Change Is Now-We Are A Movement

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-02-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

Thursday February 9th, 2012

Day 15,736 of the Journey

Becoming a hollywood producer...

Today's lesson...Be Grateful !

God gave me this song on Tuesday and I have been looking to share it here...after watching the news on Wednesday (Miramonte School, Congo and Syria)...the song played even louder in my head.

So I am going to add one more thing....

I complain a lot and I sang the blues here on Monday ...its not that nothing is wrong ever...but when I look across the country and around the world...I am reminded how blessed I am EVERYDAY ...Rev Paul Jones sings this thing...

write, produce and direct

Danna

God has been so good to us !

Esperanza Spalding - Black Gold (feat. Algebra Blessett) on Vimeo

2012-02-06T23:23:00.000-08:00

Esperanza Spalding - Black Gold (feat. Algebra Blessett) on Vimeo

Esperanza Spalding - Black Gold (feat. Algebra Blessett) from Concrete Loop on Vimeo.

Uhm well okay...enuf said...Black Gold
These are two of the most extraordinary vocalists and musicians in the game today...and beautiful. This just turned my whole thing around. The month is made right here...right now. Talk about a duet...OMGosh !!!

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-02-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

Monday, February 6, 2012

Day 15,733 of the journey

Becoming a hollywood producer...

Blue Monday by Annie Lee

This is in fact how it feels today...

I forgot the cake I wanted to take to Ali's school. The school day just ended so its too late.

I have had one long meeting, sent emails and talked creative and business on one long phone call.

I opened up an outline I attempted on a script before I knew how to write outlines (the script is complete, but I am circling back for a thesis assignment). It was also written before I knew how necessary outlines were to a successful screenwriting process.

I am re-entering the script outline business this week. They are not quick or easy. The two categories of writing them are: Beat Outlines and Step Outlines. These "outlines" are NOT to be confused with "Treatments" or "Synopses".

Beat and Step outlines offer a detailed road-map to the script. One must imagine the story from opening scene to closing scene and then record each scene.

I have a lot of mommy business to handle this week. I have Ali's broken eye glasses to get fixed. I need to reschedule doctor's visits for the both of us. My dishes are slipping away from me and they will be pulled back...washed, dried and put away.

In all of this ...Faith is the key and Faith without works is dead...so we keep the faith and we keep working...

write, produce and direct...

Danna

You know what this picture is...I will simply say the Love Patchwork was hard at work this past weekend...(Love you Char and Zoe (not pictured))

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-02-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Wednesday February 1st, 2012

Day 15,727 of the Journey...

I cannot add anything to thiswrite, produce and directDanna&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

I cannot add anything to this...

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-30T22:01:00.000-08:00

Day 15,725 of the Journey...(Desperate to Get It Right...)

Monday January 30th, 2012

I saw this today on Lionel Spearman's twitter feed which shows up on FB as well...under it was a credit to a Facebook "Like" page for Gusto and the text read...

"You are a perfectly acceptable human being right now, this minute. You are just as valid as any other human being, without changing a single thing about yourself. That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to want to grow, evolve or improve yourself, or you can’t do better sometimes. It just means that right now this instant, you are worthy of your own self love. Even if it is hard to love yourself sometimes, or you’re struggling with some really difficult stuff in your life, you still deserve it. So be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and give the best version of yourself that you can give, but know that even in the tough times, you are still valid, worthy and deserving." ~ Gusto

All of that above was extraordinarily timely because even when I patch up the hole where FAITH leaks out, the bandages pop off the wound where self-worth spills out.

There's a trick in there. I believe that we are not suppose to doubt our worth because of our FAITH that God knows what She is doing. I think FAITH is the bandage for self-doubt.

that's the ticket...

Today there was a bit of a street fight. FAITH and self doubt were mixing it up on Adams Blvd between Arlington and 10th Ave., I got hit ...a few times...but I was not knocked out.

I am still Fighting...fighting with FAITH as my weapon...(you should too)

write, produce and direct

Danna Kiel

Becoming a hollywood producer..

2012-01-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

Day 16,0something of the journey..

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Becoming a hollywood producer...

We love the photo booth app on my laptop...

It's Friday and I reminded today to keep fighting, but fight with faith.

write, direct and produce

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-26T21:20:00.000-08:00

Day 16,0something of the Journey

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Becoming a hollywood producer…

I love this photo…it was taken with Photo Booth, an app on my computer. The Love patchwork was hard at work today…this picture pays homage to that patchwork and that Love.

I am checking in because I’ve missed writing this blog over the 7 days that I’ve been absent. I will resume daily updates. This is important to me…the tough thing is the road to becoming a hollywood producer requires a mastery of time management that is still a work in progress for me.

Becoming a hollywood producer feels all consuming at times…but the work requires balance…prioritization. I should not become or feel consumed if I am focusing and prioiritizing.

I took a step today by focusing and prioritizing some late school-work. I completed one of many late assignments. It felt great. I had to sit in the same place for a very long time. Most people already do.

If you are great at time management…send me tips, by posting comments. I am open to self-improvement which is critical to becoming a hollywood producer.

write, produce and direct

Danna Kiel

Becoming a hollywood producer... (2 for 1)

2012-01-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 19th 2012....

Today is my Dad's Birthday ...

.

He turned 78 today...I think he looks amazing....

Yesterday....Wednesday January 18th, 2012 was my mother's birthday.

She would have been 71...God had a different plan...I celebrate that I am hers and she is still mine...

In the business of becoming a producer, most days I only have time for the work itself which is at this stage calls, emails, more calls, more emails and never enough writing (my love). I also pitched a project to a friend yesterday that I am praying she will have time to be a part of...we will see.

I am a mother. Most of my time is spent providing for and taking care of Ali, my son; translation: Breakfast, lunch/snack, clean clothing (and bedding), discipline, daily talks and lots of hugs and kisses.

I am graduate student so I spend the remaining time reading, writing and prioritizing the tasks of a Graduate student (BIG STRUGGLE).

Yesterday a friend's mother passed away. I paused and reflected on a life that I'd only met once. In that moment I was reminded to just keep going and doing because this life is about significance ...not broad fame or success.

She had neither of those in the way we think ("household name"). Success is our decision. It is de-facto. I am sure she was already her own success.

She was more importantly significant to her son (Chaz Shepherd (my friend)) and to the lives of young women in Philadelphia where she had taught dance for quite some time. She had also mentored those same young women whom she taught.

I was once again reminded that life is short and ever-changing and despite the sad news....Life is also ever-hopeful.

I have already decided on success. I am living and working for significance.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer....

2012-01-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

Day 16, 0something of the Journey

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

It's Tuesday...I wish I was back here with my friend, Angela Bell Howell. We were at an Applebee's or Chili's in Montgomery, AL. We had no babies and no REAL responsibilities just confusion about what life was supposed to be. We cherished that confusion in our 20's. Back then we had the energy to navigate and negotiate that confusion.

Now 20 years later there is still confusion, but there are also babies, a husband (for Angie) and REAL responsibilities. There isn't as much energy or time to deal with the confusion. We must manage the expectations of life...REAL life. Its consequences and those expectations are inescapable.

Angela and I however are blessed to look as good (as we did in that photo above :) and have beautiful children. On this Blue Tuesday I thank God for life, living, my child, my friends (Angela) and the chance to keep managing.

These last 3 faces are the faces of the future and we know we are responsible for the future.

Write, Produce and Direct

Danna

2012-01-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

Becoming a hollywood producer...

Monday, January 9th, 2012 (okay welll really...Thursday, January 12, 2012)

Day 16,059 of the Journey...

On Monday...I woke up...I got Ali off to school...then

I worked on vocal production for an old animation project. I made calls on a new animation project. I took a look at my teacher's feedback on all the work I turned in just before the Christmas Break.

Feedback drives me nuts. My heart thinks I am perfect and that I do nothing wrong. I think I can hear your laughter over my own. My head knows better...MUCH BETTER.

The trouble is I feel all beat up, sad and overwhelmed. It's exhausting. I mope around ...on the floor. Luther sang and I agree, "My Sensitivity Gets In the Way..." and I accomplish nothing.

I need an improvement plan for this. I need answers.

So I tell myself:

"Very little is perfect the first time..."

"Feedback is only supposed to make you better..."

"and I WANT TO BE BETTER !!!"

Nyame Nti ...Faith

The universe conspires to help not hurt...as long as that's what we believe...

Our beliefs conspire to create our reality...

If we believe it...It will be created...

Faith and persistence are the keys that unlock that door...

The sky is the limit...right ?!

write, produce and direct...

Danna

Napiera Groves -FORCE

2012-01-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

Napiera is an extraordinary friend...an amazing and versatile artist and this is an impactful performance and a resonant song she's written....The video is great work !!!

We Are A Force !!!

2012-01-10T01:27:00.000-08:00

Becoming a hollywood proucer...

Day 16,058 of the journey...

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I have always thought that the rhythm and cadence of this one verse, this one line was like poetry. It sounds like the opening of an amazing story (which I believe I will write).

Mark 11:23

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

I visited Della Reese's UP (Understanding Principles) Church today and all she and everybody talked about was ...Faith.

I didn't realize how much more I needed until ...recently. It all came to a "head" for me on Sunday. I wake up everyday with the expectation that I will make it to the end of the day. The faith to survive is however nothing compared to the FAITH needed to thrive.

I truly enjoyed the service....

First...I must have faith....Second...I must keep the faith

Below I just wanted to share all of the amazing quotes which I will be putting on index cards for my wall. Real Faith is the only thing that stands between me and the measure of success I would like gain and the significance, I'd like to attain.

Keep the Faith Baby !!! Adam Clayton Powell

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Kalil Gibran

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. Voltaire

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand. Thomas Aquinas

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course. Michelangelo

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them. Blaise Pascal

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof. Khalil Gibran

Faith is a passionate intuition. William Wordsworth

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation. D. Elton Trueblood

Faith is not contrary to reason. Sherwood Eddy

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into. Mohandas Gandhi

Kim Burrell - Have Faith in Me

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write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

(This live version is everything I dreamed it would be...)

Day 16,057 of the Journey...

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

Becoming a hollywood producer...

This is one of my many ALL TIME Stevie Wonder favorite songs. The composition is grand and amazing. As it played on the radio today...my son hummed and kinda sang along. I don't know where he heard and learned it. I was surprised because despite my love of music, music is not played much here at home. It's not intentional, but there is no record player...no stereo.

When I was a child his age, playing music was a process. I loved celestial radio, but I loved putting records on the record player and listening to them. I loved how we had to clean needles and sometimes purchase new ones.

I am present enough to own an Ipod. I purchased one of those docks for my Ipod, it didn't work. Our clock radio's have all died. Our small boombox passed away some time ago, as well.

I asked Ali where he'd heard it and he said, he'd heard it a lot of the radio. Honestly we have heard at least 2 maybe even 3 times in the car between today and just before we left town for the break. I was still surprised that it registered so well in his brain. His brain is fighting 4th grade math and long division like they are the enemy.

The song has quick rhythm and complex movements within the composition. Ali kept up and down with the tempo and the melody. I was thrilled. It was a respectable accomplishment.

This tune makes you do more than smile...it makes you blush.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Becoming a hollywood producer

Day 16,056 of the Journey…

Today’s Lesson…I am not even sure…so I go back to Sisyphus’s picture above. Friday felt like this. It felt a lot like this. I listened to a great friend talking through her day and its endeavors and they sounded much like this, as well.

We spent another day…becoming stronger…

Shout out to Annie Hall and her daughter, my beloved sister…Tanisha Hall

Write, Direct and Produce

Danna

Before too long we will have the strength of the super heroes on these t-shirts….

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-06T00:26:00.000-08:00

Becoming a hollywood producer…

   Day 16,055 of the Journey…

     Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Today…I spent almost the whole day writing. I believe I am placed on the earth to write and to speak. I had several types of writing to do. Like Ms. Wheatley pictured above I am most thankful for the gift of expression and opportunity to creatively express myself.
......
I am exhausted. I feel like I was in the gym all day, ran a marathon and came home and did 50 push ups. (I did not take all my vitamins and I am certain I wouldn’t be falling asleep as I type). I am fatigued, but stronger.

The work is indeed the work…

write, produce and direct…

Danna

PS: I heard Art Blakey’s “A Night in Tunisia” from his 1960 realease “The Big Beat” with a roster of messenger’s that included Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Timmons. Amazing…all of those cats on one Bandstand….amazing !

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Day 16,035 of the Journey…

Becoming a hollywood producer…

Monday, December 26th, 2011

On this the day of my birth…we left Coffeville, AL too late in the afternoon to make a split decision to head Southwest to Mobile, AL for a very necessary visit with my 83 year old Uncle Joseph (my mother’s last living Uncle); our cousin Drunetta, once a boarder in our home in Huntsville, AL when she entered Alabama A&M in 1975 as a freshman; and our childhood pal, Kevin George. Going Southwest when our final destination was Northeast, was not our brightest moment.

We should’ve spent 2 hours in Mobile instead of 4 hours which put us way behind for our 3 hour very brutal drive up 65 N to Birmingham, AL our final destination.

I spent the day reading birthday greetings on Facebook for Blackberry, listening to birthday voicemails and reading beautiful birthday texts, as we endured brutal rainy weather.

I have no profundities for this day…. (I am still tired as I reflect upon the driving and riding)

Thank God for another year and blessed by the opportunity to TRY AGAIN !!!!

write, produce and direct

Danna

Day 16,035 of the Journey…

Becoming a hollywood producer…

Monday, December 26th, 2011

On this the day of my birth…we left Coffeville, AL too late in the afternoon to make a split decision to head Southwest to Mobile, AL for a very necessary visit with my 83 year old Uncle Joseph (my mother’s last living Uncle); our cousin Drunetta, once a boarder in our home in Huntsville, AL when she entered Alabama A&M in 1975 as a freshman; and our childhood pal, Kevin George. Going Southwest when our final destination was Northeast, was not our brightest moment.

We should’ve spent 2 hours in Mobile instead of 4 hours which put us way behind for our 3 hour very brutal drive up 65 N to Birmingham, AL our final destination.

I spent the day reading birthday greetings on Facebook for Blackberry, listening to birthday voicemails and reading beautiful birthday texts, as we endured brutal rainy weather.

I have no profundities for this day…. (I am still tired as I reflect upon the driving and riding)
Thank God for another year and blessed by the opportunity to TRY AGAIN !!!!

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

Becoming a hollywood producer...

Day 16,054 of the journey...

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Corinthians 15:58

Therefore, my dear sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Today's lesson...

Always be a Woman of Courage...a special friend got this off of a calendar she purchased from Whole Foods ...

A COURAGEOUS WOMAN FOLLOWS HER FIRST MIND

YOU MUST ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR HEART, ALWAYS TRUST THAT YOU KNOW THE WAY....

I am never at issue with the fact that the one in the picture is my boss. He is who I work for. I am also always working to be in right relationship with my Creator. In that striving I know that Ali is my earthly boss, but my work is to be in service to the one that created me...

We all call our Creator by many names God, Allah, Creator, Lord...Mohammad encouraged his followers to call upon God by any of His 99 Names...Judaism refers to 72 "Divine Names", and the Hindu scripture Mahabharata contains a thousand names of Vishnu...

It has been a long day today. It has been a day of difficulty that I knew would come, but as it ends my heart is no longer heavy because by any name I am reminded today to whom I am really in service...

God gives me courage and my boss needs me to be courageous (always)...

write, produce and direct

Danna

Black Star "You Already Knew"

2012-01-04T02:35:00.000-08:00

Black Star "You Already Knew"

Black Star "You Already Knew" by BlackStar

Before I begin ...let's shout out Aretha's album, "Live at the Filmore West"...a CD I purchased one night in Tower on Sunset on a humbug...a truly amazing record..(its mos def a favorite...Spirits in the Dark)

I am excited because despite "Blogger" being an available "Share" option for Sound Cloud you couldn't share...there was always some weirdo error message that would come up and the blog just wouldn't happen...

I have nothing profound to say about the fact that it appears to be working properly now...except that I am excited that it is working properly now.

I am blogging about this song/single because I just watched Mos Def and Talib Kweli aka Black Star just perform it on Jimmy Fallon with the grace and ease that represents the Hip Hop I love ...

What's also interesting is that their profound gift and artistry are underscored by the fact that Mos Def is a devout Muslim and Talib Kweli associates with Islam's principles, but is not a devotee. Further when I reflect on artists like these two and Q Tip of Tribe Called Quest and one of his partners from Tribe, Ali Shaheed Muhammed

or even the Muslim-Friendly Raphael Saadiq and D'Angelo who though not Muslim either were part of The Ummah along with Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammed and J Dilla (1974 - 2006), its three core members; these gentlemen have created amazing music over the years...LOVE'S MUSIC I will it and even after The Ummah disbanded in 1999 Q-Tip, Ali, Raphael and D'Angelo tended to be great collaborators ...Q-Tip's Grammy Nominated "Renaissance" album

"Ummah" is the word for community in Arabic and when I listen to the music of these cats, I feel like I am part of the community ...a community of LOVE's MUSIC...

Just remember...."You Already Knew..."

The Black Star Aretha Mixtape coming this summer... (that's what I heard)

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-04T01:10:00.000-08:00

Becoming a Hollywood Producer...

      Day 16,044 of the Journey....

       December 25th, 2011

I am my parents Pt 2


Ali Kiel (my son)

In what is now the new family home (see red brick home from the 12/24/11 blog) at the Kiel Settlement, my sister (Auntie Claus) and I (Mama Claus) placed the gifts under the family tree shortly after midnight only for our sons to drag all of their gifts up the stairs to our sleeping quarters in the morning hours of Christmas Day...


