I talked to Mom briefly. I put on one of my blue jackets. I started the car, and backed out of the driveway. I did not like the commercials on the radio channels. I then put in Sean Paul. I drove out. I made a left, then a right and kept straight. If you keep straight pass the intersection, then you exit Royal Hills and enter Creekwood. So I entered Creekwood. Then I made a left, followed by a right, kept straight for a very short while, before making a left, kept straight, then made a right at the light. Straight shot to Walgreens and the heart of Bordeaux, the earth on my side of the bridge.
Got there. For some odd reason I changed to 92.1 FM. I listened to Luther Vandross sing "A House is Not a Home." Sat in the car for a little while. Then I walked to the entrance of Walgreens. The vibrations from a maroon souped up Classic Buick (year unknown to me), polished to the nines, and housing negroes I could not see due to the glare of the florescent light inside and outside the drugstore distorted my sense of balance. It was not a clear thump, but a bling-bling trumpet of a bass line that spewed bass in every direction imaginable. I starred, then smiled my tough guy smile and my eyebrows bunched together like I was eating something that tasted mighty good. I did not want to reveal that I really wanted to go home, get a wrench and a screw driver to tighten up some wires and try to save their damaged woofer.
I then walked into Walgreens. There was someone talking to my left. I wanted to catch the phrases and pronunciations coming out of his mouth, but I could not get my head around it. Sometimes I think people take me for a foreigner. My voice must sound very different to everyone cause everyone's voice sound very different to me.
I walked 7 paces forward and turned to my left. There was this very elegant woman in all black. I think she must have come from church. Her hair was short, winged cut and combed straight back, no flips, just clear off her profile. She was so brown and slim I wondered if I had read about her somewhere, like the teacher in I Know Why the Cage Book Sings, or the African woman shopping for Parisian eggs in the first quarter of Tar Baby. That is what she looked like. The model of virtue and admiration from a congregation or jealousy from chubby mountain women that man the phones at the doctor's office. She was so concentrated on the thing she was looking for, that when she dropped something, she bent down and picked it up, and then continued as if she was having a conversation with a person. It was as if she had to tell hersef that she had her own total attention. I quickly moved to the next aisle, I felt myself starring, preparing to stalk, preparing to go down the aisle to talk to her. I noticed her pleated skirt, and her high heels, and the lace bellow the line of her jacket. I noticed her lips were perfect, with no lipstick, could not tell about other make-up, I was too far, and the glare was too great.
Three paces further, I reached the aisle with the magazines. I picked up Flex. Thumbed through it, and then put it down. I have loss so much money on such purchases.
For paces to the final aisle. Turned right. I took 11 paces to the back pharmacy counter. Four workers tonight. No line. The normal guy told me to wait a second. The second pharmacist is the type of woman that is just starting to age, the tall woman with gray in the front of her hair line that looks so familiar, like I know her people or went to school with her sister. She moved with heavy feet to the other computer monitor. She parted her lips and said, wait one second. She continued to stroll with plastic bottles containing a bitches brew of high blood pressure medicine and shit for your eyes so you can see -- white bottles of that white magic, clinical juju, with coloureds in white coats working like harvest ants trying to make that mortgage. Then a tall beautiful young man with a weird fade asked what I needed.
"I need refills" I replied.
"OK " he replied. "What is your date of birth."
"February 12th" I said. I am so used to this I know they don't need the year.
"Name?"
"Littlemilk." I responded.
"What do you need?"
And I went down the list: three different pills; insulin; plus, test strips. I asked if it could be ready by noon the next day. He said yes. And I left. He smiled. I smiled and I walked 11 paces back to the end of the aisle passing all the Arizona Ice Teas and Red Bulls on that end. I made a right turn and walked about 12 or 13 more steps to the door.
On the way, I saw them taking down the Valentine's candy and displays. It is over, this holiday. I did not even notice. I might buy some half price chocolate later.
I walked out. And passed maroon Jaguar. It was polished and its entire looked so clean I thought an airplane cleaning crew might have shampooed the entire interior. There was a beautiful man inside. He was so beautiful that his face shown through the florescent lights and spotlights outside. He was talking on the phone. He looked like one of them dudes from Soulfood (the movie). It dawned on me at that moment that that beautiful woman was inside checking out and ready to get back into the beautiful car with the be beautiful man.
It was about 17 paces from the curb of the street and preacher man's profile to my silver car. It looks like a brand new ghost.
I got into my car, started it, put in my CD, and drove across the bridge.
I had to return my DVDs in West End.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
St. Valentine's Day
No plans. Ms. A sent an e-mail wishing me a good trip. I think we might be doing this just friend thing, though I sense that there are some girlfriends chatting around her. They always look at me funny, but now they are getting a bit softer. That happened the day we all shot that commercial at the restaurant. I think they saw me in a different light at work.
Hard to follow their comments since they speak Portuguese so fast, but I understand the bits that I can, and Ms. A is funny. She just watches my face and reactions. But man she has got a lot of girlfriends. A samba school practically.
On the otherside . . .
the Persian Prince and I might catch a movie. Last time we saw Syriana. He said it was realistic, though I found it hard to follow. But since he understood a couple of the languages he translated many a detail for me. Not sure what we will see today when he gets off work. If he is not tired. And if I am not tired. This is Platonic.
Paper organizing time for me. That is my goal for St. Valentine's Day.
You know the words to that old Negro Spiritual: "No Romance without Finance".
So,
I wish everybody
Peace, Love, a bottle of Eros and a pound of Chocolate without tooth decay.
Have a good one.
Hard to follow their comments since they speak Portuguese so fast, but I understand the bits that I can, and Ms. A is funny. She just watches my face and reactions. But man she has got a lot of girlfriends. A samba school practically.
On the otherside . . .
the Persian Prince and I might catch a movie. Last time we saw Syriana. He said it was realistic, though I found it hard to follow. But since he understood a couple of the languages he translated many a detail for me. Not sure what we will see today when he gets off work. If he is not tired. And if I am not tired. This is Platonic.
Paper organizing time for me. That is my goal for St. Valentine's Day.
You know the words to that old Negro Spiritual: "No Romance without Finance".
So,
I wish everybody
Peace, Love, a bottle of Eros and a pound of Chocolate without tooth decay.
Have a good one.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Meu Anniversário
Today is my birthday. And last night was the party. It started at 12 midnight because me and the Persian Prince (we share the same birthday) are both superstitious and didn't want to celebrate before the actual day. Although I was born at 11:53 pm on the 12th, I am not that specific. There were people from Persia, Brazil, Chile and America at the party. We partied at Bar 23, then we went to an after hours club. Both not the Nashville I remember, but both still very Nashville. Bar 23 had beautiful people but a Top 40 DJ. Kiss, the after hours club, had some hot ass house, but no people. And there is no alcohol being served in after hours places, so it is hard to pull in a crowd, though I do have an idea of what could work as a business model under that situation. I won't say, but I have to check the laws. The Bible Belt has been working overtime lately on killing all carnal fun.
Sometimes I feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose.
I don't have a post on the 11th because I spent a good part of the day talking to a friend in Brazil on-line. An anthropologist. A real cutie and very sweet but already taken. We seem to have some things in common though, not in a romantic way, but in terms of just life experiences. Our chat was really encouraging concerning the work I do and my opinions about the New World. After that I watched Kill Bill at my good friends house and played around with her 3 daughters, my 3 godchildren. It is cool. I like them very much. They are really accepting. They tease me about my growing stomach without end. And how tall I am. And they laugh at the way I dance. And they get some of my jokes, but not all. It is just a nice house.
Then I went to the party.
That was the 11th.
The 12 is dinner with mom and Kill Bill 2 with my friend, while the kids play in the front room as usual and more thinking about Germany.
Ciao,
Littlemilk
PS
The past couple of days have been very insane. I have been reading, and haven't had much time for blogging, but I have entries set up for the days that I have been absent. They have yet to be written out completely. I also have pictures from the party. I am debating if I will post. I am pretty sure, but I want to ask my friends first. So previous days are coming and will be announced.
ciao, ciao
Sometimes I feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose.
I don't have a post on the 11th because I spent a good part of the day talking to a friend in Brazil on-line. An anthropologist. A real cutie and very sweet but already taken. We seem to have some things in common though, not in a romantic way, but in terms of just life experiences. Our chat was really encouraging concerning the work I do and my opinions about the New World. After that I watched Kill Bill at my good friends house and played around with her 3 daughters, my 3 godchildren. It is cool. I like them very much. They are really accepting. They tease me about my growing stomach without end. And how tall I am. And they laugh at the way I dance. And they get some of my jokes, but not all. It is just a nice house.
Then I went to the party.
That was the 11th.
The 12 is dinner with mom and Kill Bill 2 with my friend, while the kids play in the front room as usual and more thinking about Germany.
Ciao,
Littlemilk
PS
The past couple of days have been very insane. I have been reading, and haven't had much time for blogging, but I have entries set up for the days that I have been absent. They have yet to be written out completely. I also have pictures from the party. I am debating if I will post. I am pretty sure, but I want to ask my friends first. So previous days are coming and will be announced.
ciao, ciao
Friday, February 10, 2006
Bom Criuolo
I found the book Bom-Crioulo at the bookstore. The book was written by Adolfo Ferreira Caminha (1867-1897). It is a love story between a black man and a young white cabin boy in Brazil. It was published in 1895. It ends tragically I am sure, though I have not read it. So expect a book report on it soon.
The only problem I have is the way the book's title is translated by some reviewers and websites. Some have said that Bom Crioulo means Good Darkie or Good Nigger. American racial connotations against a Brazilian book title doth maketh my skin crawl I must say. I think Crioulo must be a term of endearment. Maybe? Something like Negruinho (Upa negruinho na estrada!). In Portuguese I can survive colored niceties and knick-knacks. In other languages it can be real difficult. I kicked it with this Bulgarian business man one night on a blind date. He made a couple of terms of endearment that kind of had me spinning my wheels. And with his German being very basic, and absolutely no English skills at all, I was not sure how to communicate that his English word for me was more than a slight insult. The affair was brief to say the least. He wrecked my nerves.
The translation I found by E.A. Lacey has Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy.
Cool beans.
The only problem I have is the way the book's title is translated by some reviewers and websites. Some have said that Bom Crioulo means Good Darkie or Good Nigger. American racial connotations against a Brazilian book title doth maketh my skin crawl I must say. I think Crioulo must be a term of endearment. Maybe? Something like Negruinho (Upa negruinho na estrada!). In Portuguese I can survive colored niceties and knick-knacks. In other languages it can be real difficult. I kicked it with this Bulgarian business man one night on a blind date. He made a couple of terms of endearment that kind of had me spinning my wheels. And with his German being very basic, and absolutely no English skills at all, I was not sure how to communicate that his English word for me was more than a slight insult. The affair was brief to say the least. He wrecked my nerves.
The translation I found by E.A. Lacey has Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy.
Cool beans.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
The Consensus and Terrence Howard
Some of my friends that are not writers have told me that my blogs are too long. I am sorry, I don't realize it, my fingers get to going and it does not take that much time. Plus after a month of doing it I am finding it a bit easier to figure out how to go about my daily entries. Plus things out here in the wilderness (of thought) are a bit isolated, so what I don't say to anyone I say on my blog.
Today I want to talk about director Craig Brewer's "Hustle & Flow".
The movie stars Terrence Howard as DJay, the worn and weary pimp-o-matic with 3 female investments and inner angst. From the very first line he utters in the dismal isolation of a sun beat Caprice Classic to the very last shot of the film I was addicted. I watched it with my friend from high school, she has lived the life and I think for all the years I was in New York and other places I did not understand those realities. Yes, I understood them in the same sense I understood walking through urban areas or working with homeless people, but not life for my friend. For some time now I have had an insider view of a privileged guy just wanting to help. I am beginning to think of it as the insidious Florence Nightingale in pimp language syndrome that a lot of middle class black folk got. Do we really know what is going on? I did not assign such pimpin realities to my friend cause we were always laughing, but I found we never talked about those other realities until a mutual friend of ours was murdered by her husband 2 days after Christmas a coupld of years ago. After that, the sad song of a lonely hearted pimped out girl emerged from both of my friends, the one living and the one dead.
And at times, I think she has underestimated the things that have been going on with mine. My corporate isolation. The joy of archival isolation. The isolation of living in a different language. But those are all cerebral. They are not connected to a scarcity of resources in an mini-micro economic ghetto. Larger than that is the task of providing for children. Children make all the difference in the adult world. It creates a divide between the single and the parents. I have an inner maturity from books, a couple of relationships, independence (or perceived independence); versus, the outward maturity of thinking outside of yourself. And in the South it is an issue of social respectability and the accolades of having outer "responsibilities", seen children, your old ladies children from an old marriage, hidden children, children in jail, unknown children, a woman with child, etc. . . .
So, we watched the film together. And, during this homecoming, I must admit that it articulated the chasm that has developed between me and the people that live here. There were clearly two sides to the equation, the isolation of a legitimate world formed by the preoccupation of making a descent honest living, and on the other side, the underworld and its communal fortitude. Anyone that has "partied" and "rolled" with Philly Blunts, Crown, Miller High Life and a big pot of something spice must know what that feeling is and how easy it is to drift from the legitimate side to the underworld without skipping a beat because you have known your homeboy since 7th grade and you "know him", in a much different sense. You knew him before ghetto trappings, and he knew you before degreed sheep’s skin.
My quizzical apprehension to crunk music has started to evaporate due to the film. Part of it is because I see what is so familiar about it, its nothing but gansta walkin' with big speakers and sagging pants. The energy is a bit less melodic, its all flash and bling.
Howard's character is endearing. A guy that is in his mid-to-late 30's trying to become a full man. He wants to be a full fledged adult delivered from his lowness through his dream of becoming a rapper. In the South, people will say you are low because of the carnal things that you do. Like the chick that lived across the street. She danced for her boyfriend outside one night. She did it in front of his car light while he blasted the music and put lights on bright. Her preacher father had to have heard. My Church of Christ neighbors surely did see it cause they are the ones that told me. I was not living here. I heard about it after a visit from New York. The next day the Church of Christ matriarch supposedly told the preacher's big hipped daughter (Denomination Not Known -- DNK) that she was "low". That word has stuck with me since because it implies that she is down on the ground with the beast and water nymphs. She is separated from the angels. She has been come earthbound. And, in the streets, I see these earthbound teenagers. And, in the language of the crunk, the Church of Christ family and the DNK pole dancing daughter I hear phrases full of the "low" and "lowly"; those that want something to "swing low"; and, others that simply or rhythmically want to "rock away" like a chariot carrying baby jesus to the nativity. All crunk motion now. DNK daughter's street dance as seen by my Church of Christ neighbors was almost 10 years ago. I can't remember if that preacher died. I know that the woman that told me the story, my neighbor's eldest daughter, died during childbirth. I don't know who lives there across the street. I believe it is that same DNK daughter. The second daughter of my Church of Christ next door neighbors has started her family. None of us talk much. We simply don't talk much at all.
My film screening friend tells me that people in the projects don't care about my art. They are not thinking about "that". It seems as if much is lost in the translation of my languishing literary world to their literal and earthbound world. It is a small world because it is occupied by young people involved in behavior that keeps them young and in motherhood, and middle-aged with the responsibilities of an septuagenarian. Their bodies never catch-up to the task at hand.
"Hustle & Flow" is about a boy in a sense. It is an open world full of roaming visionaries independent of parental guidance. It is family made from different stuff. It is child bearing. It is the nastiness of a man fucking a 20 dollar whore. It is about a whore.
