In this episode host Tracy Rigdon sits down for a chat with good friend Damien Lamar, Multi-Disciplinary Artist, Digital Creator, Emerging Author & Music Producer.
Tracy Rigdon:
“So Damien, it has been a long minute since I’ve seen you. You appeared on the Contrast project back in Jacksonville in our studio in seasons one and two. And since then, you have taken a project that you talked about earlier on then during those days and you’ve stepped it up a notch. So how the heck have you been?”
Damien Lamar:
“I have been exquisite.”
Damien Lamar:
“…I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching, a lot of growth and self healing, a lot of reading and after leaving Florida and moving to New Hampshire, I kind of found myself here, which was good. And that helped me to really fast track this project.”
“…So the book is of course, Time Travelers Digest and Anthology. And it is the print version of the magnum opus. So when I was on the contrast project before, I was talking about the new adventures of Professor Clock, which was really the fundamental basis of the project where it all started 12. years ago when I was dealing with grief and I wanted to create this music and this sound. And then when I moved to New Hampshire, my partner said, you know, you really should flesh the story out. Like where are your characters? Like tell me a little bit more about why you made the music. And I started journaling and the journaling led me to, as a matter of fact, a book by the name of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. forces you to get up in the morning and you write your morning pages. And I was doing that in my room before I even hit the ground. And I got this bug where some days I couldn’t stop writing. And it just started coming and coming and coming and coming. And next thing you know, I’m like, oh my god, I have a novel over 500 pages!”
“And it’s wild. So that’s how it all happened. And The music is of course the bed or the soundtrack to the overarching project.”
“Now, of course, I loved creative writing in high school and I’ve always, I’ve been a songwriter for a long time, but writing a novel, that’s a whole different world, you know? And I think about all the times where I posted on Facebook and a friend of mine would actually say, he pulled me to the side, he’s like, listen man, you share some really amazing stuff on Facebook, why don’t you save that for your book? So, and, but that was my own personal writing and it had nothing to do with Time Travels Digest so I realized that I was a writer, you know.”
“I Created the First Afrocentric Time Travel Magazine and Novel!” – Damien
Readers will explore the possible effects of time travel on history, society, and the individual.
The novel is a thrilling adventure that will captivate readers from start to finish and leave them wanting more with its diverse cast of characters, unexpected twists, and unpredictable finale.
Damien Lamar – https://timetravelersdigest.com/magazine
“…I looked up here in January and I was like, Okay, I have so I have literally, I have over 2000, maybe 3000 images that I’ve rendered that I haven’t even published. And I’m like, what can I do with this? How can I frame these images around this story and use this to be able to convey the story because we do live in a very visual society, we people like to visually see things. A lot of people don’t want to read. We’ll rather text the emoji or we would rather just see an image before we read. We would rather see a video before we actually read something. So that’s why I sort of led with the magazine first. It does have in the magazine, it’s got short stories. There are, uh, care. All the characters have a profile where you see their face. You can read about who they are. Some of the characters are writing letters where originally that was kind of how I wanted the book to be, a collection of the student letters, because the students are learning at the academy for time travelers in Egypt. And the protagonist is the one that’s teaching them the art of what’s called temporal science. And I wanted to be able to take these images and put them into play so that… they can of course even spark some of my writing. So if you see this guy, he’s not even in the book at all. He just looks good for the cover.”
“Temporal Visions” is the talk of the town! Its original artwork and thoughtful stories have resonated with readers from around the globe.
“Despite its limited run, the magazine has gained an avid cult following and continues to be a must-have for African art and culture enthusiasts.”
We later talked about the political climate in the state of Florida, specifically, the drag show bans.
Tracy: “…one of the things that, uh, has been on pretty much every one of our podcasts and even my audio podcast where I don’t have video, uh, I talk about, uh, uh, a lot of the things that are going on in Florida besides arts and culture and all that, but. what’s currently happening with the Florida legislature and some of the bills being passed, it’s affecting arts and culture and it’s affecting people’s livelihoods. Not just the ban on the books and the whole battle, the whole battle with Disney World and all that that’s going on, but more recently as well, the ban on drag queens and specifically what flared that up was the drag story hours.”
These bans would affect drag shows, pride parades, etc…
“That’s gonna really affect pride parades because cities won’t be able to issue permits.”
The economic impact could be devastating.
