For St. Valentine's Day, Schmutzig Donnerstag, Rosenmontag, Mardi Gras/Fasching, and Ash Wednesday

I wanted to say so many things, but the past week has been crazy with all the holidays that most people celebrate with less flare and attention (I had my obligatory helpings of red beans and rice with andouille sausage on Sunday and Monday afternoon) . . . St. Valentine's Day, Carnival Days, birthdays (mine included) and today, the beginning of the 40 day fast before the Resurrection Feast Days. I also noticed more sunlight. The sun rose before I made it to the the Lincoln Tunnel this morning.

So, for the lack of blogging, I leave a song that doesn't really sum " it" up, but the lyrics have been in my head for days now.

Renewed Infatuation.

Despite all the obstacles, it is funny that every spring I am surprised by the longer days as if I doubted the fact the days would lengthen. I am surprised by the feeling of love that is in the air also, as if the drudgery of nights that last half the day are always loveless.

Hit it Ella!

Gumbo Yaya

I took a course on making a New Orleans meal on Thursday evening. It was taught by a colleague -- the colleague I had a fierce confrontation with a couple of months back. Chefs run their operations by intimidation, and I have yet to work with one that did not cause me to start yelling and screaming back . . . well, there was one that I did not scream back to in Anniston, Alabama . . . but that is another story. So, yesterday's menu consisted of Shrimp Creole, File Gumbo, Blacked Peas and Rice Salad and Pralines. It was not bad, I knew a lot more about the culture than they did, but not as much as my cousins or grandmother. But they are chefs, and I am an aspiring historian (really). But it was nice to see cooking techniques in play, I do love to cook.

So, let's start with 15 questions (can't think of 20), a sort of Gumbo Yaya of my own:

1. Why did the woman sitting next to me in the class say she had never seen a Black Eyed Pea before?

2. Why did the woman next to her wonder what Okra was? Is it a squash? What does it taste like?

3. Why do New Yorkers treat Southerners like they are from a different country, and people from the Gulf Coast like they are from Jupiter?

4. Is it just me, or does all this Anna Nicole Smith stuff feel strangely like the Princess Diana car wreck? The media blitz storm, the obsession over the welfare of the children, the laundry list of lovers (though Anna baby, you beat out Princess Di by a yard of fabric at the Elk's Ball), and our inability to leave Anna Nicole alone even in death all ring true to me.

5. Is the fact that we still judge Anna Nicole as a freak due to her marriage and personal life, as opposed to Princess Diana who we considered a saint due to her marriage and personal life, the only reason we are not remorseful about our media obsession over her? Scratch that, I guess bringing attention to land mines in war torn countries is much different than being a televangelist for a weight loss placebo.

6. Does Dick Chenney have nine live? And, no 9 mechanical hearts does not count!

7. How long will this war last?

8. What about them Dixie Chicks? Was the album that good, or was it more about the inclusion of fallen angels into the constellations above the Mason Dixon line? I did like there song Not Ready To Make Nice and it was on VH-1's top 20 for weeks on end.

9. Why did it take the Grammy Award to force the issue of American regional culture onto the table without dredging up the Red State/Blue State paradigm (I apologize for that word "paradigm", I try to stay a way from it) which thwarts discussions?

10. Why are some of my favorite YouTube videos all of a sudden unavailable?

11. Why did a good friend of mine from England tell me once again: "We see why Iraq is the way it is because of the way you Americans are handling New Orleans"?

12. Why do people not see that American credibility has been eroding since the rejection of the Kyoto Accord, the Arthur Anderson meltdown and the Enron scandal? Iraq was just the watermellon on top of the Sunday.

13. Why have I not seen Dream Girls yet?

14. Did I miss something, Bounce is on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Was it difficult to keep that a top secret? My multi-media industry sources gave no hints.

15. Why do all the cool people in NYC seem to be 30 and over? Maybe it is because they remember NYC before its current incarnation?

A Glimpse at the Feast Exotic (Whitney Houston and Serge Gainsbourg)

Andrew Sullivan how did you brush up on this gem of exoticism?

This clip is epic for so many reasons.

The Death of the Music Journalist

I

Yesterday, I arrived in the city at mid-day through Portable Authority. I had a good amount of time to get from mid-town to the nether regions of the Upper Eastside (59th and Lexington), so I glanced around the Hudson Newsstand. Imagine my childlike delight when I saw the latest Spin Magazine and My Chemical Romance gracing its cover. I guess I stood there for about a quarter of a minute before I did my compulsive purchase for the morning. I don't know what it is about New York, but I am constantly picking up magazines, gum, newspapers and toiletries. It is something about the urban landscape I guess. Years ago a cat told me that the tarot card that corresponds to New York City is the Hermit card because people live in such isolation. I guess that is why I feel so comfortable in the city, and at the same time why it is a dangerous place, I have a tendency towards withdrawal, I stay with my thoughts more than most people suspect.

In that spirit my Spin purchase was part of my own private anthropological study. I have not picked up a Vibe, Spin or Rolling Stone in ages. I used to work in the music writers' world for a split second and wanted to desperately be a part of it; but now it just seems to be a dream deferred, a sour little minutia from my past. I thumb through a music magazine at the newsstands now and then, reading it like an old sixth grade love letter. I feel transported in that same sense, rapidly perusing the masthead for a name I can recall, feeling a tingle of former infatuation, then discarding the rag after the unfamiliar names ring an atonal tone in my heart, an emotional discord that is slightly out of pitch – “Ah, the disappointment. What legendary writing could have happened if Vibe/Spin/Rolling Stone had only done such and such”. . . i.e., “If only they had kept me and my friends who are all doing wonderful things anyway.” Now, even the majority of the founding saints and villains of that former Biggie/Tupac mega death hip-hop monthly libretto have been axed.