Ahmed Halen Kiel-Kamil (my nephew)

Ahmed seen here is playing with toys that he had stumbled upon in the luggage. He "accidentally" found them Christmas Eve while searching for the Wii remotes he had packed to use with the console Ali and I brought with us (we forgot our remotes).

"Anywho" my sister and I would get up before daybreak to see what Mama and Daddy Santa Claus had left for us. There was nothing like the quiet of the whole house and the walk down the long hallway to see what the reflections of the orange, yellow, green and blue Christmas lights would reveal under the tree.

We would bring the stuff into the back bedroom where we'd been asleep to check it out up close. We are truly are our parents now...

Mama and Auntie Claus at the Waffle House on Christmas Eve

write, produce and direct

Danna

PS: On this day I missed my Mother and Grandmother to pieces...holidays are always a fractured and wild ride for me without my own mother...being a mother does not keep you from missing your own.
My grandmother bka "Big Ma" used to make Egg Pie (12/26) for me on my birthday. She taught me to make it and her Pecan Pie, as well. The Egg Pie (similar to Vanilla or Egg Custard, but with a crust and a little more lemon flavoring) was my favorite.

Since Big Ma's passing in 2000, I had not enjoyed Egg Pie. One of her close confidantes and students of her ministry, "Little Alice" could make Egg Pie about good as Big Ma and in 2000 prepared one for me to take back to California as I departed the funeral.

Funny thing...I may have eaten 2 pieces, but I couldn't eat any more. It molded and I put my love of Egg Pie on "the shelf"...the back shelf at the very top.

Even funnier thing...December 25th, 2011 "Little Alice" showed up with an Egg Pie to drop off for the Family Dinner...and I enjoyed a piece. One was enough and it was good.

It took me 12 years...but time can mend some things...and the heart is usually one of those things...

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-04T00:07:00.000-08:00

Becoming a Hollywood Producer...

Day 16,053 of the journey....

Tuesday January 3rd, 2012

I no longer write checks, but as I was writing this blog I was confronted with writing (well actually typing...) the correct year "2012". While technology moves us quickly forward, there are things that never change. They stay in the same place.

For at least the first 2 - 3 weeks of any new year it is tough to remember to write whatever the actual new year is....in this case "2012". As I worked on yesterday's blog I hit the same snag. I almost published with the wrong year.

We are all excited about the prospects of the new year...but can't quite break the old year's habit. Well its January 3rd and it's fair to say we have a Grace period to get out of the old and into the new. I wanted to finish sizzle in the old year, but in the Grace period of the new year we finished it on Sunday, January 1st.

I believe Grace is where a lot of us live. However with hard work and honest intentions we still make our deadlines and finish lines...we even get out of the old year and into the new one...

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

Becoming a Hollywood Producer...

Monday January 2, 2012

Day 16,052 of the Journey…

A big project has come to a close… I believe. Well the first phase has come to a close and now “the process” begins. I have been very exhausted since my return from the break. I got little rest while spending time in “Sweet Home Alabama”. I was renewed from seeing family and just being there in Alabama…but I am tired.

(At the Waffle House on Christmas Eve)

I did not make a mountain of resolutions…I am just on an improvement plan. With God’s Love and mercy, I will improve.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2012-01-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

Day of 16,043 of the journey...

Saturday December 24th 2011

It's Christmas Eve...I am now my parents...


Helen D. Kiel (1940-1979)                        Damon Kiel Jr. (1934-

From Birmingham, AL and on through Bessemer, AL we hit the road and headed down Route Highway 69 to the Kiel Settlement located in Coffeville, AL. Our family has gathered there for over 100 years to celebrate the Christmas Holiday. I can only believe this ritual began because once we had the Freedom to celebrate and gather as a family...we did.

I was once a child looking at my cousins who were my same age and some younger for as long as I can remember. I went from childhood to pre-pubesence watching my parents, grandparents, great grandfather and a host of great aunts and uncles and their cousins e.g. cud'n Earlene (whom I miss) scurry around to handle food, its preparation and the business that brought the Kiel Family Christmas Celebration to LIFE.

Funny thing is as I have grown older ...so has EVERYONE else. Grand parents, great aunts and great uncles have passed on and have been replaced by my parents and their peer group within the family. I watch us prepare for tomorrow's Christmas Day dinner and I realize I am now my parent's age with my own son who is 9 and the cycle of love, life and Kiel Settlement Christmas Holiday Dinners continue...for at least another 100 years we hope !

(Site of the Kiel Settlement ...with new construction...My uncle Travis' home built for retirement and migration from Los Angeles back to Coffeville, AL; his birthplace)

We remember...Henry Kiel Sr. (son of Mark Kiel, a slave, and the first one to carry the Kiel name), Big Ma, (Carrie W. Kiel, my grandmother); Big Daddy, (Damon Kiel Sr., my grand daddy); Cud'n Earlene, Aunt Pearl, Aunt Sissy, Cud'n Rollie, Cud's Anita and Cud'n Blondina (sisters...I believe); Cud'n Ernest and Cud'n Charlie (two brothers), Uncle Arthur, Aunt Luvern and the list goes on...



Kiel Family Cemetery...

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-24T01:45:00.000-08:00

Today's Lesson...Get to it !!!

I am a card carrying Christian who is open to Eastern Spiritual Belief systems and practices. I am aware that the birth of Jesus Christ does not fall squarely on December 25th according to "the facts". I understand the month of December to be a month of holidays, as well as, religious and spiritual remembrances.

December 25th is at its worst a capitalist society's convention to mix some spiritual concepts like the birth of Jesus Christ and the birth of St. Nicholas (who I suspect is not a real saint) with one financial convention. "Let's revive the economy annually by going out to buy gifts for people who's birthday it is not with the exception of those actually born on December 25th to celebrate this day", is how this shakes down.

I have not thus far dealt with Christmas any other way except to purchase gifts for my son...I had not even gathered my child's Christmas list until yesterday. I struggled to get into the "Christmas Spirit" and get to it.

With that I did my duty and braved Target and Old Navy for gifts for my child who assembled a wonderfully moderate list for Santa aka "me" to obtain. My twin sister Donna is in town, so Auntie Santa brought a few things to augment the offerings of Mama Santa.

I am however concerned about perpetuating what feels like a myth...a cat carried by 8 reindeer is out delivering gifts around the globe in one night...really ? It seems pretty elaborate...but then again is there anything wrong with our children having a sense of wonder?

While I know the reason for the season is not who can go broke the fastest...that's what it feels like...I did a dance today when I discovered there was one last Nintendo 3D DS Sonic Generations Game available...(even the display was gone)

Joy to the World...

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-23T00:13:00.000-08:00

Day 16,041 of the journey….

Today’s lesson…I am vacationing…

I really am. My good girlfriend baked 3 of these, Key Lime Cakes, before my very eyes. She is tenured professor of Graphic Design at Auburn University of Montgomery. I am proud to know her. She is an amazing artist who has added baking to her repertoire of skillz.

After driving through torrential rain to be here and bad weather…

which I completely underestimated. The visibility was almost non-existent at times. We were all riding with hazards on to make it down 65 South. I was so glad to get out of the car after driving for 2 1/2 hours from Birmingham to Montgomery, a drive that is at best 1 1/2 hours.

Upon my arrival to Montgomery to visit my girlfriend Breuna and her son….

I have licked cake bowls, eaten pizza, tried out Ocean Spray Cran-Pomegranate juice and chatted about life and the prospect of more than a patchwork of Love…

We have also listened to lots of Kurt Elling …

(Kurt’s in the middle)

because Cake Batter, CPK Frozen Pizza and Kurt Elling are what vacation is all about…

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer....

2011-12-21T23:45:00.000-08:00

Day 16,040 of the journey

I am supposed to be on "vacation", but I am "away". There is a difference. I am in Alabama visiting with my Dad, Breuna, Baine, Barbara eventually Wilma, Travis and the remaining Kiel clan which includes Donna Kiel, my twin sister and my nephew who arrive here in Birmingham, AL on Friday night. I am thrilled to be away even if I am not vacationing.

I am away from Los Angeles where I live for and work at being a great mother and a great producer. I am however never away from either pursuit. As you know if you read this blog, I arrived here Monday. I worked most of Tuesday...phone calls, emails and texts...

Today (Wednesday) I have not "worked" as much, but my mind never stops. I am not sure you could pour or melt my brain into a vacation even if my body went on one. Additionally, I received an email from my professor that I had formatted something incorrectly. I corrected it and resent the assignment.

My mind swings from the projects at hand to the fact that I have not posted vlogs regarding the Congo in months and given that I tweeted for all I was worth every day of Congo Week; I watched and waited for election results from the first Democratic elections in 5 years, I marched with the Congolese Community of Southern California and that I blogged about Masika Katsuva right here on tumblr I am overdue.

I am supposed to be resting now for a 1 hour drive to Montgomery, AL in the morning, but I am blogging (Ali is up munching) and its 1:37a here in Birmingham and 11:37p back in LA. I am about to work on a project and then I am going to bed.

"I thought I told you that we don't stop"...even though we should...And eventually I will, but for now ...I am living the dream.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

Day 16,029 of the journey...

Today's lesson...Don't Be Afraid of the Dark...

I love to talk, but conversation scares me sometimes. Conversation beyond "hello...how are you?" is daunting at times. It feels dark and unknown. I am afraid of the dark. I was an adult when I started being able to sleep in the dark.

Conversation feels like standing in a dark room. You don't know what to reach or grab for in that darkness. "How do I sit still, listen and pay attention after the initial issues are addressed?" (that's when it gets dark); "When do I add anything?"; "What do I add?"

Listening is patience and I gave up my place in line, when God gave that out. If I am listening I will know when to add something. As I listen I will know what to add.

Funny thing happens though when you try harder than you are used to trying. You begin to do "it" and the more you do "it" the more of "it" you become capable of doing.

Today was a day of emailing, talking, listening and responding...conversation. I got lots done, but I still got lots more to do.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

Day 16,028 of the journey…(Monday)

Today’s lesson…Keep the faith

Today I am part of the “mile-high” club. I am on a flight for which our final destination is Birmingham, AL. Southwest had me choose seats online, but it was a trick…a ruse I had to announce to the passengers that my son and I wanted to sit together so that we could. A nice young woman obliged our pursuit by giving up her seat. Ali and I are now sitting together.

I got all my work in yesterday for my class. I just realized though (at the airport) that the scripts I had planned to read while on vacation I forgot to pack. I am still inspired and shell-shocked by the 6 I’ve already read. I also completed 95% of the work on the reel for my client.

I am feeling “high” …”mile high”. Ali is playing on his DSI. I am contemplating what Santa will bring and listening to Ella Fitzgerald.

I might even have some Christmas cheer…

My birthday is coming …December 26^th

Writer, produce and direct

Danna

PS: There is turbulence and I need to go use the rest room…I am nervous. There are also adult twin sisters on the flight. One has a baby that is 1 to 3 months old. The other’s baby may be 8 months. (turned out only one was a mother and the other was an auntie).

You guys know I'm a twin, right ?

and we are both mothers...

I am now listening to Diana Krall’s Live in Paris.

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Day 16,037 of the journey...(Sunday)

Today's lesson...be authentic...be intense in your pursuit...

I got closer to the finish line on the edit of the reel.

I completed all of my mandatory assignments for my first Thesis Qualification class, but not without some “wrangling”.

Our teacher observed that some of us were having difficulty meeting the deadlines for our class assignments. She sent a generic, “this is what you will need to complete to pass the class” email to all of us.

She then sent me the obligatory and my very own “get your shit together by Sunday …or else” email. I got my “shit” together and before the stroke of midnight tonight (Sunday) I turned in all of my “mandatory” assignments.

Most of my peers would argue that a progressive or even a terminal degree for endeavors into the Entertainment Industry is not valuable to your success in our field ...our industry. I would only say to anyone, do and participate in what will improve you.

write, produce and direct

Danna

Pictures...

2011-12-18T00:31:00.000-08:00

Okay so I don't have anything to say other than I saw this photograph and thought it amazing...I stole the painting below from a Facebook friend...I got the photo above from Facebook, as well (different friend) and I am just sharing these images...because I believe these women to be beautiful...

So the photo and the painting are provocative...their beauty still can't be denied....

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

Day 16,036 of the journey...

Today’s lesson…I can make it…but only if I keep going…

After finishing “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” ...

I started reading “Head of State”. I love Chris Rock and I saw bits/pieces/parts of this film, but never the whole thing. Sitting down to read the script brought the political satire completely to life. It in fact advanced my understanding of “Satire”.

I am High School Graduate, I am a college Graduate and I am currently pursuing an MFA so I am more than familiar with the literary device. I am however ALWAYS closing the gap between intellectual comprehension of a concept and the craft (craftsmanship) to create and execute these concepts into living breathing things…screenplays, plays, poems and short stories.

“Head of State” moved me closer…I felt it… ("did y'all feel that ...over there?")

write, produce and direct

Danna

(I am excited to report I met Chris Rock earlier this year at a party. I so wish I had read this before that day...we might have conversed about something other than the gray hair he's hiding and the gray that I hide by cutting my hair as SHORT and CLOSE as possible)...look at that short hair on the girl in the center...me

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-17T22:29:00.000-08:00

Day 16,035 of the journey...

Today's lesson...persevere...that's it...

I held on. Even though the script for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (that I'd begun on Wednesday) felt like the story that would never end, I knew it would and that I had to finish it. I did.

The source for the script was not a PDF, but a txt document. A "txt" document prints out tiny unless you copy and paste it into a word document. I did. In that format it turns into 424 pages of script formatted "txt" aka "hot mess"...and I read it ... all of it. I am admittedly a member of the "procrastinating bum" class, but I don't feel anything is gained when we shortcut the process.

It was so very long, but did not disappoint. I soaked in my triumph and began reading Chris Rock and Ali Leroi's "Head of State" script which was to my surprise in many ways a modern retelling of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", what a coincidence...really a "God Wink".

I say "God Wink", because it gave me new insight into the writing process that feels like it will serve my current career path well.

I was inspired to press toward the mark of the higher calling....

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Day 16,034 of the journey...

Today's lesson...work through it...

Whatever challenges you most you have to work through it...you also have to work even harder to give yourself the time to work through it. I have to read a total of 10 scripts for 2 assignments. My professor cut me a break so I now only have to read 5.

The 5 however must be in the same vein. I have read a total of 4. 3 were in that same vein so I have to push through two more (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Head of State) to go with the 3 which will make 5. I must write one page abstracts "so to speak" drawing similarities and differences between the project I am writing and the ones I've already read.

I have read a lot and still have a lot of reading to do. I have always struggled with "reading comprehension". I am both an audio and a visual learner, but more aural and as a result more verbose...loquacious. I understand how to listen and respond. I am at times just befuddled by too many words on a page.

I don't sit still much. I don't sit still to watch spray paint dry. If I do sit still that long, I usually fall asleep. I am still exhausted from the 4 scripts I read between Saturday and Monday. It's Thursday and I've been reading "Mr. Smith" since Wednesday.

sidebar in ....yes I have known about the assignment long enough so that I wouldn't be jammed up...but we procrastinate the stuff we are most fearful or uncomfortable doing...I am ain't right ...just honest...sidebar out

The story is compelling, but just sitting and reading it is like watching interior latex paint dry.

I am not only down to the wire on the assignment, but I am in free-fall trying not to hit the pavement.

Additionally, my eyes don't read large amounts of text on a screen for long periods without fatigue and discomfort. I have printed my scripts and am toting them around. I have read everywhere from the car to a friend's Christmas Concert.

So today is just about more reading and getting through the reading...and more reading and more reading and more reading....oh and completing the reading...

Because not only can I get through it, but I can overcome the reading and finish my assignments...(besides I have to :)

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-15T00:36:00.000-08:00

Day 16,033 of the Journey...

Sometimes I wish somebody would take me by the hand…and honestly just hold it….

Day 16,033 of the journey…

Today’s lesson…bending and standing strong…at some point you have to do both and possibly at the same time.

When I should be quiet or speak softly I talk and sometimes when I talk I should speak softly or just be quiet. Being accurate to the moment on either aforementioned tasks requires that I stand strong enough to bend. I must be steadfast and unmovable in the mission, but always abounding in love, humility and professionalism to achieve the task at hand. It feels to me and my pride like we are making a deal with the devil, but it’s so not.

I was told recently that I have the “gift of asking” if I do it without fear, reticence and trepidation. Today on the phone I called a colleague and while I over intellectualized it and over schmoozed it, I stood strong in the mission and bent for the immediate goal and accomplished what I set out to get. It was quietly amazing and humbling. Courage came today on the wings of signs and wonders.

I would like to take credit for it, but it was God…

It’s been a week of signs, wonders and “God winks”.

(Don’t tell anybody that God might be a Black woman who looks like Betty Boop)

Since Monday my thoughts from the road have been confirmed by a piece of mail when I walk in the house or the complaint of looking for some contact info and the next thing I pick up is it after not having had any idea where to look since getting the info in January.

I was introduced this to the “God Wink” business on December 1st which referred to Squire Rushnell’s book. Getting into “God Wink” business was confirmed by Artis Lane who mentioned a God Wink by saying, “you know when God kinda winks at you”. I asked her about Rushnell’s title. She was completely unfamiliar with the work.

Signs and Wonders aka “confirmation” provide me the inherent strength and fortitude (together they are called faith) to submit to the will and the way of the creator and the universe…

Submitting to the rhythm of gaining significance is not easy (maybe for some). I am convinced that I am smart. I am not convinced I know everything, but I am convinced that I am smart. I believe that if I think it through I can figure out how to get it done. Submission to anything feels treasonous…like another deal with the devil.

Here’s the thing though…

“Getting it done” and “being smart” don’t play nice. Further, “getting it done” seems to keep “being smart” on the ropes. “Getting it done” requires submission to the will of God (the Universe…all of creation it feels like)

So I am today and many days from now…getting it done…

write, produce and direct

Danna

(as I get it done will somebody please hold my hand…just for a few minutes :)

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Day 16,032 of the journey...