After figuring out sometime ago that I am a sucker for good marketing, good use of formula and seeing the human even in the highly photoshopped, I have started to read reviews for movies on-line. I read both "A Pimp With A Heart Follows His Dreams" by New York Times' A.O. Scott and the Village Voice's "Memphis Bleak: Trick daddy: Pimp-hop flick's troubled sensibility sabotages an exquisite lead performance." by Laura Sinagra. Both of them basically say the same thing concerning Howard's performance and the misogynistic overtones of the film. I agree with the both critics that Howard shines with minimal textual direction. Howard's technique and analysis of this character's situation does turn the movie into something special. A.O. Scott states, "The complexity -- one might less charitably say the incoherence -- of DJay's character requires a lot from an actor, and Mr. Brewer's good fortune in casting Mr. Howard can hardly be overstated. The actor's heavy eyes and downturned mouth convey weariness and worry, but he tries not to presume too heavily on the audience's sympathy."
The films depiction of a woman’s value and worth bothers both reviewers. For me the problem becomes, do these Florence Nightingale reviewers understand that this is what really happens in life? There are real live people that assign themselves to positions in which they are looking for a man to lead them or are looking for women to adore and follow them. Call it what you want. But in the South no woman is looking to get beat and have her grill totally jacked off her jawbone, but there are a lot of women that are looking for a King Solomon. There are a lot of women that are looking for a house to keep and a man to kiss before he fights the dragon. So, the critic falls flat on me, because I sat near Fisk University watching the movie on DVD with my friend who lived that life for 10 years. 10 years she talked about as if she possessed a deformed fetus in formaldehyde.
The critics talk about this movie as if it is a hip-hop fantasy, a real Earth Wind and Fire Alice in Wonderland Vacation Holiday for Ho’s.
The fact is pimping is woman hating. So when A.O. Scott says that the film does not endorse the behavior depicted in the film (DJay kicks one of his bitches out, and sets the tricks baby next to her still in his troller), "it is integral to the fantasy Mr. Brewer is selling, which is that pimping is not as hard as it looks." "Hustle & Flow" is not a girl flick. Pimping is hip-hop's boy power.
Sinagra attacks the female characters as a flock of flat characters that have arrived flatlined. They are different archetypes of female subjugation -- a mirage of brides of Pimpin'stein. The shrew, the docile blues (morphed into a modern lyrical sample lick) woman, the good christian woman, and the tramp are all haunting her perception of the films truly great performance by Howard. I will give her credit, but I will also give credit to the director, because in the world of philly blunts and reformed women that I know, they are still looking for a man, they are still looking towards me, and they are starting to apologize for call me a fag because I did not play sports and I liked to read so much. Sinagra reminds me so much of the writer and critic that always has a problem with how someone depicts someone else. "Great!, what else is new.", is always my response, because I am not convinced that she interacts with that world or knows what that world is. Must art always show another way out? Sometimes I think that art can show how things are.
In truth, her calling the collection of four women in the in the movie a feminine heresy does not bother me. But, one quote does. Sinagra declares very bluntly that ". . . in another pimp stroke, Brewer ensures that the two characters with the most innate ambition in his story are white: Manning's washout (Yevette, the caucasian pussy-over-popped youngster tired of the life -- I describe this in the jest of the pimp -- not my true personae) with a sudden head for business and DJ Qualls's stoner church pianist who lays down DJay's crunk beats." Sinagra goes on to say that the position of these white folk in the narrative was a hollywood "concession".
OK, I honestly don't know where to begin, so let's start with class and the South. First, these white folk did not wield any power. Yevette is a homeless young girl that tricks out of the back seat of cars, and DJ Qualls fills up vending machines for living. Hey! Go figure! Where does the representation of "innate" power get injected into the narrative? And I guess the most glaring misconception for this call against hollywood concessions is that Yevette's business sense comes from flirting with radio program managers and specialist in order to get the disk played. We do not see her squatting under a desk sucking off executives, but we do see her legs crossed and her running down a monologue and getting people to listen. Is that white power at work Sinagra? I wonder. I appreciate her critic until the end, then her language and observations smack of cynicism, which I simply don't like. It closes down discussions because cynics are just disgruntled clairvoyants that know what's going to happen anyway, and in this case what all the signs mean. The black folk are simply “hustling” and the “whites” have a work ethic. Fuck that, they all pimps, tricks and trickin' chicks.
Today I want to talk about director Craig Brewer's "Hustle & Flow".
The movie stars Terrence Howard as DJay, the worn and weary pimp-o-matic with 3 female investments and inner angst. From the very first line he utters in the dismal isolation of a sun beat Caprice Classic to the very last shot of the film I was addicted. I watched it with my friend from high school, she has lived the life and I think for all the years I was in New York and other places I did not understand those realities. Yes, I understood them in the same sense I understood walking through urban areas or working with homeless people, but not life for my friend. For some time now I have had an insider view of a privileged guy just wanting to help. I am beginning to think of it as the insidious Florence Nightingale in pimp language syndrome that a lot of middle class black folk got. Do we really know what is going on? I did not assign such pimpin realities to my friend cause we were always laughing, but I found we never talked about those other realities until a mutual friend of ours was murdered by her husband 2 days after Christmas a coupld of years ago. After that, the sad song of a lonely hearted pimped out girl emerged from both of my friends, the one living and the one dead.
And at times, I think she has underestimated the things that have been going on with mine. My corporate isolation. The joy of archival isolation. The isolation of living in a different language. But those are all cerebral. They are not connected to a scarcity of resources in an mini-micro economic ghetto. Larger than that is the task of providing for children. Children make all the difference in the adult world. It creates a divide between the single and the parents. I have an inner maturity from books, a couple of relationships, independence (or perceived independence); versus, the outward maturity of thinking outside of yourself. And in the South it is an issue of social respectability and the accolades of having outer "responsibilities", seen children, your old ladies children from an old marriage, hidden children, children in jail, unknown children, a woman with child, etc. . . .
So, we watched the film together. And, during this homecoming, I must admit that it articulated the chasm that has developed between me and the people that live here. There were clearly two sides to the equation, the isolation of a legitimate world formed by the preoccupation of making a descent honest living, and on the other side, the underworld and its communal fortitude. Anyone that has "partied" and "rolled" with Philly Blunts, Crown, Miller High Life and a big pot of something spice must know what that feeling is and how easy it is to drift from the legitimate side to the underworld without skipping a beat because you have known your homeboy since 7th grade and you "know him", in a much different sense. You knew him before ghetto trappings, and he knew you before degreed sheep’s skin.
My quizzical apprehension to crunk music has started to evaporate due to the film. Part of it is because I see what is so familiar about it, its nothing but gansta walkin' with big speakers and sagging pants. The energy is a bit less melodic, its all flash and bling.
Howard's character is endearing. A guy that is in his mid-to-late 30's trying to become a full man. He wants to be a full fledged adult delivered from his lowness through his dream of becoming a rapper. In the South, people will say you are low because of the carnal things that you do. Like the chick that lived across the street. She danced for her boyfriend outside one night. She did it in front of his car light while he blasted the music and put lights on bright. Her preacher father had to have heard. My Church of Christ neighbors surely did see it cause they are the ones that told me. I was not living here. I heard about it after a visit from New York. The next day the Church of Christ matriarch supposedly told the preacher's big hipped daughter (Denomination Not Known -- DNK) that she was "low". That word has stuck with me since because it implies that she is down on the ground with the beast and water nymphs. She is separated from the angels. She has been come earthbound. And, in the streets, I see these earthbound teenagers. And, in the language of the crunk, the Church of Christ family and the DNK pole dancing daughter I hear phrases full of the "low" and "lowly"; those that want something to "swing low"; and, others that simply or rhythmically want to "rock away" like a chariot carrying baby jesus to the nativity. All crunk motion now. DNK daughter's street dance as seen by my Church of Christ neighbors was almost 10 years ago. I can't remember if that preacher died. I know that the woman that told me the story, my neighbor's eldest daughter, died during childbirth. I don't know who lives there across the street. I believe it is that same DNK daughter. The second daughter of my Church of Christ next door neighbors has started her family. None of us talk much. We simply don't talk much at all.
My film screening friend tells me that people in the projects don't care about my art. They are not thinking about "that". It seems as if much is lost in the translation of my languishing literary world to their literal and earthbound world. It is a small world because it is occupied by young people involved in behavior that keeps them young and in motherhood, and middle-aged with the responsibilities of an septuagenarian. Their bodies never catch-up to the task at hand.
"Hustle & Flow" is about a boy in a sense. It is an open world full of roaming visionaries independent of parental guidance. It is family made from different stuff. It is child bearing. It is the nastiness of a man fucking a 20 dollar whore. It is about a whore.
After figuring out sometime ago that I am a sucker for good marketing, good use of formula and seeing the human even in the highly photoshopped, I have started to read reviews for movies on-line. I read both "A Pimp With A Heart Follows His Dreams" by New York Times' A.O. Scott and the Village Voice's "Memphis Bleak: Trick daddy: Pimp-hop flick's troubled sensibility sabotages an exquisite lead performance." by Laura Sinagra. Both of them basically say the same thing concerning Howard's performance and the misogynistic overtones of the film. I agree with the both critics that Howard shines with minimal textual direction. Howard's technique and analysis of this character's situation does turn the movie into something special. A.O. Scott states, "The complexity -- one might less charitably say the incoherence -- of DJay's character requires a lot from an actor, and Mr. Brewer's good fortune in casting Mr. Howard can hardly be overstated. The actor's heavy eyes and downturned mouth convey weariness and worry, but he tries not to presume too heavily on the audience's sympathy."
The films depiction of a woman’s value and worth bothers both reviewers. For me the problem becomes, do these Florence Nightingale reviewers understand that this is what really happens in life? There are real live people that assign themselves to positions in which they are looking for a man to lead them or are looking for women to adore and follow them. Call it what you want. But in the South no woman is looking to get beat and have her grill totally jacked off her jawbone, but there are a lot of women that are looking for a King Solomon. There are a lot of women that are looking for a house to keep and a man to kiss before he fights the dragon. So, the critic falls flat on me, because I sat near Fisk University watching the movie on DVD with my friend who lived that life for 10 years. 10 years she talked about as if she possessed a deformed fetus in formaldehyde.
The critics talk about this movie as if it is a hip-hop fantasy, a real Earth Wind and Fire Alice in Wonderland Vacation Holiday for Ho’s.
The fact is pimping is woman hating. So when A.O. Scott says that the film does not endorse the behavior depicted in the film (DJay kicks one of his bitches out, and sets the tricks baby next to her still in his troller), "it is integral to the fantasy Mr. Brewer is selling, which is that pimping is not as hard as it looks." "Hustle & Flow" is not a girl flick. Pimping is hip-hop's boy power.
Sinagra attacks the female characters as a flock of flat characters that have arrived flatlined. They are different archetypes of female subjugation -- a mirage of brides of Pimpin'stein. The shrew, the docile blues (morphed into a modern lyrical sample lick) woman, the good christian woman, and the tramp are all haunting her perception of the films truly great performance by Howard. I will give her credit, but I will also give credit to the director, because in the world of philly blunts and reformed women that I know, they are still looking for a man, they are still looking towards me, and they are starting to apologize for call me a fag because I did not play sports and I liked to read so much. Sinagra reminds me so much of the writer and critic that always has a problem with how someone depicts someone else. "Great!, what else is new.", is always my response, because I am not convinced that she interacts with that world or knows what that world is. Must art always show another way out? Sometimes I think that art can show how things are.
In truth, her calling the collection of four women in the in the movie a feminine heresy does not bother me. But, one quote does. Sinagra declares very bluntly that ". . . in another pimp stroke, Brewer ensures that the two characters with the most innate ambition in his story are white: Manning's washout (Yevette, the caucasian pussy-over-popped youngster tired of the life -- I describe this in the jest of the pimp -- not my true personae) with a sudden head for business and DJ Qualls's stoner church pianist who lays down DJay's crunk beats." Sinagra goes on to say that the position of these white folk in the narrative was a hollywood "concession".
OK, I honestly don't know where to begin, so let's start with class and the South. First, these white folk did not wield any power. Yevette is a homeless young girl that tricks out of the back seat of cars, and DJ Qualls fills up vending machines for living. Hey! Go figure! Where does the representation of "innate" power get injected into the narrative? And I guess the most glaring misconception for this call against hollywood concessions is that Yevette's business sense comes from flirting with radio program managers and specialist in order to get the disk played. We do not see her squatting under a desk sucking off executives, but we do see her legs crossed and her running down a monologue and getting people to listen. Is that white power at work Sinagra? I wonder. I appreciate her critic until the end, then her language and observations smack of cynicism, which I simply don't like. It closes down discussions because cynics are just disgruntled clairvoyants that know what's going to happen anyway, and in this case what all the signs mean. The black folk are simply “hustling” and the “whites” have a work ethic. Fuck that, they all pimps, tricks and trickin' chicks.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
A New Hope
I guess I have chosen the first Star Wars movie title because the beginning is actually the middle. And that is where I am at, starting all over from the middle. My dissertation is back on track, with the change in theme I feel a bit more confident and also feel like I am not trying to bite into an entire piping hot apple pie while it is walking away from me. I got it down to a slice, now I got to consume it/write it bite by bite.
I also started on that "other project". Wrote some pages for it, not sure how I feel about it, but it is getting out of my system.
Then I updated my monster account, so I can start to look for a gig with insurance. I gotta pay for my insulin pump.
And I figured out some of my settings on my blog that should make it easier for comments to be posted.
Talked to a friend in Norway about the riots (I have been making mad comments to people all over the websphere about stereotypes in Europe). Wrote an e-mail to a friend from Brazil.
Watched the Coretta Scott King funeral service in bits and pieces. If I was there I would have called her "a woman with a cool head and a fiery heart". And I would have also said that she proved that to be a mother and a wife does not mean you can't be a warrior.
Later a feminist popped up and said that Jackie O. and Coretta Scott King proved that you can endure and be calm and strong and still be effective. The old feminist movement overlooked them she continued. Then she went on to blah, blah, blah. Anytime I hear that kind of speech I remember when my boss accused me of being "just one of the other men" when it came to power. That was her reasoning for not defending me against some really foul shit. And shortly after that I was sent up the river without a paddle. I could have sued. I think feminism is fair, but in terms of things that have happened to me in my old company, I think I still carry some baggage and trust "issues" (such a silly word now, but a friend of mine from Holland loves its American usage) about power women in the work place and how they perceive me. Them Southern executives who worked with the NYC office ran a freakin' train on all the women and blacks who worked for them. I will never forget this same female director taking me to lunch at my favorite French bistro (it is gone now) and crying telling me I had nothing to do with the power play that was pitted against her. "But what about me" I thought. I just left that job. I had to leave that job, I was not being defended in anyway. I left only to hear other male friends talking about having to leave other jobs too. I guess it is universal . . . in America. German corporate politics are back in the 50's, so you can guess what my black ass had to go through walking through that door. Actually, I did not go through shit cause I am an arrogant pompous ass! Them white folk went through some shit, and I did not tire of giving it too them. Maybe somebody will write a book about it.
Hey, maybe I should write a book about it!
Flash of literary success in front of my eyes.
Now back to normalcy.
I promised not to be an angry slave this week.
And finally I have been getting stuff together for my German trip. I leave on the 14th of February. I talked to Pepper. He asked how long I have to live. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Everyone just says, "I did not know it was that bad." Well, actually it is better with a tube running out of my stomach, what is bad is people being so aggressive about drinking and drugs when I tell them I can't do them. I can have a beer, but not anything else. In Germany everybody has to be doing what everybody else is doing . . . at least in the Southern German.
