December 2009 E-News

To all my burnt out holiday-ready folks,

A major email blast to send us off on our last few weeks of ‘09. (Deep breath.) Have you been noticing all the beautiful people around New York with their pink cheeks? Call me crazy, but it seems folks are just getting better looking and more shiny, in spite of the bitter cold. 1 for the people, 0 for mother nature!

I have slacked on fifteen different levels with saying hello and keeping you looped in, so here I am, a bit worn around the edges, with a long email blast including everything under the kitchen sink, and the bathroom sink too (and even in the back closet, which is a bit scary with all the cobwebs.) To keep things short and sweet, here is a list of what you’ll find by scrolling down:

- Three upcoming shows
- Two song new releases on Tokyo Dawn Records
- Daru Jones Free Sampler & Living Room Session
- New Bay Area Living Room Sessions
- Special offer for a $3 download of my 2007 EP
- Giving thanks
- A new poem to share

I’m sure that’s not even the half, but look, I’m tired, you’re tired and this is an abundance of goodness to push forth so let’s call it a day.

Signing off with big, fat kisses and wishes for a blessed, relaxed, love filled holiday season for the lot of ya,

<3 Caits

http://www.caitsmeissner.com

http://www.myspace.com/caitlinmeissnerpoetry
http://www.twitter.com/caitsmeissner

P.S. If you’ll notice, there is a soft release for my new website happening right now. Shhh. I’ll be officially releasing it with a free download in the new year. This is just for y’all that actually read…

P.P.S. You look hot in that ugly holiday sweater. Careful there, tiger. Rar!

–

UPCOMING SHOWS

> Performance @ Drive For the Stuy Sat. Dec 19th

ARISE will be teaming up with Butch of MXPizza and Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger to collect as much clothes, toys, and food as possible for those in need. This event will also be in honor of Antoine Stokes, Steven Hill, Derrick Henry (all 3 shot and killed on Sept 10th) and Jahlal Lee (shot and killed on Sept 22nd). At sundown there will be a moment of silence for every gunshot fired on those 2 days. The September incident happened no more than 100 yards from Malcolm X Pizza.

ARISE is striving to make this a community event and we need YOUR SUPPORT!!!

ARISE PRESENTS…
2ND ANNUAL DRIVE FOR THE STUY

SATURDAY DECEMBER 19TH NOON-5PM
MALCOLM X PIZZA
352 MALCOLM X BLVD (@CHAUNCEY ST)
BROOKLYN, NY
NOON-5PM
PERFORMANCES & MUSIC FROM 2-4PM
SILENT VIGIL @SUNDOWN
A TRAIN TO UTICA AVE
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger

http://www.bedstuyagainsthunger.org/

> Performance @ Listening Party for DJ IRS’ Forthcoming Album Jan 9th

Saturday January 9th, 2010 | 6-10pm
$8 donation

For Those Listening
Album Release for DJ IRS’ forthcoming album
Hosted by HBO Def Poet Big Mike
Featuring: Monique, Caits Meissner, Deathrow Toll
& Alexis Golden Lover

@ The Hub Teen Center
411 Joyce Kilmer Ave
New Brunswick, NJ

> Jan. 29, 2010 Feature: The Inspired Word @ Le Poisson Rouge

FRIDAY JANUARY 29, 2010
THE INSPIRED WORD @ LE POISSON ROUGE

Caits Meissner will be featuring with a 20-30 minute set alongside friends & fellow poets Shanelle Gabriel, Kelly Zen-Ye Tsai & B(rook) Yung.

Date: Friday, Jan. 29th
Time: 7-10pm (really more like 7:30-9:30)
Place: Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

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NEW RELEASES ON TOKYO DAWN

Portformat’s album “The Repeat Factor” now finally available in stores! Grab this unique Soul/Hip-hop long player and find out what all the hype is about: Seventeen tracks from deep space featuring Dudley Perkins, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Shuanise, Suzi Analog, Blaktroniks, Gajah, Caits Meissner, Altar The Obey Native and more.

Preview/Cop here.