I met Artis Lane today. She sculpted Sojourner Truth, my (s)hero.

She painted Oprah Winfrey, who was gifted the above painting by Jamie Foxx.

She sculpted this so that all men could see their manhood.

This is of course her. We chatted like old friends swapping concepts and understandings of life, God and metaphysics. She is 83 and spoke softly and openly about her whole life.

We talked Jacob Lawrence, Ernie Barnes and Cary Grant (She knew them all). I was blessed to have a close friend on board with me. I left them momentarily. When I returned; she said, I need you here “words are not my medium”...and I thought "they don't have to be."

writem direct and produce

danna

(playing catch up)

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

Day 16,031 of the journey...

Rest in abundant peace...John Atterbery...

What I learned today...hmm...I was reminded that life is indeed short.

The handsome 40 year old face you see above was shot in a RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE on Friday. I worked in the record industry a few short moons ago and had met and seen John Atterberry in passing.

I did not know him intimately, but I know that any of our paths could have led us to the intersection of Sunset and Vine this past Friday around noon. John was shot in the face and chest by a suicidal and homicidal maniac, who was killed by police that same day. John was of course hospitalized for his wounds. I reported this story on my radio show on Saturday and on Callywood, as well. I woke up this morning wondering about John's condition.

All I know is...it can all turn on a dime and today shortly before 5pm at Cedar Sinai Hospital...it did.

John Atterbery you were loved and you will be missed...

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-11T23:57:00.000-08:00

Day 16,030 of the journey...

Today’s lesson…I am only human…

And I get envious…I am envious of how some people get things done and appear effective and efficient. I work awfully hard, but obviously not as smart as some.

Today I saw where somebody had invited me to a script reading, something I have been threatening to do for years on various projects, but have not executed. I was jealous of my colleague whom I knew when I got his invitation.

I am happy that he or anybody’s doing it…but it blows the horn on all of my insecurities and fears about my future, present and even my past which I can do nothing about.

I am reading scripts today for my Thesis class. I completed 2 and started a third. I attended a portion of a good friend’s holiday concert. She sings with a church. She cried when another friend and I showed up (late). Don’t get me wrong….the house was packed, sold out. It however meant the world to her she explained during the intermission that we showed up…for her.

On this very human day of envy and other sins…I felt like I did something right.

I am working to be greatful and remember that success and significance are in abundance…there is some for me.

write, produce and direct

Danna

somebody…get that monster please !

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-11T23:54:00.000-08:00

Day 16,029 of the journey....

Today kinda feels like the picture…

I cut the perfect Avocado…it was the perfect yellow with green trim…the seed was the perfect shade of walnut brown and the texture of the “meat” was that perfect blend of smooth and firm. In my mouth a slice of well…heaven.

I also felt this way because I am producing a sizzle reel for a project and we completed a rough cut of it today. If you know what a rough cut is then you know its a”first draft” or even a “rough draft” of a video.

We use the word “cut” because “editing” is nicknamed “cutting”. When frames are assembled it is called a “cut”…albeit “rough” or “final”. In the world of production, a “rough cut” is not an ending as much a culmination of lots and I mean LOTS of collaboration and effort…both code words for WORK.

I’ve had to eat and drink computers, drives, video clips, “add on’s” and high res photos all week. The editor has worked diligently and fiercely in the face of adversity: “Car in the shop”, low monetary resources and perfectionists for producers. You’d thought that we were up for an Oscar or Nobel prize…neither just an opportunity to show the world we know what we are doing…

One day soon it will all make sense…in the meantime

write, produce and direct

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer....

2011-12-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

Day 16,028 of the journey...

He’s still the boss…

Today’s lesson…know you are okay (not perfect) no matter what…
***NOTICE***

The above lesson may be something that everybody processes like the air they breathe. It could even be possible that I am the only one who doesn’t process it that way. Don’t tease me.

Yesterday felt good and today feels good. I am always in search of “victorious”…maybe even “triumphant”, but good is a blessing. I just need to hear the horns going off or those streamers shooting up and in every direction every once in a while to feel great or just to feel like there is progress.

I am today saddened because good friends are moving away from LA again…on Friday. I also learned that another friend will be moving away in June. She is taking some items home during the Christmas Holiday and will complete the school year. She will then move into the home she’s already purchased…in another state.

The patchwork of love is feeling stretched and frayed once again on this good day. As I watch those around me making transitions for better lives for themselves and their children, I could not help but reflect and meditate on my choices for my son’s life and my own.

Well I remember my earthly boss is my son, Ali Daniel Kiel and that God is the sufficient disposer of affairs; however it all still feels complicated, courageous and crazy.

I feel the day is successful (and sufficient) because I am keeping my word. It is successful (and sufficient) right now because I am sitting with my dear friend (who is not moving to anywhere) in silence (because we are working) and I feel comforted and at peace. I pray that my presence is a source of comfort and peace for her, as well.

On this hodge podge day …I know that Love is probably really the answer…no matter what the question is…

write, direct and produce

Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-11T23:49:00.000-08:00

Day 16,027 of the journey....

He's the boss...

What I learned today is...that it always takes longer than I think...plan, strategize, be patient (with yourself most of all), be ready and be open....

I am often liberated by technology. I believe that is what technology is supposed to do, liberate us (me). There is nothing new under the sun... so as the IPad2 commercial suggests we are doing and loving what we always did, but we are now provided with new, more efficient, revolutionary (even) ways of doing those things.

Today was a day where I had to keep quality and exposure separated. I possibly deal with Executive Function Dysfunction. It doesn't clip my grasp at greatness it just means I have to work really hard at "a consistent quality of performance".

I have been blessed with a lot of intellect, competence and capability; but sometimes my hands fall short of what my mind can process and my mouth can articulate. On the other side people take for granted that if you are good at 3 out of 5...and you can intellectually process the other two...you can do them (the other 2, that is). It's simply not true.

Today I figured out some stuff...some good stuff. I actually performed well, but it took extraordinary patience with me from me to get it all done.

The thing is...at any age practice is the only thing that makes perfect so today I am learning to practice. Perfection comes, one day at a time.

practice...perfection...significance...

write, produce and direct

Danna

PS: Shout out....to Hakeen

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Day 16,026 of the journey...

This is how I feel today. It gets me nowhere, but its how I feel.

Today's lesson...be really open to what it takes even the stuff I don't know and I can't see or for-see.

All I can say is that they don't feel like mistakes when you are making them. However it sounds like and feels like everything's been a mistake everyday for like 3 months now. While that's not accurate, its how it feels.

Today doesn't feel like there is anything to be optimistic about. It's only 10:44a PST and everything feels wrong from the personal, the political to the professional.

I am choosing right now as I write to think positive, be productive and be thankful for life.

write, produce and direct
danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

Day 16,024 of the journey

Today was just frustrating...this current landscape of producing content and selling ideas moves literally at the speed of light. Technology has created enough tools to assuage anybody's desires or needs of the work...the content.

I learned to color footage today. I re-strategized my workflow on some audio production and learned a new software that I had to integrate with another software I just learned back in August.

I am sick of learning new stuff...but the new stuff is never-ending. Learning is therefore never-ending.

The "Love Patchwork" was stretched and and became frayed today. I am blessed to have a patchwork ...but the dream is to be a patch and meet a patch.

Tomorrow we shoot...

We also start pulling graduate work out of the Grand Canyon it fell in...

write produce and direct
danna

Masika Katsuva...Strong Woman

2011-12-04T17:53:00.000-08:00

This is Masika Katsuva. In the Congo (DRC) she survived being brutally raped watching her daughters 15 and 13 be brutally raped and witnessed her husband murdered, chopped up and then being force-fed his private parts…

She lived to tell…she opened a farm to give sanctuary to rape victims …170 currently. They farm, harvest and heal …

I am Masika Katsuva…
Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

Day 16,023 of the journey…

I just love her picture. There is no real reason for it. I just love her face and her gaze of resolve as she stands around this pole. Yesterday I missed a walk against Global Girl Abuse hosted by my friend Sha Givens founder of I Can Fly International. This girl’s picture reminds me of the resource I am responsible for protecting.

Today’s lesson…”just do you” or in my case….”just do me” …whichever it is you know what I am saying :) ..

It’s Sunday and I saw a great play last night called Sunday Mourning. It was a testament to the work of artists trying to rise above some of the art of the current marketplace. Afterwards I was inspired and looking for my “playwriting muse”.

We all enjoy works of art whether at a playhouse or in a movie theater that have given life to our passing thoughts and ideas. We wonder “why didn’t I write that?”

The truth is we all share in competencies and capabilities, but we are distinguished by our aspirations and choices. We can write the play too…

Repeat after me…”Just Do Me!”

write, produce and direct
Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Day 16,022 of the journey...

Today’s lesson…EDUCATE YOURSELF - be a lifelong learner…

There is no end to knowledge and information. The more you know truly the more you grow. Some knowledge will help you graduate and get promoted, but some knowledge just improves your modus operandi.

The world, the ether, the atmosphere, the climate changes around us every minute of every hour of everyday. I am not suggesting to keep up with or manage change at that rate, but change (the thing I hate MOST) is the only constant. In order to not be overwhelmed or run over you must breathe it in and keep moving.

Living with and through change is educating yourself.

Today so far is not the day that I wanted. Its 1:30p and there has already been victory and defeat…I made it though my radio show, I made it through my contribution to my girl’s radio show and I spoke briefly with Freeway Ricky Ross …the REAL Rick Ross aka Donnell Ross. He was an authentic inspiration…20 years in Prison and 600 million in drug sales and he lived to tell…

Shout out to Black girls and Black boys everywhere and around the world doing the right thing in the face of so little that affirms your presence on this earth and living to tell…I glorify you !

Who is Masika Katsuva …Find out…google her ! (hint: women are changing our world)

I am grateful…

write direct and produce
Danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Day 16,021 of the journey...

It's Friday...thank God

Today's lesson...build each piece well and it will be well with the whole thing.

Everyday and almost everything feels like production. Being a mother has taught me the most about production in reel time. I love my son and I want “it” (all of it) as perfect as I can get “it” for him. That’s production…

The weird thing is when you become self-employed...your understanding of time as your own must shift drastically...I feel like I am never off the clock. The morning has not been what I/"we" planned, but I stand on the mission...to be significant...with a measurable impact on my industry.

I therefore roll with the soft punches.

write, produce and direct.
danna

Becoming a hollywood producer...

2011-12-01T16:02:00.000-08:00

Day 16,020 of the journey

Today's lesson was to listen (breathe)...and learn....

I am supposed to be working, but I had an amazing meeting this morning. It amongst a million other things is on my mind. I sat across from someone with an amazing intellectual property, even more amazing ideas and an amazing vision for the property.

I was inspired to continue being me by cultivating my visions for my intellectual properties…which are my gifts, competencies and capabilities (a few scripts, some treatments, my graduate work and some unfinished shorts).

I was also inspired to move with courage and honesty…but most of all to always…move.

write, produce and direct
danna

Feeding Off The Love Of The Land by Stevie Wonder (With Strings)

2011-11-29T09:29:00.000-08:00

OMGosh...this is such an amazing record. I believe one of God's greatest gifts to the world is Stevie Wonder. He is one of the few artists that I don't remember not knowing existed. Stevie Wonder is music, he is air.

When I was old enough to not only "hear" music, but process it for myself the musicians that defined music for me were Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Aretha Franklin.

In our home we had 45's from them all. As a girl of the 70's the Jackson Five most certainly ruled, however my earliest understanding that music could be frivolous, fortuitous, fortitudinous and always meaningful was Stevie Wonder. He could deftly articulate sentiments that ranged from the dance-floor funk of "Boogie On Reggae Woman" to poems about the human condition like "Big Brother".

My Stevie Wonder education and appreciation occurred in real time, as well as, in retrospect. While the album In Square Circle (1985) might have been the current album in the market place; it was radio's quiet storm DJ's who still played "Creepin" or "Where Were You When I Needed You" alongside "Overjoyed", the single from that album that shaped my understanding of Stevie's genius.

In college "guy-friends" gave me cassettes that chronicled and culminated all the records I'd grown up with and all the "best of's" to which we'd listened. There was in particular an "Best of" 8 track my mom bought one summer from a two-lane highway gas station traveling from our home in Huntsville, AL to my grandparents' home in Coffeville, AL that sticks in my head and HEART. This 4 program 8 track contained songs like "Big Brother", "You Haven't Done Nothing" and the seminal "Higher Ground"; songs that even for me around the age of 8 or 9 plugged into what I understood about spirituality and living your best life. These are songs that I was hearing for the first time in that car on that road, but they were life changing...even for a child. From then all art I believed... I thought should actually feel transformative like those songs and so many more in his vast repertoire.

When home from school (Tuskegee), I can still remember having friend's over and hearing "If It's Magic" late one night on the radio (shout out to celestial radio dj's). I stood still because the song demanded that I did and all I kept thinking was, "I've never heard this one before" (sequentially it is found after "Another Star" on Songs in the Key of Life (what an album title)).

It's not my intention to wax on forever, but I post this song, "Feeding Off The Love of the Land" from the Jungle Fever soundtrack because it is touching, beautiful, honest and as usual for my hero Stevie Wonder...profoundly prophetic.

I AM STILL STANDING !

2011-10-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Helen Dianne Kiel

My Mommy

God delivered her to Earth January 18th, 1940 and called her back to Heaven October 19th, 1979. I was 11. I thought the world would end. I thought there would be no new music. I had no idea what we would do on this Earth without her. All I can say is...32 years later and counting...we made it...and we continue to make it each and everyday.

Thanks be to God...

This song was my first sign of life after loss...there would be new music.

<br><br>th

Spare The Rod And Humiliate The Child?

2011-10-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Spare The Rod And Humiliate The Child?

I think we forget our children are neither slaves nor pawns. During slavery into Jim Crow and on to Civil Rights parenting in the African American Community demands something different of us and we must evolve. Our objective is the same: to show love through discipline. The urgency of those days is different than today and demands a different dictate.

Every generation will have to evolve to improve the lives of our children in this country. Passing down what my parents, grand parents and great grand parents did is not sufficient, if we want our children to be better than we are or were. I want my child to be bigger, faster and stronger than I ever was and I am not too shabby. We must remember we are no longer a physically enslaved people...but mentally and spiritually a lot of us are still in trouble.

Below is my "comment thread" to a Facebook debate. The debate was not on my page so the participants are not "my friends" (I cannot post their full comments). My selected touchstones from their comments were: "Men have to discipline their sons differently then Mothers and daughters"; "It's frustrating to see he is in trouble for parenting, caring and disciplining his son"; "That's a shame that they arrested him for disciplining his child"; "He's at the age where he needs it, especially from his father"; "That's the only thing that he did different from what the military does every day":

I wrote...

As a single mother whose son's father passed away this year, he hadn't been what his son needed; but I absolutely agree that the parenting pathway for mothers and fathers is different. By nature of gender and what gender roles can accomplish in the lives of our children "it is what it is". Classically mothers nurture and instill courage and fathers impart discipline which supports focus, self esteem and confidence. The lines of accountability for these things are not always exact or 50/50, but the collaboration and combination of it all is unbeatable...that said the "cursing" and the "shaming" are not effective tools from the parenting toolbox no matter the gender.

The objective of parenting is always to show love and to rear whole and healthy children. In that pursuit our actions must reflect the discipline we are looking to impart to them and to respect their humanity as we expect them to consistently respect and obey us. I have no issue with spanking. If you completely spare the rod you may spoil the child. "Hair" combined with cursing and shaming do not appear to be effective currency for disciplining a child, that's just trauma. I don't Devry Broox arrested...but counseling or other supports are a MUST !!!!

And why was this posted on the internet and edited together like a mini documentary or something ?...The statistics he sites in the "opening credits" are critical touchstones, but we don't stem those awful numbers with "cutting hair", shaming and cursing our boy children...in the Facebook comment thread I was on someone compared this father's actions to the military(hence my comment here) -The military does indeed do the same thing to ADULTS who are not looking in the face of a Sargent for Love...a shallow comparison like that is a false analogy in this discussion.

Peace and Blessings
Danna

Who Devastated the Congo ?

2011-08-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Who Devastated The Congo?

By Danna Kiel

On Monday, August 8th an op-ed in the New York Times by David Aronson suggested that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act had devastated the Congo. Devastated?…Really ?…yeah…uh no!” A close look at the country’s timeline from King Leopold to Kabila tells us the Congo has been “devastated”, plundered and "picked over" for much of its history.

Along the new timeline that emerges to write the Congo’s story there is one mission: Independent Governance by the Congolese for the Congolese in the Congo and the safety and security for it to be so.

President Barack Obama has said two key things about Africa first , “"Across Africa, we have seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny, and making change from the bottom up. ...Make no mistake: history is on the side of these brave Africans, and not with those who use coups or change Constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions. ...”

and second “As we provide this support, I have directed my administration to give greater attention to corruption in our Human Rights report. People everywhere should have the right to start a business or get an education without paying a bribe. We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don't, and that is exactly what America will do. ...”

The current fever pitch of death and destruction across the Congo has only in the last half a decade sustained anybody’s attention long enough for something to be done. In 2006 then Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored PL 109-456 (the first “Obama Law” as it is referred to by the Congolese). Public Law 109-456 is The Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, which sets 15 policy goals for Kabila and the Congo, as well as, consequences for not meeting those goals.

The second “Obama Law” for which Aronson (and many others) take aim is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. “How Congress Devastated the Congo” is the title of last Monday’s fire-starter. Aronson points out that after talking to scores of artisanal miners who were making paltry incomes from digging raw ore from the mountainside the de facto embargo on Conflict Mineral mining that has emerged from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform has in fact “devastated the Congo”.

