ROJONEKKU WORD FIGHTING ARTS
Rojonekku is a style of word fighting arts taught by me,
Raven McMillian (aka Raven Mack) to various demographics of the Universal
Underclass as a means of empowerment. A general socio-economic condition of the
Universal Underclass is local legislations usually make illegal normal
underclass means of survival, thus creating outlaws through normal living. The
goal of Rojonekku is to channel these natural Universal Underclass psychologies
and genetics into word fighting styles that are generally overlooked by local legislative
bodies, who prefer to use the Freedom Charade Technique to keep the masses
placated. Thus, word fighting can be disseminated throughout, in traditional
means as well as through the use of newer developing social media technologies,
without literally causing imprisonment.
I was born from trash psychologies and genetics, and it has
taken me hard uphill work for most of my nearly 40 years to recycle myself into
a positive enough force to not self-destruct, much less help others who come
from similar backgrounds gain power over their lives, even if nowhere else
other than the realm of the human word clusters that live inside our heads.
When the world around you is a prison, sometimes literal and sometimes
metaphorical, it’s probably a good idea to unlock the inner-worlds which go as
forever as outer space. Big picture of the forest, that’s the goal of
Rojonekku.
Inside that forest though, each tree cannot be a grandiose
utopian dream. For the Universal Underclasses, life is hard work. So the trees
of Rojonekku – the lessons I use with my students, the forms of writing we
share with each other, the forms of expression you see here before you – they
are all work. There is dirt and grime
and struggle in all of it, because that is what we come from. And instead of
feeling ashamed of this dirt and grime and struggle etched into our bloodlines
and scarring our insides, we need to embrace it, get the good out of it, and
discard the bad. This is what I was born into, so beyond my choice, that is
what my life’s work must be.
BEERBOX HAIKU PROJECT
I had for years kept this box full of scraps of magazines
cut to the same size, for so long I can’t even remember why. I think it used to
be to glue into a writing trigger notebook, but then it became its own thing.
At some other point, while deeply immersed in the rewarding life of being an
hourly housepainter, I fell in love with haiku again and decided, “I shall
write a thousand.” So I did, each one on its own notecard. As they started to
pile up, I wanted to highlight my favorites, but all I had laying around was
the box full of magazine pictures, as well as empty 12-pack boxes from my
family’s recycling bin. So in the haphazard way, I started making Beerbox Haiku
Plates.
Eventually, the plates piled up themselves, so I decided to
put them together as wall-hangings in groups of three plates. All told, 1000
haiku (only 900 of which were used on boxes), 225 empty 12-pack boxes (most of
which, unfortunately, I probably drank on my own, which in itself is 2700
beers), 75 total wall-hangings, not to mention the thousands of magazines
pilfered for images over the years. I am glad to say that at this point in my
life I no longer self-medicate with factory alcohol products, but piling these
haiku up in such a literal sense around me in my life was an important step in
moving beyond the self-medication/destruction tornado many Universal Underclass
people like myself get stuck inside of.
JUNKYARD PHOTOGRAPHIES
Haiku, being quick observational flashes, indirectly led me
to starting to take pictures of random roadside detritus along my life’s
meandering path. At first this was with a Polaroid, where I just took pictures
of old cars. But then Polaroid stopped making Polaroid film, and this became a
hot commodity amongst artsy types, thus pricing me out of that realm. It was
sort of cutting it close before they stopped making it, but I enjoyed the dirty
effect of Polaroids enough to justify it to myself. Once prices went black
market, I couldn’t.
We had multiple family digital cameras, so I took the older
one, which has always had a nice feel to it to me. It’s been dropped a number
of times so has a cracked bottom where the batteries/card are held in, and has
to be duct-taped together to keep the connection working. Thus it looks like a homemade
bomb. I bought a new digital Polaroid camera one time, thinking it would
continue the Polaroid lineage, but it failed to match the simple megapixel
beauty of the older digital camera. In fact, over time I have tried two other
newer, better digital cameras, one even suggested by an actual protographer
friend, but none of them gave me the happiness of the old ones weird settings.
These pictures started going up on my website one a day, and I would write a
gambleraku poem to go with them, and then they just started being their own
thing. It’s a very meditative experience for me, to just wander around the back
sides of the American Façade and take pictures of beautiful blight.
GAMBLERAKU GRAFFITI SCROLLS
Gambleraku is a three-line form of poetry with 7-syllables
in each line I started writing because I was feeling confined by the 5-7-5
standard westernized haiku structure, but do not support free form poetry, as
it is not workmanlike. Free form poetry is vacation from constraints, and my
life is all about constraints for the most part. My constraints have
constraints. But I started tinkering with the 7-7-7 structure and enjoyed the
flow of it, to use with my pictures I put on online. Somewhere along the way I
stopped putting them online, but then I found a roll of receipt paper for a gas
pump, and thought, “Wow, it would be fun to turn this into a graffiti scroll.”
So I am, little by little.
HAIKU RAILROAD SPIKES
Carving haiku into railroad spikes came to me as a great
modern recreation of the work of my favorite rapper – T’ang era Chinese rapper
Hanshan, who was a mountain hermit and scribbled poems into cliffs and caves.
Where I wander, there are no cliffs and few caves, but there are tons of
railroad spikes. These spikes are wild harvested from throughout Virginia,
wiped down with vinegar, and then a haiku I’ve written is painfully carved into
them, using an industrial back yard method that is loud and physical and really
great. These haiku are only used for the spike they are carved on, then gone,
so not only are no two alike, but that haiku is unique to that spike.
Additionally, railroad spikes are considered powerful
objects in southern hoodoo magic, often used to bless or protect properties.
The spikes are infused with the energy of labor, and for me also the spirit of
the railroad which has always plucked an outlaw nerve in American history. With
this southern hoodoo magic tradition in mind, where the spikes were placed at
the corners of a house or property with the pointed edge of the top pointed inwards,
I carve the haiku in such that the side with the pointed top edge is blank, and
can thus be pointed in the direction you need the haiku to shoot. Conceivably,
these haiku spikes could be driven into the ground with the point properly
directed, and the energy and spirit of the haiku would shoot in that direction.
There are aspects to Wilhelm Reich’s theory on orgone energy involved here as
well, and honestly I am afraid to really explain all that these haiku spikes
mean for fear of weakening their magic.
I am available for railroad spikes commission work for
individuals or properties on a larger scale. This can mean either special
requests, or a visit to your land or home, learning its history and your
history with it, getting a personal sense of the place, and composing and
carving original haiku in relation to the place. These are powerful objects,
either for marking a space, or for helping heal a place from past activities.
ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS
One Thousand Feathers is a pamphlet project I’ve recently
started that will involve the creation and dissemination of one thousand small
literature tracts over the course of the rest of my life. Having a father and a
father’s father who both died in their mid-40s, mostly from being caught in
that self-medication/destruction tornado that afflicts the Universal
Underclass, this project is a means for me to envision and shape the second
half of my life beyond the age of 40. This is a portion of my life that I
honestly did not believe would exist until recently, and I am excited to see
how it unfolds. You can learn more about how to make it unfold, literally
inside your hands, as it progresses, online.
CONTACT
Further information about all of these projects, or
questions, request, or commissions can be done at www.ravenmillian.com (web),
ravenmack@gmail.com (email), PO Box 270 Scottsville VA 24590 (mail), @SSVa_Raven (twitter), Rojonekku (google), or along the back roads of
Virginia (life). Thanks for your interest and support.
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