So for $3.99 I made a commitment and started to read what I could of Spin. The brevity of the the articles was caustic. I felt as if I had missed something really important in each one because they were not written as meticulously structured exposés describing the time and place of the interview nor the inner tinkerings of our rock gods. Unfortunately, the articles were written as short data entries to be digested with little saliva – their dietary nutrients molecularly compact. Granted the cynical tongue-in-check language adds flavor, but everything tasted the same.

Back in 1993 when I was an intern at Vibe I remember language pouring out of every office. On a typical day I saw Hilton Als working on the Chaka Khan piece, Diane Cardwell blasting Janice Joplin and everyone talking about the Fugee promotional package. I got a green long sleeve Fugee T-shirt that I wore like my lion’s skin. Vibe, as Spin was 10 or 20 years ago, was thicker at its inaugural. Even Vibe's 5th anniversary issue, in which one of my pieces appeared, was thicker. Granted, much of it was ads, but other bits of it included Scott Poulson Bryant, Michael Gonzalez, Greg Tate and Joan Morgan. But in those first five years, there were several scandals and turnovers, and even Alan Light found his way lighfootedly from Vibe to Spin, maybe he was even a joint ruler of them both at one time, if my memory serves me correctly.

I do remember my interview at Spin after graduating from my beloved HBCU. I was dressed in a suit that was too big, and everyone at the entrance way to the interview was totally grunged out. I was settling into the New York area from the South before Eryka Badu and Master P made it cool. My first impression was that the Mid-Atlantic petit bourgeoisie air, New England secondary school polish, Ivy League feminism and Boston white boy college sensibility clashed against my New Negro haberdashery. The interviewer was very nice. He told me they were not paying very much, but he would keep me in mind. In fact he was really sweet in some memorable way -- just a T-shirt and jeans. He might have been pushing thirty, but his honesty rang so true to me in some older brother type of way. He later died of a drug overdose while covering one of the wars in Eastern Europe. It is a shame and embarrassing that both his name and the exact conflict escape me.

And so, I landed at Vibe instead and worked there a semester. Then after that it was graduate school, Ghana, malaria, diabetes, Israel, Master's thesis and a switch to book publishing, in that order. All that time the idea of being a music journalist, or more specifically a pop critic, re-shaped and morphed until I ended somewhere totally different. You see the problem starts with the timeliness of periodicals and the fact that they could be at the point of closing an issue anywhere between 2 and 3 months ahead of what is actually on the newsstands. Books take more time. There is more lead way. You are an elephant, your heart does not race at the rate of a mosquito. So I asked God to turn me into an elephant.

II

The February 2007 issue of Spin is a special issue entitled "The State of Music". It is funny that the way the magazine's layout is done betrays the problems or rather the shift of my generation being in the vanguard, to us becoming elephants, if not mastodons, of the old music industry. Again, I found myself in the dark. This declaration of the death of the album is new to me, but then again I don't really buy new music. Even My Chemical Romance, which is the first new rock thing I have actively participated in since the turn of the millennium, has not made me run to the store. Also the economic reasons behind the death of the album seem to harbor more credence among the pop literati than what Nelson George talked about in Hip-Hop America a decade ago. In it George points out that the hip-hop generation shows no loyalty, the fans simply follow a succession of artist of which few accumulate a true following. It is just one single after another, one anthem after another, one player playing the game after another. And for those that make it to legendary status, so many in the hip-hop industry opt out like Lauryn Hill, or find their heads served back to them on a platter like the current shunning of Jay Z. And, as Spin points out so directly, with beat driven hits saturating the market, the loss of melody is palpable. With these factors, plus the power of the consumer to make a line item veto concerning the selection of tunes for purchase, no wonder things are changing.

We are in the age where you can just download the single and incorporate it into your i-Pod generated sound track for your own personalized march through the subzero streets of New York City or while gliding on your treadmill. Take Beyoncé's “Check On It”, which was so hot I drove for miles from Nashville to Atlanta alternating between that joint and Labelle’s Moonshadow album. And maybe, with that image, we have the struggle between this new hotness that you consume like cafeteria jell-o and a 4 course Wonka stick of gum that delightfully turns you into a blueberry full of soul juice and conceptual nectar -- nectars unripe with heartache, ripe with social calls of rectification, or overripe with personal triumph -- Virgin, Mother, Crone (Madonna ?) -- Knave, Knight, Emblem (Prince). Our Marys, our Princes and our Nirvanas mystify us and stitch us up in a larger overarching view of our lives, not the immediate snare drum licks that accent our staccato on concrete. After looking through this issue of Spin I realized that I am getting old, I am an elephant, I do not own an i-Pod, I cringe at the thought of becoming so wrapped up in Maria Bethânia that I could be hit by a truck crossing at 60th and Lexington where the traffic bottlenecks and there is always one delivery truck gunning it on red to make a left turn. Always!