So. I am kinda ready to make my amends. Got two checks coming from my old job here in Nashville. Will meet my Doktorvater (mentor) in Cologne, spend a weekend with some friends, pack my things and start again from the middle.
Teaching again when I get back. Non-insured. Bummer. I do like how companies treat you over academic institutions honestly. But I won't bitch. I think I have found people and a university I can work with the way I want. The important thing is for me to keep on writing.
Now that has got to be in the top 3 things. Ignoring dumb asses and fucking with boys that make me jump through hoops is in the top 5. Girls? They always pop up when I need them. When I want them, or when I want her most I should say. They are secret treats I don't like to share. I have said it once and I will say it again.
I am a repressed heterosexual.
I also started on that "other project". Wrote some pages for it, not sure how I feel about it, but it is getting out of my system.
Then I updated my monster account, so I can start to look for a gig with insurance. I gotta pay for my insulin pump.
And I figured out some of my settings on my blog that should make it easier for comments to be posted.
Talked to a friend in Norway about the riots (I have been making mad comments to people all over the websphere about stereotypes in Europe). Wrote an e-mail to a friend from Brazil.
Watched the Coretta Scott King funeral service in bits and pieces. If I was there I would have called her "a woman with a cool head and a fiery heart". And I would have also said that she proved that to be a mother and a wife does not mean you can't be a warrior.
Later a feminist popped up and said that Jackie O. and Coretta Scott King proved that you can endure and be calm and strong and still be effective. The old feminist movement overlooked them she continued. Then she went on to blah, blah, blah. Anytime I hear that kind of speech I remember when my boss accused me of being "just one of the other men" when it came to power. That was her reasoning for not defending me against some really foul shit. And shortly after that I was sent up the river without a paddle. I could have sued. I think feminism is fair, but in terms of things that have happened to me in my old company, I think I still carry some baggage and trust "issues" (such a silly word now, but a friend of mine from Holland loves its American usage) about power women in the work place and how they perceive me. Them Southern executives who worked with the NYC office ran a freakin' train on all the women and blacks who worked for them. I will never forget this same female director taking me to lunch at my favorite French bistro (it is gone now) and crying telling me I had nothing to do with the power play that was pitted against her. "But what about me" I thought. I just left that job. I had to leave that job, I was not being defended in anyway. I left only to hear other male friends talking about having to leave other jobs too. I guess it is universal . . . in America. German corporate politics are back in the 50's, so you can guess what my black ass had to go through walking through that door. Actually, I did not go through shit cause I am an arrogant pompous ass! Them white folk went through some shit, and I did not tire of giving it too them. Maybe somebody will write a book about it.
Hey, maybe I should write a book about it!
Flash of literary success in front of my eyes.
Now back to normalcy.
I promised not to be an angry slave this week.
And finally I have been getting stuff together for my German trip. I leave on the 14th of February. I talked to Pepper. He asked how long I have to live. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Everyone just says, "I did not know it was that bad." Well, actually it is better with a tube running out of my stomach, what is bad is people being so aggressive about drinking and drugs when I tell them I can't do them. I can have a beer, but not anything else. In Germany everybody has to be doing what everybody else is doing . . . at least in the Southern German.
So. I am kinda ready to make my amends. Got two checks coming from my old job here in Nashville. Will meet my Doktorvater (mentor) in Cologne, spend a weekend with some friends, pack my things and start again from the middle.
Teaching again when I get back. Non-insured. Bummer. I do like how companies treat you over academic institutions honestly. But I won't bitch. I think I have found people and a university I can work with the way I want. The important thing is for me to keep on writing.
Now that has got to be in the top 3 things. Ignoring dumb asses and fucking with boys that make me jump through hoops is in the top 5. Girls? They always pop up when I need them. When I want them, or when I want her most I should say. They are secret treats I don't like to share. I have said it once and I will say it again.
I am a repressed heterosexual.
Monday, February 06, 2006
The Day After
I have been talking about race a lot lately, more so than I would in Germany. But when I lived in Germany I was always sick in my stomach cause I did not have anyone to talk to about my situation in that country. Everytime I tried to talk to a German about how I felt they would say "I don't know how that feels." Thanks guys for the honesty as usual. I still love all your little German asses.
So, I need new subject matter. How about the fact I am absolutely addicted to Project Runway and that Flava Flav show. What do they put in these shows, MSG? I like Project Runway because anything with creative people catches my interest. And I think one of the guys on there is cute, sensitive, bitchy, bitter, passionate and totally queer. I would do him in a second. I forgot his name though. Arabian Prince said my non-southern accent and my hetero-butchness are my main attractions. It made me think of this guy from France who screamed "Totally Butch!" in disgust when I snorted out a woogey and spat it 10 fit across the Koenigstr. I miss that guy. He was so nice. I don't think I could get very far with the Project Runway guys though. I just don't.
This blog is really starting to wear me down. The whole thing was down yesterday. I guess that is fine, but I could not post anything for two days, nor read for two days so I have been having fits of withdrawl. Glad we are back on line.
So, I need new subject matter. How about the fact I am absolutely addicted to Project Runway and that Flava Flav show. What do they put in these shows, MSG? I like Project Runway because anything with creative people catches my interest. And I think one of the guys on there is cute, sensitive, bitchy, bitter, passionate and totally queer. I would do him in a second. I forgot his name though. Arabian Prince said my non-southern accent and my hetero-butchness are my main attractions. It made me think of this guy from France who screamed "Totally Butch!" in disgust when I snorted out a woogey and spat it 10 fit across the Koenigstr. I miss that guy. He was so nice. I don't think I could get very far with the Project Runway guys though. I just don't.
This blog is really starting to wear me down. The whole thing was down yesterday. I guess that is fine, but I could not post anything for two days, nor read for two days so I have been having fits of withdrawl. Glad we are back on line.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Southern Bodegas on the Edge of Hard Knocks and Section 8
I
I live in Northwest Nashville. Our house is in the Black subdivision of middle-class homes that no one knows about. Or, let's just say knew or cared about when I was growing up. The uppity negroes. As time has progressed from our genesis back in the 60's when somebody decided to develop this land, the generation that played in its streets in the 70's and 80’s moved to Atlanta where you could be black, or gay, or a lesbo, or dab on the side, or see strippers, or hang with your lawyer friends, or play in little five points, etc. . . . So the parents, rich enough to move somewhere else either sold their houses, rented them as section 8 or simply stayed their ground while the world around them was invaded by the black folk across the river beccause the mayor wanted that land where the projects were in order to build a stadium since run down concrete grassless acres do not look good on NBC during football season from an arial view.
I live on the hill. We are safe up here, though I question our property value, not in an act of race hating but as part of the propertied class.
So funny to hear my self use such language.
The reality of black life is that no matter how much money you have, if you live in a black neighborhood, you may be in a position where you are starving for goods and services. When I opened my bank account, the guy said "I don't understand why they don't bring more stores and services out to this area?" I giggled and just signed on the dotted line. He is obviously from another part of town and has been stationed out here in the outskirts by the company.
When I was twelve they opened a Kwik Sak gasoline connivence store on Clarksville Highway. They offered gas, magazines (I would look at the dirty magazines, my sister would just laugh two steps behind me when the cashier would scream "Hey!", we weren't embarrassed for some odd reason), fresh backed glazed donuts, chicken and potato wedges with that crumbly breaded coating used for fried steaks in the morning. The store was the closest thing to a corner store for us. We would brave a very narrow road open to two way traffic to get to it for a pack Hubba Bubba and a box of Whoopers. There was no sidewalk, and the edges were trimmed with white gravel and bits of concrete. These gray, light sand brown and bleached bone white bits of calcium and limestone were speckled with tiny shards of green glass. It was dangerous, especially going up hill where the cars could not see you. We walked there in the summer, at least a mile and a half and thought nothing of it. It was close. Just for a grape soda and a talk about our parents and who was moving to which neighborhood cause their dad got a raise; or, who was moving to a new state cause their mom just finished dentist school; or, who got into a fight at the all white private all boys school that their mother worked two jobs to send them to. You know normal shit.
One day during one of these talks, Paul, a friend of mine, who was only 2 months older but a full head taller walked in front of me with an umbrella. A crazy redneck with his girlfriend faked like he was going to run us down. His girl was in one arm, his other hand was on the steering wheel and we both froze as the practical joke played out and his fiery brown hair flared back like a super hero, a super villan that my mother warned me about, those crazy white guys that will abduct you, stab you, violate you, kill you cause your black. This guy was just a blip on a world that was ending around us, but a world that was and still is behind in race relations. But at 12, I thought that these green trees and this thin road and our nice house was the world. I thought that the guy in the green car was going to run us down because he could.
That was just one incident of many while walking down a street on Clarksville Highway, but the only one I will tell today.
But for me and Paul, this was a big incident. We talked about how we wished he would come back. We talked about how we wished Paul had held the tip of his umbrella out to scratch the car, cause he was that close to us. Cause there was no where to go but into the thicket, of which any 12 year old would be scared in my neighborhood. Poisonous snakes. Chicken Snakes. Black Racers. Thistles. Ticks. Wasps nest. Rabid dogs. All I had seen in my yard or under our house, let alone in the woods, all threats.
II
Today after maybe 22 years of that store being there it has a different name. All of the cars in the parking lot are duces, beat up trucks, Cadillacs, fixed up Toyotas, etc. . . . The guys running it are Middle Easterners. It is a bodega and not a connivence store anymore. It is a cornucopia of nukka city delights. Hot Fries. Hot Potato Chips. Onion Rings. Golden Flakes. Little Debbies. Hostesses. Brimms’. Old English. 5th Avenues. Golden Flakes. Sour Creams and Onions. Cool Ranches. Extra Cool Ranches. Beef Jerkies. Egyptian Musk Inscenses. Strawberry Inscenses. Drakar Inscenses. Philly Blunts. Fried Chickens. An ATM. High Lifes. Genuine Drafts. Coors Lights. Mystic flavors. Nutty Buddies. Banana Fingers. Lotto. Pick 3. Rub-Off. Chocolate miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Powdered miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Toasted Coconut Dusted miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Honey Buns. Glazed Honey Buns. 35 cent Honey Buns. 99 cent Honey Buns. Cokes. Sprites. Diet Cokes. Newports. Salems. Winstons. Virginia Slims. Camels. Malboros. Lights. Menthol. Life is in a can. Life is in plastic. Life is in a box. Life is in a wrapper. It is a bakery. It is a chocolaterie. It is a soda shop. It is a brewery. It is a dairy. It is a tobacco shop. It is a smoke house. It is a parfumerie. It is provisions. It is Madison Avenue thin paper weight placards painted blue with silver lettering. It is a photshopped black girl on every box.It is a field of dreams. It has oil for the car so you can fuck to a sweet scent. It has car oil. It has newspapers. No magazines. It has little horoscopes rolled tight like spliffs of different colors. It is worn. The North Africans or Persians or Syrians talk without looking. Their lips are black. Their eyes are black. They seem to want to be there. They are comfortable. Everyone is comfortable with them being here in my neighborhood.
I remember when that store had black employees. I remember when the store up the street the Little Red Barn was own by a black guy after he bought it from a white guy but then sold it to another guy whose origin I do not know. The men behind the counter of the Little Red Barn are from the Middle East too. As I approached the former Kwik Sak, driving in a Cadillac, looking for a parking space, on this outpost I paid attention to my direction. When traveling north on Clarksville City Highway you can turn right on Kings Lane and see a couple of big houses to your left. To your right the world is becoming the hood, with roaming groups of young peoples. They are harmless and not foreboding, but looking down this road, to my right and watching three children, maybe not even 16, walking with a baby and a stroller on that same precarious concrete crumble trim of a narrow two way street unnerves me. That is harmful. It is foreboding. The boy up front, holding the pink fitted infant, the two girls pushing the carriage behind talking as they go. 2 are dark, one is brown. 2 have straighten strands of hair, one is beady and boney and tall and lanky. The boy walks like he his balancing something on his head the baby is a secondary gesture in his arms. It is extra. The girls chatter as if they have husbands and must rush home to cook and prepare a bath. They chatter like they have men at war and one has just had an affair or their next door neighbor has just sucked off an officer on leave. They wonder about that husband. They chatter as if they know the kids. They hurry pass me on the road, the shorter dumpier one's motion with the carriage, the speed at which she tries to keep up, the way she is bent over the rail of the buggy, betrays chatter concerning judgment. They are passing judgment, the two girls, the boy strolls atheletically and with perfect posture, almost ready to break into a strut, but the little baby legs clip his motion.
To the left, if you choose to turn left, you are heading to my neighborhood. I live on the hill. There are many hills, but mine is not the big one where the science teacher lives. Mine is the small hill, in the middle of the suburban calm but spacial chaos. The bumpy lands make it so that our land is not carved out so well, not true squares but pie slices. The kids on the bottom of my hill’s north side are in smaller houses. When I was younger friends would visit and they would say that I was rich (not seeing the house I lived in before my parents divorce). I did not believe it. I played it off. It made me uncomfortable to hear such words. But today, as I drive through I wonder. I wonder what is happening to the neighborhood. What is it going to mean for us if that group below the hill invades? From the north comes the look of dilapidated front yards that are grassless. Are grassless yards a sign of poor coloreds? Just a question. Are lush grasses a sign of uppity coloreds? Is that the code? I don't know, but I plant my seeds at the beginning of every spring, sowing my seeds from a basket by hand, like my grandfather used to do. I heard you should do it when it gets cold, in the fall, cover the yard with straw after sowing and wait for the snow. When it melts, the weight of the water will take your seeds into the earth. A bit much. No? I am not that uppity. Negroes.
Below, to the South are my neighbors with the fences. A couple have manicured gardens. Another is a handsome couple who have handsome children that I have not seen for years. They are probably in college now. I remember when they were really small. That yard has two German shepherds that bark all the time at the rabbits that run through our yard. To the West is a view of the green hills before the green mountains. To the east is a church steeple that is new to me. When I played in that church’s backyard it was not built. The pastor has died too. The old first lady of the church lives up the street. Her daughter married a friend of mine from high school who I saw buying chicken soup for his sick son at the Kroger they just built at the sight of an old drive-in theater which once held a blues festival back in the nineties that I missed cause I was in New Jersey finding myself. He is balding. I feel funny near him. He seems conservative, I thought he was wild, he kind of remembered me, but didn't. I forgot. I had a sexual identity problem, I did not speak to anyone in school that much. I just went to class, laughed loud, but I did not go out out out. I did not know what to do with whom. Doom. Gloom. A girlfriend here, a girlfriend there, but no boyfriends. The girl I liked I think became a Black Republican. Not for me.
I went into the Kwik Sak after getting my haircut. It took all day. Today was a service day for the teachers so fathers were at the barber’s with their sons. I waited for 2 hours without any food. Afterwards I went shopping at Kroger. I bought ground chicken, a big chili spice packet, one onion, one pepper, some milk, some eggs, a small can of tomato sauce and a case of Diet Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper (nectar from Venus's titty). I then drove to the old Kwik Sak and bought a honey bun because I did not eat all day. I know that I am diabetic, but all those nikka city delectable delights were circling my head like sugar plum fairies. They all gathered at my temple and killed the little sugarless gum bitch of a fairy that is normally talking into my subconscious. Then I picked up a beer for the chili mix and drove away. Every time I am in line I want to speak French to them, but I am nervous, a bit scared. The cashiers have a programed way of addressing everyone. I instantly turn into "boss" or "dawg". They can tell that something is different about me. Something is different about me. Something is different about me. They must know where I live. Maybe they think I am an immigrant too. Kwik Sak is the last gas station for some miles. The Clarksville Highway goes on forever, out of my subdivision into a world of farmland and horse farms. Beautiful little communities. They are agrarian. They are working class. The majority are white. They do not consider themselves Nashvillians at all.