This op-ed and articles across the web (www.ricochet.org, www.atlasshrugs.com and the www.csmonitor.com) from April up to now suggest that the much needed laws to regulate mining practices out of the Congo’s Eastern region are not punishing the intended Warlords, but hurting the smaller mining cooperatives who depend on the uneven trade of their ore for survival. Aronson’s op-ed sites Nyabibwe and Nzibira as regions where miners blame the second “Obama Law” (the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Act) for their economic woes. Hans Bader of www.atlasshrugs.com even entitled his piece “The “Obama Law” Devastates Impoverished People in the World’s Second Poorest Country The Congo”. I believe "second poorest" speaks to the existing devastation. Take a second...think about it!

Did anybody have this much to say when NOTHING was being done about the trade which fueled two invasions by Rwanda? Did anybody have this much to say as the blood of 8 million was shed across the country and concentrated in the Eastern region? None of the articles or responses I’ve read thus far even count the dead, raped or kidnapped or the role that the mineral trade had in these killings, rapes or kidnappings. There is no doubt that discourse can fuel action, but a discourse without the full scope of events and causalities can misguide and mislead readers and potential advocates.

Aronson posits that, “The Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw first hand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region” which is because he says, “No one wants to be tarred with financing African warlords”

Well I hope no one does want to be “tarred” that is with the African Warlords who are the ones who have DEVASTATED the Congo…8 million dead and still counting, 300,000 plus women raped and thousands of children enslaved in the mob-run mines of the region are the realities of Conoglese life that we hope no one including President Obama and the U.S. Congress want to be “tarred” with.

He and other sites go on to suggest there is “confusion” around the intended regions, he even indicts the Enough Project.org ‘s campaign for this unintended “devastation” by inciting a movement against Conflict minerals. See their response http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sasha-lezhnev/what-conflict-minerals-le_b_922566.html

The op-ed continues that after “32 years of misrule under the kleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko (when the country was known as Zaire) that it is now just beginning to emerge from over a decade of brutal war and internal strife.” In this “jump to” in Congolese history timeline there is no mention of the fact that the 32 years of “misrule under the kleptocracy” of Mobutu Sese Seko ended in 1997. The killing and raping fields of Goma and the Eastern Region, as well as, the invasion all the way into Kinshasa all began in 1998. Rwanda invaded Congo for her Minerals and other natural resources. Rwanda’s only natural exports are coffee, tea and bananas. The economy of Rwanda at times stands solidly on the re-distribution of Coltan stolen from the Congo.

While no one in the Geopolitical discussion of Congo disputes challenges brought to the Congo under Mobutu’s Rule (a rule supported and endorsed by the United States until the end of the Cold War); the people of the Congo agree what is taking place now would not have happened under Mobutu’s watch. I am also sure if you ask the 8 million murdered, the 300, 000 plus women brutally raped and thousands of boys kidnapped they might say the same.

As an advocate for the cause of independent governance by the Congolese people, I am only interested in a clear point of access for anyone willing to help. I talk to anyone who will listen about Congo. I must always be clear in what I tell them. As I have learned of the Congo’s past and present, I am inspired by the great possibilities of her future. These possibilities cannot be realized without the support and diligence of everyone already involved and those who could become involved.

Last week was a week of energetic debate set off by David Aronson’s clear and passionate op-ed. Despite concerns about the narrow scope of the piece and the finger pointing, the roof may have finally been raised and the party may finally be in full swing.

What should you do ?

Start with www.friendsofthecongo.org …then go to www.congoinitiative.org then go to http://www.enoughproject.org then go to www.raisehopeforcongo.org just to name a few then “Google” the tags you see on these sites and take in as much information as your heart and head can hold. Give time, resources and anything you can give to support the youth and the emerging leadership in the Congo. I repeat...Our only mission is for Independent Governance by the Congolese for the Congolese in the Congo and the safety and security for it to be so.

Change is Now - One Filmmakers POV w/Maurice Carney of FOTC 06/25 by Auteur 26 | Blog Talk Radio

2011-06-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Change is Now - One Filmmakers POV w/Maurice Carney of FOTC 06/25 by Auteur 26 | Blog Talk Radio

Congo...the heartbeat of the world...

When opportunities to talk about the Democratic Republic of Congo referred to by most as simply “Congo” arise I am ready to talk. On this page you will see lots of evolving videos that represent the widening arc and spectrum of my voice and my activism bka “Love and Support” of this country and her people as I’ve understood it. The Congo is my home…the one I’ve never visited.

As my understanding has grown to face head on the complexities that texturize her past, present and most importantly her future so my videos grow in message and instruction.

However using words on paper (or on web) feels overwhelming and limiting when I look, read or watch the available literature, news reports and videos available on the Congo. To watch, listen or read these materials is not only daunting when life is already overwhelming as a single mother in the USA with a young son in a tough economy against life’s landscape of trying to be my best self. However the deep hopelessness and irrepressible hopefulness you see resonate with me in a way that words cannot begin to describe.

My heart also stops when reflecting on the atrocities awaiting and daily faced by citizens of the Congo’s Eastern Region. However when looking to who is responsible for what will see in the Film, “Crisis in Congo” and other docs about the subject is to realize that the DAMAGE DONE while irreversible can be shifted to create prospering nation by economic, political, social, cultural and humanitarian will if we who call ourselves human decide it WILL be so.

Join me this Saturday in meeting Maurice Carney Exec Dir and Co-Founder of Friends of the Congo and friends on my show Change is Now-One Filmmaker’s POV at 9am PST on www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak and learn how by solving the challenges of the Congo we can solve the problems of our great big world.

In French...

Congo ... le battement du cœur du monde ...

Lorsque des occasions de parler de la RDC visés par la plupart comme simplement «Congo» se pose, je suis prêt à parler. Sur cette page, vous verrez beaucoup de l'évolution de vidéos qui représentent l'arc creuse et le spectre de ma voix et mon militantisme BKA "amour et le soutien» de ce pays et son peuple comme je l'ai compris. Le Congo est ma maison ... celui que je n'ai jamais visité.

Comme ma compréhension s'est développée pour faire face à la tête sur les complexités qui texturer son passé, le présent et surtout son avenir afin mes vidéos grandir dans un message et l'instruction.

Cependant en utilisant des mots sur le papier (ou sur le Web) se sent écrasante et en limitant quand je regarde, lire ou regarder la littérature disponible, les bulletins de nouvelles et de vidéos disponibles sur le Congo. Pour regarder, écouter ou lire ces documents n'est pas seulement intimidant quand la vie est déjà écrasante comme une mère célibataire aux USA avec un jeune fils, dans une économie difficile contre paysage de la vie d'essayer d'être mon meilleur de soi. Toutefois, le désespoir et l'espoir profond irrépressible que vous voyez en résonance avec moi d'une manière que les mots ne peuvent pas commencer à décrire.

Mon cœur s'arrête également quand une réflexion sur les atrocités et l'attente quotidienne rencontrées par les citoyens de la région de l'Est par le Congo. Cependant quand on regarde qui est responsable de ce qui va voir dans le film, "Crise au Congo» et d'autres docs sur le sujet est de réaliser que les dommages causés tandis irréversible peut être déplacé à créer nation prospère par l'économique, politique, social, culturel et humanitaire sera, si nous qui nous appelons humaine décider qu'il en sera ainsi.

Rejoignez-moi ce samedi à Maurice Carney réunion Exec Dir et co-fondateur des Amis du Congo et les amis sur mon changement spectacle est maintenant POV-un cinéaste à 9 heures PST sur www.blogtalkradio.com / djdannak et apprendre en résolvant les défis de la du Congo, nous pouvons résoudre les problèmes de notre monde est grand grand.

Heather Russell - "Can't You call me on the phone?"

2011-05-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

I have thanks to my good friend the good brother Mr. Dave Scott have been checking out the mighty Heather Russell who's talent is more than eye opening it is more than PRECOCIOUS...it's just Soul. This song that I was just turn on to absolutely amazed me. She is not only profound, she is phenomenal...as I listen to her lyrics on this song, "Can't You Call Me On The Phone" and watch her jam up those keys like they did it...I am scratching my head going ...I am over 30 ;) and wondering "at 10 ...what do you know about it and how can you sing about it...like that ?"

Music I believe changes everything. I have said it over and over...music's healing power is beyond measure! I listen to Heather and feel that maybe I am not walking alone. I hurt sometimes (okay maybe more than sometimes), but her music, her voice...she feels me...she definitely feels ME!

At 10 she may be feeling you too...

Confessions from a Music Junkie
djdannak

554 Days to Re-elect Barack Obama (5-2-11)

2011-05-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

I posted ...Saturday to Facebook

there are 556 days before we re elect President Obama what will you do to ensure victory !

I got much vigorous debate about re-electing our beloved POTUS when I posted this...but as a bullheaded blogger I felt my comments were more than fair and yes I got some push back on whether to "ensure victory" let alone how...thanks Darren, Demetria, Terrance, Sunae, Jahlee and Ruby for your supporting the countdown....thank you Tim for a discourse that made me ...well...stronger !

Tim said...

What is he doing to get my vote? Being cool and looking like me may get your hang card punched but not a vote. But that's just me.

Terrance said...

Tim, As you see this man has been vetted, vilified, and disrespected more than any other President in the history of this country. Nobody asked for Bush's "papers" and he never released his "college" transcripts. If we give Obama another term I guarantee you he will drop the trade embargo with Cuba, appoint a Black Surpreme Court Judge and tell everybody on the right to kiss his Black Ass.

Tim then said..

Terrence, why hasn't he done those things so far, he had an appointment to the SCOTUS and didn't choose a black person, I'm not sure what dropping the trade embargo with Cuba will do for us as a country and telling everyone to kiss his bl...ack ass probably isn't what politics is all about. What I'm saying is this, the folks on the right will vote for any and everyone that says what they want to hear but then, as folks on the right are seeing now, once they get into office they don't do the requsite follow up.

Personally, I don't see anyone on the right that is any serious competition for the office right now but still, to give your vote away without critically examining the politician is the same as throwing your vote away. After the Dems lost power due to the southern strategy and courted the "black vote" black folks have been in the pocket of the left, to the point that they don't even have to work for your vote. We voted this current president in on a promise of things changing in Washington, things haven't changed there isn't any more transparency in government than there was pre '08, Gitmo is still open, troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, these are some of the big issues that we were told would be handled. Do I think that President Obama had a magic wand that he would wave and all those things would be taken care of, no but it was still a bill of goods that he, probably, knew that he couldn't deliver on but pretty much figured out that after the votes were cast most folks wouldn't keep their eye on the process. This is pretty much borne out but the losses the Dems took this past fall, folks that were all for "O-beezy" couldn't bother to come out in the midterms. We have to be diligent with our vote and not just be out for the highprofile stuff.

This is just how I see it. Not falling for the okie doke from any politico, if I can help it.

Don't believe the hype and stay woke.

So I said ....

@Tim I disagree with a lot of that... he said he would get us out of Iraq and we are darn near out (and this just in Bin Laden is dead) ...he told us we would go to war with Afghanistan and we did he said he would tackle health-care despite some graceless moments he did... yes Gitmo... is still open...but on day one he froze salaries and did things to get his administration on the right page..he has been more strategic and more transparent than any president I have "critically examined" in my lifetime and since I've been old enough to vote...he also signed into legislation to LRA Disarmament and Uganda Recovery Act no other President despite "all the record breaking things Baby Bush did for Africa" no one to date has dealt with POLICY when it came to Africa and there is more that wasn't promised that has been delivered and while he was never looking to change bicameral legislation methods he showed everybody what time it was when he made his decision and went into action on Libya and now of all those who said we should not participate in that...McCain is at the front of the line suggesting we increase our presence there and my list could go on as articulately as yours did :) but I got one eye open and one close

...and btw I agree with you he's got no formidable challengers within the party or from the other party but I truly believe Black Folks (African Americans) will generally always have a better shake with the left and not the right and until given reason I will honestly be in lockstep with the left...the right is offering Bobby Gindal, Sarah and Mitt none will appoint a Black Supreme Court Justice...puhleaze (Bobby Gindal doesn't believe his state of Louisiana composed of 51% Women and 32% African American merits an African American or a Woman on its Board of Regents)

...I have needed every drop of unemployment I have received so thank God for the FEDERAL Extensions (President Obama and Congress)...

much Love Tim and everybody on the discourse...looking for more takers on what we will do to re elect President Barack Obama in the next 556 days...

So the last thing I said was ...

I am solidly locked in because the time and energy for critical analysis and strategic electorate action is better served after the election where the real work begins. Not just his work, but my work as a voter who holds my elected leaders...hip (all of them) accountable to me and my family. I will always cast my lot with one who demonstrates the capacity to hear me, see me and feel me. I also understand the limitations of what can be accomplished from the office, but am solidly locked in to a President and a candidate who has demonstrated strategic action, intellectual prowess all practiced with the compassionate hand of practicality. Obama has already passed all of my tests with flying colors.

I Got the Music In Me-In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire (1979) Part 2

2011-04-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Part 2....

Many moons ago when I was between 9 and 11, my sister and I were cleaning our room and as an Alabama A&M University football game was being broadcast and half time arrived, the announcer said the band would be playing Earth, Wind & Fire's hit song "In the Stone". My first thought was, "I have never heard of this song and I know all their songs...how is this a hit?".

My greater challenge was that the performance was instrumental. While I connect with lyrics after composition, enjoying HBCU band performances before that day and since are still filtered through knowing a song's lyrics. It was love at first listen, but I was still curious about the lyrics.

As the song opened with its grand horns and then percussion, I was transformed...that music that composition, that arrangement was transcendent and beautiful and somehow possessed "Funk". I am right now being transported to the very spot in my room I stood looking at the radio (to me then still a magic box like the tv) as the composition and its performance blossomed in my ears. The radio was for me then and on good days now a portal to a spectrum of concepts and emotions that begin and end with LOVE.

It would be weeks maybe months later before I heard the song being played for the Soul Train dancers and would become briefly acquainted with its lyrics. I can still remember thinking that Saturday morning watching Soul Train, "WEUP doesn't play this song". The beauty of the composition could still be felt through the TV broadcast which had been so different from hearing a HBCU's band perform it live.

Having played in the band connected me with things in the music that it has taken me many years to realize everyone simply won't hear. Besides Stevie Wonder's music I connect first with composition (and melody) and then lyrics. I am the only woman I know who does that...casual polls among friends and musicians suggest women classically connect with lyrics, first and then melody.

In adulthood we all, I believe, reclaim the parts of childhood or youth that we can. Music is both a background and foreground of our lives...if you love the Elements like I do then you may have enough years behind you to remember records (33's, 78's and 45's), reel to reel tape, cassettes, cassingles, CD's, CD singles and now we listen to a waveform known as the MP3. The music we once enjoyed via these tangible mediums we now enjoy as intangible, ominuously collected by 80 Gigs or more on an iPod or some other off brand MP3 player.

I got a new computer almost 2 months ago now and a friend helped me reconstitute my music library until I take myself back to the Apple Store for a data transfer session so that my music library can be moved from my PC to my Mac. In addition to the music we put on here, where there were deficiencies of my faves I immediately upload from my hard discs, but then there is...

Being in line at a store and seeing an EWF Greatest Hits CD for $5 (brand new) and flipping it over to find an interesting hodge podge of what Columbia Legacy labeled "Greatest Hits". "A&R guy, give me your job so I can show you how its done even if you are trying to offer something different and yes I appreciate you for not putting 'Let's Groove' on there" I digress...amongst this 'hodge podge' was my jewel, 'In the Stone".

In my car there is a CD player. I rewind relentlessly to hear every lyric because while the chorus is clear, "true love is written in the stone", Maurice White's amazing and signature phrasing doesn't allow me access to every word (of this poem). His voice is an instrument and very melodic, but like many artist it is not always accessible by the natural ear...phrasing a lyric to match the melody just doesn't allow it to always be well... articulate (we love you Anita Baker).

However I have damn near put my ear to car speakers trying to hear and understand every word and since I've uploaded the $5 CD to my computer and iPod, I have continued my mission to decipher every word. There is ministry in there...I just know it ! ...There is healing in there...I just know it !

Well in this tech savvy world I don't have to expend much more time or effort to figure out the lyrics...alas (as we all know and I learned from HS students a while back) there are websites for which you key in your selection and voila...lyrics

So hear to preach and teach us what the word of God is saying to us from the Stone...the Bible...are the Elements...Earth, Wind and Fire...

"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis

I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone

In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone

Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone

In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

I Got the Music in Me...In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire(1979) Part 1.

2011-04-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

Music is not only my muse, it is my healer...okay and my lover too. I present the song of the week ( 2 weeks or month until we get a new song of which there are already new ones brewing), as my healing and growth are moved forward in the hopes that what is said, sung and performed will help somebody else to move forward.

"In the Stone" by the INIMITABLE Earth, Wind & Fire is one of so many amazing records from a catalog that spans 30+ maybe 40 years. I will not tell my age, but for all of my life that spans back to conscious memories of childhood and in particular memories of radio, 1600 AM WEUP in Hunstsville, AL, I don't remember them ever not being played on the radio.

At home we had "Saturday Night" on a Casablanca Label 45. Their songs that punctuated my childhood are "Septemeber", "Boogie Wonderland", "Got To Get You Into My Life (their arrangement on this cover is MATCHLESS), "After The Love Is Gone", "Reasons", "Devotion" and the list goes on ..."Getaway","You", "And Love Goes On" and "Side by Side".

I don't mention songs like "Let's Groove" (a mega hit that crossed them over which is always good for the musician's pocket) or even "System of Survival" because these represented a shift in their continuum of creation. While the success they brought the group are to be applauded, it signaled a turn from the melodies, hymns, spirituals that I loved and songs that had been for the listener (me) transformational.

