B̲e̲astie B̲oys – Check Your Head (Full Album)
The very first title of a WordPress blog [started perhaps in 2019, but blogging had become REAL WORK and therefore abandoned] was/is micaphonechex, stolen from the Beastie Boys’ 1992 alum Check Your Head, and it’s something mi naño and great friend, Enrique Lavin and I named our talks sometime after I left the country for the first time in June 1993.
With even short phone calls from Quito, Ecuador costing $20 back then, talking was out of the question!
Epistolary communications took off. Thankfully, within a few years, developed nations had Internet. It wouldn’t reach Ecuador until 1995, and then only for the rich or those running businesses.
Rique, and former Long Beach roommate Larry, came to visit in 1995 and when I wasn’t teaching, I was able to trek with them a couple of times.
“It’s like we haven’t missed a beat, picking up right where the conversation left off.”
I get this often from friends and family.
A gift, I have no idea how we’ve been able to maintain these “on-going” conversations.
Regardless, those 2- and 4-hour rap sessions were lifelines especially when my Spanish had improved tremendously, yet speaking intellectually about books, politics, relationships, social issues, how to cure the earth, sex, drugs, who’s stronger Popeye or Mighty Mouse, and MUSIC, baby!! in English was like breathing air for the first time.
These were our first Head Checks.
From then on, and costs of International calling plummeting with the adoption of cheap Internet, we were able to connect for Head Checks periodically throughout the year.
With the arrival of girlfriends, kids, parents growing older and LIFE, often conversations cover these extremely important events and moments in one another’s lives, yet we learned to simply say, “Head Check” when time was running short or when we felt, “Yaddi, yaddi, ya…let’s cut to the chase, where’s your head?”
Rique, thank for that New Year’s Eve call last month Dec. 31, 2021 and for all your annual End-of-the-Year Gratitude Letters. The call was unexpected and just what I’d needed. I was on one of the Nubian Islands; Elefantine, in the middle of the Nile off the cost of Aswan, Egypt. Again, though I was surrounded by fellow travelers, English the common language, connecting with you was like AIR.
Soul Brother’s Fire
Brother Poet: Mark Quinn
Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be “followed-by”, guided by and cheered on by my big brother Mark Quinn.
Goosebumps
Mark’s musical talents and his poetry have helped sustain and lift up many for decades. He has self-published a couple of books of poetry and, with his permission and to his utter delight, I used several while teaching in Thailand, Vietnam and China, among other destinations.
His words are transcendental and I’ve tried to read them aloud in a way that honors and epitomizes his layered sentiments.
I want to share just one of the many letters Mark has sent to me (and my family – and presumably dozens of others), similar correspondence. This particular one responds to my impressions of arriving and working in Bangkapi, Thailand, right after my massive FAILURE at living in New Zealand literally liquefied with the earthquakes of 2010 – 2011. That rocky beginning to my 10-year-P4L ending abruptly, placing me in a classroom of 8-year-olds! I’d written a lengthy letter chronicling that 13-month shift capping it off with the difficulties of learning Thai, derived from Sanskrit.
Mark and all the Quinns, thank you!
From Mark Quinn Nov. 21, 2012
Some of the great works we have read on/for our Search, ie The Tao, The I Ching, Mencius, were translated from the Sanskrit. Speaking of you, brother Shawn, turning you students on to writing journals, I hope, pray and suggest, their Teacher, Shawn L. Carson, write a book. Your travels, adventures of staying alive, tempered by the main crux of the book- the information, written in my younger brother Shawn’s eloquent 200k vocabulary, of the Teaching Experience Overseas. The caste systems, cultures and their rules – if you’re smart, you’ll follow them.
That was Super Cool getting the good word from you, dear Shawn. I am thumb texting you. Getting laptop soon- then I shall send you a trip or two about how I have witnessed the Eternal, bleed into our temporal lives. God bless you and your good works over there. God (I have a personal entity I conjure my Lord Jesus The Christ, lo, yet seek always, His “Father”, the Eternal). One way we mere mortals can get close to lifting the veil by being…
Here Now Be Here Now Be.
God keep you safe and well. Be in touch.
Love and Peace.
I give thanks for Inspiration / It Guides my mind / Along the way
These Head Checks and hundreds more from phone calls and letters from Michele, Bobby, Joe, Ed, Alicia, Steven, Emmett, Jeanneth, Carlos, Mario, Sasha and others have been the AIR when I’m out of breath or simply yearning to speak freely with people who pick up the conversations right we we left off.
Not surprisingly, the next cut on the Beasties’ album is called, Gratitude. Lighten Up, and Finger Lickin’ Good
So, Whatcha, Whatcha WANT?!!!
~I’ll pass The Mic to D. / For a Fistful of Truth!~
Shawn L. Carson @doepicshiiiit4138 @micaphonechex
Do Epic Shit 