Some “…cities that normally would be celebrating pride and having pride parades. And some cities have already said that they’re canceling their parades. I’ve already said it, and the law hasn’t even gone into effect quite yet. But some of the local clubs in Jacksonville, there’s a couple of local microbreweries that have trivia nights. Everybody has a trivia night. Now it’s a trend over the last several years, but they now have drag trivia nights.”
Damien Lamar:
“Yeah. So, yeah, I think that’s a good point.”
“…my book with Time Traveler’s it literally deals with the same thing. So if we would just let’s for a quick moment, let’s travel back in time to the year 52 BCE. So that’s 52 years before the birth of Christ. And at that time, Julius Caesar was over Rome, along with Pompeii. And then you have on the throne Cleopatra, the seventh and her husband and brother Ptolemy, they rule the throne. At the same time, the same information, the same type of… culture war was happening in Africa and Egypt and you know Julius Caesar then he’s flexing his muscles. He goes right into Egypt to Flex because his buddy Pompeii, you know Pompeii’s got this big infantry. He’s got this big army. He’s flexing So he goes there to Egypt not only his own land to figure out where Pompeii is and Cleopatra says oh by the way Your boy, Pompeii, here’s his head and here’s his ring to prove it.”
“The reason I brought all this up, that right. So during that same time, when Julius Caesar arrives, the library of Alexandria, which is actually where the conflict resides in my novel, library, books, what happened to the library? The library was burned. But history, if you, everything that I’ve read when I was doing my research for this book, there is no definitive answer on how the library was burned. Some say Julia Caesar did it. Some say that it may have been an accident. Some say it could have been a soldier. And I said to myself when I was reading this, I said, wow, this is kind of ambiguous. It’s kind of open. We don’t have a real open answer on what happened. But let’s talk about the library for a second.”
“And I’ll bring it back to how it matters today. The Library of Alexandria, at that time, there, if you think of it, here is Alexandria and you have the, at the tip of Africa, the beginning of the top of Africa, we have this little horseshoe and people would drive their ships into the great harbor. In the harbor, it was the, the Walaathas Harbor. As the ships would come in, the scribes would go to the boats, they take the scrolls, all the materials off. And they would instantly, at that moment, take the original materials and then take it to the library. The original materials were held in the library and they would make copies. They’d transcribe everything that they’re reading, whether it be from the Vikings, whether it be from the Asians, the Chinese. They take all this material and they transcribe it and they keep the originals in the library and then give the materials, the copies, back to those people to take it back. to where they were. So a lot of the stuff was copies that went back, not the originals.”
“So you have original works that now have been burned! 700,000 plus scrolls were destroyed and burned. And it was said that it may have been an accident. So here we are, fast forward 2,000 plus years, and now we have state legislatures, governments, the governor, the one that is always on the news talking about his woke agenda”
“taking that position in a different way to squelch the knowledge, to not have the knowledge shared. And how can we gain as a society if we don’t tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth and we continue to… We create dissonance or we create segregation or we disenfranchise a lot of the disses. We create these things to make one group look better than the other group. I just feel like here we are again.”
“…if, you know, if we continue to sit idly by and we do nothing, we may as well be just as complicit, we’re allowing it to happen. We can’t just say, we can talk about it all day till we’re blue in the face, but why do we continue to allow this to happen to our knowledge? Nobody’s doing this to the Jewish culture. Nobody’s doing this to the Asian culture. Why are we doing this? What, what’s the, what’s the real game? Is there something? Again, even going back to the Library of Alexandria, is there something that was needed to be hidden? Was there something that needed to be destroyed because we don’t want the masses to read this? We don’t want the masses to know this because the masses may be educated…”
Tracy Rigdon:
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Damien, I have enjoyed this conversation with you. I’m gonna let everybody know about your project, about your book, about your ebook, the quarterly ebook.”
Damien is also the Founder and Creative Director of Professor Clock Media.
“With over 20 years of logos, brand design, website production, and development experience, we create emotional connections and loyalty with your customers by helping them change the world through timeless brand designs and engagement with dynamic, high-quality, attention-grabbing digital content.”
Damien had previously appeared on the show in July of 2021.
From the original post: “Damien Lamar (full name Damien Lamar Robinson) is an American singer-songwriter, vocalist, technologist, and composer. To local audiences, Damien Lamar is known for his passionate live performances, honest yet sensitive lyrics. He incorporates diverse influences in his performances to include jazz, gospel, down-tempo, R&B, rock, and ambient sounds.” Read the entire post here.
** Music Tracks for this Podcast by Alex Grohl on Pixabay
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