In the 6th and 7th grades I played clarinet in Davis Hills Middle School band. My sister played saxophone. Learning to play music was awesome. I can't say that we demonstrated a particular gift for our instruments, but we tried. All band camp kids know that when you enter a band as a school activity you are taught music. You are taught scales and what terms like crescendo mean and what symbols on the sheet music signal a staccato, crescendo, decrescendo or rest.

I was always impressed with "staccato" because it required...demanded precision. (Staccato is what you hear when "Getaway" opens...they ROCK it) For two little girls who already LOVED music, being in the band and being taught music lifted me to a new level within myself. I saw a glimpse of a higher self at 10 years old. I didn't know what to do with the higher self, but I saw her in the distance :)

Of all the Soul Music played on the radio, I would submit that EWF was most recognizable as band. I didn't imagine them in an orchestra arrangement in rehearsals like we were at school, but they sounded like they were HUGE. Their horns and horn arrangements were a major signature for them as a band. There were so many signatures to their sound. They were and still are flawless. I heard Philip Bailey sing at a funeral here in LA recently and Verdine White spoke...for me they are timeless icons of Soul Music...of Music. Their compositions were classic and rhythmic at the very same time. You can listen in a chamber fashion or you can DANCE. God is so in their music.

My sister and I composed very short songs that we went on the garage and played. We, I believe assumed that's what you are supposed to do when you learn something new. EWF (and some TV scoring) bridged a connection for us between what we were learning what was available to be done as musicians. Participating in band meant you were to try, do it, get in it and be a part of it. We had taken ballet very briefly so while this wasn't an introduction to the arts or craft it signaled to us that we had permission to ..."do something" that started within and came out.

I reflect now (many years later) how beautiful that was because, we saw no barrier between ourselves and the music. Thank you Earth, Wind and Fire. Because your MUSIC was on the radio, we believed in enough of our potential to try...to not only play, but compose. Though our potential was neither recognized, realized or encouraged (God had another plan). To this day I still see no barrier between me and the music. I am looking to purchase a tambourine and learn piano on this computer...I will not be stopped :)

Anyway this notion of "no barrier between hearing and doing or seeing and doing" I want to bottle that and teach it to Ali, so while I work on that concept for child rearing I share Earth, Wind and Fire's compositon "In the Stone". The song is still transformational and now that I pay attention to lyrics...I am even more moved...

"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis

I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone

In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone

Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone

In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

Mos Def - Love

2011-03-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

It sucks that when this gets imported to FB, the video doesn't come over and admittedly its a still with the song...but what a song ! The Beatles sang "All We Need Is ...Love" but take a listen to what the artist, lover, brother the Mighty Mos Def does with ...LOVE

If you know the song...then I know on the surface you like I recognize and honor that his metaphor here is Hip Hop music...but if you take just a minute and hear what is being said in and in between the lines you will know that in our short time on this planet we must locate the center of LOVE that brought us here and place that LOVE at the center of what we do...and if we are doing things for which LOVE is not the locus or centripetal force...then find or do something else...

I write...it makes me crazy, but besides my son there is nothing I LOVE more ...Rahsaan Patterson threw his two cents into my head just now..."I'm living for the day that everybody lives for LOVE!" until then... "I start to think, and then I sink Into the paper, like I was ink...When I'm writing I'm trapped in between the line I escape when I finish the rhyme ..." thank you Mos Def for channeling the greatest of all time...Rakim on this one !

"Love"

They say the goodness in life belongs to those who believe
So, I believe...YES!

[Chorus 2x]
I start to think, and then I sink
Into the paper, like I was ink
When I'm writing I'm trapped in between the line
I escape when I finish the rhyme (aiyyo)

My pops said he was in love when he made me
Thought about it for a second, wasn't hard to see
I could hear he was sincere, was a game of promotion
The entire affair's probably charged wit emotion
But love call your heart, I guess you got to persue
12-11-73 my life is testament
Praise the beneficent, element that rest
Devoid in the form that make love manifest
I spent my early years in Roosevelt Project
It was a bright valley wit some dark prospects
In '83, Venny C was the host wit the most
I listened to the Rap Attack and held the radio close
I listened to the Rap Attack and held the radio close
This is far before the days of high glamour and pose
Aiyyo power from the street light made the place dark
I know a few understand what I'm talkin about
It was love for the thing that made me wanna stay out
It was love for the thing that made me stay in the house
Spendin time, writin rhymes
Tryin to find words that describe the vibe
That's inside the space
When you close yo' eyes and screw yo' face
Is this the pain of too much tenderness
To make me nod my head in reverence
Should I visit this place and remember it?
To build landmarks here as evidence
Night time, spirit shook my temperment
To write rhymes that portray this sentiment
We live the now for the promise of the infinite
We live the now for the promise of the inifinite
And we believe in the promise (love, love [repeated])
Yes yes y'all and we don't stop because

[Chorus]

I got love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E to MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E I MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E to MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
The M-O-S-D-E-F-initely

Check it out y'all, feel me out y'all
Feel me out y'all, hear my out y'all
Check me, out y'all
Feel me out y'all, check it out y'all
Now hear out (bounce) y'all
Check me out y'all, feel me out y'all
Check me out y'all, feel me out y'all
Feel me out y'all (hear me bounce y'all)
Check me out y'all, check it out y'all

My folks said they was in love when they had me
I take they love they made me wit to make rhymes and beats
(Can you feel?) The raw deal, it's all wheel-driven
Contemplate the essence of beats, rhymes and living
Speech in line wit the rhythm, designed wit the rhythm
Ears and eyes keepin good time wit the rhythm
I shine wit the rhythm, the Black Star Gallactica
Big number fleetin, we ancient like the Abbacca's
After us, I see most proceed to be trees
Sproutin leaves, given breeze to the we who believe
I MC, which means I Must Cultivate the earth
Back straight backs, hard beats and hard work
I be the funky drummer to soften the hard earth
(Amin) Pray Allah keep my soul and heart clean
(Amin) Pray the same thing again for all my team
This go out to Fort Greene and on out to Queens
Uptown to Boogie Down, yo just look around
AND SHOOK UP THE WORLD!, like Ali in 6-3 (right)
I'm reachin the height that you said cannot be
I'm bringin the light but you said we can't see
Saw the new day commin, and it look just like me
Some burst through the clouds, my photo ID
I bring light to your day and raise yo' degree
The Universal Magnetic, you must respect it
From end to beginning, ? true and livin
EVERY CHANGING, it was a state of magnificent
Building it now for the promise of the infinite
Building it now for the promise of the inifinite because

[Chorus]

I got love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E to MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E to MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
Love, L-O-V-E to MC
Get love, L-O-V-E and I be
The M-O-S-D-E-F-initely

N'dea Davenport - Placement 4 The Baby {1998}

2011-03-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

This week as is everyday of life part of the journey...how we survive and thrive on the big planet and in our sanctified spaces and places is in direct correlation to faith in the wonder and the good that are to come, as well as, the fortitude we have to stand in that faith.

This truth is hard to remember, but as a woman or man thinketh so she or he is. I subscribe to the Western paradigm of "religion" firmly rooted in the Christianity taught in the New Testament, but understanding full well that without Moses, Abraham or the lineage of David there would be no Jesus.

So I am as much a Deuteronomy 31:6 girl "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you"; as I am Mark 11:23 girl "For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith."

Over the past few weeks in addition to God who is Love lifting me, the power of music has been as much my sustenance as food, water and my vitamins. I have listened to The Roots (How I Got Over), David Sanborn (As We Speak and Backstreet), Justin Timberlake (Justified (a mainstay)), Erykah Badu (Live) and a constant sprinkling of Kurt Elling's cover of "Steppin Out" for good measure...yesterday however I went for N'Dea Davenport and her self entitled solo album. It is for me her Magnum Opus.

"Placement for the Baby" was neither a released single nor was there a video. It is just an installment or what we affectionately called "an album cut" that makes the whole record sublime...ethereal even. This song is a lullaby for a child(ren) newly arrived and possibly yet to be born about finding their place in the world. It is part war song, "Ready or not go on and lead...dive on in there...(ad lib) 'Are you ready to go?' " N'Dea sticks the question repeatedly to us the listeners.

As we comfort the baby with this lullaby, I couldn't help but here my own (adult) call to action: "Are you ready to go...to the next phase of life?...Follow your heart...keep looking for the prize". She even sings to the baby, "I know you feel all alone and you want to scream and shout". I do...I am sure we all do...

I then remember...I have faith and I have fortitude and I have this song...so I gift it to you. You will at first be captivated by the voice very quickly healed by the lyrics, but most of all encouraged and commanded to

Go on...

God's Best to everybody and all who in love, light and words encourage me daily on the journey (shout out to my Starbucks crew (on both sides of the counter)...love and light to Pastor David Scott for always standing on the Word)

Kurt Elling - Steppin' Out (2011)

2011-03-21T02:13:00.000-07:00

When I am supposed to be doing homework...I blog...I write this short one right now because twice this week my sister and I have had these interesting conversations about men...In a blog entitled "the makings of me" from 2 years ago I shared how I believed I was made ...beyond the obvious God, creation, womb birth piece that are the facts...we talked about fashion, clothing, self-esteem and making babies in particular the beautiful one I have now...he's 8.

I shared in detail that growing up without mother and stepmother in and then kinda back out, my twin sister and I became "sophisticated ladies" through conversations on pay phones and fake calling cards about what we learned about fashion from her days matriculating at Xavier University there in New Orleans and me there at Skegee. For women (until we change it for our daughters) it starts with what's on the outside and then goes inside.

Friends, roommates and confiidantes can tell you we got it right sometimes and sometimes we got it wrong. Through all of it my sister and I had each other and now with those 20+ years behind us we still confer and consult on the "makings of me". Her "me" and my "me", the essence of who we are ...today. What's funny is...it doesn't stop here today; it evolves, but it is what I call a "living evolution". You have to grow, watch yourself grow and then somehow in real time be that "grown up". Crazy, right...I wish I could sit on the couch and watch that "fool" figure it out...oh yeah that fool is me :).

When it comes to the subject of men, my sister and I are possibly teaching (2%chance)...but for sure learning however like the scientist she is and the "reluctant" scientist I am we are designing experiments, observing, asserting hypothesis and drawing conclusions. Accurate or inaccurate we go from one day to the next thinking as my friend Maronzio Vance, puts it "one day it will all make sense". In the meantime to my sister I just say..."I got you babe".

As these experiences come and go with men, it becomes material that I FICTIONALIZE beyond recognition and then distill and sift again into my work as I know most writers do. I use the term "come and go" because neither of us beautiful girls is married or with a final partner or a perceived "final" partner and as I look around and listen to girlfriends new and lasting...we are all in a very big boat together. When they thought a Tsunami might make it to our West Coast shores, there were for me...for none of us big shoulders to lean on...I called my Dad asking him "why hadn't he called me?" (From Alabama he knows our crises before I know our crises)

At first I panicked and then I accepted this part of my journey as that "this part of my journey" the "living evolution" for which we can place great faith in the change that is always coming. Bear in mind ...we don't know what it looks like until actually gets here...be open and liberal (I am striving).

I post Kurt Elling because his voice...his presence in the world instigates and inspires me to write...anything and everything (blogs, homework and the stuff in between)...the power of music can never be underestimated nor should it ever be measured...the power of music to heal and make whole is beyond measure...

This blog is dedicated to one of my besties, Breuna Baine and the long conversation we wrapped just about 2 hours ago...it is also love letter to everyone in the boat with me...however one feels about the circumstance...thank God for the company...

Fonzworth Bentley - Everybody HD

2011-03-17T06:14:00.000-07:00

I am writing for a school assignment and after talking to a classmate to shake some things down and ending up seeing some music videos on TV...my music spirit was lead to this song and video so just sharing. This video (3 year ago) was self funded by Fonzworth Bentley and his girlfriend, Faune Chambers (I pray it is safe to assume they are still together, but if not ce la vie)...its a great and fun music collaboration and such an original video...the players particularly Andre "Ben jammin" 3000, Kanye and of course Fonzworth give it their all...

Passionately and Musically yours
Danna "djdannak" Kiel

Conflict Minerals 101

2011-03-14T03:47:00.000-07:00

I thought I posted this one here at blogger ...but I noticed I had not and it makes the information plain and the conversation SIMPLE....so

I am just spreading the word...I am a mom...I hate knowing other moms and children are hurting !!! I gotta get back to my schoolwork but I am attempting to use every tool in my box to get us all talking ...

Big LOVE
Lots of Hugs
Let's raise our voices together against WAR, RAPE, MURDER, DEVASTATION and DESTRUCTION

dk

The Voices of Conflict Minerals

2011-03-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

BTW...I made this one last week

I am just spreading the word...I am a mom too...I hate knowing other moms and children are hurting !!! Admittedly I am doing THE MOST today...cause I gotta get back to schoolwork, laundry and mothering...but I have no peace when this type of DEATH, RAPE, DESTRUCTION and DEVASTATION goes unchecked...we are consuming the Congo by saying nothing

Let's Talk ABOUT IT and then Be About it

Big LOVE
LOTS of HUGS
dk

Life Should Be Free

2011-03-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

I am just spreading the word...I am a mom too...I hate knowing other moms and children are hurting !!! Admittedly I am doing THE MOST today...cause I gotta get back to schoolwork, laundry and mothering...but I have no peace when this type of DEATH, RAPE, DESTRUCTION and DEVASTATION goes unchecked...we are consuming the Congo by saying nothing

Let's Talk ABOUT IT and then Be About it

Big LOVE
LOTS of HUGS
dk

Hollywood Moms Speak out for Congo

2011-03-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

I am just spreading the word...I am a mom too...I hate knowing other moms and children are hurting !!! I gotta get back to my schoolwork but I am attempting to use every tool in my box to get us all talking ...

Big LOVE
Lots of Hugs
Let's raise our voices together against WAR, RAPE, MURDER, DEVASTATION and DESTRUCTION

dk

Stealin Quotes that give me ...well...pause

2011-03-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
Zora Neale Hurston

I lead off with this grand theft larceny of book quotes because...when these words came up on a black screen before "She's Gotta Have It" Spike Lee's (my idol) inaugural theatrical release into the market place they were lyrical and beautiful....graceful even...but for me unclear.

I believe now 25 years (a quarter of a century later) It seems to be true...women live the truth of reality as a dream and the dream of reality as truth...men seem to assess that the true dream will never come true and as parents say to our children..."you get what you get and you don't get upset." I have also in that time read the novel and been blown away by how amazing, prophetic, PROFOUND and lyric Zora's work was.

What I wonder now then is how are these world views ....well uhh compatible ?

As a writer we are inspired and challenged by the great and inimitable words of others. I am writing (supposed to be anyway) on a few projects and working to get inside of this monkey business of man-woman stuff and its EXHAUSTING. You can't help but flip through the pages of your own biography....and wonder...thanks Zora Neal...your rubric of measurement and reflection is a demanding one...

An Open Letter to Generation X...my peoples

2010-11-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

Okay....what appears below explains My Conflict Minerals Indie PSA's/Vlog/Live Petition. This is some of the "why" beyond the call of duty on the matter of the Conflict Minerals, themselves and my DEEP concern for the Congo and her people, God's people, our people....check the video if you haven't and yes I noticed the Yoplait container and the "too much stuff" after the uploads (youtube, facebook and blogger)...

This is an email to a friend and it got so long that I thought would share. I welcome feedback or comments, but to the Generation X'ers I really want to hear you...

(From Danna to "new friend")
Something that you said was so striking today...it has played back in my head since earlier and I have tried to ignore it only because I feel like it's true... it is a "funky" truth one about which I wonder too often....you said (to paraphrase) "trying to figure out why Generation X is so fucked up"

I will share my ruminations and thoughts on it and I will direct you to a blog I wrote almost 2 years ago that provides a more sensitive insight into the matter from a very personal POV

I am a fifth generation away from Slavery...My Great Great Grandather Mark Kiel (Mark Todd before marrying and being given the name "Kiel" as a wedding present by slavemasters) was the last slave on my father's side....His son Henry Kiel was my great grandfather with whom I (and my twin sister) communed with until we were 10 and he 107, his son Damon Kiel Sr was my Grandfather, a liquor bootlegger in a dry county of Alabama and a landowner who ran his own logging and timber business and My father Damon Kiel Jr who earned a BS in Electronics from Tuskegee Institute before the hybrids between a Trade and a Discipline disappeared from the Catalog...I told people my Dad was an Electircal Engineer... I was in graduating High School before I reflected upon and understood the difference and distinction of one from the other...

I believe we are funked up because we are the products of the failure and successes of design not definition

...I mean that we experienced 1st hand the computer go from a novelty and an experiment ...from DOS to the TRS 80 or the Commodore 64 and programming language (I took a Fortran Class at Skegee) before "programming language" (remember PASCAL) became Windows and Windows became a tool of construction, not the house itself and the internet became the new hammer while smartphones have become some of the nails...

We saw Hip Hop be born....we saw the age of music video be born...we had a magic bullet in our homes at our fingertips that we could teach ourselves the things that some were imagining, then teaching themselves and then learning in a home environment...with no classroom or teaching standards to filter the "Wild Sound" and now where the race and those running in it had become a cogent group with a certain set in 1st, a specific group in 2nd and another group in 3rd it was now a marathon without end for which all the runners were all over the place and some even running at their own pace...but all still running

We watched and experienced much in the raw footage stage before it was digitized and its effects rendered and then all edited into a final cut...we regularly used prototypes before they were tweaked for the marketplace....the manufacturers didn't know they were prototypes until they knew what the final products were and began to sell those to us, as well

As a result a lot of us became seers and prophets and could therefore see through the marketing and beyond...we became commentators but not doers or craftsmen because for a brief time there was currency for our thoughts (and way more than a penny) ...

we watched the busy signal dissolve into call waiting, three way calling, call blocking we even saw little white answering machines disappear into voicemail services...I believe we saw too much evolve too fast and all the while we were getting through college and grad school and professional school over an everchanging landscape of pure change itself...we had nothing to dig into or plant solid feet upon....the teachers, the lawyers and the doctors faired well because the way did business never changed much ...more toys and improved delivery systems but their content was relatively rock solid...

