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Paradox Interview
interview 0177 added
07.02.04 words: Nikesh
technical:
QED
SPOKEN WORD SIRES 1: PARADOX
AND THE EVOLUTION REVOLUTION
Rappers are two to a dozen. Anyone can spit a few macho lines and hopefully
have some sort of understanding of rhythm, even music. There is a revolution
happening in London at the moment, with the expanding and evolving spoken word
poetry scene. As someone on the frontline of it, I can only say that the talent
out there is absolutely astounding. First, in a series of interviews with spoken
word/slam poets, is Paradox, the dreadlocked prophet from Galactic Central. In
following months, we will be catching up with shortMAN (featured on Ty’s
“Upwards”), El-Crisis amongst other movers and.shakers.
 Why spoken word poets? What have they got to do with hip-hop, with UK hip-hop?
Everything. The focus on lyrics and delivery is an important one, especially
when it comes to something as fast and as rhythmic as rapping. Ask any rapper
what makes a good rapper and they will give you the same answers: Diction,
clarity, communication, charisma, passion and lyrical skills. The ability to
paint pictures with words. Performance poetry takes away the music and the focus
is on you, the microphone and the audience. You have no choice but to make sure
everyone is feeling your delivery. You have to live your piece, you can’t hide
behind a beat, a fill or a sample. Being a good spoken word poet will only make
people a better rapper… because once you can deliver some lyrics convincingly,
accapella, imagine the strength that will come when you back that delivery with
music. Every rapper should learn their trade, take their time and practice their
craft, practice it in different settings and make sure that they believe what
they are saying. This is what UKHH hopes to achieve with this series of
interviews with spoken word artists. We hope to highlight a scene where rappers
become poets become better rappers.
First up is Paradox. When I first saw Paradox, with his long dreadlocks and his
green khaki military wear, I was expecting an explosion of angry polemic.
Instead, when he opened his mouth and his clear, precise and deliberated voice
began, I heard a well-spoken, comic, fiercely intelligent and cosmically crazy
poet who was dedicating his whole life to changing himself to change things. His
easy approachable persona and his well researched, well-written words are
symbolic of a thriving spoken word scene. And his relatively new appearance on
the scene and his life story make him a good person to start…
OK, First off, explain the concept of Paradox.
Paradox is a prophet who in his previous life worked, as Bill Hicks would say,
as a whore in the capitalist gang-bang, in the media and advertising industry. I
would say, rose to the level of, even though I don’t see that as rising in any
way, rose to the level of managing director of a media-buying organisation,
earning 70 grand, nice car, nice flat, all the rest of it, well-travelled and
literally woke up one morning… literally woke up one morning… and realised that
I was leading a hollow, empty and shallow life. Even though I had all the
material things, and status and success that one imagines would make one happy,
I wasn’t… and, ever since I was kid, I never thought I was from this planet,
never thought I came from my family, always felt like I didn’t belong. Went
through a series of epiphanies… I would describe epiphanies as remembering
something you’ve forgotten for a thousand years. I had a series of those… I look
back with hindsight now and recognise I was channelling direct galactic
information from galactic central. So I decided to give up all my material life
and ambition. I went to live in Battersea Park for seven months, sold the Big
Issue, unconditioned myself and started writing poetry... was in fact given
poetry by the stars and the trees and the birds in the park. And now, I’ve never
been happier, I feel fulfilled and self-realised and now I’m just doing what I
was born to do… which is be a messenger and a prophet.
"...So I decided
to give up all my material life and ambition. I went to live in Battersea Park
for seven months, sold the Big Issue, unconditioned myself and started writing
poetry... was in fact given poetry by the stars and the trees and the birds in
the park...”
So, how long have you been on the poetry scene?
I’ve been writing poetry since June 2002 and I started performing in August
2002…so, kinda went to the Bug Bar in August 2003, so I’ve been on the circuit
since then.
So you started at the famous “Singers and Poets” night (First Wednesday of
the month) at the Bug Bar in Brixton?
Actually, the first place I started was a night called Wormworld at the Foundry
in Old Street. That was the first place I started. It was quite a rough place
but a great place to learn the trade, sort of thing… and then I discovered the
Bug Bar, which was completely different. It had people like shortMAN and
Phenzwaan and Crisis and then I started performing at the 491 Gallery in
Leytonstone, which is like an anarchist, new age, hippie, radical atmosphere.