III

And so after reading that Perry Farrell has been in the business for 20 years, that Courtney Love is working on “something” and feeling famished after a meatless 400 word burp about the Swedish music scene, I sunk my teeth into the My Chemical Romance article. And there it was, the great divide in music history, these cats are nothing but the Smashing Pumpkins in drag, but from what I can tell, we need the Smashing Pumpkins in drag today . . . and I could not agree more. Timothy Gunatilaka's article basically focuses on how these guys are needed by many young people today, and it seems that the band has experienced this truth in their performances. The article’s layout is ingenious; the text is littered with little green blurbs from My Chemical Romance's Myspace page, ImnotOkay.net and MyChemicalRomanceForum.com. Most are tinged with the salvational salutations to the band for creating music that intervened during the time of their planned (or spontaneous) suicides. Of course as a teacher I got a funny feeling in my stomach, a feeling that I have had students in that place, and I have witnessed at least one intervention collapse, not resulting in death thank God, but institutionalization. One person sent a message bluntly stating ". . . You save lives . . ."

So, is this the state of the album? Are my little generation Y'ers and Z'ers missing what I devoured with great delight, what my fellow high school and college classmates picked without asking? What would life have meant for my freshman roommate who listened to Tom Petty's "Free Falling" every night; for my single white female best friend (to the raised eyebrows of both our parents) if REM's "This Is The End Of The World As We Know It" and everything after didn't exist; for me if Prince's double album Sign of the Times (that I listened to for 3 years straight in high school to the chagrin of girl named Deborah who called me strange for 4 years straight) was never produced. This is the landscape now. Napster and i-Tunes have nipped away the security of young Americans according to this hypothesis if you introduce a little anti-matter to it. They have no Dick Clark to breast feed them, only Paula Abdul's Novocaine tit to drip feed them celebreality. Who knew that the record store was the teenager’s Temple of Delphi, but now the barbarians are at the gate in the true Harold Bloom sense of the old reactionary adage. The American record store’s death throws have turned to convulsions. The tower has literally collapsed, and according to friends and reports, the music industry may evaporate as if zapped by a sonic death wave, a wrong chord reverberating from a Queen LP played backwards.

Miss Industry is a behemoth made of bricks and mortar. Who would have thought, that books would prove to be more nimble (for now at least) in the cyber age? In 2000 the publishing industry asked collectively, what was going to happen to the book, but that was so naive. Shakespeare is unmovable, written language has been around for millennia and moveable type for centuries. Records didn't even close out the century, CD's survived for only two decades. Nothing is permanent.

So maybe I am a nimble little elephant with twinkle toes (many would say that already for varying reasons). I have a Myspace page and on it I have a community of musicians, writers, friends and perverts that share my taste in music, literature, politics and perversions. I do not feel so alone, in fact I am indulging my senses with old G-Force footage and Gothic styles as we speak. Myspace has given me a world to express myself in ways I did not have years ago. A thought comes to my head and I will research it and add it to my page, giving a picture of myself, with close self-editing of course, for not all of me can fit on one page. And in this world where the visual and auditory are supple and correct by simply cutting and pasting information in HTML, how are young people learning to receive information? Hell, how are they dealing with relationships, because as much as I love my virtual communal nest, they are not really friends in the brick and mortar sense of the word.

But back to music rags . . .

Beyond the market forces that force these thick mini-catalogs of hip-hop and rock and roll to reduce their page sizes, are there issues concerning what is music journalism and what is not? I believe that there are, but I can not address them now, I have only bought one music magazine in the past 2 years. My anthropological research into the manhandling of the music and its musing rags will need further investigation.

IV

When I was working at Reader's Digest in Germany during the winter of 2003, there was a music marketing manager from Spain who moved from Barcelona in the 1970's to southern Germany and fell in love with Freiburg. He stayed and had a family. I remember my seminars with the editorial and marketing teams were always really pleasant when he was around. He talked about playing music constantly and wanted me to teach him how to stop rolling his r's so pronouncedly, as well as working on other consonants that escaped his grasp with each English utterance.

"It is so sad Bill," the marketing manager confided in me one day, "the way music accompanied my life and your life is not the way for my children and will not be that way for yours."

I stood there and looked at him. I did not know it then for sure, but somewhere in my subconscious I had received the news that the album was ill. I wonder what that means for the music journalist in light of all that has happened concerning record company/media mergers, bottom-lines and the musical interest of young people unable to find the ballad that gets them through their first kiss, break-up, heartache, separations, growing aparts and finally the death of the relationship all together. For a lucky few the companionship will blossom, for others the isolation in their lives may have more sinister sources than puppy love. And what about us, the over 30 demographic so despised by notions of fashion (except for the gay demographic), are we left without albums also?

“Hey!, Mr. DJ I confess. I have been through some traumatic shit and I need a hero, but 10,000 Maniacs will do me just fine."

A Few Of My Favorite Things

1. We have a bunch of brawlers at my job. Very interesting to know that I am not the only one. There must be about 4 or 5 of us liable to get down at anytime.

2. Tonight on television I saw the Billy Strayhorn documentary on Independent Lense. He was only 16 when he wrote Lush Life. It is interesting, all of his band mates called him Sweet Pea -- he was black, gay and Duke Ellington's major composer taking little credit during his lifetime for his work. Diane Reeves sounds so good in this documentary.

3. Brazil versus Portugal on Fox Soccer Channel. It is a friendly in England. I am glad I don't have to be at work until 11:00 am tomorrow. Downing coffee as we speak.

The re-broadcasting of the match is from 11:oo pm until 1:00 am. I could die tonight. Earlier I watched Fox Football Fone-In . . . marvelous evening!

The End of the Earth

Das Experiment called from the most southern Western city on earth last night right after I posted my blog entry for Saturday. He lives in a city called Invercargill. It is at the most southern tip of New Zealand. We had a ten minute conversation about life.

