Thing is - one thing that struck me, at the time, I mean, after we'd seen that movie and had talked about it and stuff ...
see, we cant all be gangstas (thank god), but doesnt mean we dont all have the same drives, motivations, urges inside some place still, to come up when the context makes them so.
I remembered (talking about that film), that when i first came to a2k - or a little while
after i first came to a2k, i should say - i was pretty damn intense - angry - tense. I was so very surprised when craven, a few months later, called me "the diplomat" of a2k ... because i distinctly remember a period of time (which may have resurfaced a little bit this past week or two/three), where what i was basically doing here was - battling. I mean - bottom line - there was (and sometimes is) much of the same drive.
Think about it. He's on stage, he's listening to the other guy - he must absorb a maximum of information, text, points he can pick up on, pounce on, react to, outdo, put to rest - and then
do that, on pure, instant improvisation, with maximum impact - and all he's got to do it with is his capacity for
words. Hands up how many of you (if you've ever been on the Politics threads) have ever caught yourself posting in much of that mode.
Like I said, there was a span of time where I did mostly that - even if, apparently, I phrased it all politely enough still, in the eyes of some - the mode was still the same. Focused, concentrated - scrutinising the opponent's submissions, seeking, analysing what the main point is, what the points are that are not right - picking up the core of what you disagreed with, the thing that did it - and hone and hone and hone your own message in response, until it
fits, until youve made it so as to - positively
neutralise that objectionable core - and what you say
stands. I think I went for that and succeeded in it some - half dozen, a dozen times, perhaps. Until its the other's turn again, and you can expect him to do the very same thing, and beat you at it. Crudeness or rudeness of argument has nothing to do with it - the most carefully phrased posts can sometimes have been drafted for max impact.
Cant say thats what these forums were meant for - or that thats what I came here for, at all, or like to catch myself doing - or even that I was always any good at it. But it was definitely in there, at least part of the time - the parallel was striking enough, once I'd seen it.
(I've also often enough asked myself
why - especially if, some late night, I eyed myself up in puzzlement, when spending some exorbitant amount of time on drafting a post on god knows what - the state of buddhism in uzbekistan - animal abuse in birma ... lord knows it was different on abuzz - i was never like that, there. Yeh, in the beginning, when I came to post on the Presidential elections - but soon I found comfort and whimsical creativity there, instead. Here I still find myself battling sometimes - too often.
What was going on, in my life or in my head, that made me need to do that? There was a time when I felt so extremely stifled about tackling things in real life - when, for a variety of private reasons, I felt I could never speak out, speak up, about my feelings, problems - my thoughts, even, when it concerned my personal life - I thought that may have been the reason why it was so very important to at least be able to speak out - phrase, draft and complete - my thoughts about Bangladeshi Leninism to some comparatively undisprovable perfection. Could well be that. Or, alternatively, the sheer need to assert yourself - to enter and fight the kind of battles, the equivalents of which in real life you could not afford to even take up ...
And how different are politicians from those hip hop battlers, when it comes to personal motivation? How much personal issues of intensity are invested in their verbal battles?
Moreover, how different, yet how near are the realms of words and
real weapons - how easy do they bleed through into another? 'S been enough political radicalinskis who grabbed guns instead of metaphors to try finish off the fight ... perhaps thats the same kind of bleed-through whot happened to hip-hop, too, when the battle on the stage - itself already, and originally, a mere sublimation of real-life turf violence - inversely bled through into settling on-stage accounts with off-stage weapons, with rival hip hop crews killing each others figureheads off ...
Eminem -- When the music stops -- wrote:see me leap out, pull a piece out,
**** shootin', I'm just tryin' to knock his teeth out
**** with me now bitch, let's see you freestyle,
talk is cheap, ************,
if you really feelin' froggish, leap
yo Slim, you gon' let him get away with that?
He tried to play you, you can't let him skate with that!
man I hate this crap,
this ain't rap,
this is crazy
the way we act,
when we confuse hip hop
with real life
when the music stops
).
lessee, where did this start? 
