fragments of an attempted writing.

Gil Scott-Heron, R.I.P.







Two things that tie me, as it were, to Gil - he spent much of his childhood in Jackson, TN, not to far from Memphis and a town my parents used to live in, and he went to college at Lincoln University in PA, where my dad worked many moons ago and where me and my buddy Nathan used to pick crab apples in front of Langston Hughes Memorial Library.

4 comments:

  1. Me, I'm more of an Amiri Baraka fan, but GSH was talented. The Atlantic did a really interesting piece on him last year, giving a glimpse into his crack addiction and steady decline.

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  2. Doh, The New Yorker, not The Atlantic

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  3. Three excellent clips, especially the last message to today's messengers, product of more recent times. Still sharp and to the point despite the rocky road he's travelled. Just read Susan Rosenberg's 'An American Radical; Prisoner in My Own Country'. Tomorrow going to visit a friend in their 19th year of incarceration.

    MJ

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  4. There's a decent obit at telegraph uk. It is no suprise however to see a pile of venomous reactions to GSH's death. Both a leftist and a black man in america with a voice.

    MJ

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