He said that Invercargill would be too boring for me, I would have to live in Auckland.
He said that most Americans that ex-patriate to New Zealand end up in Australia.
Most Europeans that ex-patriate stay.
He felt that things were 30 years behind.
He said there were some hot girls in his MBA program.
He said I could handle it.
It is like rural Germany.
But, it is more like Ireland.
Or England.
Or Scotland.
I said life was the same for me.
I looked up Invercargill on the net, and yes that shit is at the end of the world.
Might make a nice trip.
But that is just a mental note.
Das Experiment sounded a little down and isolated.

I also saw parts of Female Trouble by John Waters on IFC this past Friday night. Now I will have to see this Trash Trilogy.

For Once

Well, I don't have really anything to say. My boss wants to get me moving in a couple of different directions. We will see. This temporary job may lead to where I wanted to be in the first place . . . behind a desk somewhere moving inventory in foreign places. I have heard stories of meteoric rises to the top at this place. My language skills do come in handy and that is a plus for me.

Otherwise, I spent the day with Ava yesterday. We had a good time. We talked about relationships, I watched her shop (I am not a shopper), had a nice Thai meal, another nice meal at a diner on 3rd and 60th (I love that diner, very good food and fresh Lemonade year round) and just walked through the city.

Still looking for work. A financial institution wants to see me at the Jersey Shore on the 8th. I know how these places work . . . almost like a pyramid scam plus commission. So, I am weary. Did four applications this past week to different places. I will have to get back to five a week at least!

German Musicologist comes at the end of the month. We will talk about a project that Alice and I have been tweaking for some time.

That is all.

Nothing to really say. Just contemplating a character and sketching it out. It is funny, after my application to Presbyterian University the voice I was writing in has evaporated. At least that is the result of the query I instigated concerning my spiritual and emotional well being. I wonder if my creative voice will be diminished more in my use of more academic styles of writing. I guess the intended issue is the intended audience.

I need to turn myself back to a stage coach after my brief stint as a pumpkin.

ciao, ciao

A Snapshot Of A Conversation About Ms. Scott

Today, while doing inventory and eating some of the food that our co-workers brought in I overheard two ladies and one guy talking about not understanding Jill Scott's Family Reunion track.

It went a follows:

"I don't understand it, listen . . . listen to that . . . did you hear . . . listen, listen . . . she sings about scallions and then says celery. It is a weird song. I just don't understand it."

I feel like a college instructor in everyday clothes, and I was just about to leap across the counter and pull out a flow chart . . .but I did not. I just looked and took note, and I let them see that I was looking at them and taking note. What could she not understand, I guess it was the songs articulation and the ROUNDNESS OF THE SOUNDS.

I felt sorry for them. Like their hearts are closed off, but by no fault of their own. I need to liberate my office space. There is some bad vibe in it . . . but maybe it is just who we are . . . in that space.

They don't represent everybody.

Conversation with Tony

I talked to a childhood friend of mine for the first time in almost 10 years. Two memorable quotes from the conversation that focused on music for about 30 minutes out of a two hour conversation (as with all my childhood friends):

Unbeached: Yeah, man. I dig My Chemical Romance. They are amazing. If the Cure and Queen had a child together it would have been named My Chemical Romance.

Tony: Dude, it even all that. It is something like the Roots, they deep, but without all the Toni Morrison grooves in it.

Skooter Libby Libby Libby Canned Pineapples

So,

I guess I am back to living in America for real, I am personally caught in a medical care vs. other bills crossfire. It is demeaning, that is all I can say right now, and I am thinking more and more about issues of the chronically ill. Something is really wrong with how I am being treated by the insurance industry, medical industry and financial institutions. And the answer, "Why should you be any different from anybody else." is really fueling a brighter fire in my head and heart. What a convenient lie that is to keep people from believing they can't organize against something as ghastly as not being able to pay for the medicine that enables you to have life. My answer to that question will now be, "Because you should be treated different from everybody else also."

I would love to talk about Scooter Libby, but I will talk about my new found love for Tom Sizemore and the show Shooting Sizemore (it sounds like a porn star's documentary, but he is one now). I know, I know. This is another boring train wreck via the idiot box (and who does the idiot box better than VH1? - - NO ONE ELSE!). But I do have a soft spot for Robert Downey Jr. and it goes into overhaul for Tom Sizemore (Mickey Rourke could have achieved a spot in my sublime pantheon, but his plastic surgeon ruined it for me).


This second tier love has to do with the fact that they are tormented artist first and foremost, but it is also the whole tie me up, tie me down self abuse they are trying to deliver themselves from. Drugs, strange sex habits and spurts of anger are interesting things to follow while they are doing great work like Saving Private Ryan, True Romance and Natural Born Killers. They are Hollywood IT men turned to Charles Bukowski chic parodies of themselves, who must overachieve to survive themselves. I love it! There is something very American about this process as we move from 15 minute of fame culture to an entire "television season" of fame that knocks the facade clean off (with careful editing of course). It goes back to the idea of confession as redemption, but now we have the added twist of "reformation" that we have not seen until our technological age. To relapse is to be both witness and witnessed. Weren't the puritans wonderful people!

I was captivated from the time Sizemore sitting with a facial mask in the Northern light of a Canadian sun chomps down on a spoonful of oatmeal. The effect is an illuminate ultra-violet glow to his smooth facial mask which contrasts with the rest of the room. He is a kabuki actor, even on his off time. His anxiety, his particular flavor of angst, his past, his isolation, his career and his detachment from drugs mixes into an everyman close-up, a broken metrosexual, a heterosexual alien munching on Quaker instant Oats.

