Part Two Mississippi Mud²

 

Q: Is there another way to express waking up instead of waking up? Because folk stay woke but folks stay folks?

A: Be aware. You can be a nigga and be aware. Look at Lil Jon and Eastside Boyz.

Q: What are they aware of?

A: I’m sure Little John and the Eastside Boyz are aware of the conditions that we’re in as people. They’re extremely intelligent. Look at Two Chains, he’s educated and I think that he is aware.

Q: So it the purpose of being awake one’s capability to pimp the system?

A: No, it’s to be able to promote a conscious way of thinking.

Q: And Lil Jon and Two Chains take advantage of that?

A: Definitely.

Q: How so?

A: The market to the uneducated and unaware but they have made attempts to elevate the consciousness of their audience through imagery and content. Two Chains, not Lil Jon [insert laughter].

Q: How do you keep your mind safe, considering sex and love are equally just as mental as they can be physical?

A: I don’t allow myself to be accessed by any and everything. I pick and choose what has access to my mind. I’m conscious and aware of what has access to my mind, at all times.

Q: Why?

A: With the wrong influence or message, I can act out or someone could act out. The influence could not be necessarily good for the community.

Q: Considering sex is why we’re here and it ensures future generations, why isn’t procreation more strategic?

A: Because we procreate with the phattest ass, who got the best hair, we’re not thinking about the future generation or the actual building of a nation or helping with the community—we just out here having sex because somebody look good or makes us feel good for a moment you’re not thinking about tomorrow.

Q: So you think that procreation is in the ball court of men?

A: No, it’s in the ball court of all of us that are involved in creating because it takes two to create.

Q: Can making love be just as pleasurable as having just sex?

A: It’s more pleasurable because it allows you to express emotionally something that you can’t express when you’re just fucking somebody. But we do like to fuck. Oh yea!

Q: Do you think rhetoric has altered our philosophies about sex and potentially love too?

A: I think Disney fucked us up. I think Disney got us all out here looking for princes and princesses and we waiting on these frogs that we’re lying next to, to turn. Sometimes you just got to love a frog for being a frog.

Q: That’s what Disney says, though.

A: Well, I never actually made it to the end of the movies.

Q: I mean when people talk about that, people refer back to Disney as if it’s completely unrealistic, like what part is unrealistic? The message is, don’t change yourself for love or anything. I mean it’s probably lost on children, but its there.

A: The part where Mansa Musa left back home in Timbuktu on an excursion and spread his wealth and wisdom through Africa. Can we get the version where Hannibal left his wife and children to go and assert dominance of his empire further into the Roman Empire and northern Africa? The real version of these heroes so that we can have some sort of realness in our culture. We still got brothers going off to war to build a bigger empire. We still sisters working 16-hour shifts to provide. We got Queen Assantewas and Hapshepsuts that’s taking over kingdoms. I don’t know what the fuck that got to do with the question, but it sounded awesome.

Q: Now, that this is the second rendition of Mississippi Mud what are people saying?

A: Everybody is excited. The whole city is buzzing, with excitement. They really want to be under the roof of that energy. People are more so talking about the energy and the art. [Insert inebriated long pause and laughter] Everyone is interested in going to this one. Everyone is talking about how necessary the event it is, the necessity of it.

Q: What are you hoping for, this time around that wasn’t present that first time?

A: More substance, we have a lot of sensation. We have to do a lot more to feed the substance of the event because, in African culture, our rituals and our celebrations they was always substance. It was not about the sensation, when we came to America we bought into the sensationalism. Everything we do is about sensation, everybody loves sex but there’s substance to an exchange of energy, physically and spiritually. And I want more of that to be in Mississippi Mud.

Q: What’s the substance?

A: The substance is frequency, energy. The substance is the connection. The substance is emotion and intimacy.

Q: The other day you posted an article about not having sex with anyone you do not want to become, how does that play a part into the substance? Is substance necessarily always good or is it bad too or bad for you?

A: In our original culture, there wasn’t bad or good, there was balance. So, if you became somebody or allowed some spirit you didn’t want to be there you balanced it out by finding somebody that could correct your imbalance. It was about a chemical reaction, physical reaction, science, and mathematics. Now, it’s like I like you, you like me now check the box for yes or no.

Q: Do you think you’re balanced?

A: I think I am extremely balanced.

Q: Were you always balanced or have you become balanced?

A: I’ve become balanced.

Q: As a black man, what has been your experience non-sexually in regards to sexuality?

A: Being a father, that’s sexual but not sexual. I have to love somebody beyond physical gratification. I have to love my child and her mother for who they are now, for who they are going to become; no matter what.

Q: Have you loved that way before?