Somewhere in it "Deming Management" was being hailed as an important business and operations management model ...there was the idea that science and math could solve all of our problems and things like passion and commitment fell way to the way side like the two solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle (we saw Shuttles, hell...we saw a new frontier into space being televised as it had when Man walked on the moon...the shuttle take-offs and landing were our "walk on the moon" or at least as close as we were going to come)....we saw everything go from bigger to smaller to bigger again and faster but not always stronger but a lot better ..overall

The world become modern in front of our eyes and under our noses.

we saw cocaine become crack...

We saw all of this between about 1964 - 1985 and then a steady pattern of growth began to emerge but I don't think the word got all the way out until about 1994 or so and by then we were starting to get married and make babies and trying to ensure they did not come out funked up only for them to turn out better and worse than we did...most of us have turned out to be jacks/janes of all trade masters of little to none who are blooming LATE because there is finally a road for our rubber to actually meet...

We saw our only solid rock ....our identity... disintegrate...and now we are all putting our own pieces back together.... (with that new hammer and those new nails)

Why We Love The President !!!!

2010-10-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

This image defies words. It is a reminder of why I committed to President Barack H. Obama's campaign before he ran for President, before there was indeed a CAMPAIGN and why I was indeed of Soldier of Love NOT politics to have become involved in the first place. We are almost halfway through what I hope is a first term and my love and commitment for our fearless and courageous leader has not waned ! Baby, I got my President's Back!...

When I look at a photograph like this it is truly the HOPE of our next generation I see...honestly, I believe God is pleased about this one...will you look at that baby's eyes !!!

You Gotta Be - Des'ree (lyrics)

2010-10-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

I heard this song today. KTWV "the Wave plays" it every so often and there is just something EXTRAORDINARY about the song. It's lyrics are not only flawless, but the music is indeed music. There is guitar, drums and llush and ayered vocals. The video ia amazing, a pure delight...the video is a triumph of expression. The song brings an energy of refresh and renewal and then the delivery system is a stunning and beautiful creation of chocolate womanhood with amazing dimples and a magnetic smile. As Jimmy Fallon might write in his Thank You" notes, "thank you music video director of Desiree's "You Gotta Be" for not being afraid of the extreme close up".

"All I know is Love will save the day !" She sings this lyric to remind us to let LOVE be our guide. If you believe the same as I then all I know is God (Mother/Father) is our Guide and God will surely save the day.

Friday night (along with 3 other cities (Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami)) I screened a documentary film by Janks Morton entitled "We Need to Talk, A Message to Our Daughters" and of so many issues and baggage tackled about what shapes the lives of women for much better, as well as, for the very worst the claim that we can stake for becoming healed and whole is to do the hard work of finding completion in Christ (For other believers I am asserting the spirit of the creator that rests in us is where we look to be made whole).

The movie's target audience was Women, but the message of finding completion in Christ (or your creator by the name with which you worship) is for our men because they too are searching. The difference is in how our creator shaped our physical and psychological beings that drive us toward each other for completion. Because completion is in Christ Jesus and not one another, the trails we blaze toward one another are always destined for collision and calamity...

It is time to pick up the pieces by looking up to the fill gaps and spaces on the inside...it will take fortitude, courage and wisdom...because we gotta be bold, we gotta be wiser we gotta be hard, we gotta be tough, we gotta be stronger we gotta be cool, we gotta be calm, we gotta stay together...All I know, all I know love will save the day ....so now you sing...

Desiree
Gotta Be

Listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try and keep your head up to the sky
Lovers they may cause your tears
Go ahead release your fears
Stand up and be counted don't be 'shamed to cry

You gotta be, you gotta be bad
You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know love will save the day

Herald what your mother said
Read the books your father read
Try to solve the puzzles in your own sweet time
Some may have more cash than you
Others take a different view
My, oh, my
he-eh-y

You gotta be bad
You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know love will save the day

Time asks no questions it goes on without you
Leaving you behind if you can't stand the pace
The world keeps on spinning can't stop it if you tried to
The best part is danger staring you in the face

Remember, listen as your day unfolds
Challenge what the future holds
Try to keep your head up to the sky
Lovers they may cause your tears
Go ahead release your fears
My, oh, my
He-ey-y

You gotta be bad
You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know love will save the day

You gotta be bad
You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
All I know, all I know love will save the day

Got to be bold, Got to be bad
Got to be wise, no never sad
Got to be hard, not too too hard
All I know is love will save the day

You gotta be bad
You gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together
Oooh, yeah yeah yeah

(Continue until fade)

Stealing Back 1993.... Sandwiched between Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison

2010-10-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

Stealing time...1993 to be exact...I am as usual beefing with time because as I cut, paste and type I am working to meet a midnight deadline...for an "Incomplete" class...as I assembled the necessary artifacts of literary pieces for a script I've written for my class I stumbled across the dates of two of the most waking and rousing texts of modern time and modern literature...there is no argument that my favorite President of all time, President Barack H. Obama, has authored 2 of the most definitive speeches of our time with his speech to the DNC in 2004 or my fave the "Yes We Can" speech after a loss in the Connecticut Primaries...others will argue that his speech on Race that summer in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright controversey was his best...the debate may never end...but let's talk about LOVE...Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison

I am hear to say that many American History moments happen before our eyes...as long as our eyes remain open and in 1993 a year full of changes and constants these two mothers of words took a stab at using words to capture messages for the world to hear and abide in and live by. In taking a stab January 20, 1993 (Inaugural Poem-Maya Angelou) and then another stab December 7, 1993 (Lecture to the Swiss Academy for her Nobel Prize - Toni Morrison) these 2 women pierced the heart and soul of the woman I've become today...

On the Pulse of the Morning

Inaugural Poem

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

I graduated Tuskegee University in May of 1993 ...I was and am forever sandwiched between what these two women had to say that year....I rhetorically understood and appreciated what my two idols had to say that year but some 17 years late...I get it...I mean I really get it...

Nobel Lecture

Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993

Listen to a Sound Recording
33 min.

In order to hear the sound you need RealPlayer.

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"

Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.

Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency - as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: "Is it living or dead?" is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language smitheryed to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of armor polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental. Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots, summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all - if the bird is already dead.

She has thought about what could have been the intellectual history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and representations of dominance required - lethal discourses of exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the excluded.

The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower's failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.

She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here," his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the "final word", the precise "summing up", acknowledging their "poor power to add or detract", his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference - the way in which we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

"Once upon a time, ..." visitors ask an old woman a question. Who are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter? What did they hear in those final words: "The bird is in your hands"? A sentence that gestures towards possibility or one that drops a latch? Perhaps what the children heard was "It's not my problem. I am old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I cannot help you. The future of language is yours."

They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including the one they have asked: "Is the bird we hold living or dead?" Perhaps the question meant: "Could someone tell us what is life? What is death?" No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe either, who can?

But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space.

Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with language invented on the spot.

"Is there no speech," they ask her, "no words you can give us that helps us break through your dossier of failures? Through the education you have just given us that is no education at all because we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between generosity and wisdom?

"We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don't you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?

"Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is artful, but its artfulness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you. Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-for-television script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands.

"Why didn't you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, "nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced." Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?

"You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

"Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

"Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter, placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their sex, they thought of heat, then sun. Lifting their faces as though is was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving them humming in the dark. The horse's void steams into the snow beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt are the envy of the freezing slaves.

"The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat and something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is warmed."

It's quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman breaks into the silence.

"Finally", she says, "I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together."

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1991-1995, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997

TO CITE THIS PAGE:
MLA style: "Toni Morrison - Nobel Lecture". Nobelprize.org. 19 Oct 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html

This Is It (Kenny Loggins not MJ)

2010-07-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

I LOVE THIS SONG ...

Family,

First let me begin by saying Jesus does not look like Kenny Loggins and when you see those street vendors with those framed glass pictures of Kenny Loggins tell the vendor this is not what Jesus looks like and see what he says... :-)

Second, I always thought this song was amazing. In the late 70's and into the 80's the musical landscape that traditional radio offered was simply the best. Michael McDonald (The Doobie Brothers), Kenny Loggins, Hall & Oates, Bobby Caldwell and others offered us something very special in the way of what became know as Blue Eyed Soul.

Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins were during this post disco era great collaborators. I would love to know what their first meeting was like or what did they hear in one another's music that brought them together. They co-wrote "What A Fool Believes" which earned Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers a "Song of the Year" Grammy in 1980 and they co-wrote "This Is It" which earned Kenny Loggins a "Best Pop Vocal Performance Male" Grammy 1981. BTW ...you don't have to listen to hard to hear Michael McDonald on the background...I don't know that the song would have been a monster hit without what his signature vocals added...

"This is It" was a favorite for me because I loved the rhythmic nature of the music, it's composition (it was more than a "track"). I loved the emphasis on the chorus. I loved the break in the Piano just before the chorus rung out ...This is it !!! as though Kenny Loggins was really trying to tell us something. The song feels like a wake up call, right ?

Fast forward 30 years and the song more than holds up across today's musical landscape. It is played in heavy rotation on LA's KTWV the Wave (a format of soul, contemporary jazz, soft rock, adult contemporary...basically anybody over 35 has somewhere to go on their AM/FM dial). As I heard it twice in a span of 3 or 4 days I was given a chance to meditate and reflect on the lyrics. I was immediately taken back to a time when "the living was easy...(or at least easier)", but I also became VERY INSPIRED !!!

Though I am a lover of ALL things 70's most 80's and an all around vintage girl in a modern world, it was more than nostalgia that moved me when I heard the song. The lyrics...the sermon...came alive. I am sure the original intention was a love song. The lyrics seem to suggest that if you ever leave that other dude alone, I am here for you. He sings, "Let him believe /Or leave him behind /But keep me near in your heart /And know, whatever you do /I'm here by your side."

But you guys know ART, it stubbornly resists one meaning...one interpretation. There is more than "double entendre", there are a multitude of meanings based on every individual experience. It is up to the listener...every listener to decide. I also believe that Carl Jung was on to something though when referring to our "Collective Unconscious". I say that because Kenny Loggins' song "This is It" was a huge hit. It resonated meaningfully enough with consumers who bought the single or the whole album. Either or both went Platinum (at least 1 million sold).

So I share the lyrics and a couple of videos here because this song for me...my meaning...my interpretation is a call to action...to as folks say all the time..."keep doing what you doing !" I realize everyday as Kenny preached in his record, "This is It...The waiting is over ...No room to run ..No way to hide ...No time for wondering why ...It's here ...The moment is now" ....I truly believe ....THE MOMENT IS NOW !

Thanks Be To God
Danna

"This Is It"
written by Kenny Loggings & Michael McDonald

There have been times in my life
I've been wondering why
Still somehow I believed
We'd always survive
Now I'm not so sure
You're waiting to hear
One good reason to try
But what more can I say
What's left to provide
You think that maybe it's over
Only if you want it to be
Are you gonna wait for your sign, your
miracle
Stand up and fight
This is it
Make no mistake where you are
This is it
Your back's to the corner
This is it
Don't be a fool anymore
This is it
The waiting is over
No room to run
No way to hide
No time for wondering why
It's here
The moment is now
About to decide
Let him believe
Or leave him behind
But keep me near in your heart
And know, whatever you do
I'm here by your side
You said that maybe it's over
Not if you don't want it to be
For once in your life, here's your miracle
Stand up and fight
This is it
Make no mistake where you are
This is it
You're going no further
This is it
Until it's over and done
No one can tell you what you know
Who makes the choice of how it goes
It's not up to me this time
You know
There comes a day in every life
This is it
Make no mistake where you are
This is it
You're going no further
This is it
Until it's over and done
This is it
One way or another
This is it
No one can tell what the future holds
This is it
Your back's to the corner
This is it
You make the choice of how it goes
This is it
The waiting is over
This is it
No one can tell what the future holds
This is it
You're going no further

Fences and Progress pt 2

2010-07-06T22:53:00.001-07:00

BTW... the blog and both pictures were taken and sent from my phone (a crackberry)...see that ...progress and technology...just mesmerizing !

God's Best
Danna
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Fences and Progress

2010-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

Jesus Be A Fence !

I am daily amazed and captivated by progress and technology. I am also admittedly a "little" addicted to Facebook. Djdannak's the name...social networking is oft times my game...

This evening as I was attempting to teach a sister in blogging something new, I learned new tricks myself. I was amazed to find out that I could email pictures and other media to my blogspot blog for immediate publishing. To the credit of a lot of networking sites I am on they all give you an address for sending stuff to the site, but I hadn't processed what that meant until tonight.

Oh you mean ....

I have in essence found a new way to share. I am not sure if another way to connect and communicate with my community is actually necessary, but it satisfies what at times feels like the insatiable itch to reach out, touch and talk to my peoples...

I am honestly very excited and giddy even about this avenue to share because it is emailing. I love emailing. I always have. I don't know about anyone else, but emailing makes up for all the snail mail I wrote (and intended to write) that I never got to the mailbox to send. It also makes up for letters that I looked for that didn't come...I can dish procrastination, but I can't always take it...

I still nonethelesslove letter writing. There is a groove and comfort in writing letters. Letter writing opens a space of liberation and safety that springs directly from the heart.

Letter writing whether public or private; personal or political connects the heart to the page (paper or web). It also sharpens my writing axe. From a place of passion I feel free to say whatever it takes to get my point across to a lover, friend or colleague.

At this place of freedom lies the axis of progress and technology
where inspiration roams free and creativity is born...daily

God's Best
Danna

PS:I am also sharing evidence of my turnaround trip to NYC to see Viola and Denzel in "Fences" and this is also to explain the lone picture of the amazing "Fences" marquis...check out me and my friend, Mickey too

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

2010-07-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

From: Danna Kiel <dannakiel@gmail.com>

Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2010 00:45:23 -0700

To: <dannakiel@att.blackberry.net>

Subject:

--
God's Best
Danna

Vote Kamala Harris Attorney General for the State of California - June 8th, 2010 (Endorsed by the SEIU, Mayor Antonio Villaragosa, The Los Angeles Times and Nancy Pelosi)
Vote Holly J. Mitchell 47th Aseembly District for the State of California - June 8th, 2010 (Endorsed by Karen Bass, Diane Watson and the California State Democratic Party)

Vote Barbara Boxer for for U.S. Senate - June 8th 2010

www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak

Obama is President !!!!!!!!

my blog...
www.djdannak-changeisnow.blogspot.com

My OWN Show

2010-07-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Family, I have been doing a lot of "doing", "running" and "thinking". I am mastering film-making in my 40's. I have admittedly been in the "game" a minute and am clamping down to package all the skills into a something that is efficient, effective and most of all productive. In fact the goal is to produce High Quality content.

I am currently working on an MFA in Screenwriting. I am continuing to network and build an artistic community of not only fellowship and communion, but of quality and efficient (there's that word again) production. We are building a TEAM !

I am waiting on an edit now and while there are just elements out of my control that have slowed the process, I am pushing to get back on track and finished with this one and move on the next.

I am in constant count of my blessings. My son is healthy, the lights and other needed utilities are on and the key turns in the door. We are not hungry...ever. Many daily negotiate these things and I don't forget that.

I am however standing on God's word for more...I desire through prayer and supplication to build and sustain a career as a filmmaker. Everyday I do something teeny tiny or colossal toward my goal. Fear, worry and anxiety creep in...but in those moments I realize the fear, worry and anxiety are not only NOT my friends, but they are spirits of darkness and Paul had something to say to the folks at Ephesus about it...

Eph 6:10-17 (NIV) ...Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

It is with this full armour that I fiercely protect my family and the dreams that God has given to me that he is bringing to pass. My journey is my journey and I am on the path of success...I also strive to be obedient: the greatest demonstration of our Faith...

I write here what I am trying to keep short and simply say to my team...my friends that are family and the family God bore me into - Be encouraged, as well as, Be of good courage - Deuteronomy 31:6 he tells his chosen people

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

I therefore continue "doing", "running" and "thinking", as well as, "writing", "producing" and "directing" ...for these are the things I am called to do. My Dad called me this week and shared that he saw James Cameron (Titanic and Avatar) on a 60 Minutes interview. He said some things that were special so I posted on FB this status....

My Dad has begun in recent years to encourage my journey...he called me this morning to tell me he saw James Cameron interview on 60 minutes who says no matter how small your film..."You are a filmmaker" and to say..."that's what Danna is...'you are a filmmaker' " it meant the world to me (he also said he voted for my 'Ofrah' ...video :-)

As you guys know I auditioned for Oprah and need your support so vote for my audition...like Hezekiah says "I need you to survive"

God's Best
Danna

Been A Minute...Let's Talk About L-O-V-E

2010-06-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

I U

Love they say "is a many splendored (or 'splendid' or 'splintered' ..it feels splintered at times, right ?) thing". Whichever the term ...I am not sure if Love is always felicitous and it for me it has been sharp and painful. Love to me is also a passionate beast or a beast of passion. It can whoop your ass (not literally, domestic violence is NOT love) and it can make love to you gently. It is energetic, lethargic, eclectic and tricky. Love "got game" and has swagger. Love is safe and at other times capricious.