On top of that he has a personal assistant named Luree. I need a Luree in my life. She reminds me of the inventory managers and female truck drivers I dealt with in LaVergne, Tennessee. Chain smoking, screaming, yelling, realistic, one-day-at-a-timers and aware of how to take care of every little situation in every paper ridden detail. Luree, like them, is a good reader of character. They are a perfect match. Luree is like a barren wet nurse that knows nothing about delivering babies, wiping asses or singing a cradled enfant to sleep. She simply knows how to keep a grown man to task.

So, between I Love New York (which is a total hot mess), and Shooting Sizemore my television consumption is pretty consistent. BBC, Euronews, Fox's Soccer Channel and Rome fall through New York and Sizemore's natural rhythm. I don't watch, Lost, Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy or The Amazing Race. CNN is becoming boring now that it focuses basically on child abductions/molestations and the 2008 election. And a good number of shows on PBS don't catch my eye anymore in a world where things are so evident to me.

I spend most of my time on the computer. My media diet consists more and more of old 70''s and 80's footage of Fela Kuti, Nina Simone and Paulinho da Viola. Then there is the required time on monster.com and mediabistro.com, not to mention networking and talking about work with former colleagues.

So, Scooter, I am sorry, I just don't have the time to follow you the way I want.

This guy is pretty intriguing. His silence and face betray a lot to me . . .

And to Lindsay Lohan, I did not even know who you were until last year. Gosh, there is so much interest in you and that former Miss America that it makes me nervous. Please, who cares. I wish you the best in gaining weight and I sincerely wish that one beer was enough for you. You are so young, maybe not even 21 if a year over that, hell.

There is so much to live for and to explore, don't do it all at once.

And, Fergie, I just listened to the lyrics of "Fergalicious" for the first time. Nice production. Nice delivery. And I just heard your speaking voice on the VH1 commercial for the Superbowl show. Girl, you sound like a black girl. But for the life of me I can't remember which one you were on Kids Incorporated.

Mississippi Goddam (Free Styling about My Life and the State of The Union)

I woke up to Nina Simone and Mississippi Goddam.

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I guess I identify. Everything seems to be moving too slow, especially on the race and gay marriage stuff in the Volunteer State. And in the end I am wondering what the real motivations for migrations and ex-patriotism are. Looking at me and Nina at 4:44 am in the morning I am starting to think that it is almost a primordial/patriarchal/matriarchal Freudian response (take your pick) to what is around you. A feeling of a betrayal that prompts self orphanage.

When younger I was enamoured by Huckleberry Finn.

I am dwelling on this with Nina a bit more than normal this morning because I used to sing with some of her former musicians in a gospel choir. And everyone that was in Germany that was African American was running from something out of a sense of deep betrayal. I guess, I was one of that number.

Looking at the State of the Union address, I started to think about my choir director, the professional singers that I knew, and a vibraphonist whose story on how he came to Germany still sticks with me (its that personal, that I just can't say). Condoleezza Rice's face on the PBS coverage of the speech spoke volumes about where we are now in this historical moment. She was dressed in black like at a funeral, and the darkness in her eyes was so complete and shadowed it declared something else about her well being besides being tired. It is terrible what it actual takes to become successful in the this country when you are coloured. I listen to the way black folk speak, from successful NFL coaches to leading politicians and I can't help but get this sense that you have to get with the party line. And the only thing about this mega-assimilation that I can gleam is that I am not following the right steps. I guess my hesitation comes from the inevitable change so well mapped out by Jill Nelson in her book Volunteer Slavery.

You set out to change the system, and the system changes you. Jill said it so correctly.

Maybe me listing to Nina was a premonition. I didn't find any joy in the occassion. Justice is a hard thing.

So is letting go.

Jomanda

The classic song that plays in my head all the time.

Black Box-I Don't Know Anybody Else

The Over-Cooked (but still delicious)

I have always felt Martha Wash deep deep down. Black Box is this weird contradtion in my heart and always will be.

Nina Simone: Feelings

The Raw

I stumbled upon this one. It somehow fits the other two in a weird way. Nina is talking about love inspite of the heart's anti-optimism. Is'nt that what happens to us all overtime.

I am still fighting this weird version of writer's block, but this brought me back to earth tonight. So, I wanted to share it.

Ode to Socks

OK. I have caught a cold. And I am doing my usual thing to get over it which involves a couple good nights' sleep, drinking fresh lemon tea, and some drugs. It works very well only if you call out from work the day you start to feel sick and fight for at least 48 hours. If not, then you will be really sick before your body gives out and the rest is history . . . it will take a week or weeks to get rid of it. I advise fighting it when it is a scratch in your throat or a runny nose and don't give the evil germ an inch in terms of settling in your respiratory system, your head or your nasal cavity.

So, while in the kitchen today, I tell my stepmother that I had a revelation, I need to where socks. I live downstairs in the basement where there is an office for working, pool table for boredom and a long bar for stacking all my books. It is very cold downstairs as compared to upstairs, so my winter long habit of no socks has been abandoned in the wake of my cold.

I meant my statement to be a joke, but my stepmother immediately starts shouting at me telling me that as a diabetic I always need to wear socks, and that I just choose not too. OK, here's a list of issues.

1. The majority of diabetic information, magazines and promotional gimmicks are designed for the elderly -- so, sometimes I feel like all of the precautionary measures make me feel old. I don't particularly like house shoes because they make me feel like the guy from Father Knows Best, and I prefer beach shorts and long sleeve shirts in the winter. Just me.

2. If I am not wearing socks those that have me under dietary (and now podiatric) surveillance think I am not "fighting for my life".