I live in Northwest Nashville. Our house is in the Black subdivision of middle-class homes that no one knows about. Or, let's just say knew or cared about when I was growing up. The uppity negroes. As time has progressed from our genesis back in the 60's when somebody decided to develop this land, the generation that played in its streets in the 70's and 80’s moved to Atlanta where you could be black, or gay, or a lesbo, or dab on the side, or see strippers, or hang with your lawyer friends, or play in little five points, etc. . . . So the parents, rich enough to move somewhere else either sold their houses, rented them as section 8 or simply stayed their ground while the world around them was invaded by the black folk across the river beccause the mayor wanted that land where the projects were in order to build a stadium since run down concrete grassless acres do not look good on NBC during football season from an arial view.
I live on the hill. We are safe up here, though I question our property value, not in an act of race hating but as part of the propertied class.
So funny to hear my self use such language.
The reality of black life is that no matter how much money you have, if you live in a black neighborhood, you may be in a position where you are starving for goods and services. When I opened my bank account, the guy said "I don't understand why they don't bring more stores and services out to this area?" I giggled and just signed on the dotted line. He is obviously from another part of town and has been stationed out here in the outskirts by the company.
When I was twelve they opened a Kwik Sak gasoline connivence store on Clarksville Highway. They offered gas, magazines (I would look at the dirty magazines, my sister would just laugh two steps behind me when the cashier would scream "Hey!", we weren't embarrassed for some odd reason), fresh backed glazed donuts, chicken and potato wedges with that crumbly breaded coating used for fried steaks in the morning. The store was the closest thing to a corner store for us. We would brave a very narrow road open to two way traffic to get to it for a pack Hubba Bubba and a box of Whoopers. There was no sidewalk, and the edges were trimmed with white gravel and bits of concrete. These gray, light sand brown and bleached bone white bits of calcium and limestone were speckled with tiny shards of green glass. It was dangerous, especially going up hill where the cars could not see you. We walked there in the summer, at least a mile and a half and thought nothing of it. It was close. Just for a grape soda and a talk about our parents and who was moving to which neighborhood cause their dad got a raise; or, who was moving to a new state cause their mom just finished dentist school; or, who got into a fight at the all white private all boys school that their mother worked two jobs to send them to. You know normal shit.
One day during one of these talks, Paul, a friend of mine, who was only 2 months older but a full head taller walked in front of me with an umbrella. A crazy redneck with his girlfriend faked like he was going to run us down. His girl was in one arm, his other hand was on the steering wheel and we both froze as the practical joke played out and his fiery brown hair flared back like a super hero, a super villan that my mother warned me about, those crazy white guys that will abduct you, stab you, violate you, kill you cause your black. This guy was just a blip on a world that was ending around us, but a world that was and still is behind in race relations. But at 12, I thought that these green trees and this thin road and our nice house was the world. I thought that the guy in the green car was going to run us down because he could.
That was just one incident of many while walking down a street on Clarksville Highway, but the only one I will tell today.
But for me and Paul, this was a big incident. We talked about how we wished he would come back. We talked about how we wished Paul had held the tip of his umbrella out to scratch the car, cause he was that close to us. Cause there was no where to go but into the thicket, of which any 12 year old would be scared in my neighborhood. Poisonous snakes. Chicken Snakes. Black Racers. Thistles. Ticks. Wasps nest. Rabid dogs. All I had seen in my yard or under our house, let alone in the woods, all threats.
II
Today after maybe 22 years of that store being there it has a different name. All of the cars in the parking lot are duces, beat up trucks, Cadillacs, fixed up Toyotas, etc. . . . The guys running it are Middle Easterners. It is a bodega and not a connivence store anymore. It is a cornucopia of nukka city delights. Hot Fries. Hot Potato Chips. Onion Rings. Golden Flakes. Little Debbies. Hostesses. Brimms’. Old English. 5th Avenues. Golden Flakes. Sour Creams and Onions. Cool Ranches. Extra Cool Ranches. Beef Jerkies. Egyptian Musk Inscenses. Strawberry Inscenses. Drakar Inscenses. Philly Blunts. Fried Chickens. An ATM. High Lifes. Genuine Drafts. Coors Lights. Mystic flavors. Nutty Buddies. Banana Fingers. Lotto. Pick 3. Rub-Off. Chocolate miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Powdered miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Toasted Coconut Dusted miniature Donuts 6 in a Pack. Honey Buns. Glazed Honey Buns. 35 cent Honey Buns. 99 cent Honey Buns. Cokes. Sprites. Diet Cokes. Newports. Salems. Winstons. Virginia Slims. Camels. Malboros. Lights. Menthol. Life is in a can. Life is in plastic. Life is in a box. Life is in a wrapper. It is a bakery. It is a chocolaterie. It is a soda shop. It is a brewery. It is a dairy. It is a tobacco shop. It is a smoke house. It is a parfumerie. It is provisions. It is Madison Avenue thin paper weight placards painted blue with silver lettering. It is a photshopped black girl on every box.It is a field of dreams. It has oil for the car so you can fuck to a sweet scent. It has car oil. It has newspapers. No magazines. It has little horoscopes rolled tight like spliffs of different colors. It is worn. The North Africans or Persians or Syrians talk without looking. Their lips are black. Their eyes are black. They seem to want to be there. They are comfortable. Everyone is comfortable with them being here in my neighborhood.
I remember when that store had black employees. I remember when the store up the street the Little Red Barn was own by a black guy after he bought it from a white guy but then sold it to another guy whose origin I do not know. The men behind the counter of the Little Red Barn are from the Middle East too. As I approached the former Kwik Sak, driving in a Cadillac, looking for a parking space, on this outpost I paid attention to my direction. When traveling north on Clarksville City Highway you can turn right on Kings Lane and see a couple of big houses to your left. To your right the world is becoming the hood, with roaming groups of young peoples. They are harmless and not foreboding, but looking down this road, to my right and watching three children, maybe not even 16, walking with a baby and a stroller on that same precarious concrete crumble trim of a narrow two way street unnerves me. That is harmful. It is foreboding. The boy up front, holding the pink fitted infant, the two girls pushing the carriage behind talking as they go. 2 are dark, one is brown. 2 have straighten strands of hair, one is beady and boney and tall and lanky. The boy walks like he his balancing something on his head the baby is a secondary gesture in his arms. It is extra. The girls chatter as if they have husbands and must rush home to cook and prepare a bath. They chatter like they have men at war and one has just had an affair or their next door neighbor has just sucked off an officer on leave. They wonder about that husband. They chatter as if they know the kids. They hurry pass me on the road, the shorter dumpier one's motion with the carriage, the speed at which she tries to keep up, the way she is bent over the rail of the buggy, betrays chatter concerning judgment. They are passing judgment, the two girls, the boy strolls atheletically and with perfect posture, almost ready to break into a strut, but the little baby legs clip his motion.
To the left, if you choose to turn left, you are heading to my neighborhood. I live on the hill. There are many hills, but mine is not the big one where the science teacher lives. Mine is the small hill, in the middle of the suburban calm but spacial chaos. The bumpy lands make it so that our land is not carved out so well, not true squares but pie slices. The kids on the bottom of my hill’s north side are in smaller houses. When I was younger friends would visit and they would say that I was rich (not seeing the house I lived in before my parents divorce). I did not believe it. I played it off. It made me uncomfortable to hear such words. But today, as I drive through I wonder. I wonder what is happening to the neighborhood. What is it going to mean for us if that group below the hill invades? From the north comes the look of dilapidated front yards that are grassless. Are grassless yards a sign of poor coloreds? Just a question. Are lush grasses a sign of uppity coloreds? Is that the code? I don't know, but I plant my seeds at the beginning of every spring, sowing my seeds from a basket by hand, like my grandfather used to do. I heard you should do it when it gets cold, in the fall, cover the yard with straw after sowing and wait for the snow. When it melts, the weight of the water will take your seeds into the earth. A bit much. No? I am not that uppity. Negroes.
Below, to the South are my neighbors with the fences. A couple have manicured gardens. Another is a handsome couple who have handsome children that I have not seen for years. They are probably in college now. I remember when they were really small. That yard has two German shepherds that bark all the time at the rabbits that run through our yard. To the West is a view of the green hills before the green mountains. To the east is a church steeple that is new to me. When I played in that church’s backyard it was not built. The pastor has died too. The old first lady of the church lives up the street. Her daughter married a friend of mine from high school who I saw buying chicken soup for his sick son at the Kroger they just built at the sight of an old drive-in theater which once held a blues festival back in the nineties that I missed cause I was in New Jersey finding myself. He is balding. I feel funny near him. He seems conservative, I thought he was wild, he kind of remembered me, but didn't. I forgot. I had a sexual identity problem, I did not speak to anyone in school that much. I just went to class, laughed loud, but I did not go out out out. I did not know what to do with whom. Doom. Gloom. A girlfriend here, a girlfriend there, but no boyfriends. The girl I liked I think became a Black Republican. Not for me.
I went into the Kwik Sak after getting my haircut. It took all day. Today was a service day for the teachers so fathers were at the barber’s with their sons. I waited for 2 hours without any food. Afterwards I went shopping at Kroger. I bought ground chicken, a big chili spice packet, one onion, one pepper, some milk, some eggs, a small can of tomato sauce and a case of Diet Vanilla Cherry Dr. Pepper (nectar from Venus's titty). I then drove to the old Kwik Sak and bought a honey bun because I did not eat all day. I know that I am diabetic, but all those nikka city delectable delights were circling my head like sugar plum fairies. They all gathered at my temple and killed the little sugarless gum bitch of a fairy that is normally talking into my subconscious. Then I picked up a beer for the chili mix and drove away. Every time I am in line I want to speak French to them, but I am nervous, a bit scared. The cashiers have a programed way of addressing everyone. I instantly turn into "boss" or "dawg". They can tell that something is different about me. Something is different about me. Something is different about me. They must know where I live. Maybe they think I am an immigrant too. Kwik Sak is the last gas station for some miles. The Clarksville Highway goes on forever, out of my subdivision into a world of farmland and horse farms. Beautiful little communities. They are agrarian. They are working class. The majority are white. They do not consider themselves Nashvillians at all.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Ancestors, Anarchy, Autonomy (The Lost Blog)
Insane!
I posted something on this site and it has been erased. And then my entry for the Feb. 3rd was erased so I had to post it as the 4th. I will cut and paste and save for now on. How much you wanna bet? They were updating last night during my blogging session.
One of my lost blogs was an entire treatise on Denmark, racist European behavior (them bitches say that they don't discriminate, but they sure as hell can be motherfuckin' prejudice!) and a call for Al Sharpton to boycott BET and not the Cartoon Channel. Boondocks is a great show, with much insight on what is going on from the other side of the looking glass. BET and them chicks on the videos is another situation. Them girls got their moosies in the air like ashtrays. When we have a chance to go after either tasteless pornography (I like porn mind you) or satire in the Black community where does the line fall for the preacher man? Enough said.
My post was beautiful, but I don't want to write it again in vain. The word choices and metaphors just clicked after much tweaking and now the shit is gone. This is all the flavor I can recapture.
Sorry.
Here is the rest of the recap because the headline is worth saving.
Ancestors -- They wanted me to rest, I am sure of that. That is what this past year has been about.
Anarchy -- See above. Our world is becoming black and white, the Western World vs. the rest of the World. It is happening so quick it is unbelievable. Makes me think of Jonathan Swift and boiled eggs. It makes me think about what Jimmy Carter said about World War III.
Autonomy -- What I want and crave like a junkie. This is different than detachment. Please meditate on the difference.
Peace.
I posted something on this site and it has been erased. And then my entry for the Feb. 3rd was erased so I had to post it as the 4th. I will cut and paste and save for now on. How much you wanna bet? They were updating last night during my blogging session.
One of my lost blogs was an entire treatise on Denmark, racist European behavior (them bitches say that they don't discriminate, but they sure as hell can be motherfuckin' prejudice!) and a call for Al Sharpton to boycott BET and not the Cartoon Channel. Boondocks is a great show, with much insight on what is going on from the other side of the looking glass. BET and them chicks on the videos is another situation. Them girls got their moosies in the air like ashtrays. When we have a chance to go after either tasteless pornography (I like porn mind you) or satire in the Black community where does the line fall for the preacher man? Enough said.
My post was beautiful, but I don't want to write it again in vain. The word choices and metaphors just clicked after much tweaking and now the shit is gone. This is all the flavor I can recapture.
Sorry.
Here is the rest of the recap because the headline is worth saving.
Ancestors -- They wanted me to rest, I am sure of that. That is what this past year has been about.
Anarchy -- See above. Our world is becoming black and white, the Western World vs. the rest of the World. It is happening so quick it is unbelievable. Makes me think of Jonathan Swift and boiled eggs. It makes me think about what Jimmy Carter said about World War III.
Autonomy -- What I want and crave like a junkie. This is different than detachment. Please meditate on the difference.
Peace.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
The State of The Union
I wanted to make some comments concerning the speech and get into an interesting discussion with some of my fellow writers but . . .
Last night, I went downstairs to watch the State of the Union address and both me and my mom fell asleep within the first three paragraphs. Woke up. Me and mom watched bits of the Parliament/Funkadelic documentary on PBS. It was our second time. I was wide awake, my mom parted her half sleeping lips to say they don't make music like that anymore, "after Parliment/Funkadelic everything went downhill." Sometimes I think my mom has become a church woman because it is convenient. She needs a boyfriend. I then got up and went to the pharmacy. Complete madness. 4 people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Then I dropped off the video. I owe one million dollars. Black man at the interstate exit on the way back asked me for some money. He was really hungry. He needed help. I did not really notice him till I drove away. I was depressed. Could not get back to the exit to give him something. Got home. Worked on computer. Chatted with the new brown booties that popped up on my new adam4adam account. Downloaded "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction because I love Perry Farrell's voice and the key he sings this song in is fucking great. Started to work on my project for a while, I am on a new phase. Went downstairs. Watched the replay of the documentary on P-Funk. Realized that me and all my childhood friends grew up that way. Southern and Funk oriented. Fell asleep at 3:30 am. Woke up this morning at 9:30 am. Called Cousin in Atlanta. Called the Bronx. No answer. Made coffee. Called the lady from the Bronx's cell. Talked for a second. Go upstairs. Check Hotmail. Have to return e-mail to my friend down in the lower east side of Manhattan. Intellectual. Wonderful woman. My mentor. Husband just found out he had diabetes. We will talk. Go back downstairs and hear that PRESIDENT BUSH IS SPEAKING IN NASHVILLE TODAY AT 11:50 EST AT THE OPRY HOUSE WITH SENATOR BILL FRIST.
Fuck it. I am staying in my house.
