actual sense-data is either mellow or rig. Thus whatever self-evident hipnesses may be coped from our senses must be different from the sense-data from which they are coped.

It would seem that there are two kinds of self-evident hipnesses, though in deep analysis there is only one. First there is the kind which simply asserts the existence of hipness with out really being down. The other arises out of natural downness which is a fact of life.

Another class of intuitive hipness, analogous to pure downness, are judgments of memory or, in other words, what has gone down. There is some rig of confusion as to the nature of what has gone down, owing to the fact that what has gone down as an object is apt to be accompanied by an image of the object, and yet the image cannot be what has gone down. You dig?

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Ode To Pieter Bruegel

Autophysiopsychic Partnership

Writings of the Yusef Lateef Quartet

by Yusef Lateef

Perhaps? born in Breda, directed by the

parish priest,

Pieter Breugel, artist with creative

trend…

“The Procession to Cavalry” his

masterpiece,

Speaks prelude to public execution!

Strung up nerves, deeply moving

scene of Flemish working men,

Nature plays her part in the human

tragedy;

The thistle, seen in isolation from the vast

elaborately constructed picture to

which it belongs…

How well this minor detail summarizes

and symbolizes the conception

permeating the entire work,

It seems to reveal in a small compass the

mystery of all plant life.

The eye is led across a maze of colorful

incidents locked within the far

flung triangle of a unitary viewpoint

Skillfully portraying his accumulated

knowledge of man and nature,

concepts and figures: masterful

symmetry; esthetic realisms,

Breugel, whom the muses did graciously

annoint

How discreetly the local color sets off the

bright red of the soldiers’ garb,

painted by the master’s hand,

How remarkable is his handling of the

soil, spangled with patches of green,

brown and pink: an obliteration of

nature… and visual rapture.

Native crowd, tiny figures agitated,

moving in all directions, filling the

picture with vibrant life,

A stormy sky!… a bird of ill omen is

wheeling, denoting strife,

Carrion crows high in the air suggest the

vastness of space,

Clouds express poetic and poignant

realism,

Artistic passion and perfection was in his

plan,

…Peter Bruegel… Champion of

artistic expression, versed in the

anatomy of nature and man.

Copyright © 1973 by the Autophysiopsychic Partnership