3. I should wear socks because cuts on my feet may not heal, though my healing rate from minor surgery 9 years ago and the removal of a rotten tooth that shattered into 3 pieces in my mouth 2 years ago were above average. I have said it before, I am a fast clotter and heal on cue. For how long? I don't know, but I knock on wood.

4. I don't like this perception that every waking moment is a fight for my life. No one in my family talks to me about my love life, my professional life, or my life as an artist anymore. I am just the sick member of the family.

5. Being treated constantly as a sick person is a form of being a none person because everybody knows what is best for me from food, to clothing, to work, to insurance, etc . . . Maybe they should make the decisions. There is also this perception that you are not living "right", because you are sick. I have encountered that among a lot of people, especially African Americans when I first came down with the disease. I could give a million stories about going to the pharmacy and elders not letting me leave without shedding a tear for me while I am trying to make an appointment across town. I will leave that for a later blog.

6. The soles of my feet are red and show good circulation. I know this from conversations with several doctors. Which are private and I should not have to recite my discussions with doctors all the time. But sometimes I do in the mist of reaching for something to drink from the refrigerator.

7. My protest at being interrogated this afternoon was looked upon as having a "shitty attitude". I understand that people are concerned, but I don't like being talked to with a raised voice and a critical eye and then stand blindly in the face of such preaching. Why do I not get to ask questions of other peoples behavior, even if they are correcting me?

8. People constantly come to me telling me what they "heard" about diabetics, but no one talks to me about what I know about being a diabetic. I have been one for 12 years, I do know a thing or two.

9. The same people that have all this new found concern after 12 years of not really asking are pissed when I buy diet soda because they think it is selfish because no one else can have any.

Now, I write this list because I think being diabetic is as much an identity crisis fought against a backdrop of those that are not diabetic, as it is a medical issue. There are several assumptions made about you and who you are. To voice any consternation about how the non-diabetic perceives you is to have a "shitty attitude" about your own health.

To say that you have a problem with what seems to be a small rule, like socks, because it is not "you" invites the response by the non-diabetic (who could be channeling a recent memory of their grandmother's foot amputation) that "your opinion does not matter" in terms of your health. It is the same as saying that "you" do not matter. And to go further and say, "Hey, I need some help dealing with this Father Knows Best Conservative Republican Subconscious Issue behind my objection to the rule" is lost in the commotion. It is probably dealt best with another medical/psychological professional than by the person pointing out your lack of self worth because you are not wearing socks. To not listen to a diabetic while passing judgement is dangerous. How would you react to someone saying to you that you have no self worth over and over and over again?

Before diabetes so many things were of just no consequence, I could just run around without socks, and my bare feet would connote a certain freedom or Southerness. It could also be taken as a sign of being a simpleton without many cares. Bare feet may be sensual to some, a larger fetish to others or a claiming of territory. Still for others it is an issue of not soiling the carpet with shoes, or a lack of formality. But, let a diabetic run around without shoes or socks and it becomes irresponsible, suicidal, a lack of self respect, amputation, foot ulcers, neuropathy, passive in the face of disease, stupid, idiotic and the waste of a young life.

Before diabetes, minutiae were plentiful and fights were few. After diabetes, fights overflow, my stubbornness abounds and a certain spite is brewing towards those that seem to know everything about having sugar, but have never experienced its social ordeal, the personal guilt and the restrictions everyone is willing to verbally and emotional enforce on you despite you trying to change. It is as if anytime you falter, people read it as moral lack, when you are just being yourself -- despite not wanting too.

Maybe I should just develop a sock fetish. Hell, I think I already have.

Arduousness

OK. Payday was yesterday. After I sat down and figured fiscally everything that I needed done immediately, I realized that I had only 9 dollars left from my check. A co-worker of mine said he had only 69 cents left from his paycheck once he did what he had to do. Then, later in the Subaltern Transit ticket line, while I was contemplating what bills will have to "wait" and which ones I would "pay" because I was about to buy a 10 trip at the Port of Authority costing me 88 bucks, equaling 5 days of round trip bus fare so I could get to work, the woman in the line next to me was being told that both of her cards were declined and she could not get to where she needed to go.

Amazing. The woman was middle age, professional, and standing with what looked like a leather bound notebook full of credit cards. I realized later that it was her billfold. But in the moment, she was so desperate and starting to shamefully dismantle the assuredness she must have flexed in her office earlier that day, that I felt sorry for her. There was a sound of freshly earthed uncertainty that tainted her voice as the sister behind the window screamed pretty loudly "I said both cards were declined!" And from there you could tell that that this corporate associate, assistant, manager or partner had just a few seconds before my arrival verbally assaulted the woman behind the counter, and as a formidable counter-strike the transit clerk let one singular and sisterly volley of words out of her mouth forcing the corporate minion to fold her cards. For anyone in shouting distance there was a collective gasp, followed by a confused bewilderment at the professional appearance of the woman at the window. Then the delay at my window because the ticket machine ran out of tickets and I had to wait for the machine to be re-stocked and prepped with fresh ticket cards. Then there was the impatience of the man behind me and his non-smile. Then there was the mad rush onto a packed bus after searching for the correct gate since the rennovations have rained havoc throughout my normal quadrant of the terminal.

Everyones exhausted, no one smiles, no one talks, on the bus. Some read, most sleep, other look out of the window.

I wonder if I snore?