Last night, I went downstairs to watch the State of the Union address and both me and my mom fell asleep within the first three paragraphs. Woke up. Me and mom watched bits of the Parliament/Funkadelic documentary on PBS. It was our second time. I was wide awake, my mom parted her half sleeping lips to say they don't make music like that anymore, "after Parliment/Funkadelic everything went downhill." Sometimes I think my mom has become a church woman because it is convenient. She needs a boyfriend. I then got up and went to the pharmacy. Complete madness. 4 people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Then I dropped off the video. I owe one million dollars. Black man at the interstate exit on the way back asked me for some money. He was really hungry. He needed help. I did not really notice him till I drove away. I was depressed. Could not get back to the exit to give him something. Got home. Worked on computer. Chatted with the new brown booties that popped up on my new adam4adam account. Downloaded "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction because I love Perry Farrell's voice and the key he sings this song in is fucking great. Started to work on my project for a while, I am on a new phase. Went downstairs. Watched the replay of the documentary on P-Funk. Realized that me and all my childhood friends grew up that way. Southern and Funk oriented. Fell asleep at 3:30 am. Woke up this morning at 9:30 am. Called Cousin in Atlanta. Called the Bronx. No answer. Made coffee. Called the lady from the Bronx's cell. Talked for a second. Go upstairs. Check Hotmail. Have to return e-mail to my friend down in the lower east side of Manhattan. Intellectual. Wonderful woman. My mentor. Husband just found out he had diabetes. We will talk. Go back downstairs and hear that PRESIDENT BUSH IS SPEAKING IN NASHVILLE TODAY AT 11:50 EST AT THE OPRY HOUSE WITH SENATOR BILL FRIST.
Fuck it. I am staying in my house.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Reasoning and Writing
I have not had time to write lately. Sorting things out with my apartment in Cologne. Weird year. Some of my slacking has to do with my screwed up emotions over Das Experiment. And then, there is the fact that I have too much in my head to try and sort out and try to write. I am happy about this situation, better than writer's block, but I gotta order my thoughts and my head so I can produce, and that means I have to suspend all the drama around me.
Slow in Writing:
The Reasons
1. Abortion Rights -- J's Theater
Got into a real deep discussion and I want to take the time to understand the implications of Alito and a woman's right to choose. J has introduced the realities of anti-abortion legislation and the criminalization of women that choose to have an abortion.
2. Das Experiment's Call
He called me early on Sunday morning, the 31st. He sounds sad and depressed and upset. In short, he sounds like a broken record. We talked for a little more than an hour. I was worried about him, but I don't have time to make him see certain things. He is so stubborn.
3. Portuguese Exercises
I am one fourth of the way through the little tourist book that I bought when I meet Ms. Portugal. Making progress.
4. Mom's Retirement
She is finished next week. And she is also going to physical therapy for her back. I feel like my life is changing, I am a bit worried about her well being. This age thing is a trip and time is playing a trip on me big time. What happens if something happens to her. Will I be able to travel? She will be alone.
5. Diabetes
Nervous about doctor's visit. Went. And I am tired I must say of the pills and all of it. I feel strong, I look OK, but when I visit the doctor I get a different truth. He said I must take this medicine forever. I won't recite the list. It just makes me sick.
6. Sketch for Novel
Been thinking about it more. It is stupid to try while doing so much, but damn it is in my head and I gotta work on getting it out.
7. Staying or Coming Back
Up and down. Back and Forth. Can't explain to the people over there what life is like here for me. As my roommate in Cologne, when talking about the Germans, says, "How could they ever know about what we have gone through. They will only look at us African Americans with confusion and taking for granted that the 3 weeks they have known you is the whole story of your life." It is true. It is what is so hard about being exotic. People have already made up a past for you.
And people here wonder why you have come back. People do get treated like shit here.
Slow in Writing:
The Reasons
1. Abortion Rights -- J's Theater
Got into a real deep discussion and I want to take the time to understand the implications of Alito and a woman's right to choose. J has introduced the realities of anti-abortion legislation and the criminalization of women that choose to have an abortion.
2. Das Experiment's Call
He called me early on Sunday morning, the 31st. He sounds sad and depressed and upset. In short, he sounds like a broken record. We talked for a little more than an hour. I was worried about him, but I don't have time to make him see certain things. He is so stubborn.
3. Portuguese Exercises
I am one fourth of the way through the little tourist book that I bought when I meet Ms. Portugal. Making progress.
4. Mom's Retirement
She is finished next week. And she is also going to physical therapy for her back. I feel like my life is changing, I am a bit worried about her well being. This age thing is a trip and time is playing a trip on me big time. What happens if something happens to her. Will I be able to travel? She will be alone.
5. Diabetes
Nervous about doctor's visit. Went. And I am tired I must say of the pills and all of it. I feel strong, I look OK, but when I visit the doctor I get a different truth. He said I must take this medicine forever. I won't recite the list. It just makes me sick.
6. Sketch for Novel
Been thinking about it more. It is stupid to try while doing so much, but damn it is in my head and I gotta work on getting it out.
7. Staying or Coming Back
Up and down. Back and Forth. Can't explain to the people over there what life is like here for me. As my roommate in Cologne, when talking about the Germans, says, "How could they ever know about what we have gone through. They will only look at us African Americans with confusion and taking for granted that the 3 weeks they have known you is the whole story of your life." It is true. It is what is so hard about being exotic. People have already made up a past for you.
And people here wonder why you have come back. People do get treated like shit here.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Pepper
For Pepper
I have a friend from Germany named Pepper.
He said he was not interested in my blog and that I should get a life.
Then I told him to read the fucking blog.
And, I said that
I was not going to fall in love with boys that make me cry anymore.
(it was a joke.)
I had this same problem in Cologne with other Germans and Americans.
Reading and University and Teaching is not a life.
Some even hate to read.
Theater people.
Imagine that.
They did not understand what I did but they are always looking for scripts.
Then there was that boy from the Far East that said that all I was good for was reading and kinky sex.
He is right.
But he said it with such contempt.
But he liked the sex.
Weird.
Such flashbacks are
starting to influence my decision to return.
Everything was great except for that one thing --
No one could see what I really do.
Or maybe I should check out Berlin.
I wonder what that place is like.
Was there once.
Like New York.
Mayor is gay.
But there is no work.
Conservatives in southern Germany don't really care.
At least the conservative I have fallen out of love with said that.
Some say Hamburg is good.
I like it there too.
Language.
Work.
Friendships.
Fun.
Hmmmm?
Uhmmmm!
Pepper.
I still like him too.
I am going to
tongue him
and
twist his tits
in front of his girlfriend when I see him again.
Whoever that is this week.
I have a friend from Germany named Pepper.
He said he was not interested in my blog and that I should get a life.
Then I told him to read the fucking blog.
And, I said that
I was not going to fall in love with boys that make me cry anymore.
(it was a joke.)
I had this same problem in Cologne with other Germans and Americans.
Reading and University and Teaching is not a life.
Some even hate to read.
Theater people.
Imagine that.
They did not understand what I did but they are always looking for scripts.
Then there was that boy from the Far East that said that all I was good for was reading and kinky sex.
He is right.
But he said it with such contempt.
But he liked the sex.
Weird.
Such flashbacks are
starting to influence my decision to return.
Everything was great except for that one thing --
No one could see what I really do.
Or maybe I should check out Berlin.
I wonder what that place is like.
Was there once.
Like New York.
Mayor is gay.
But there is no work.
Conservatives in southern Germany don't really care.
At least the conservative I have fallen out of love with said that.
Some say Hamburg is good.
I like it there too.
Language.
Work.
Friendships.
Fun.
Hmmmm?
Uhmmmm!
Pepper.
I still like him too.
I am going to
tongue him
and
twist his tits
in front of his girlfriend when I see him again.
Whoever that is this week.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Lenny Called Me Today
My friend looks like Lenny Kravitz.
So that is going to be my code name for him. I have to admit that he's really cute and you would never guess that he is old enough to remember partying with Grace Jones, or house parties with Princess Stefanie and Prince Albert of Monaco, or seeing these strange crowns popping up around the East Village announcing the birth of Basquiat. I like him cause he usually calls my ass to remind me that I am an artist, and that I had a life over in Europe. He senses my depression I think. We get depressed by the same things, and angry about the same things, though I think we love differently. Completely different. I am the optimistic monk, sneaking a kiss in between the abbeys. He is the realist monk, devoted to his artwork and photography though his vision has not come to me yet. I wonder when it will be revealed.
I also wonder if I am going to evolve into a Lenny. Maybe I carry a little Lenny inside of me, and he a miniature Unbeached Whale, and, maybe they are both friends in some strange alternate universe that exist only between our belly buttons when we walk down Avenue of the Americas after dinner late at night.
Little does he know that my life in Europe was a very inartistic time for me and I spent my time with engineers and business people who did not have a real use for art. We are talking about large groups of people for whom language was a practical way of getting around in the world, and not meant for ornate things.
So.
He called.
I was a sleep.
I was very nervous about my doctor's visit the night before because I just did not have enough numbers on my glucometer. 4 times a day is a bit extreme, and I really don't feel like one of those perfect little cheerleader girls on the glucometer commercials. When I really want a pint of Guinness, I don't feel like apologizing for it. There is something about my self image and the disease that I have to reconcile. Not one doctor or nurse in almost 12 years has ever talked to me about that.
So, I went to sleep late, watching something on television. I think I got a total of 3 hours sleep. Lenny called about the time I was suppose to get up.
He called to tell me that 80 percent of the black folk of New Orleans can't afford to get back to the city, and that there houses will be bulldozed. . . or least the prospects of such a scenario were in play.
I kind of did not know what to do with the information. I was pissed. Lenny likes me because we see things similarly . . . but my stuff is a bit more 'round about, I am searching for some lost Creole world or where I might fit in despite prevailing notions that to be Creole is to be light skinned and have a certain last name. Lenny is a Caribbean person, displaced by his father's decision to move to this country sometime ago. His point-of-view is very pro-Black -- pro-Rasta -- play the game to get ahead -- but this shit is very unfair -- but you gotta fight not to be bitter -- but curse the Korean grocery bitch out if she keeps disrespecting you -- WBAI -- RedBlackandGreen -- calling on Zion from the Bronx and Hell's Kitchen (Harlem is only for shopping and going to the museum) -- kind of NYC politics. So, It amazes me that he is a fashion photographer. He is like most NYC intellectuals, socialist with close friends, but capitalist in practice. Lenny said that if you want to be a Socialist them move to a Socialist country, otherwise you will starve. He is self educated. He is struggling in New York cause the city he said he wanted to live and die in does not exist anymore. It has changed around him.
Lenny can ply and paste bra cups while balancing a woman on abnormally long stilettos (he calls them "fuck pumps") at the crack of the Northern light; then he can shot, edit, cut, invoice and deliver without an office. Everything is done with a mobile phone and 10 bucks.
He is a man's man with a soft side. I have seen him do his own plumbing for his own little cafe in Hell's Kitchen, back before the community's current incantation . . . The same for wiring. The same for cooking and making cocktails. The same for the tables, and the chairs. The painting. The whole thing. He is self-sufficient and a wander waiting, and waiting and waiting for the security to apply it.
Like me, he is sniffing out dry land, a safe harbor, fresh water.
So, along with New Orleans information, My Own Private Lenny Kravitz talked about NYC rents and possibilities for me to move back and get out of the hell hole of where I am. According to Lenny. Problem is, I am starting to like it here, and in a way, maybe he would too if he could get into the Country Music thing and film some of the "thangs" running around here with their Reserved Bourbon on the rock boyfriends and a Kir Royal in their charm bracelet hands. . . but who am I kidding . . . Lenny's politics and the South will only cause him to internally combust into a smoldering heap of bean pie compost. And since I pride myself on being an interpreter of Northern and Southern behavior thanks to my childhood of living in both worlds, I would probably be pained by it.
But screw it, Lenny could come and work for a couple of weeks, get an agent, and see what can happen.
Lenny said he is going to Germany and will meet a photographer in Hamburg. I want to meet this guy, he has done a couple of books. Then, there is this Fashion Show in Paris. Would love to meet him there. Don't know if I will.
We both work on a budget.
Without institutions backing us
And being skeptical to all offers
Cause we know we might get screwed in the end
We are like some sworn brotherhood of artistic autistics with one hand placed dangerously on
the hot
stone
and the other in reality.
I was there the evening of that party for the inaugural publication of "that" magazine, where "that" Korean woman did not want us to see samples of a book. She thought we were thieves. I was a working writer. He was a working photographer. We were upset. We argued with her. She argued back. We did not feel welcome. To this day I do not and will not buy "that" magazine. I am still a little bitter.
It is hard to follow my Private Lenny Kravitz's politics . . . or it was hard then.
I feel different now about it.
I just do.
Lenny.
You a crazy ass.
So that is going to be my code name for him. I have to admit that he's really cute and you would never guess that he is old enough to remember partying with Grace Jones, or house parties with Princess Stefanie and Prince Albert of Monaco, or seeing these strange crowns popping up around the East Village announcing the birth of Basquiat. I like him cause he usually calls my ass to remind me that I am an artist, and that I had a life over in Europe. He senses my depression I think. We get depressed by the same things, and angry about the same things, though I think we love differently. Completely different. I am the optimistic monk, sneaking a kiss in between the abbeys. He is the realist monk, devoted to his artwork and photography though his vision has not come to me yet. I wonder when it will be revealed.
I also wonder if I am going to evolve into a Lenny. Maybe I carry a little Lenny inside of me, and he a miniature Unbeached Whale, and, maybe they are both friends in some strange alternate universe that exist only between our belly buttons when we walk down Avenue of the Americas after dinner late at night.
Little does he know that my life in Europe was a very inartistic time for me and I spent my time with engineers and business people who did not have a real use for art. We are talking about large groups of people for whom language was a practical way of getting around in the world, and not meant for ornate things.
So.
He called.
I was a sleep.
I was very nervous about my doctor's visit the night before because I just did not have enough numbers on my glucometer. 4 times a day is a bit extreme, and I really don't feel like one of those perfect little cheerleader girls on the glucometer commercials. When I really want a pint of Guinness, I don't feel like apologizing for it. There is something about my self image and the disease that I have to reconcile. Not one doctor or nurse in almost 12 years has ever talked to me about that.
So, I went to sleep late, watching something on television. I think I got a total of 3 hours sleep. Lenny called about the time I was suppose to get up.
He called to tell me that 80 percent of the black folk of New Orleans can't afford to get back to the city, and that there houses will be bulldozed. . . or least the prospects of such a scenario were in play.
I kind of did not know what to do with the information. I was pissed. Lenny likes me because we see things similarly . . . but my stuff is a bit more 'round about, I am searching for some lost Creole world or where I might fit in despite prevailing notions that to be Creole is to be light skinned and have a certain last name. Lenny is a Caribbean person, displaced by his father's decision to move to this country sometime ago. His point-of-view is very pro-Black -- pro-Rasta -- play the game to get ahead -- but this shit is very unfair -- but you gotta fight not to be bitter -- but curse the Korean grocery bitch out if she keeps disrespecting you -- WBAI -- RedBlackandGreen -- calling on Zion from the Bronx and Hell's Kitchen (Harlem is only for shopping and going to the museum) -- kind of NYC politics. So, It amazes me that he is a fashion photographer. He is like most NYC intellectuals, socialist with close friends, but capitalist in practice. Lenny said that if you want to be a Socialist them move to a Socialist country, otherwise you will starve. He is self educated. He is struggling in New York cause the city he said he wanted to live and die in does not exist anymore. It has changed around him.
Lenny can ply and paste bra cups while balancing a woman on abnormally long stilettos (he calls them "fuck pumps") at the crack of the Northern light; then he can shot, edit, cut, invoice and deliver without an office. Everything is done with a mobile phone and 10 bucks.
He is a man's man with a soft side. I have seen him do his own plumbing for his own little cafe in Hell's Kitchen, back before the community's current incantation . . . The same for wiring. The same for cooking and making cocktails. The same for the tables, and the chairs. The painting. The whole thing. He is self-sufficient and a wander waiting, and waiting and waiting for the security to apply it.
Like me, he is sniffing out dry land, a safe harbor, fresh water.
