Ursula: It’s so funny because I always say if I hit the number, but I never play. Anyway, if I ever hit the number I want to take a year off from everything. I’m going to try not to write about anything, which probably will be impossible, you know, not perform, not do anything. Because some times it’s just too much, you know what I mean? It’s too much, just in itself it’s too much. But then when you take it, you know, and you have to travel, you have to feed the kids, and you’re talking about these things and you keep having to have these emotions resurface every time that you do a performance. Which, I have to find a better word for. Performance never really sits well with me because it is a performance but then it’s not. Really it’s kind of like just playing back some things over and over again that you may not want to play back over and over again. So I mean it’s just a crazy thing, and I always question myself. I always have that place where I wonder how much longer can I pursue this. It’s really not just a job. It’s really more than that. When you’re doing this kind of work, there’s always something that’s above the money. And I think of people like Sonia Sanchez, who is my favorite poet, when I look at her and I think of how she’s been doing her thing for over thirty years, I’m like wow, I know she's probably had these feelings but she’s still there.
Emm: It seems like the Philadelphia music-poetry scene is really connected. It seems like you all kind of know each other and work together. Are you all as connected as you seem to be, and can you kind of tell me a little bit about the scene in Philly?
Ursula: Yes. You know that’s always a difficult question for me because I think that I’m not so much in the scene as those people might be. They have the luxury to be out there because most of them don’t have kids. They’re more in there. I kind of like skirt around the boarders, you see what I mean? But I definitely respect and know them all, and I’m happy to see them whenever I can get out of the house, and touch base with them and talk with them and find out what’s going on. It’s more of a community than a scene, that’s how it look at it. Certainly before everyone else knew about people like Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, and Kindred, all these people, they were here like plugging away for years trying to do their thing when nobody knew and nobody was paying attention. And we still had that community then. And it’s still there now. So I prefer to call it that because it feels better. It feels more solid and permanent. A scene is like something that’s not going to last that long.
It’s always been like that, it’s just like a lot of people who make progressively in terms of art, you know, in terms of music and even politics.
Emm: Are you on tour now?
Ursula: Yes, in November I start my European tour, I don’t have a US tour yet.
Yes, I'm a little nervous because I have to be away from the family for three weeks. But then when I measure it in terms of three hundred and sixty-five days, it doesn’t seem so bad. A lot of times I am here because I don’t have a conventional job. So a lot of times I’m at home all day everyday, and so I just try to balance it out and reconcile things in that way. But yes, the tour starts in November.
Emm: How old are your children?
Ursula: Eight, four and seventeen months.