Breaking Bread -- A Dinner in English, Spanish and German

Today is MLK Day. It is interesting to watch it morph into an African American version of a national church service, like the Palm Sunday of my childhood as delivered by the Rose of Sharon Club at Mt Zion Holy Tabernacle, or Men's Day Services at any congregation's house of worship found on Nashville's Church Street near Fisk University. James Brown's funeral gave me the same feeling, especially after he has appeared on the cover or Rolling Stone and other magazines. It is kind of like a potluck, where you don't know which black man or woman is important in the constellation of American heroes till they are dead. So Ed Bradley gets a yes, while Gerald Levert gets a no.

For my MLK festivities, I went and had dinner with Sylvia and her kids. I walked into a room full of ladies and babies, between the ages of 3 and 8 or so. All boys, all part Venezuelan, African American, German, Argentinian, Jamaican and a couple of other countries. Great! Before our dinner, the kids sat down and were given a great speech by the Sylvia about how it is important to stick together and not allow other people to be teased because they may be different than the group. Then we ate fried chicken. That was one of the best dinners I have had, not just because of the food, but because of the company, and the spirit of the evening. I felt like it was done right, kind of like Christmas, but kind of not. It just turned into a German, English and Spanish verbal love fest. The only problem was that I was the only non-parent, so I didn't know how to let it end. Parents get going, I feel like I lingered a bit, but not too long. Talking to Sylvia's husband Andre at the end was great, he gets my anxiety about being back stateside. He grew up outside of Muenster.


This is the first MLK Day without Coretta Scott King, so it is significant to me. It is like the festivities are set to start a life of their own. I wonder what it will look like in 100 years, will people have an inkling of what it was really like, or will it be just sound bites and a collage of black and white images presented as the totality of the experience. I saw footage from Meet the Press from 40 years ago, and I must say that I am impressed beyond a doubt every time I hear Dr. Martin Luther King's speaking voice. But the true kind of fighting and blood letting I heard from my grandmother is never talked about in this part of the country (Up North). She talked about black soldiers rioting, about a cousin shooting to defend his property in the 1920's or 30's, about hiding her brother when the Klan was riding and the death of a child after a car accident because the ambulance only picked up white people. Before and sometime after MLK and his non-violence stance, I always received the message that at some point, in order to defend their property, many blacks resorted to violence or tactical cunning. For some the outcome was divine benevolence from a judge or God him/herself and for others it was death by an angry mob, but in the end . . . c'est la vie.

------

I saw I Love New York on VH-1. I know that many of my friends dislike the show, but I really don't like entering the American workforce or dealing with people without knowing what the prevailing stereotypes are, nor why the white people at my job look at me funny when I tell them about my work experience and life. Many of the people think that I am lying because "black people don't do", what I do. Everything from their change in posture and their switch to the vernacular betrays this. So, I like to keep current.

Virginia Heffernan's review in NYT is an anthropological interpretation of this season's Celebreality. The review is really efficient in its dramaturgical dismantling of the minstrel show, but the reviewers language is definitely crafted for the middle-class and the Uber-middle-class of NYC. In short, the show itself was less alarming to me than for the sweet and salty New York Times reviewer of this new Negriod Heaven by VH-1.

I am going to watch this show regardless of what my friends say though. Many believe it is acting (and it really is), staged, retrograde, reprobate and derogatory. Yeah, that is there, but there are also some interesting issues concerning character. New York is fascinating to watch because she has no internal core, just an internal compass for her desire. Her responses to people and different environments are truly protean. Her inner demeanor changes, but the body stays the same. In terms of race, the "negrita" comment by Rico and New York' s response was very good for people to see on television. Plus, there is a good amount of nice booty in this bunch, and as far as I can see it is all being pimped by one woman. So, I am wondering how the contestants and the producers play this angle.

There is one thing that the reviewer pointed out that hit close to home. All the guys that were rejected were the ones that were not hard enough, but might have had something going for them. The ones that stayed were completely crazy. I remember this being my life in high school and college for the most part. Black women blatantly told me I was too smart to date, then when I dated someone outside of my race I was pounced on like a intruder at Artemis's bath (been watching HBO's ROME, excuse the metaphors). And when I said I had a relationship with a man then I became this strange non-person, or privy to some black women's secrets concerning other men but with no desire of my own. New York's selection is staged and arranged by producers, but then again, doesn't this happen in real life too? If New York has ratings to maintain, then what is the reasoning behind what happens in our community concerning hard and soft men? A reverend years ago said that this was a problem in the black community that will come home to roost. I have heard no other analysis of this situation since that chance meeting twelve years ago.

The Lines of Demarcation, Beauty, and Liposuction: Or How the Daughter of German Immigrants Changed the Land of the Samba

I have been thinking about my relationship to food, and how sometimes I wish I could talk to someone about it. In our society only women have problems with food, but I guess I am part of the long list of male diabetics, horse jockeys, male body builders and corporate manorexics that live in silence and/or pleasure because of their relationship to wine and bread.

This article on Brazil, food, women, beauty and Brazil's beauty culture is very, very telling.

O Trem Azul -- A Life in Conversations

Well, I guess I should just say that I missed the the fight. I worked late on Thursday so the whole Condi Rice versus The United States Senate was totally over and out of my normal visual range. I did not see nor hear of anything till this Friday morning glancing over the front page of the New York Times even though I have been far more satisfied with the Wall Street Journal this past winter.

This morning I watched Meet the Press and the Mclaughlin Group. Both seem to miss some major points, mainly that the talking and bickering of congress is of little consequence, the powers of the Middle East will respond according to their own self-interest and those of their particular religious and political lines. I guess it is sobering to ponder an army of warriors without ideology or tiresome 200-year-old Western notions of the nation-state battling to the death in the largest oil fields of the world. Talk about Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Harold Bloom and the barbarians at the gate. It is unfortunate for them and their analysis, soon they will not be the center of the world.