So, along with New Orleans information, My Own Private Lenny Kravitz talked about NYC rents and possibilities for me to move back and get out of the hell hole of where I am. According to Lenny. Problem is, I am starting to like it here, and in a way, maybe he would too if he could get into the Country Music thing and film some of the "thangs" running around here with their Reserved Bourbon on the rock boyfriends and a Kir Royal in their charm bracelet hands. . . but who am I kidding . . . Lenny's politics and the South will only cause him to internally combust into a smoldering heap of bean pie compost. And since I pride myself on being an interpreter of Northern and Southern behavior thanks to my childhood of living in both worlds, I would probably be pained by it.
But screw it, Lenny could come and work for a couple of weeks, get an agent, and see what can happen.
Lenny said he is going to Germany and will meet a photographer in Hamburg. I want to meet this guy, he has done a couple of books. Then, there is this Fashion Show in Paris. Would love to meet him there. Don't know if I will.
We both work on a budget.
Without institutions backing us
And being skeptical to all offers
Cause we know we might get screwed in the end
We are like some sworn brotherhood of artistic autistics with one hand placed dangerously on
the hot
stone
and the other in reality.
I was there the evening of that party for the inaugural publication of "that" magazine, where "that" Korean woman did not want us to see samples of a book. She thought we were thieves. I was a working writer. He was a working photographer. We were upset. We argued with her. She argued back. We did not feel welcome. To this day I do not and will not buy "that" magazine. I am still a little bitter.
It is hard to follow my Private Lenny Kravitz's politics . . . or it was hard then.
I feel different now about it.
I just do.
Lenny.
You a crazy ass.
Red Lights and the Late Night Radio Show
I have just one simple question.
Why do I feel a sense of segregation concerning the gay male chat sites in Nashville and maybe in the South in general? Or is this common in other regions of the country?
It could be who I ask. For example, I asked the Arabian Prince for a website and he gave me Manhunt and nudedudes or dudesnude or something like that. Everything is alright. Both are mostly white. The thing that is interesting about Manhunt is that there are white guys that say that they are not interested in "fems, fats, sissies, or black" . . . or what have you.
Interesting.
And the hot white guys that I like on there are not interested in me when I send a picture. Some decline politely, other never respond.
Very Very interesting.
The guys on nudedudeseordudesnudeorwhathaveyou don't really care. Nice people.
-----
Now, my cousin told me to check adam4adam. This is all the rage in Atlanta. Go to it in Nashville and my inbox has been fucking attacked by gorgeous guys. Majority black. Some are whites that like blacks.
Interesting again.
Like is this what I am dealing with? Like if I go out with a white guy here is it that big of a deal in the gay community and is anybody talking about this in Nashville's gay community?
The clubs are the same.
I go to Tribe and I just sit and drink. No one speaks to me at all. OK, maybe 3 times in one year.
I went to Blu, the black club, once and it is like being in an episode of Cheers. I think I will go more often. But the politics are so interesting to m
-------
And, what is up with the descriptions on adam4adam, everything is written phonetically, and all the black folk call themselves: niccas, nikkas, negas, and other variations. And Sup, Wasup and Wazup, for "what's up" is very common.
What do you call this script I wonder. It is part Ebonics (hate that word but will use it) and part electronic iconography because the word represents something larger than its intended meaning. The way the letters are put together show that the one speaking is a real thug and therefore a real "man", and yes, now you can put your dick in my ass. It is like an EZpass for thug ass.
I gotta master this language, fuck French, though they got homothuggies too.
My encounters have been brief, masculine tension filled sentences that are short on content and context, fast on describing sexual acts. Talking becomes like dancing with scorpions.
I love it!
But interesting enough, I was writing to this guy online. When I sent my pic, he said I looked nice but from my vibe I was not his type. I was wondering if it had to do with me speaking "proper". He then said that he was sure I was "nice peeps . . ."
More on that later. There are some ghetto truths that I am becoming reacquainted with through my best friend. There is also that feeling that you are not wanted in the hood cause you are too smart and that you are not dealing with "reality". That double truth. That survivors guilt. That outside contempt.
But this is about sex and a little bit of language.
I think this is a great find. But I find it hard. It is enough to be exoticized by white gay culture, but to be exoticized by other blacks who are looking for a beautiful black dick is a bit hard for me to stomach at times. Though I must say I have missed all the Latino boys and Black boys from the hood in the past FOUR YEARS. If you remember Stella's or Cats in NYC then you need to send a shout out.
4 Years!
-----
Then there is the question of literacy in the community. I am afraid that this is a sign that people do not read generally that much any more. This iconography is basically the recording of inner thoughts, and those that are expressing themselves are using words the same way they do on the street or on the phone. They are not switching to proper English usage for the page.
Oral culture/Oral sex
strikes again.
Why do I feel a sense of segregation concerning the gay male chat sites in Nashville and maybe in the South in general? Or is this common in other regions of the country?
It could be who I ask. For example, I asked the Arabian Prince for a website and he gave me Manhunt and nudedudes or dudesnude or something like that. Everything is alright. Both are mostly white. The thing that is interesting about Manhunt is that there are white guys that say that they are not interested in "fems, fats, sissies, or black" . . . or what have you.
Interesting.
And the hot white guys that I like on there are not interested in me when I send a picture. Some decline politely, other never respond.
Very Very interesting.
The guys on nudedudeseordudesnudeorwhathaveyou don't really care. Nice people.
-----
Now, my cousin told me to check adam4adam. This is all the rage in Atlanta. Go to it in Nashville and my inbox has been fucking attacked by gorgeous guys. Majority black. Some are whites that like blacks.
Interesting again.
Like is this what I am dealing with? Like if I go out with a white guy here is it that big of a deal in the gay community and is anybody talking about this in Nashville's gay community?
The clubs are the same.
I go to Tribe and I just sit and drink. No one speaks to me at all. OK, maybe 3 times in one year.
I went to Blu, the black club, once and it is like being in an episode of Cheers. I think I will go more often. But the politics are so interesting to m
-------
And, what is up with the descriptions on adam4adam, everything is written phonetically, and all the black folk call themselves: niccas, nikkas, negas, and other variations. And Sup, Wasup and Wazup, for "what's up" is very common.
What do you call this script I wonder. It is part Ebonics (hate that word but will use it) and part electronic iconography because the word represents something larger than its intended meaning. The way the letters are put together show that the one speaking is a real thug and therefore a real "man", and yes, now you can put your dick in my ass. It is like an EZpass for thug ass.
I gotta master this language, fuck French, though they got homothuggies too.
My encounters have been brief, masculine tension filled sentences that are short on content and context, fast on describing sexual acts. Talking becomes like dancing with scorpions.
I love it!
But interesting enough, I was writing to this guy online. When I sent my pic, he said I looked nice but from my vibe I was not his type. I was wondering if it had to do with me speaking "proper". He then said that he was sure I was "nice peeps . . ."
More on that later. There are some ghetto truths that I am becoming reacquainted with through my best friend. There is also that feeling that you are not wanted in the hood cause you are too smart and that you are not dealing with "reality". That double truth. That survivors guilt. That outside contempt.
But this is about sex and a little bit of language.
I think this is a great find. But I find it hard. It is enough to be exoticized by white gay culture, but to be exoticized by other blacks who are looking for a beautiful black dick is a bit hard for me to stomach at times. Though I must say I have missed all the Latino boys and Black boys from the hood in the past FOUR YEARS. If you remember Stella's or Cats in NYC then you need to send a shout out.
4 Years!
-----
Then there is the question of literacy in the community. I am afraid that this is a sign that people do not read generally that much any more. This iconography is basically the recording of inner thoughts, and those that are expressing themselves are using words the same way they do on the street or on the phone. They are not switching to proper English usage for the page.
Oral culture/Oral sex
strikes again.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
The Body
"There are things that I find attractive about both sexes. The human body is where I should begin, I guess."
That was the first line of this installment, but I don't know where to go with it. You see, the sentence was sparked by a photograph I saw on the internet from a nudist beach of a woman and her boyfriend.
I saw this woman's body, and just ignored the man's. They are walking away from the sea, and the sun is shining on their salted bodies. The last time I was on a beach was with Ms. Portugal at Figuera do Foz. It is the city where her family used to vacation when she was a child. There was something about it that was so silent and small and cold and jagged. I remember we got into an argument concerning my low blood sugar. She wanted me to sit outside and I wanted to go inside immediately when we approached a resturaunt after a couple of hours on the sand. I told her that I needed sugar. She thought I was not acting in a rational manner. And I wasn't, but that is part of being diabetic, the mood swing. But I was also reacting to her need to control, and the fact that without speaking Portuguese and her constantly saying it was impossible to master that and German at the same time. In short she, always lite a ball of fire under my ass that I wanted to shout out with my tongue, so my words just came out so wrong all the time with her. Did you know that the Portuguese are among the least most confrontational people in the world? I wonder where African Americans stand on this spectrum. I suspect far, far away.
Ms. Portugal also came from a small place (and in some cases a different time), and I guess I was an oddity. A man that could cook, and take care of himself to a certain extent. And then there was my disease, the difficulty I found in talking about it. The fright she had concerning my reaction to things. She did not understand that the sun, the aerobic activity of being in the ocean, the light diet of summer time and the exertion of walking in the sand always brings my sugar down. I have noticed this with time, and I do tend to get low on a beach; but, I wonder sometimes, because that trip was about us acting like things were OK, and they simply weren't. The relationship was over and I was simply passing through to see her. I never really made the decission to be with her.
The last time I saw a couple like the one in this picture was on the beach in Figuera do Foz. They must have been British or Dutch. Everybody checks everybody out on a beach. And it was clear to me that these guys were taller than anyone else besides myself, and they were blond and light. The sun was not that strong then, and maybe this was September. I remember the drive there, and us sleeping over at Ms. M's house in Coimbra the night before. Ms. M is Ms. Portual’s dearest friend. And I remember the dinner where I mispronounced a Portuguese word, and it sounded like the a word for the female anatomy. Ms. M. giggled with her lips clamped like she broke her jaw. I did not know what she was laughing about until Ms. Portugal told me.
So, this picture, reminded me of the female body at the beach. It reminded me of Ms. Portugal’s body on a bed, though is is dark and short. It reminded me of the past. It reminded me of Portugal and the invasion of Brits and Germans on the shores of Iberia. But, it was the way this woman was shaved that really attracted me to this photography. Her bikini wax, that was simply a thin line of hair in the middle, and whoever took this photo at the beach had to have had that in mind when he looked at his camera phone later that day. The photo is not forced, nor is it pornographic. The blond woman’s hair was up in a tiny ponytail, and she lead the way, as her slacker boyfriend emerged less dramatically. He was thin, and Blink 182 like -- punk but not pyro -- just a new aged bilingual greaser.
Since I wrote that first italicized line in the morning, and in between that time I have finished the blog for Tuesday, driven out to Goodlettsville, fought traffic to get back, talked to my cousin, warmed the roasted chicken, spooned out a plate of green pea salad, and had several cups of coffee, I have lost the thread. What I originally wanted to say about that photograph is gone.
I wanted to talk about the woman's body. I wanted to mention this 25 year old woman that was topless in a German GQ magazine photograph. Dark caramel brown sista with a head wrap. She was topless. She was interviewed with other German girls, telling men what they look for in a chance encounter. This is something I have little practice with in actuality. I meet a woman like Ms. Portugal or Ms. A and it just starts. The flirting, and revelation of the body to each other is known before words. I don’t have a pick-up line. I know, she knows, we both know it will happen, like some unexplainable beckon drawing us to the same lighthouse. I don't kiss and tell. I don't brag to my friends about my conquest. Many times I have “had” far more than they could imagine (wait, that is bragging isn’t it). Some straight friends believe that I am lying about the women or find it amazing to see me with a woman, so I stopped telling many of them. And with my gay friends, if I am with a woman, they find it to be retrograde, reprobate, denial, etc . . . So, I think I have turned into a love bandit of sorts. I trust a few. Only a few know what are the right questions to ask. Some asked me about Ms. Portugal. In fact other lovers have asked about Ms. Portugal. No one asks about Ms. A. They just see pictures and say very good. They say she's hot. I just scoot about, taking the Ms. A’s conversations and the walks alone, me and this object of affection, which all relationships in the end are, and try to turn it into something that might work. I don’t know if it will. No new developments, but new feelings from us both I suspect.
The woman in this photograph was my type of woman I think. She was two steps a head of the guy, who was clearly a space cadet. She is the practical one. He is the risk taker. They emerge from the water on this nude beach of Ibiza, Malloroca, or Evora to find their blanket in the sun. And like Figuera do Foz, Jones Beach, Coney Island, the sand dunes in Queens, the beach in Phoebus Virginia, the beaches of Antigua, Venice beach and the black rocks on the Black Sea they are being checked out.
This photograph, for which I am at a loss of words, hit my screen today, and I felt like I did a while ago. 8 years ago, I sat on Jones Beach and leaped into the waves for hours. I was sick the next day from all the sun, and maybe something in the water. But I remember looking at the men and the women. Looking at the female lifeguards and their suits. The dark African girl with braids, her athletic body in the sun, the white one piece bathing suit with a thong in the back stretched over her body without shame or embarrassment. She had authority. She did not give a damn. She sat on her towel and talked to the man in the high chair. There was a couple behind us that day. A man and a woman and they were middle aged. The blond haired woman smiled at us. Me and my friend, who is dead now, smiled back. I looked at the vastness of the water, and glanced back at the husband and wife. They both watched us with different eyes. The wife wondering about us, the man wondering about us too. Italian. American. Black Speedos. Bleach Blond Hair. Sand. My friend was listening to his walkman and writing. I was trying to read, distracted by the waves. I dived into the waves, timed my motions, and moved like an Olympic swimmer. At least that is how I imagined it. I emerged on the other side, salted and tasting the green in the water, and feeling the sun on my face. I passed through the wave, the wave passed through me, and because of my ability, I stood still. I did not move. I just waited for the next.
Back on the beach, I remember, to my right was a man with a perfect body wearing those jogging shorts that double as swim trunks. He had his walkman on too. He was there just to relax and talk on the phone then go to the club. Then there was the swimmer that swam farther than me. I spoke to him in the waves, as they hit me under my neck. He swam back and said hello. He was in his 40’s and in great shape. He said hello to the lifeguards. He changed and he left. Everyone was of different colors and races and sizes. Everyone was self conscious, letting a little rise happen in their shorts because the water would shrink it. Everyone was feasting.
I wish I could say more about this photograph. It just makes me think about the human body, a relationship that sprouted but never grew and the sea that I miss. I am here with the landlocked side of the family, I am much different than them I have never seen my mother swim in my life.
That was the first line of this installment, but I don't know where to go with it. You see, the sentence was sparked by a photograph I saw on the internet from a nudist beach of a woman and her boyfriend.
I saw this woman's body, and just ignored the man's. They are walking away from the sea, and the sun is shining on their salted bodies. The last time I was on a beach was with Ms. Portugal at Figuera do Foz. It is the city where her family used to vacation when she was a child. There was something about it that was so silent and small and cold and jagged. I remember we got into an argument concerning my low blood sugar. She wanted me to sit outside and I wanted to go inside immediately when we approached a resturaunt after a couple of hours on the sand. I told her that I needed sugar. She thought I was not acting in a rational manner. And I wasn't, but that is part of being diabetic, the mood swing. But I was also reacting to her need to control, and the fact that without speaking Portuguese and her constantly saying it was impossible to master that and German at the same time. In short she, always lite a ball of fire under my ass that I wanted to shout out with my tongue, so my words just came out so wrong all the time with her. Did you know that the Portuguese are among the least most confrontational people in the world? I wonder where African Americans stand on this spectrum. I suspect far, far away.