A: Yea, my mama, and my family but not the way I love my child.

Q: No, no, I don’t think you can compare that, what I’m saying have you loved without the satisfaction of the flesh?

A: The mother of my child, that’s why she’s the mother of my child.

Q: How do you hope for people to evolve from the experience that you are providing, rather it be sexually or not?

A: I just hope they get home safe.

Q: How may loving your body or yourself in general, become an important ingredient to sexual freedom?

A: You can’t tell somebody what makes you feel good if you don’t know what makes you feel good.

Q: In your humble opinion, how do we take ownership of our bodies?

A: Dancing naked in the mirror to traditional African music, intoxicated, drunk; and monitor yourself spiritually.

Q: How do, you, monitor yourself spiritually? I mean you can’t answer for everybody else. Is that a secret?

A: No, it’s not a secret. I monitor myself by finding my insecurities and strengthening them.

Q: You mean strengthening them or alleviating them?

A: I haven’t got to the point where I can just totally get rid of them. I strengthen myself.

Q: What if we took “ownership” of our spirits?

A: We are spirits having a human (physical) experience. We have to remind ourselves that we are spiritual beings. We’d be better off.

Q: If we were all surviving what would love look like then?

A: Bigger.

Q: In what, capacity?

A: It wouldn’t be monogamous.

Q: So if we were surviving, we still would need polygamy?

A: Yes. We would need monogamy as well.

Q: When I was researching on what to ask you, I came across an article of a person that found monogamy to be hard, difficult and something he didn’t prescribe too but also that it was an advanced version of love. He thought that it took great courage, that society has been judging monogamy the wrong way. We always bring up nature and the past but if the things around are to evolve than the things in us should evolve too.

A: True.

Q: What do you think about that?

A: Not all evolution has positive effects on nature. Our technology is an evolution but it hasn’t had a positive effect on our nature. There are some positive things about monogamy but there are some negative aspects as well. We have placed everybody in a box and that we expect everybody to be the honest truth. If we want to love somebody unconditionally, you have to love them for who they are and how they love. Some people are not monogamous, they are polyamorous. Some people are not heterosexual, they’re homosexuals. Some people are not heterosexual or homosexual, they’re binary or bisexual. Some people are asexual. I don’t think that it should be just one thing to express the love you have for a person.

Q: So you think the box has turned us into liars?

A: Yes…I don’t think that the box has turned us into liars. I think that box has provided us with the opportunity to fail.

Q: You don’t think that if there was more truth the opportunity to fail would cease to exist?

A: It would still be there. It will always be there but with more facts the less chance there is of failing. Relationships fail because of no communication and less facts, more lies. When you have that, you’ll have a failed relationship because the two parts can’t relate, they can’t connect. There’s a disconnect.

Q: If two can communicate, they can find out if they don’t relate and move on to the next.

A: Exactly, or grow as a whole.

Q: If we were all surviving and loving the way we want to love or need to love, what would it feel like?

A: Selfish. Whole. Ambiguous. Elusive.

Q: Sexual freedom, free love is selfish?

A: Yes, because under the constraints of monogamy it’s about subduing that freedom.

Q: Well, my question was not in reference to monogamy. Because sexual freedom, there is no restraint. To me, sexual freedom is choice without judgement.

A: That’s deep.

Q: But if you can’t communicate what you want or you’re afraid to communicate what you want, you can’t choose without considering others.

A: True.

Q: So again, if we were all surviving…

A: We’re all surviving now.

Q: No. Let me rephrase the question. If we had all survived meaning no more need for hustles, no more struggling, what would love look like?

A: It would look like peace, happiness. It would look like Umoja. It would look like dashikis in the summer time. It would look like children running through a fire hydrant. It would look like double rainbows. It would like primitive peace.

Q: But that happens.

A: It does happen.

Q: It doesn’t happen for everybody, though, but it happens.

A: And it doesn’t happen for a long time. It would look like a dot within a circle.

Q: The dot would be content with being the dot or would it want to become the circle?

A: It would all be one.

Q: What does that feel like?

A: A Basquiat or a Prince song. A prom in lingerie.

Q: How in the hell does that feel, lol?

A: Being covered in Mississippi Mud. [Insert laughter]

Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

A: Ben Jones parties go hard and I’m drunk as fuck. Yo, you got to get an interview by The Karamoko Way. This shit was fun.

Mississippi Mud: Saturday, June 18th, 2016 10pm-4a
Club Reign 2055 Gratiot Detroit, MI    @ St. Aubin , East of 75

FOR MORE INFORMATION BEN JONES CAN BE CONTACTED THROUGH FACEBOOK MESSENGER (BENJONESDETROIT) or by email: benjamin_jones@live.com