As well, it is like the "Life" Langston Hughes describes from a Mother to a son "(love) ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor-Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin, And reachin' landin's, And turnin corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark. Where there ain't been no light."Did y'all feel that...over there ? It's has been dark, that's for sure." (Can I preach like I feel it :-)

Today I had to grapple with the notion of being lonely and without LOVE...I of course mean Eros...not AGAPE...Mother/Father God showers me everyday by breathing the breath of life into Ali and myself, I am Loved by my creator and I give Love. I am also blessed beyond measure.

But...yes there is the "but"- I am admittedly lonely and creating a world is not my option. For the record I tried and it was some mess. Today as I turned my back on my class ENG 668 Genre "Horror" and shifted my focus back to "whatever I am supposed to be shifting my focus back to" (since my next Graduate class doesn't begin until July 6), evidence pointed squarely to the fact that I am without a mate, boyfriend, "special friend", "friend" or even a "booty call".

There is no one. There is only the dream of someone. There are only the ghosts of "First Love's" past. There are only the crushes that look, sound and act like the ghosts of "First Loves" past. There are only the recollections of what Faith Evans branded "Caramel Kisses".

I gave myself permission to ride the "moment", but I thought I might share this with anyone who might know something about it. Jimmy Ruffin asked, "What becomes of the brokenhearted ?" I am not sure so I wait...but of these ghosts...Erykah's song best captured my thoughts as I tearlessly reflected upon the predicament in which I find myself...I don't offer an mp3 because she is (like all of her records) saying something here and I wouldn't want anyone who needs this to miss it. (The chorus is bolded because somebody needs this word and if anybody has a jar of Holy Water...can we share ?)

Erykah Badu..."I Want You" (Worldwide Underground EP)
REPEAT 4x's (begining)1st part

I I I I I I I
WANT YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU
OOH I
I I I I I I
WANT YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU

so what we gone do
what we gone do
what we gonna do

2nd part

in the worse kinda way way way way way way way
i want youuuu (baby)
so what we gone dooooo (baby)
so what we gone do (baby)

CHORUS
love is on the way
all I got to say
is It wont let go
you can pray to early May
fast for 30 days
still It wont let go
got a good book and got all in it
tried a little yoga for a minute
but it wont let go (oooh)
tried to turn the sauna up to hotter
drank a whole jar of holy water
but it wont let go

begining

and in the worse kinda way way way way way way way
i want you
so what we gone do
what we gone do

beginning

Hook:

and in the worse kinda way
i want you
so what we gone doooo
now what we gone do
i know you're a little nervous
(what we gone do)
i know you really want this
(what we gone do)
i cant believe i feel it
(what we gone do)
i feel it all over , feel it all over
(said what we gone do)
babe,yeah baby
(so what we gone do)
you don't believe in love
you missing a good thing
(so what we gone do)
because im genuine
im genuine
(so what we gone do)
yeah baby

Bridge:repeat 2x's

i dont want no trouble
just alittle loving (yeah)
i want to get to know ya (yeah)
i dont want your money (yeah)
you oughta get to know me (yeah)
my love a make you wonder (yeah)
and lightning a thunder (yeah)
i get from my mama (yeah)

and i
i want you
and i
i want you
and i
i want you....

Begining (1st part again)

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2010-04-12T09:51:00.001-07:00

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Cheat Blogging, Freedom's Sisters, Walking no more talking...

2010-02-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

I am constantly inspired, but not getting it down on paper or web by accident or on purpose. I try not to be a slave to time, but I'll be damned if she doesn't feel like a master. Shout out to Royale Watkins whose presence in the world and voice inside my head inspires me to do much better. (Friend your wife and kids are blessed)

I shot a short film back in November and have two completed feature length scripts, as well as, cracking the code on 5 other ideas that I am breaking down into treatments according to Blake Snyder's "Save The Cat". My short film is stalled in the "edit bay" and instead of continuing to do soft pitches on my work its time to budget, schedule, find investors and shoot both and prep more.

I am self employed. Money gets funny and change strange so in the natural realm days can appear and feel difficult. I however look to the heavens from which comes my help, my help comes from the Lord who has made HEAVEN and Earth. I am persisting in faith (thank you David Barnes for your gem "Fulfilling Your Destiny" (correct me on the title in the comments) and walking in belief without doubt. I am trying to "get good at" or as they say master the second...it gets hard.

I am learning to hear God's voice, listen to his command and then obey...this is also hard...but way doable if we know who abides in us and who we abide in...who shall be able to separate from the LOVE of God...nothing and no one.

I press, I write and I grind. I continue to work to master parenting for God has given me one of his most precious ones and I am no cakewalk, but Ali loves me anyway.

I express the above because I feel like everything gets crossed up in a way that not enough of MY writing gets accomplished...particularly this blog. (Yes I am trying to watch my choices I am not a victim, I am accountable and responsible.)

I attended Ford Motor Company's Freedom's Sisters Awards Luncheon which honored 20 amazing leaders of the Los Angeles Community....Speaker Karen Bass, California State Assembly, Actress Holly Robinson Peete, HollyRod Foundation, Deputy City Mayor Miriam Scott Long, Entertainer Rev. Della Reese, News Anchor Pat Harvey; KCAL 9, Actress Loretta Devine, former LA County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, HIV/AIDS Activist, Community Activist “Sweet Alice” Harris, Executive Denise Pines, Tavis Smiley Group, Publisher Natalie Cole; Our Weekly News, Sculptor & Painter Artis Lane, Community Activist Lillian Mobley, Captain d'Lisa Davies; LA Fire Department, Cynthia Davis; Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science, Community Activist LaWanda Hawkins; Justice For Murdered Children, Auto Advocate Glenda Gill; Rainbow PUSH, Community Leader Charisse Bremond-Weaver; Brotherhood Crusade, Child Care Advocate Holly J. Mitchell and Youth Advocate Angela B. Winston; Challengers Boys & Girls Club. Loretta Devine got an award too...she's just awesome.

I was slayed by the inspiration and spiritual awakening I felt at its conclusion. It was AMAZING to just be in the room. (That's me and Malcolm X's Daughter, Attallah Shabazz after the luncheon)

Myrlie Evers was the keynote speaker, but for me she was more than that...she is the breathing and living legacy of what inspires me to be...she is a Black Woman who has survived what she called "the darkest time" and shines with the brilliance of pure Gold...I own Brian Lanker's Groundbreaking table book "I Dream A World" where Ms. Evers-Williams among other sheroes is featured. She walked out of the book and came to life for me Thursday.

20 years ago I thought I would be moving and shaking some things and like all the lists of up and coming or respected leaders or activist in their arena I looked forward to reading about from year to year various publications. I thought I'd be one. (I feel like a winner when Ali is clean, fed and matching). Even if it were just a blurb somewhere in Ebony, Essence, Jet or Vibe. I was sure that by now I would have figured something out and been doing something publicly recognized as brilliant or awesome like Vann Jones up there on the stage tonight but to date no such singular accomplishment hence no outward confirmation. I am a filmmaker and God honors my current focus and determination and the outward confirmation is on its way. Thanks be to God I have the gift certificate and he will cash it soon.

I will say this though I brilliantly engaged Myrile Evers for Red Carpet coverage that was unprecedented and unparalleled to any in that room. When my turn came I asked her compelling questions for which gave riveted answers and out the corners of my eyes the remaining journalists huddled in awe and in a perfect circle to hear her answers to my questions, they poised their recording devices to capture her words. I had touched the hem of her garment (and my own) and was infused with "girl power"...better than that "woman power".

I am regularly moved one way or another by news and other commentary so there have been quite a few things on my mind for a while. Tonight however while tweeting the Image Award Broadcast (saw Myrlie Evers again) I exchanged comments with friends...me, my cast and crew of FB friends were in particular moved by Tyler Perry's Chairman's Award speech... so I clipped the conversation below (cheat blogging) to share because our conclusion I believe is not only to heed the call to action that Tyler Perry expressed but the work that we get to once engaged in Active duty ....not reserve status....The heart of this blog beats in my final comment (check me out :-)!!!!

So it went like this...

Danna Lafaye Kiel ''We don't have to wait for someone to greenlight our projects. We can create our own intersections.''~ Tyler Perry
about an hour ago via Twitter · Comment · Like
Eeinna Brighton-Akers likes this.

Danna Lafaye Kiel
i stole yours !!!!
about an hour ago ·

Eeinna Brighton-Akers WE ALL SHOULD MAKE THIS OUR STATUS!!! Not only that...hell we should call a round table discussion at a POSH Blackowned venue and call it ''creating our own intersections''...Think tank round table...whatever you want to call it it's about that time!
about an hour ago ·

Vonnetta Sharee King What award show was this?
about an hour ago ·

Danna Lafaye Kiel NAACP Image Awards
56 minutes ago ·

Karen L Glover Great speech by Tyler Perry and Vann Jones.
52 minutes ago ·

Danna Lafaye Kiel @karen I so LOVE Vann Jones ..
2 minutes ago ·

Danna Lafaye Kiel @Eeinna I vehemently disagree about the roundtable :-)...if one has been to enough panels at film festivals and conferences where concerns, challenges or issues are or have been considered and discussed then you like I :-) would know that the discussion has been exhausted (and you know that ladybug)..."the problem does not require much thought" a friend shared recently ...

what I am sure of is that if we call ourselves writers or directors or both our work is to create the HIGHEST QUALITY CONTENT not now but RIGHT NOW ...what I beileve must be different is that we must lock arms and talk everyday about how much we wrote or about story issues that we encountered while creating content...

we should be PUSHING one another to pick up the pace on our process and then help one another breakdown the script for scheduling and budgeting... from there we build the house of LOVE for which we've created a blueprint or we lock arms across the process of getting the property sold if that is the desired aim, we must be the other's quality control no matter how HARD that will be ( I'm an artist and I am sensitive about my sh*t...I really am very sensitive about my sh*t) ...we must also pray together and for one another

we must like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu 3 Mexican Writer/Directors/producers who were all getting Oscar recognition of some kind in the same year who supported and worked with each other at some point in their careers...during the '07 Oscar Season they were inseparable, we must stick to each other like glue...

Let's get it !
4 minutes ago ·

2009-11-07T17:45:00.001-08:00

Faith is reborn and Daily Cultivating and Consulting Creativity, Intellect and Expression

2009-10-29T00:51:00.000-07:00

Daily Cultivating and Consulting Creativity, Intellect and Expression

Hey Pham,

I am trying out www.hubpages.com . (Check my page www.hubpages.com/djdannak) It is this awesome site that will share everywhere, but I didn't realize it would only deliver the link here. It is part cool understated blog and part webpage home which equals your own hub.

A lot of you say a lot of wonderful things to me about how I express myself and the accidental intellect I have become. Thanks for the LOVE and I am excited to report I have found an avenue expression for all of me and "my stuff". Check me out and click the links on the page too

Let's catch up right quick...

October 19th was the day that grief turned 30. Last Monday made 30 years that My beautiful mother Helen Dianne King Kiel went over to the other side of Jordan. However my personal pastor, mentor and friend encouraged me not to continue to acknowledge grief and loss, but seize the faith that I will soon see her face, as well as, gleefully look upon the face of Jesus who paid the price so that my mother and can be together one day.

So I press...

Faith was reborn just about everyday last week, as well, through test and trials that my Faith truly brought me out of...so maybe just maybe Hope can spring eternal as long as my faith is in tact...

So I press...I press to be obedient because I also learned last week that my obedience (to God that is) is the greatest demonstration of my Faith and it is that FAITH that GOD responds to....

So I press...and as a songwriter sang "I look for him to take the pain out of the pain and the hurt out of the hurt"...and another sang "I wanna go ....where Jesus is....I got a mother over there...where Jesus is..." (me too)

So I press and I wait...and while I wait I must share while on this side of Jordan...meet me at my hub....www.hubpages.com/djdannak

Blessings to my Bishop Dr. Kenneth Ulmer who recently suffered this loss (last week), as well as, my high school classmate who updated her status to reflect that her mother transitioned today also ...

ALL LOVE
Ashe
Amen
Danna

Pause ...Consider...African American Actresses can and will open films...

2009-10-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Disclaimer...the blog below is not what I intended when I opened the "new post" window to write...but it is what flowed like blood from a fresh cut...

I use the above title not so much as what this whole blog will be about, but I have just noticed that positive and negative thinking seem to work the same way. Have you noticed that the more you say anything the closer and closer and closer it gets to becoming true. Haven't you also noticed that if fact already supports a supposition like the one above, it will not improve if everyone keeps saying it. Repeating it does not make it okay, right or true forever. Consider this...the sooner you stop saying it; it like that dream deferred and that raisin in the sun will shrivel up and die and not continue to fester like a sore and then run...

As some of you know I am a writer and not an actress, but a good number of the stories that I am interested in seeing told or want to tell tend to be a reflection of the personal culture I know extraordinarily well. I am woman. I am Black (or African American). Nearest to my heart is the narrative from and about either or both groups.

I appeal to readers, listeners, writers and bloggers everywhere to pause and consider the idea that if we lift the veil of this daily "hammered" notion and begin to believe that not only is it possible, but imagine and see it as reality...it could happen. African American Actresses can and will open films to huge box office.

And so it has been with every great struggle: Women Suffrage, Anti Slavery and Abolition, Civil War, Anti Lynching, Black Codes, Jim Crow, Integration (whether we agree that it was for the best or the worst) Civil Rights, Affirmative Action, Roe V. Wade, the Vietnam Wall, Martin Luther King's Birthday (thank you Stevie Wonder and others for Marching in your long fur in Washington, DC) the list of movements is long and wide, but you get it right ? Someone(s) with clout, resource, focus and determination had to have a vision and then an action plan to support that vision to make it happen or as the saying goes to "make it rain". Say it with me...African American Actresses can and will open films to huge box office.

We of course want to shout of all the actresses: Jill Marie Jones, Kerry Washington, Golden Brooks, countess Vaughn, Tracee Ellis Ross, Queen Latifah, Halle Berry, Monica Calhoun, Nia Long, Terri Vaughn, Ruby Dee, Suzanne Douglass, Napiera Groves, Taraji P. Henson, Kim Fields, Erika Alexander, Lisa Bonet, Phylicia Rashad, Sanaa Lathan< Gabrielle Union, Kay Pri Marcus, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Paula Jai Parker, Victoria Dillard, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Tangi Miller, Viveca A. Fox, Vanessa Williams (both of them), Angela Bassett, Regina King, Esther Rolle, Bernadette Stanis, Alfre Woodard, Theresa Randle, Marla Gibbs, Theresa Merritt, Mabel King, Isabel Sanford ....Writers: Judi Ann Mason, Tina Andrews, Suzanne De Passe, Yvette Lee Bowser, Mara Brock Akil, Gina Prince Bythewood, Danna Kiel :-), Teanne Coleman-Chennault; Directors: Euzhan Palcy, Chip Fields, Debbie Allen, Mayeen Bassey, Julie Dash, Neema Barnett, Danna Kiel :-); Producers Kimberly Ogletree, Alyss Dickson, Joyce Washington, Helena Echegoyen, Bridget Davis, Tracey Edmonds, Poppy Hanks, Robi Reed, Holly Davis Carter, Rashida Turner that daily regularly and often make it their business to shift the paradigm and "Move That Bus" on a house that is in need of repair. Say it again ...African American Actresses can and will open films to huge box office.

(these lists are full of known and unknown folks (young women and those making their way) and they are all endless..they are in no order as these women are ALL SIGNIFICANT in contribution)

While the belief, the imagination and vision to shift to the reality that entitles this blog will not be a march on Washington or even a march through Hollywood or Beverly Hills for that matter...I just believe that some positive thinking is in order and so is a new conversation...words do have power... say it ...African American Actresses can and will open films to huge box office.

My prayer is that gate keepers will choose their words more carefully when speaking on the "now" possibility and the future. This is not a rant or even a "somebody done me wrong" blues song. I was yes tried by fire (yesterday), but awakened to press for the multi-prong solution to what is a (corporate model) fact based challenge. (I been aware and worried about this for much longer)

We are all professionals and business is certainly carried on a particular way in Hollywood. I don't think any entertainment industry professional agrees with all of the rules all of the time, but we all know you must work the system as is to carefully, clearly and fairly point out its flaws. Once the flaws are higlighted, SOLUTIONS must replace joints, washers and nuts that are not allowing the system to operate properly.

Growing in Going in Creativity
Ashe
Amen
Danna Kiel

Chane is Now-We Are a Movement....Talking Healthcare with Tanya Acker

2009-10-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Our onging Derrion Albert Conversation...What we do now.....

2009-10-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Conversation Pieces...

Conversation from Wednesday regarding Tuesdays Blog
Leslie Williams Boissiere
Amazingly well said as always.

lwb
12 hours ago · Delete

thanks ...where you at Big B
6 hours ago · Delete

Conversation from Thursday regarding Tuesdays Blog, as well
Jennifer Muirhead Johnson
It's hard to believe that something like this could happen. And it seems like the people in the crowd were excited by the violence rather than shocked or outraged. Could it have anything to do with all the violence we see on tv, film, billboards, in music? Or are these kids just used to violence because they live with it everyday?
57 minutes ago · Delete

Danna Lafaye Kiel
I believe...there are so many puzzle pieces...some fit and some don't. All the things you mentioned tv, film, billboards and music are impactful because this generation is more visual than ever and desensitized because of the over stimulation and over titillation that comes with that territory, as well as, their reality. I think to a good extent the bar on what satisfies gets raised quarterly with the new lows in the music, television, gossip and reality. Teachers, schools, after school programs, boy scouts, girl scouts, Delteens, Debutante organizations, young gent organizations are not as well funded nor does what we teach or give through any service groups get amped quarterly so as to successfully compete with what's out there in the media marketplace or the plethora of channels through which this media is delivered and received (I heard 4th graders talking about getting an iPod touch (on sale it retails for $200 to $250)) and then couple all of that with parents who have checked out because they are working all the time, because of multiple jobs or in some cases strung out on various substances. You end up with what we spoke about earlier "weapons of mass destruction" parading around as our youth...
2 seconds ago · Delete
Write a comment...