Ms. Portugal also came from a small place (and in some cases a different time), and I guess I was an oddity. A man that could cook, and take care of himself to a certain extent. And then there was my disease, the difficulty I found in talking about it. The fright she had concerning my reaction to things. She did not understand that the sun, the aerobic activity of being in the ocean, the light diet of summer time and the exertion of walking in the sand always brings my sugar down. I have noticed this with time, and I do tend to get low on a beach; but, I wonder sometimes, because that trip was about us acting like things were OK, and they simply weren't. The relationship was over and I was simply passing through to see her. I never really made the decission to be with her.
The last time I saw a couple like the one in this picture was on the beach in Figuera do Foz. They must have been British or Dutch. Everybody checks everybody out on a beach. And it was clear to me that these guys were taller than anyone else besides myself, and they were blond and light. The sun was not that strong then, and maybe this was September. I remember the drive there, and us sleeping over at Ms. M's house in Coimbra the night before. Ms. M is Ms. Portual’s dearest friend. And I remember the dinner where I mispronounced a Portuguese word, and it sounded like the a word for the female anatomy. Ms. M. giggled with her lips clamped like she broke her jaw. I did not know what she was laughing about until Ms. Portugal told me.
So, this picture, reminded me of the female body at the beach. It reminded me of Ms. Portugal’s body on a bed, though is is dark and short. It reminded me of the past. It reminded me of Portugal and the invasion of Brits and Germans on the shores of Iberia. But, it was the way this woman was shaved that really attracted me to this photography. Her bikini wax, that was simply a thin line of hair in the middle, and whoever took this photo at the beach had to have had that in mind when he looked at his camera phone later that day. The photo is not forced, nor is it pornographic. The blond woman’s hair was up in a tiny ponytail, and she lead the way, as her slacker boyfriend emerged less dramatically. He was thin, and Blink 182 like -- punk but not pyro -- just a new aged bilingual greaser.
Since I wrote that first italicized line in the morning, and in between that time I have finished the blog for Tuesday, driven out to Goodlettsville, fought traffic to get back, talked to my cousin, warmed the roasted chicken, spooned out a plate of green pea salad, and had several cups of coffee, I have lost the thread. What I originally wanted to say about that photograph is gone.
I wanted to talk about the woman's body. I wanted to mention this 25 year old woman that was topless in a German GQ magazine photograph. Dark caramel brown sista with a head wrap. She was topless. She was interviewed with other German girls, telling men what they look for in a chance encounter. This is something I have little practice with in actuality. I meet a woman like Ms. Portugal or Ms. A and it just starts. The flirting, and revelation of the body to each other is known before words. I don’t have a pick-up line. I know, she knows, we both know it will happen, like some unexplainable beckon drawing us to the same lighthouse. I don't kiss and tell. I don't brag to my friends about my conquest. Many times I have “had” far more than they could imagine (wait, that is bragging isn’t it). Some straight friends believe that I am lying about the women or find it amazing to see me with a woman, so I stopped telling many of them. And with my gay friends, if I am with a woman, they find it to be retrograde, reprobate, denial, etc . . . So, I think I have turned into a love bandit of sorts. I trust a few. Only a few know what are the right questions to ask. Some asked me about Ms. Portugal. In fact other lovers have asked about Ms. Portugal. No one asks about Ms. A. They just see pictures and say very good. They say she's hot. I just scoot about, taking the Ms. A’s conversations and the walks alone, me and this object of affection, which all relationships in the end are, and try to turn it into something that might work. I don’t know if it will. No new developments, but new feelings from us both I suspect.
The woman in this photograph was my type of woman I think. She was two steps a head of the guy, who was clearly a space cadet. She is the practical one. He is the risk taker. They emerge from the water on this nude beach of Ibiza, Malloroca, or Evora to find their blanket in the sun. And like Figuera do Foz, Jones Beach, Coney Island, the sand dunes in Queens, the beach in Phoebus Virginia, the beaches of Antigua, Venice beach and the black rocks on the Black Sea they are being checked out.
This photograph, for which I am at a loss of words, hit my screen today, and I felt like I did a while ago. 8 years ago, I sat on Jones Beach and leaped into the waves for hours. I was sick the next day from all the sun, and maybe something in the water. But I remember looking at the men and the women. Looking at the female lifeguards and their suits. The dark African girl with braids, her athletic body in the sun, the white one piece bathing suit with a thong in the back stretched over her body without shame or embarrassment. She had authority. She did not give a damn. She sat on her towel and talked to the man in the high chair. There was a couple behind us that day. A man and a woman and they were middle aged. The blond haired woman smiled at us. Me and my friend, who is dead now, smiled back. I looked at the vastness of the water, and glanced back at the husband and wife. They both watched us with different eyes. The wife wondering about us, the man wondering about us too. Italian. American. Black Speedos. Bleach Blond Hair. Sand. My friend was listening to his walkman and writing. I was trying to read, distracted by the waves. I dived into the waves, timed my motions, and moved like an Olympic swimmer. At least that is how I imagined it. I emerged on the other side, salted and tasting the green in the water, and feeling the sun on my face. I passed through the wave, the wave passed through me, and because of my ability, I stood still. I did not move. I just waited for the next.
Back on the beach, I remember, to my right was a man with a perfect body wearing those jogging shorts that double as swim trunks. He had his walkman on too. He was there just to relax and talk on the phone then go to the club. Then there was the swimmer that swam farther than me. I spoke to him in the waves, as they hit me under my neck. He swam back and said hello. He was in his 40’s and in great shape. He said hello to the lifeguards. He changed and he left. Everyone was of different colors and races and sizes. Everyone was self conscious, letting a little rise happen in their shorts because the water would shrink it. Everyone was feasting.
I wish I could say more about this photograph. It just makes me think about the human body, a relationship that sprouted but never grew and the sea that I miss. I am here with the landlocked side of the family, I am much different than them I have never seen my mother swim in my life.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
The Darkness
I have been trying to type a blog entry for everyday of the week, but it is taking me sometime. Part of it is simply my writing and editing speed, the other parts is that so much is going on in my life, as usual, that I have not had enough time to figure out what I want to say.
I need a day.
So, I am two days behind.
This entry is for Tuesday night,
but I am writing it on Thursday morning.
Man!
The dark fragments of my mind,
Do absorb my time.
So, what happened on Tuesday night, on this Thursday Morning?
I saw Underworld 2, Evolution (directed by Len Wiseman).
I love this storyline. Went with WineExpertLesbo to the big IMAX theater at Opry Mills. This was the second time she saw the movie that day. She loves shit like this. This time Markus awakens to find the coven in disarray, and after doing a little research of his own, finds out what is really happening.
Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman) are the sexist couple on screen to date, and the fact that Michael is so unaware of his power and is vulnerable like a teenage kid ups the action and sexual attraction. The movie picks up right where it left off, and we soon see Markus in all his "goo" and gargoylish glory. I won't say more. It is dark, sexy and cool. I like the decadence of the vampires and the interwoveness of the Corvinus clan with the fate of Selene and Michael.
Now, the thing that kills me is that I was reading the reviews on rottentomatoes.com and everyone is crucifying it. Is it me? I wonder sometimes about this hyper-critical attitude towards movies. A perfect example is Star Wars III. Underworld 2 is 10 times better, and the heroine is a million times better, cause Natalie Portman really screwed up her part in the last of the prequels. Kate Beckinsale does a much better job, partly because she has a much better and juicier character with more action than fashion modeling. They had to bring Tom Stoppard in to save that freakin' anemic screenplay of George Lukas' computer graphic and lyrically taut and challenged mind, plus they couldn't get Portman to pot up the intensity. It was shitty to me, all three of them. At least the 3rd had some gravity to it. Its tragedy, erases the other two.
OK, that is baggage.
This past year I started to enter the gaming universe, and as part of the coven, I think that I am starting to have a better appreciation for fangoria, fantasies and sports. I am starting to show less appreciation for movie critics, at least in this instance. This intellectual separation that people make between art work and the critic is sad if the critic does not take the time to understanding the structure of the storyline. In this instance, Underworld 2 is written with a gamer in mind, the clues to the mystery must be fleshed out and that must happen through several trials. It is visual. It is looking for talismans. It means getting more power through the givers of the mysteries. It means battling a demon, and being defeated because you do not have that power. This was good shit, and all these bitches that are saying Kate Beckinsale's can't act are missing a point. She is suppose to be followed on the screen, not deconstructed.
OK. I will leave those ideas at that. I would like to develop them, but I have some more things I gotta work on today. Plus another doctor's appointment, tomorrow, which is Friday, because this is Thursday morning, and I am writing an entry for Tuesday night, about an event that has already happened.
I love the darkness.
--------
PS
I read the poem "A Great Day For a Lay" also known as "Platonic Blow", by W.H. Auden.
It is better than a Chi Chi La Rue film.
Trust.
I tell you,
That generation of dandies . . .
Something tragic about them.
All that booze, tweed, cigarettes, underground sex, in seedy motels on the East river, and parlors full of Americana . . .
Where was Langston in this line of dandies?
Dead?
Alive?
or
Dying?
Poor American Dandies.
Like they wanted to stay Edwardian even after the atomic bomb was detonated.
I don't know much about Auden, have to read up on him. But I do locate him in dandy time and space.
For us,
The self-pity is still here
In this new century
Even if the tight molars of New England accents
Have have long gone
Out of fashion.
They,
The dandies,
Are still
Here
In Nashville
Listening to Depeche Mode
Drinking sour apple martinis
And looking absolutely fuckin' dead.
And
I look
Wondering
If the pussy
Is any good.
I need a day.
So, I am two days behind.
This entry is for Tuesday night,
but I am writing it on Thursday morning.
Man!
The dark fragments of my mind,
Do absorb my time.
So, what happened on Tuesday night, on this Thursday Morning?
I saw Underworld 2, Evolution (directed by Len Wiseman).
I love this storyline. Went with WineExpertLesbo to the big IMAX theater at Opry Mills. This was the second time she saw the movie that day. She loves shit like this. This time Markus awakens to find the coven in disarray, and after doing a little research of his own, finds out what is really happening.
Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman) are the sexist couple on screen to date, and the fact that Michael is so unaware of his power and is vulnerable like a teenage kid ups the action and sexual attraction. The movie picks up right where it left off, and we soon see Markus in all his "goo" and gargoylish glory. I won't say more. It is dark, sexy and cool. I like the decadence of the vampires and the interwoveness of the Corvinus clan with the fate of Selene and Michael.
Now, the thing that kills me is that I was reading the reviews on rottentomatoes.com and everyone is crucifying it. Is it me? I wonder sometimes about this hyper-critical attitude towards movies. A perfect example is Star Wars III. Underworld 2 is 10 times better, and the heroine is a million times better, cause Natalie Portman really screwed up her part in the last of the prequels. Kate Beckinsale does a much better job, partly because she has a much better and juicier character with more action than fashion modeling. They had to bring Tom Stoppard in to save that freakin' anemic screenplay of George Lukas' computer graphic and lyrically taut and challenged mind, plus they couldn't get Portman to pot up the intensity. It was shitty to me, all three of them. At least the 3rd had some gravity to it. Its tragedy, erases the other two.
OK, that is baggage.
This past year I started to enter the gaming universe, and as part of the coven, I think that I am starting to have a better appreciation for fangoria, fantasies and sports. I am starting to show less appreciation for movie critics, at least in this instance. This intellectual separation that people make between art work and the critic is sad if the critic does not take the time to understanding the structure of the storyline. In this instance, Underworld 2 is written with a gamer in mind, the clues to the mystery must be fleshed out and that must happen through several trials. It is visual. It is looking for talismans. It means getting more power through the givers of the mysteries. It means battling a demon, and being defeated because you do not have that power. This was good shit, and all these bitches that are saying Kate Beckinsale's can't act are missing a point. She is suppose to be followed on the screen, not deconstructed.
OK. I will leave those ideas at that. I would like to develop them, but I have some more things I gotta work on today. Plus another doctor's appointment, tomorrow, which is Friday, because this is Thursday morning, and I am writing an entry for Tuesday night, about an event that has already happened.
I love the darkness.
--------
PS
I read the poem "A Great Day For a Lay" also known as "Platonic Blow", by W.H. Auden.
It is better than a Chi Chi La Rue film.
Trust.
I tell you,
That generation of dandies . . .
Something tragic about them.
All that booze, tweed, cigarettes, underground sex, in seedy motels on the East river, and parlors full of Americana . . .
Where was Langston in this line of dandies?
Dead?
Alive?
or
Dying?
Poor American Dandies.
Like they wanted to stay Edwardian even after the atomic bomb was detonated.
I don't know much about Auden, have to read up on him. But I do locate him in dandy time and space.
For us,
The self-pity is still here
In this new century
Even if the tight molars of New England accents
Have have long gone
Out of fashion.
They,
The dandies,
Are still
Here
In Nashville
Listening to Depeche Mode
Drinking sour apple martinis
And looking absolutely fuckin' dead.
And
I look
Wondering
If the pussy
Is any good.
The Oracle
I went to the bookstore yesterday to return two movies I watched. One was called Dona Herlinda and Her Son. Sexy movie. Sexy butts in shorts and tight pants. The second was The Einstein of Sex. Very interesting but depressing. It shows a side of German history that many do not know about.
Don Herlinda is a great film because it shows a woman that has obviously no problem with her son's sexual taste, and is willing to manipulate parts of Mexico's conservative Catholic bourgeoisie society in order to have the family that she wants. That includes a married son and a grandchild. The hand picked wife and her son's lover are woven in step by step and you are amazed at all of the characters and how their lives come to some mutual understanding. I think it is interesting. The film was made in 1986, which is part of what makes it so fun (little technological gadgets are featured, whose depiction in today's world, rivals VH-1'S I LOVE THE EIGHTIES).
The movie stars Guadalope Del Torro, Marco Antonio Trevino and Arturo Meza and is directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo. I will have to check Hermosillo out a bit more. He is an openly gay Mexican movie director. There was something so exact about this film. Everyone is moving in this unsaid world of the obvious. It is the actors' expression and performance of internal emotions on celluloid that leaves an impression on you. In the end, not only does Dona Herlinda get what she wants, but so does everybody else.
The other film I saw was the Einstein of Sex. It was a docu-drama about Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld. I think the title is funny, it sounds like one of those movies I used to wait up for on Cinemax when I was 10. The film itself is done in that German cinematography that makes everything look as if you are watching Masterpiece Theater on extra bright. This particular style of filming is crystal clear, almost like the cameraman has filtered out all imperfect light like a brewer of "Krystalweissen". For some films I like it, at other times I don't really. I find this optical realism makes any footage of the North Sea or the Baltic with its clear salty sky, sand dunes, shallow water and tall grass appear ab-so-fucking - lute- ly amazing. This film opens on the Baltic, so I fell in love pretty quick. The lighting was great, except for the scenes with Hirschfeld's nemesis, Adolf Brand, founder of Der Eigene. All those naked guys and Greco-Roman sculptures needed a bit more shading. Brand seemed to me to be a bit down and dirty and drunk on masculinity. Such optical clarity did a bit of a disservice to his character and the boys that played as his army of dime story lackeys. I have found the magazine Der Eigene to be great pornography but bad politics. But, don't take my word on it, read up on it yourself.
The movie is great in showing a particular German world of the "belle epoque". It reminded me of Weimar Berlin, which was notorious for its bisexual and homosexual flair. There was a CD I saw in Germany full of love songs written for men and women of the same sex, and performed by women and men. Gotta buy it when I go back.
At the end of this movie you just think "poor Herr Professor Hirshfield ", since he was Jewish, gay, and an intellectual the twine tied tight around his neck. In the end, a world tour saved his live. He just did not come back. And lucky for him, the film portrays him as a man secure in his middle-class world, and his accomplishments; therefore, he is naive about the situation. I think that could be correct, how many Jews perished because they did not notice that the water in their pot was about to boil.