Which is good, I like that mixture. And then places like Synergy. Actually, I
should explain the Paradox thing… Life is a paradox, everything is a paradox.
Umm, I often say, one of my things is that human beings don’t know what they’re
doing because in order to know what you’re doing, you have to know what you’re
trying to do. Motive is everything, purpose is everything. If you don’t know the
purpose of life then you cannot know what you’re trying to do. And the reason we
don’t know the purpose of life is because we don’t know who we are. We think we
are our bodies and thus, we think the purpose of life is to survive. Umm,
however, we aren’t our bodies, we’re more than our bodies as any disabled person
will tell you. You might lose the use of your body but you’re still you. Who we
are in fact is everything and nothing, which is a paradox. We are part of the
whole, which makes us localised infinity. And not only is the part contained
within a whole but the whole is contained within a part, which is a paradox. And
the purpose of life is to self-realise, which is to know that you are everything
and nothing. And that’s Paradox. I know the purpose of my life because I know
who I am and I know what I’m doing.
How would you describe your style? What percentage are you a written poet and
what percentage are you a performance poet?
I’ll answer that bit first… zero written, one hundred percent performance…
although people keep saying I should write stuff down, and that’s something I’m
going to start doing. Actually put my work out in written form. My performance
style? Hmmm, well, I have this paradox in my appearance because I have dreads
and I speak the way I do. That’s an immediate paradox. People often say, “wow,
that’s the way you sound?” my style is kinda like, self-Mickey-taking really. I
often open with a line that I am a cosmic twat. That’s my paradox. On one hand,
I’m an agent of the cosmos, and on the other, I’m a bit of a twat. Because,
number one: I am a bit of a twat. Anyone who gives up a seventy grand a year job
and goes to live in the park must be a bit of a twat. But also, the fool is the
wise man. It’s the whole thing about the fool. To everyone else, I look crazy
but to me, everyone else looks crazy to me. I’m quite happy to be called a fool,
cos, most importantly, a lot of what I say is very challenging. I talk about the
end of time, I am an end-of-time prophet, I talk about the fact that people
don’t know what they’re doing and the fact that they’re slaves to their minds
and blah, blah, blah. Those are challenging things. So, in a poetic setting,
it’s good for people to realise that I don’t take myself too seriously and I’m
not actually saying “I’m better than you.” It’s just my job to tell you the
truth. The truth hurts and because I’m not a angry person, I like people to have
fun and so I want people to enjoy hearing the message so it suits me to have
this Mickey-taking joker angle as well as the hardcore prophet angle, so I
paradoxically try and mix those together.
"...human beings don’t
know what they’re doing because in order to know what you’re doing, you have to
know what you’re trying to do...”
Well, watching you perform, I noticed that for every ten truths you tell,
there’s a punchline and it’s kinda like Bill Hicks in a way…
Well he’s my hero… Well, when I was working in advertising… you know, he has
this line “Anyone who works in marketing or advertising, kill yourself.” I took
that quite literally. I killed my identity. So, props to Bill Hicks.
When I see you performing, you look like you’re rapping off the top of your
head, freestyling poetry. How much is rehearsed and how much is improvised?
Wow, well, I’m really flattered to hear that it looks improvised, cos it is
completely rehearsed. One of the things I need to grow and evolve into is the
ability to freestyle, which I’ve found, you know, when I’m at a party and I’m
stoned, I find I have the ability to do… but, it’s one of those things I’m
afraid… it usually takes me five days to write a poem. I’ll write the bulk of it
and then I’ll spend five days just saying it. Dylan Thomas once said that it was
about “the shape of sounds” and that’s what I’m into, the shape of sounds. I
only know a poem’s good if when I say it, the rhythm and sound is good and
that’s why I’ll say it over and over again and I’m constantly reiterating it and
rewriting it. So by the end of those five days, I’ve pretty much absorbed it and
learnt it. And then I rehearse it over and over again in a defined and
structured format. I have to hold my hands up and say it’s rehearsed.
Isn’t that the talent of a performer? To be able to look improvised when it’s
actually quite polished…?
Like I said, I’m amazed that people think that… it’s completely rehearsed!
Sell spoken word and slam poetry to a hip-hop audience…
 This is not to say that aren’t messengers in the hip-hop field and there are. In
the London poetic scene, it’s packed with people I’d call messengers, people
whose poetry is focussed on social justice, evolution, the evolution of ideas.