Tokyo Dawn is proud to present Comfort Fit’s masterpiece “Polyshufflez” remixed by techno godfather Laurent Garnier, breakbeat guru Domu, UK house don Atjazz, death star laser trooper Robot Koch, Germany’s up and coming Hip-Hop producer fLako, Denmark’s finest Boom Clap Bachelors (who remixed me!), Jay Scarlett (Beat Dimensions), Sweden’s finest funkateer Opolopo, house shooting star Jacob Korn, global bass buccaneer Tim Turbo, Singing Statues (aka Jackhigh), brilliant beatmaker Swede:art (new album on Tokyo Dawn 2010), our intergalactic Portformat and finally the main shuffler, Comfort Fit himself.

Preview/Cop here.

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DARU JONES FREE SAMPLER
& LIVING ROOM SESSION

Daru recently dropped volume three of his soul-hop sampler series, “Spirit & Soul-Hop Sampler ‘09″ featuring some of the illest singers and MCs out right now. In this Living Room Session, Daru treats us to some of the album’s cuts. Special LRS addition, he is drumming live along with them. Also check the tasty solo and a hilarious conversation between him and I. Flames Momentum, A-Team ‘09, let’s go!

(PST, I designed the album cover and site, as well, so I have a special love for the project!)

Download Daru’s “Spirit & Soul-Hop Sampler ‘09″ (for free!) at
http://darujones.bandcamp.com

Watch the Living Room Session here.

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SPECIAL BAY AREA EDITION
LIVING ROOM SESSIONS

What she said! Featuring the poet/playwright/master manifestor Anthem Salgado, my cousin and songstress Ivy Meissner and poet/MC extraordinaire Dre aka Duke of the High Decibals. All my family, all welcomed me into their warm homes, all magic. Show em some love.

Watch the Living Room Sessions here.

–

$3 DOWNLOAD OF 2007 EP

Listen/cop it here.
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GIVING THANKS

My friend Ashley sent out a call for lists of things people were thankful for. She asked us to write until we could not write any longer. Unedited, off the top, first things that came to mind. This is what came out. It’s amazingly long.

Read the whole post here: http://king-poetic.livejournal.com

–

NEW(-ISH) POEM

On Envisioning Perfect Love

A parachute descends on the sun and night
swallows the earth. A square window of light
reveals a city of stacked laundry building up on
the hardwood floor of a bedroom chamber
mid-Brooklyn, mid-autumn, the leaves, funeral mourners
scattering the sidewalk. It is an impossible season,
a season impossible to not make a treaty with death.
We walk the streets in black. We say we are dressing
up for New York.

How are you?
Do not ask me such an irreverent question in fall.
I am choosing to smile, tooth picks propping the lips.
It looks funny, but I am seeking only merit, today.
I am folding laundry and slipping it into the dresser
along with my secrets.

Picture perfect love, he tells me.
This is the goal, as I smooth the sheet over the round
corners of a bed to big for my body. We are trying on
patience and quiet and stumbling. These words have
long lost meaning under the spinning bits we pull
from our guts each morning and examine like
children’s toys gone broken, off key and beeping
incessantly like a hospital. We smash them against
the wall, worry it is our own fumbling hands too big
for the tiny mechanisms. Worry we’ve finally gone mad.

And so what if we have?
Love, there is only perfect love, I tell him.
It arrives in Easter baskets and on the door step
shuffled in with the Chinese food pamphlets.
It surprised me when it made a heart on the napkin
I wiped my chicken-grease fingers on, it is a jokester
like that. It shaved off my hair when I was sleeping
and left it all over the bathroom floor spelling out
“p-e-r-f-e-c-t.” It’s trying to make me love myself
naked and full of nicks in my skin. When you
breathe out smoke and it curls on the hairs
below your nose, notice it’s hesitance to disappear.
It is telling you something. I don’t want to work
anymore, I want to live. I am taking you to the sea.

–

Just for fun, I know it’s the wrong holiday, but I thought you might appreciate Mikey1Soul and I on Halloween. Who knew Ziggy Stardust and The Warriors were homies?