More Conversation pieces...

I am posting conversations, thoughts and statuses because I really believe that we've got to permanently change how we get down on the day to day. WE ALL (including myself) function in a sort of tragedy to tragedy sort of way. We are at the peak of dialogue when the cataclysmic event happens and then we return to a whispering valley until the next catastrophe for which dialogue again peaks. We are admittedly awake, but we must remain consistently ALERT. As my grief over Derrion Albert turns into an action plan I am posting ideas, suggestions and commands through twitter and my FB statuses. Today I posted couple of commands and got some interesting responses ...I will share here....

sidebar in
Let us not forget that the family of Derrion may never be able to stop grieving this horror. I personally don't want anybody who is awake and alert to miss an opportunity to INSTIGATE CHANGE in the hearts and minds of not only ourselves, but other "Everyday People".
sidebar out

More conversation pieces...

Danna Lafaye Kiel To all my FB and Twitter Fam call any and every child you see today a SCHOLAR or GENIUS (if they don't know what that is tell them)
9 hours ago via Twitter · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (5)Hide Feedback (5)

Comments and "likes" were

Shannon Haley, Sonya Gibson and Cushon Bell like this.

Shannon Haley
Good Morning View Park Scholars :)
9 hours ago · Delete

Mia Brandlmeier
View Park Prep!!!
9 hours ago · Delete

Danna Lafaye Kiel To all my FB and Twitter fam it is not to early to tell your little ones they are and encourage them to be SCHOLARS (Ali's school does)
11 hours ago via Twitter · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (4)Hide Feedback (4)
LaTisha Green-Hernandez, Sabrina Slocum-Johnson and 2 others like this.
Write a comment...

I later posted ...

Danna Lafaye Kiel Wants FB and Twitter Fam to continue calling any and every child you see a SCHOLAR or a GENIUS

Comments and "likes" were the following...

7 hours ago via Twitter · Comment · Like / Unlike · View Feedback (4)Hide Feedback (4)
Natasha Warsaw likes this.

Darryl Moore
But Danna...what if the kid is really dumb as heck??? LOL...then I would be teaching the kid to lie...that ain't good. LOL
7 hours ago · Delete

Breuna Baine
Encouraging a kid's self confidence is one thing but giving them accolades they haven't earned is just making a fool of them and giving them an undeserved sense of entitlement. Too much of that crap already.

Danna Kiel
Bre...I disagree I believe that we have to believe in the genius or the scholar in every child... it is their own potential we must literally call out of them and by saying it as often as the opportunity presents and dialoguing with them it also sets an expectation and that is one of the keys to educating children, youth and young people ...our babies big and small have to know that somebody cares and believes in their potential for success...the Derrion Albert situation has brought me to the realization that even though he was a scholar those who killed him died many intellectual, spiritual and cultural deaths on the inside long ago and I believe we all have a role in stopping these Weapons of Mass Destruction wrapped in the minds and bodies of today's youth who without education, self esteem and living in poverty believe that their identity is wrapped in what they wear, what they drive, how many babies they can produce and how many folks they can terrorize, maim or even kill...I believe calling children "scholars" or "geniuses" is one small step in the long walk toward what Marvin Gaye commanded..."save the babies!"

Blog Pham,

I am drunk and high off the notion that real change can happen as evidenced by the election of November 4th, 2008 and successively the events of January 20th, 2009...so I am with my whole heart trying to do my part...the Revolution may not be televised, but there is a Revolutionary Movement afoot and I am cranking up my "moving" truck now. Join me for the ride or grab your keys and join the caravan of ....

Love

Ashe'
Amen
Blessings everybody...

Rev Jackson, Bow Wow and Nas have come forward will there be more....

2009-10-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

To Jesse, Nas and Bow Wow...Thank You, Thank You and Thank You...

Will there be more who come forward and say something ? Will there be more who raise their voices in order to raze change and fight for a transformation of values? I ask this of our citizens who have a higher profile (some call them celebrities or stars) and through their raised profile can shine a light on the tragedies and work of everyday people. Day to day many preach, teach and mentor young people. The work however of the everyman and everywoman goes virtually unnoticed and those who do it go without thanks, reward, recognition or even acknowledgment.

My hope and prayer is that citizens with raised profiles can in a fair exchange with the consuming citizens who have acknowledged their God Given talents by purchase or aquisition of their content return love, support and admonition in times of pain and anguish as with the death of Derrion Albert (Katrina Victims, Amadou Dialo, Yusef Hawkins, Latasha Harland you are not forgotten). We really are family !!!

It is the role of adults everywhere to wrap arms of Love and protection around all of our young people. It is also our role as parents, teachers, preachers, principals, caregivers and more to lend tongues of reason, listening ears and willing hands to heal the hearts and change the minds of these same young people.

My mind is still baffled and my heart is still weak from a news story, odious in nature as this one.

Excerpts from CNN piece contain quotes from Grandfather, Aunt and others...His memorial was even burned the next day....

"He was in Bible class this Tuesday night. Church on Sunday," Walker told WLS-TV. "I have no trouble out of my grandson whatsoever. This thing that happened to him is so horrific that we just don't know what we're going to do. We lost a really dear friend in my grandson. He was a blessed child."

Walker said the family was struggling to come to terms with why Albert was killed.

"I don't know where all this anger come from these people today," he told WLS-TV. "That's just too much anger for someone to have in their heart. All I can do is I'm going to pray for these people, I'm going to to pray for forgiveness." Video Rick Sanchez asks, "Are our young people salvageable?" »

Albert's aunt, Rose Braxton, told CNN affiliate WGN-TV that the family was hurt again when a memorial in Albert's honor was burned down.

"To go and burn a memorial after such tragedy, then that just speaks for itself to what kind of people they are," she told WGN-TV.

Family and friends asked the community to turn in anyone they knew who was a part of Albert's beating."

Rev Pfleger said it best ...

"What kind of person, what kind of individual, has such rage and such anger and such madness?" the Rev. Michael Pfleger said. "We've got to get to the hearts of our children, because nothing, nothing, excuses or justifies the actions of an individual who would beat another individual. Nothing justifies that in this society. "

"All I know is...something gotta be did !"
(anonymous GA man)

PS: So People what is our Action Plan ? ..I'm serious ! - What is our plan ?

Blessings
Amen Everybody

The Slaying Derrion Albert/My FB Status/Open Letter to Jesse, Al, Kanye and Van

2009-09-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Danna Lafaye Kiel Is hurt, shocked and dismayed by the brutal beating death of 16 yr old Derrion Albert another sad chapter in our ability to support our own

Nadine Cherry-Camel
isn't that horrible! i just don't get it for the life of me:( makes me so sad
4 hours ago · Delete

Eric Antonio
that is just sad...
3 hours ago · Delete

Cynthia Bennett
What is going on with our children? All I could do is cry.
3 hours ago · Delete

Danna Lafaye Kiel
I feel you Cynthia ...it shook me to my core the little bit of the brutality that I could stand before I had to change the channel...Nadine I just don't get it either ...like what is happening to our children...where does that kind of blood thirst come from to beat another child to death and I am still trying to understand why no one could help ? Were there no adults, nobody of sound and sober heart or mind to pull him away before it was too late...I am sorry you guys I am just baffled is all I can say and I want to know WHERE IS THE OUTCRY ...where is Kanye,Jesse or Al with their big mouths now !!!! Van Jones SOMEBODY...Preachers in Chicago need to be with the family....the grandfather and aunt sitting on tv this morning should not have had to sit alone on a national stage like they did on one of the morning programs
31 minutes ago · Delete

My epilogue/open letter to Jesse, Al, Kanye and Van

While I have called out Al, Kanye and Jesse as big mouths in the previous paragraph I have opened up to include Van Jones whose Big Mouth has clearly been used for Good and not evil too because as I beseech sister and brother black leadership coalitions to come out come out come out wherever you are I also hope that as most of you rally around injustices that are White on Black you will rally around the outstanding bill in the mailbox labeled "self destruction" addressed to the Black community from the mothers, aunts, parents, friends (and more) of every man, woman, preganant woman, child, niece, nephew, son, grandson, grand-daughter or friend that has suffered, bled and died senselessly and unjustly at the hands of people that looked like them.

I have a son...I also teach as a puzzle piece to how I make my living...despite how frustrated my inner teacher gets with my outer students...I want the best for them with my whole heart...as a mother my heart goes out to the caregivers of this young man ...that your child is dead is one thing, but to wrap one's finite mind around the brutality he endured until unconscious and transitioning is beyond anything I could reason or intellectualize or contextualize...the grief would probably make me go insane...

In times of trouble while my mouth will call on the Lord God and mine eyes will look to the hills from which cometh my help and remembering that my help comes from the Lord who has made heaven and earth....my hands will reach for the earth bound work that it will take to do what MARVIN GAYE SAID .."Save The Babies !!!!!"

Amen
Blessings Everyone

PS: JESSE, KANYE, AL, VAN, Common, DL Hughley ....I am listening out for you !!!!!!

Tanya Acker On Change is Now www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak this Saturday

2009-08-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Join us this Saturday when we host Democratic Strategist and Political Analyst Tanya Acker on Change is Now-We Are a Movement at www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak join the chat by calling us 347 215 7743 or just visit www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak

They say the 3rd time is the charm. I am writing this blog from the Youtube share "post to a blog" function for the 3rd time. The first time the text cleared I am not sure of what I did. There was however no rough draft, it was not saved anywhere so it was just gone ...real gone. I started and finished it a second time from the dome. This time I decided I would highlight and "copy" the text each time I made major changes so that if it got swept away, I could "paste" it back. I then clicked "post to blog" at the end. I noted that when I went over to the "blogger" page it hadn't posted yet, but I attributed it to needing more time to travel over. I wake up this morning and return to blogger for no new blog There is of course no "save" and youtube doesn't save it to your channel so ...the genius at 2am is gone....so here we go again...

I have been on a on again off again hiatus this summer. I am proud to announce that we are back...bigger and badder than before...and we were pretty big and bad when we began.

I am excited to host a guest that I am extraordinarily proud to have on the broadcast, Tanya Acker.

Before I tell you all about her because some of you are going..."I went to Howard and I don't know her". Let's talk...

A guest like Tanya Acker thrills me because I believe that God put me on this earth to share through verbal and written communication...I talk and write a lot.

I believe that sharing is critical to the uplift of the race, African American to Human and everything in between. I will of course cop to having a particular focus on the African American race...one of the greatest charges Booker T. Washington left us was to "Uplift The Race" and I am down for the race to which this quote directly refers.

I love knowledge and information. These two along with wisdom and understanding I thought were the gateways to adulthood. As children my twin sister and I read encyclopedias at random, memorized the greek alphabet, combed through the Atlas and flipped through the dictionary because we thought the book was so big and pretty.

I therefore believe it is my responsibility to share because knowledge is in fact power. I share information not only to inform, but to inspire ....to not only inspire, but INSTIGATE ACTION.

My vision for instigated action and change are clear and fine tuned everyday as a mother raising a 7 year old son. It is my personal mission to make the world better for him and his friends. It is also my mission to do what I can while I am here on earth to make the world better for those around me in particular those whom I love. The care of children who carry God Given intellect, but little wisdom and no filters that say "I shouldn't say this", "I can't" or "that's somebody else's job" keep parents and teachers alike on our toes and striving to live in moment to moment truth. The little people and the big little people (teenagers) are daily going for what they know and what they don't know...we must also do the same.

I share because if I can spread love via the magic red carpeted internet super highway (and any other avenue, street or boulevard accessible) then those around me with whom I can directly and indirectly connect might start to instigate some change too...we may all indeed uplift the race.

When I see and hear the Tanya Ackers, Kamala Harrises, Melissa Harris Lacewells, Yolanda Pierces, Harry Allens and Bell Hookses (and so many more) of the world then I see with clarity that my duty and obligation are to share with you not only who they are, but what they have to say. Their leadership is clear, expressive, sensitive, appropriate and most of all informed on matters big and small.

I therefore count it a rich pleasure to be able to host the one and only Tanya Acker to my show this Saturday, August 22nd at 8am. Please call us 347 215 7743, chat with us or just listen at www.blogtalkradio.com/djdannak

Tanya is an amazing Democratic Strategist and Political Analyst who is truly the sharpest tool in the shed and is fearless when doing real battle with colleagues and peers on the world's media stage. She is also gorgeous. She truly uplifts the race African American to Human and everything in between.

A frequent guest on various television and radio broadcasts (including “Larry King Live,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” and “Headline News” on CNN; “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity and Colmes,” Your World With Neil Cavuto” “Geraldo at Large,” “Studio B with Shepherd Smith,” and “The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum” on the Fox News Channel; “Verdict With Dan Abrams” on MSNBC and “Kudlow & Company” on CNBC, Verdict with Dan Abrams, as well as various other broadcasts on the E! Channel and the U.K.’s Sky News) Tanya Acker is presently a member of the panel of experts on SheSource.org, a resource for news media seeking experts on diverse topics. Acker was cast in and shot a CBS primetime television pilot, created and produced by the creators of “Extreme Makeover Home Edition,” in which she worked with individuals in challenging situations and helped them resolve their crises. (www.shesource.org)

During her studies at Yale Law School, from where she graduated in 1995, Acker worked in the Office of White House Counsel in the Clinton White House, in the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice, and interned at various private law firms. After graduation, she served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Dorothy Wright Nelson on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; her duties during this appointment included advising and making recommendations to Judge Nelson and other judges about rulings on a broad variety of cases, and preparing Judge Nelson for oral argument on matters before the Circuit. (www.shesource.org)

Please join us this Saturday by participating in the courageous conversation....

They say if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around does it make a sound ? Of Course !!!! Thank you Dr. Donna Kiel, Carolyn Radcliff, Robin Thede, Royale Watkins, Joyce Washington, Tiffany Jameson, Nikea Gamby Turner, Nefetari Spencer, Napiera Groves, Maronzio Vance, Cass Odum, Beth Payne, Sheree Devereaux and sooooooooo many more who listen and have been guests....you are out there and you're listneing...THANKS

Blessings

Amen Everybody

Bad Habit (and Grapes)

2009-08-11T21:19:00.001-07:00

Okay I have not updated my blog in forever and while I have everything on my heart to talk about from Funny You Tube Videos to Jesus and right now to Green Grapes I simply have not checked in...

I have however this evening seized an opportunity You Tube gave me to update my blog...

Green Grapes remind of my co worker, fellow Skegee Alumni and Frat Brother Chris Price who passed away in the classroom almost 2 years ago (October 22nd 2007). Despite the forward motion of life I think the "return to school" will forever and always be something that is harder to manage because of that loss...Chris and I had communion over green grapes about 2 weeks before his sudden transition. It was one of the heartier moments we shared. I think they were my grapes....which doesn't matter much now, but I can see him reaching out to me and asking for some as we crossed paths on the sidewalk across campus. It has been and still is hard to enjoy grapes. It wasn't until buying grapes a month or so later and allowing them to mold that I realized I had no desire to eat them.

Impetuously I would tend to when seeing them on sale for 1.99 /lb or less grab them and purchase before getting them home and losing all urge to eat them because I can think of no one, but my dear friend Chris Price.

Today was different... as we ease into the home stretch that is the end of summer and prepare for school to start ...I pushed passed the pain to put the green grapes I purchased last week and had not touched into a bowl for Ali and I to snack on and ate past the loss.

I will with each purchase of "sale" grapes keep pushing passed it...because grapes are good for us and that is the real moment that Chris and I shared....so here's to good health...

connection to Maxwell's Bad Habit video...absolutely none

This is all attached to Maxwell's video for his new single Bad Habit which features one of my favorite actresses Kerry Washington because when I hit the "share" button to post it on my facebook page "post to a blog" came up and I thought I would seize the moment for an over due update...Honestly music and video give me a creative imperative...

Much love to Yasmin Kavanaugh (Savanna Marsh Mama) for the love she gave me a week ago

In Jesus Name
Amen Everybody

Change Is Now-We Are A Movement

Becoming a hollywood producer...

Esperanza Spalding - Black Gold (feat. Algebra Blessett) on Vimeo

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Napiera Groves -FORCE

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Black Star "You Already Knew"

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Pictures...

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Masika Katsuva...Strong Woman

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Feeding Off The Love Of The Land by Stevie Wonder (With Strings)

I AM STILL STANDING !

Spare The Rod And Humiliate The Child?

Who Devastated the Congo ?

Change is Now - One Filmmakers POV w/Maurice Carney of FOTC 06/25 by Auteur 26 | Blog Talk Radio

Heather Russell - "Can't You call me on the phone?"

554 Days to Re-elect Barack Obama (5-2-11)

I Got the Music In Me-In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire (1979) Part 2

I Got the Music in Me...In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire(1979) Part 1.

Mos Def - Love

N'dea Davenport - Placement 4 The Baby {1998}

Kurt Elling - Steppin' Out (2011)

Fonzworth Bentley - Everybody HD

Conflict Minerals 101

The Voices of Conflict Minerals

Life Should Be Free

Hollywood Moms Speak out for Congo

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An Open Letter to Generation X...my peoples

Why We Love The President !!!!

You Gotta Be - Des'ree (lyrics)

Stealing Back 1993.... Sandwiched between Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison

On the Pulse of the Morning

Inaugural Poem

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

I graduated Tuskegee University in May of 1993 ...I was and am forever sandwiched between what these two women had to say that year....I rhetorically understood and appreciated what my two idols had to say that year but some 17 years late...I get it...I mean I really get it...

Nobel Lecture

This Is It (Kenny Loggins not MJ)

Fences and Progress pt 2

Fences and Progress

My OWN Show

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Hotels.com - Sponsored Post

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A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.