Umm, and people whose poetry, UK hip-hop is something I used to follow. I’m 37
now, when I was 21 I used to be a rapper, before the career thing. And so, the
days of London Posse and Hijack and even earlier than that, Demon Boyz. But I’ve
lost touch with UK hip-hop, certainly over the last few years. So, I’m not in a
really great position to comment on the current scene. But as far as I can see,
there’s a lot of shit being taught. The only thing that is relevant, the most
important issue in our time is that we’re coming to the end of Western
Civilisation. Now for a lot of people, that’s a frightening event. But for a lot
of other people, Western Civilisation itself has been a frightening event. So,
I’m very pleased and excited to be living in the most exciting time in history.
All the individual people who have struggled for justice over the last thousand
years, we are the inheritors of that. And we’re gonna be here when it happens.
That’s the only thing worth talking about to me. And there are a lot of fucking
talented poets talking about what’s important. Which is that our entire society
is dysfunctional and primitive in what I’d call galactic terms. Human beings
still solve their problems through violence, human beings are still indebted to
wage slavery, because of our false economic system. And we’re poisoning and
destroying our planet. I mean, compared to those issues, everything else is
probably irrelevant. Not irrelevant but all the problems people talk of are
related to that. And so, I’m all about cause… you can’t solve a problem till you
understand its cause. And our first cause is the state of our consciousness.
Everything comes from mind and ideas. Spoken word poets recognise that. If you
wanna hear something that expands your mind and challenges the way you’re living
and the world you’re living in, spoken word is the thing.
Where are the links between spoken word and hip-hop?
Well, the links lie in the fact that hip-hop was it. It came from the streets
and social injustice in the ghetto. The source is the same. At the end of the
day, the rhythm and the beat, the timbre and the tempo of hip-hop is phat, it’s
infectious. As I’ve seen spoken word evolving over the past year, it’s becoming
more hip-hop. A lot of spoken word artists are putting their poems to music.
It’s not the same as the simple four-four beat so it’s not exactly the same. I’m
interested in doing this actually. The poet, shortMAN talks about “Rap-oetry”
creating a different genre, by writing poems to the rhythm in your head instead
of a pre-existing rhythm like in rap. So I think the link is, the tempo and the
rhythm coming from the type of things we’re talking about. A lot of spoken word
artists are ex-rappers who have now evolved into spoken word. Not to diss
rappers but maybe they found the medium restrictive. There’s only so many things
you can say do or express in a song because a song tends to have verse chorus…
structure. Singers always say to me, “I want to write poetry cos there’s more
scope in what I can say. “ I always think, damn I wish I could sing! Poetry
always more scope to explore subjects.
"...On one hand, I’m an
agent of the cosmos, and on the other, I’m a bit of a twat. Because, number one:
I am a bit of a twat. Anyone who gives up a seventy grand a year job and goes to
live in the park must be a bit of a twat...”
How did you come to start writing poetry?
Well, when I first started writing poetry, I was living in Battersea Park, in a
sleeping bag, under a tree, and so I think the thing that differentiates me from
other poets is that I don’t do anything. I’ve completely dedicated my life to
being a poet. I literally spend all my mind time, walking round, thinking,
breathing, reading and writing. I used to walk around and stop people in the
street and ask if they wanted to hear a poem. So, I fancied myself as a street
poetic terrorist. That helped my confidence. So when I started doing gigs I
wasn’t that nervous cos I’d tried it on the street first. When you have people
look at you like you’re mad and say “No”, when you’ve got an audience sitting
there ready to hear you… there’s no reason to be scared. Because I wasn’t so
nervous, I was able to observe myself performing and I learnt that the most
important thing for me to do, was to focus on my breathing and my inner-self and
not give a shit whether the audience liked it or not. And when I found I wasn’t
focussing on the audience, I did a better performance. I started at open mics…
there used to be like one or two a week, but now the scene’s grown so much
there’s five or six a week, and now I get bookings. I make CDs of my poetry to
sell at these events and they’re my main source of income. I don’t need much of
an income, I don’t pay rent, I don’t have many material possession cos I don’t
need them, I don’t have a bank account and I don’t pay tax. I am an outlaw. I
live in a squat…
We’ve already touched upon it, but as a poet, how do you view hip-hop in its
current state?
Well, the music is infectious. It’s the world’s most popular music and with good
reason. It’s cosmic. It transcends the rational mind. The flavour, the beat, you
can’t help it. In general terms, Eminem is a great example, he’s a great rapper.
