| The Eulipians |
| Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores. At their feet I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth in my own terms. These are the “Eulipians”— writers, poets, musicians, painters, and uncommon drunks— those shade-tree philosophers who contemplate the fungus within the cracks of society; Who dance with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition, through the presumptuous speculation of the ages; Who live in county jails, cardboard boxes, alley ways, and luxury Apartments; Whose very existence exposes the scam of Great Bruteland. While these obscure intellectuals stand well outside the mainstream of academy, I’ve watched with astonished delight as they sing, scat and scribe their philosophy into the mainstream of human knowledge; As they rammed forth the proposition that passion transcends caste and social privilege. Bird, Malcolm, Langston, Trane – They sing but one song: Knowledge is free. Eric L. Wattree |