OK, I promised to relax the political slant.

Otherwise Friday was a haphazard diabetic day. Blood sugar normal till I got to work and tested and saw that that my sugar was high (snacking on some Cheeze Its before the evening shift). Was under control till I kept getting delayed from eating my 6:00 pm meal, so I started to feel a low. Then I evened out after that cause I was really hungry. The sad state of affairs is that good food choices require lots of money and if your money is funny so is your diet. Period. Maybe congress should hold a hearing on that.

The only other things to report is that I was talking to a co-worker. She graduated from the same HCBU (Historically Black College or University) that I went to. She works with hedge funds. Very, very interesting world she belongs to during the day. I want to hear more about her everyday -- much different than the motley crew and career choices I have made.

Thursday night I had dinner with Alice and a friend of hers we will call SC. First Alince and I went to Borders in the new (to me at least) Time Warner Center. We sat at Dean and Deluca and talked for a good while about my younger sister, her niece, her girlfriend, women in dance hall, future projects, newness in my life and how to raise a child. I am not sure if the people around us liked her rants on capitalistic society, but fuck it, ten years back that same street corner would have seen a handful of old 60's radicals and septarian cold war socialist dotting its quadrant at anytime. Now I am astounded by the consumerist milieu that is sprinkled on top of normal heady New York literary behavior. I guess I shouldn't be a sour puss . . . but I kind of am.

After the Dean and Deluca experience (I have only eaten in one other Dean and Deluca, about 10 years ago in Soho), we went to meet SC for dinner on the Upper Westside in the upper 60's, lower 70's. Again a different NYC, but at least more neighborhood like. There we talked about Vibe,where I interned eons ago and wrote a couple of articles. Seems they are looking for a copy editor and posted it on Craig's List. Well this is a sign. Then we talked about Vibe's trajectory an arc from test issues, to New York darling, to Fashionistas secret choice, to not being hood enough, to being gangster, to writers being beat, to staff turn overs, to now. It is epic and it is symptomatic of something else in hip-hop that I am honing in on, but decline to comment on till I have thought my hypothesis out clearly. But at the end of the day, Vibe showed so much promise when I was younger, that I am still speechless on what a waste it has become in comparison to its expectations. The wisdom I have earned tells me that people are more apt to tearing other people down (and their institutions, notions and dreams) rather than building them up. You choose what you will fight for, and I must admit that hip-hop is not what I am fighting for anymore. I just had a flashback to me and other interns standing alone sipping our gin and juice. Just watching.

But that was the past.

Otherwise the dinner was more about this season of The Wire and Clive's rescue of Whitney. We all agree, this will be the comeback of comebacks. All she needs is a cigarette and an orchid in her hair and bitches will be throwing tantrums.

Other conversations:

-- We talked about Hunt's Point at work on Friday. It is a stroll in Brooklyn that was featured on HBO where there are a mass of prostitutes. I like to think of it as an ass mall. There is a young gay guy at work who talks to everybody with much respect about everything from politics to Sanitorium (the inanimate noun, not the person, I will say no more), which can be political. It was nice because we are all of varying sexual identities and we just talked about all the types women, transgendered and male hustlers found at the ass mall. That would never have happened in Tennessee. I forgot that I like NYC for that reason, and I think that many black men have gotten a bad rap uptown for being portrayed as homophobic. Many straight uptown brothers are very open minded and will not shy way from any questions concerning sex and what one likes.

-- I have been playing O Trem Azul by Milton Nascimento to calm myself down a bit. It is nice. It is helping me get into a position to get through this plot issue I have with a particular project.

-- Jochencito! Congratulations.

A Year and Several Days Into an Experiment

It has been a year since I started this blog. And true to form, I have lived in two different places Nashville and NYC/NJ. I feel as if I have two different blogs just thinking about it. Now I am trying to figure out what to do with my blog. December had to be the worst blog month for me concerning entries and making sense to a wider audience. In other words, I felt that I was trying to capture snapshots of what was going on around me but had insufficient time to flesh them out. And right now, I want to talk about Saddam Hussein's execution, the President's revised Iraq policy and the swearing in of a new Congress and Senate, but it has all become background noise. Things on the home front concerning immediate family, larger family and the future are pretty tight. Plus, I am starting to wonder about blogging. I can write whatever I want, but the question becomes in the end, "Who is my audience ?". And there is the crux of my dilemma.

So, in 2007 I want to start all over.

There are a ton of things concerning sex and sugar that I have been pretty tight lipped about because I wanted to touch on larger issues concerning the world, but my desire to talk about that is waning in the catastrophe that our political process has become. I also have felt that treatises on the larger world or the application of my political views to the world around me can become boring to my readers. I have thought of myself as a writer and an artist probably longer than I have thought of myself as a bumbling teacher/academic and reporter, so for now, my everyday observations are what I want to concentrate on in my blog entries. After all, being diabetic, that is all I do. I sit in observance of how I feel physically. I watch for mood swings. I watch for sudden hunger and the shakes as I approach blood sugar rock bottom. And, I watch for sluggishness and grogginess after lunch, signaling a dangerous blood sugar high and its required guilt.

So, I promise to get to what I felt was the story I wanted to tell at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007. In 2 previous posts I talked about tiring of boys and my 14-year-old excursions to the projects with my play big brother Andre as he conquered 2 women there. In some weird way they are linked. Sugar and desire, maybe this is my life's journey.