But my whole thing is, I’m 37 I have two teenage kids and my thing is adults
have fucked the world up for kids. You can’t blame kids for being rebellious and
for hearing the things he says. On the other hand, there’s no solution in there.
Pointing out the problem without pointing out the solution doesn’t get us
anywhere. So I agree with a lot of things he says, which is ultimately adults
are hypocrites. You have created this hypocritical world and you expect children
to behave perfectly when you do all the things you expect them not to do. So I
couldn’t agree more. But they don’t offer solutions, certainly not ones based on
the mind or on activism or positivity. That’s my problem with hip-hop, yes, tell
about what your life is like with all the social injustice that’s going on, but
offer a solution. And I know there are artists who are conscious and offer
solutions, people like Wu Tang, Blackalicious, but they’re not in the majority.
The majority are all playing Babylon’s game. A lot of rappers have fallen into
the whole MTV, girls with big booties thing… the power elite, that enslave
humanity… laugh at them… they’re their puppets. And that’s the most popular
hip-hop. Because the music is so good in itself but the messages tied to the
music… I would love to see The Neptunes or Timbaland produce something
conscious. Because the music is phenomenal. There are artists doing it, but they
are in the minority. People are being inspired by these guys. So when the
majority are talking shit, the youngsters end up talking shit. So you got to
inspire the youngsters to think about getting out of that situation instead of
worrying about making a lot of money as a rapper.
"...The earth is a
living conscious being, and she has made a decision to evolve to the next level
of her existence and that leaves humanity with a simple choice. Consciously
evolve with the earth or get off...”
Why
choose the spoken word over the written word?
That’s a personal thing. I know poetry can be powerful. Good poets will tell you
that when you’re performing, you become the poem. The impact of that on someone,
the energy you transmit is something. Hakkin Bay, the anarchist writer, talks
about something called immediatism. As in, I-MEDIA-TISM. Meaning, getting rid of
the middleman. Because eighty percent of the world’s media is owned by five
companies, which is why we get the same messages on them. In order for an artist
to reach their audience in this world today, if the message is mediated by any
corporate entity, the message will be commoditised, homogenised, or lost.
Immediatism is about direct art to the audience. From my heart to me mouth to
your ears to your heart. Publishing independently, standing up is the most
immediate form basically and doing a poem to someone. Even without the music,
it’s pure sound vibration, from one energy source to the other. That’s why I
like spoken word.
On
to lighter issues now… what is the sexiest word in the English language?
(after much thought.) YES… yes… “Can I fuck you?” “YES!” “Do you like that?”
“YES.” See what I’m saying. Always turns me on.
What advice would you give to up-and-comers?
 The best advice I’d give is… write poetry you can live and live poetry you
write. I know people write mostly about what they know, but live it too. I
suppose that applies more to people writing conscious poetry than people writing
about gun culture. If you’re writing conscious poetry, live it or people will
know you’re being a hypocrite. Live up to your words!
Final thoughts, I will say this. When I went to live in the park, I communed
with the birds and the trees and they gave me a message and it’s my duty to pass
this message on… “The earth is a living conscious being, and she has made a
decision to evolve to the next level of her existence and that leaves humanity
with a simple choice. Consciously evolve with the earth or get off.”
Any
shameless plugs before you go?
Yeah, I want to shamelessly plug, the night of light and inspiration that I put
on called “Gods and Goddesses” in recognition of the fact that every human being
is a god in embryo. It’s on the first and third Thursday of every month at 330
Kennington Lane at a club called the Fringe. Poets, comedy, DJs, galactic
decoding, anarchist conspiracy fact agents… you can get hold of my CDs by
emailing GodsnGoddesses@hotmail.com.
over the last year, I produced five CDs and I’m about to bring out a new one
called “Let’s Bring the Bliss In.”
As well as Paradox’s own night, he regularly appears at the Bug Bar’s Singers
and Poets night (First Wednesday of the month), and V.O.I.C.E. (First Monday of
the month at the Lounge in Brixton). These are just the tip of the iceberg. New
open mics are springing up all the time and the scene is at its strongest.
Paradox is a great example of the thriving scene. His well-crafted wordplay and
his strong message are both moving and magic at the same time. The
self-confessed agent from Galactic Central is beaming down missives from above.
Let’s hope he’s here to stay…
-
Nikesh Shukla
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