Rosa von Praunheim did a great job in directing and casting the actors. I also think, since the film was done in Germany, the film has a very clinical feel that makes the subject matter of sex approachable in a way that is too charged for an American director or one with an American audience in mind. The only thing I want to take her to task for is the depiction of young Magnus's sexual awakening with coloured men dancing in the hull of a ship. There is nothing wrong with beautiful virile black men dancing to drums with 2 machetes in hand (I do it all the time), it is there empty representation because the music and ceremony are without any true cultural signs that show a real language, a real rite, or a real meaning. They are just coloured folk from all parts of the tropics dancing and chanting; and, meanwhile the 2 white boys are experiencing there desire in this hull, which smells of young Magnus's subconscious and the Eurocentrically constructed abscess of Western culture where the noble savage can descend to a Dionysian plague of lust and not be infected. Coloureds are allowed such debauchery and base pleasures, white's must rule the world.
Which reminds me, I will write about German boys later. They are not like that, but in a way they are still. A couple. I did not fuck 'em, these few. But there was something frightening in their voices and language concerning me being black or African and them being German. I think the 19th century was born between the legs of England and Germany and in many ways, maybe those countries are still between them legs. Just a thought.
Mental note.
Follow up later.
Ok . . . Einstein of Sex
Otherwise, there were some other issues concerning 19th century science and its empirical surveys of dick sizes, anal suppleness and pear shaped male bodies that bothered me. Africans were done the same way. The scientific hoax that that world of thinking was has caused so much damage for all of us in the 20th century. But I don't think Praunheim was tackling that subject, we need another movie for that.
-------------------
So, I finished the films and took them back to the bookstore after work. I talked to a friend of mine there. She lets her big afro fly and she doesn't really care about what people think and most of the time she is just doing her work and smoking her cigarettes watching people go from here to there. I will christen her The Oracle. I know it is tacky and Matrix like, but she put the law down on me in such a subtle but serious way.
We won't get into details.
You just need to know that she has a high voice, tie-dye shirt, jeans jacket, wide glasses and a manner that can seem non-threatening. Her scarves and bandannas cast her as someone that remains in her world, but she is in touch. This night, she showed me another side, like fire coming from her eyes concerning having my cake, eating it too, and where I bought it in the first place.
I just went to the back to talk to her about the movies, but we ended up talking about this guy I had a crush on and wanted to bang. The short of it and the realization of 2006 is "ASS IS A DISTRACTION!"
Thank you Oracle.
And Lawd knows I have been distracted.
THANK YOU ORACLE.
Plus, she warned me that if I do go see the Radical Faeries that I should not let them convince me not to wear deodorant. LOL
Thanks for the heads up Oracle.
You know my hardwiring bitch!
And I am grateful.
Don Herlinda is a great film because it shows a woman that has obviously no problem with her son's sexual taste, and is willing to manipulate parts of Mexico's conservative Catholic bourgeoisie society in order to have the family that she wants. That includes a married son and a grandchild. The hand picked wife and her son's lover are woven in step by step and you are amazed at all of the characters and how their lives come to some mutual understanding. I think it is interesting. The film was made in 1986, which is part of what makes it so fun (little technological gadgets are featured, whose depiction in today's world, rivals VH-1'S I LOVE THE EIGHTIES).
The movie stars Guadalope Del Torro, Marco Antonio Trevino and Arturo Meza and is directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo. I will have to check Hermosillo out a bit more. He is an openly gay Mexican movie director. There was something so exact about this film. Everyone is moving in this unsaid world of the obvious. It is the actors' expression and performance of internal emotions on celluloid that leaves an impression on you. In the end, not only does Dona Herlinda get what she wants, but so does everybody else.
The other film I saw was the Einstein of Sex. It was a docu-drama about Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld. I think the title is funny, it sounds like one of those movies I used to wait up for on Cinemax when I was 10. The film itself is done in that German cinematography that makes everything look as if you are watching Masterpiece Theater on extra bright. This particular style of filming is crystal clear, almost like the cameraman has filtered out all imperfect light like a brewer of "Krystalweissen". For some films I like it, at other times I don't really. I find this optical realism makes any footage of the North Sea or the Baltic with its clear salty sky, sand dunes, shallow water and tall grass appear ab-so-fucking - lute- ly amazing. This film opens on the Baltic, so I fell in love pretty quick. The lighting was great, except for the scenes with Hirschfeld's nemesis, Adolf Brand, founder of Der Eigene. All those naked guys and Greco-Roman sculptures needed a bit more shading. Brand seemed to me to be a bit down and dirty and drunk on masculinity. Such optical clarity did a bit of a disservice to his character and the boys that played as his army of dime story lackeys. I have found the magazine Der Eigene to be great pornography but bad politics. But, don't take my word on it, read up on it yourself.
The movie is great in showing a particular German world of the "belle epoque". It reminded me of Weimar Berlin, which was notorious for its bisexual and homosexual flair. There was a CD I saw in Germany full of love songs written for men and women of the same sex, and performed by women and men. Gotta buy it when I go back.
At the end of this movie you just think "poor Herr Professor Hirshfield ", since he was Jewish, gay, and an intellectual the twine tied tight around his neck. In the end, a world tour saved his live. He just did not come back. And lucky for him, the film portrays him as a man secure in his middle-class world, and his accomplishments; therefore, he is naive about the situation. I think that could be correct, how many Jews perished because they did not notice that the water in their pot was about to boil.
Rosa von Praunheim did a great job in directing and casting the actors. I also think, since the film was done in Germany, the film has a very clinical feel that makes the subject matter of sex approachable in a way that is too charged for an American director or one with an American audience in mind. The only thing I want to take her to task for is the depiction of young Magnus's sexual awakening with coloured men dancing in the hull of a ship. There is nothing wrong with beautiful virile black men dancing to drums with 2 machetes in hand (I do it all the time), it is there empty representation because the music and ceremony are without any true cultural signs that show a real language, a real rite, or a real meaning. They are just coloured folk from all parts of the tropics dancing and chanting; and, meanwhile the 2 white boys are experiencing there desire in this hull, which smells of young Magnus's subconscious and the Eurocentrically constructed abscess of Western culture where the noble savage can descend to a Dionysian plague of lust and not be infected. Coloureds are allowed such debauchery and base pleasures, white's must rule the world.
Which reminds me, I will write about German boys later. They are not like that, but in a way they are still. A couple. I did not fuck 'em, these few. But there was something frightening in their voices and language concerning me being black or African and them being German. I think the 19th century was born between the legs of England and Germany and in many ways, maybe those countries are still between them legs. Just a thought.
Mental note.
Follow up later.
Ok . . . Einstein of Sex
Otherwise, there were some other issues concerning 19th century science and its empirical surveys of dick sizes, anal suppleness and pear shaped male bodies that bothered me. Africans were done the same way. The scientific hoax that that world of thinking was has caused so much damage for all of us in the 20th century. But I don't think Praunheim was tackling that subject, we need another movie for that.
-------------------
So, I finished the films and took them back to the bookstore after work. I talked to a friend of mine there. She lets her big afro fly and she doesn't really care about what people think and most of the time she is just doing her work and smoking her cigarettes watching people go from here to there. I will christen her The Oracle. I know it is tacky and Matrix like, but she put the law down on me in such a subtle but serious way.
We won't get into details.
You just need to know that she has a high voice, tie-dye shirt, jeans jacket, wide glasses and a manner that can seem non-threatening. Her scarves and bandannas cast her as someone that remains in her world, but she is in touch. This night, she showed me another side, like fire coming from her eyes concerning having my cake, eating it too, and where I bought it in the first place.
I just went to the back to talk to her about the movies, but we ended up talking about this guy I had a crush on and wanted to bang. The short of it and the realization of 2006 is "ASS IS A DISTRACTION!"
Thank you Oracle.
And Lawd knows I have been distracted.
THANK YOU ORACLE.
Plus, she warned me that if I do go see the Radical Faeries that I should not let them convince me not to wear deodorant. LOL
Thanks for the heads up Oracle.
You know my hardwiring bitch!
And I am grateful.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Reading Rainbow
OK. These are all of the books that I am carrying over from 2005, and that does not include required reading for my other project.
Reading List
1. Steppenwolf by Herman Heese -- A friend told me to read it. It takes place in Tübingen where I lived for a while and he said it captured that place perfectly. I am not a fan of Tuebingen personally. If I had gone before I went to NYC then it probably would have been OK. But what can I say, I found a room and some work, and got started there. You can’t just quit because other people tell you to.
2. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst -- Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for fiction. Have started. Found it intriguing, but just haven’t read that much.
3. Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais -- Bought last year. Only got through the majority of the first book.
4. Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance -- I like to cook and I like cultural histories and I found this one at a big remainder clearing house full of people who look like the author on the back. You know. Book and cat lovers and plant lovers. I can identify to a certain extent . . . if I can get a little rough and toughness, I could find a perfect mate there. Everybody in that book store was much too gentle for my taste though.
5. General Sun My Brother by Stephen Alexis -- lugged around Europe back to Tennessee. Bought in Germany, in Stuttgart.
6. Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire by Niall Ferguson -- first book that I bought as soon as I landed after reading the reviews in the NY Times at my desk in Cologne. I am wondering about Niall's style of history . . . suppose to be the historical Archangel of my generation in a way.
7. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand -- Same friend from number one tried to strangle me for borrowing it, after he said it took a while for him to read. English is not his first language but it is close enough now. I am a bit unnerved that I have not read it.
8. Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts by Segars and Barrow -- Bought from used book store on Ellingston Place. They keep directing me to the “black book section” and frowned at me when I was looking at other books. First antiquarian bookstore I went to in this country after 4 years of being away. I did not feel very welcome. Still bought this book because it is fascinating to me.
9. Mucho Macho: Seduction, Desire and the Homoerotic Lives of Latin Men by Michael Girman -- Been eyeing this book for some time, but never had the nerve to read it. Bought this summer when I got back from Deutschland. Don't care if mother sees the title on the coffee table (I am starting to feel like Norman Bates, at moments . . . )
10. The Story of the Siege of Lisbon, Jose Saramago -- Ms. Portugal gave me this. We don't talk about this anymore.
11. The Bondswoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts -- Birthday gift from mom last year.
12. The Equality of the Human Races, by Anténor Firmin -- Gotta read it. Period.
13. Ulysses by James Joyce -- Ashamed to say I have not read it, so I gotta read it!
14. The Geography of Perversion: Male to Male Sexual Behavior Outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination. 1750-1918 by Rudi C. Bleys -- Found on a discount rack. Seems very , very interesting to me. Not for everybody though.
Reading List
1. Steppenwolf by Herman Heese -- A friend told me to read it. It takes place in Tübingen where I lived for a while and he said it captured that place perfectly. I am not a fan of Tuebingen personally. If I had gone before I went to NYC then it probably would have been OK. But what can I say, I found a room and some work, and got started there. You can’t just quit because other people tell you to.
2. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst -- Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for fiction. Have started. Found it intriguing, but just haven’t read that much.
3. Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais -- Bought last year. Only got through the majority of the first book.
4. Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance -- I like to cook and I like cultural histories and I found this one at a big remainder clearing house full of people who look like the author on the back. You know. Book and cat lovers and plant lovers. I can identify to a certain extent . . . if I can get a little rough and toughness, I could find a perfect mate there. Everybody in that book store was much too gentle for my taste though.
5. General Sun My Brother by Stephen Alexis -- lugged around Europe back to Tennessee. Bought in Germany, in Stuttgart.
6. Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire by Niall Ferguson -- first book that I bought as soon as I landed after reading the reviews in the NY Times at my desk in Cologne. I am wondering about Niall's style of history . . . suppose to be the historical Archangel of my generation in a way.
7. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand -- Same friend from number one tried to strangle me for borrowing it, after he said it took a while for him to read. English is not his first language but it is close enough now. I am a bit unnerved that I have not read it.
8. Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts by Segars and Barrow -- Bought from used book store on Ellingston Place. They keep directing me to the “black book section” and frowned at me when I was looking at other books. First antiquarian bookstore I went to in this country after 4 years of being away. I did not feel very welcome. Still bought this book because it is fascinating to me.
9. Mucho Macho: Seduction, Desire and the Homoerotic Lives of Latin Men by Michael Girman -- Been eyeing this book for some time, but never had the nerve to read it. Bought this summer when I got back from Deutschland. Don't care if mother sees the title on the coffee table (I am starting to feel like Norman Bates, at moments . . . )
10. The Story of the Siege of Lisbon, Jose Saramago -- Ms. Portugal gave me this. We don't talk about this anymore.
11. The Bondswoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts -- Birthday gift from mom last year.
12. The Equality of the Human Races, by Anténor Firmin -- Gotta read it. Period.
13. Ulysses by James Joyce -- Ashamed to say I have not read it, so I gotta read it!
14. The Geography of Perversion: Male to Male Sexual Behavior Outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination. 1750-1918 by Rudi C. Bleys -- Found on a discount rack. Seems very , very interesting to me. Not for everybody though.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Leviathan
I am having a hard time today. I am depressed about New Orleans and worried about my cousins' welfare in Slidel. I have only meet a couple of them. It was the Christmas when I was 14 and my cousin Annette took me to a bunch of bars and we got drunk, then went and saw the Eddie Murphy's movie The Golden Child. I was not that tall, but I could carry myself pretty well in a room full of adults. All I needed was a cigarette, and my cousin just had a cup of white wine. She wasn't legal either. I drove home from the movie cause she was sleepy.
I am worried about my grandmother in Picayune, which is located on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain and East of New Orleans. I just don't think America cares about the Gulf, and is willing to show more optimism, support and cash to Iraq than to us.
But is that really the case? Friends of mine in Europe say that through Katrina, they see why Iraq is a disaster. This is the way we manage our wars and disasters in America, without a plan and by the seat of our pants. Sometimes it is a good idea, and sometimes you come up with craps.
New Orleans is a whole world that is falling into disarray. Its francophone remnants will be swallowed by the sea I am afraid, but time and migrating generations have already eroded much of that underlying fabric. Sometimes I wonder if the spirits have ordained it. I wonder if they are claiming it back, if their moment there of preeminence is long gone, and there is something in our lethargy towards the spirits that is causing this shake down. All this commercialism and the turning of fetishes into mere gimmicks has punched a whole in the levy. Maybe the spirits are inviting Our Lady of Guadaloupe (who is a synchronization of the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin) to take up some of the slake caused by the Anglo invasion. She is an earth goddess and I think that the marsh lands are in need of some serious sexual healing after all this erosion. . .
But what do I know. I am just babbling. For right now, I just can't get over the parallels between Gonaive in Haiti and New Orleans. Rivers. Honey. Hurricanes. Erzulie Frida. Erzulie Dantor. Neglect. Pandemonium. Poverty. Floating black bodies. Bloated black bodies. And this feeling that the Anglos never understood or cared about the creoles . . . really. That strange and Firmin feeling I got when I was growing up. People talking about us because we ate so much fish in our house. In Germany sitting with many African-Americans and listening to gospel music and talking about how "we" shall over come and what "we" want for "the people", and there being something else in the back of my mind. Something about our prosperity and a floor wash I found in my father's closet next to his shoe shine polish. Watching him pour rum and read book after book. Telling us it is time to "go make groceries" and pushing us around in the cart when we were small enough to fit. His baby blue blue jeans from Sears and the flip flops on his ashen feet that he was not ashamed of made everybody turn at Winn Dixie. He walked and carried himself with a jiggle, that I think I have inherited. Something just mud ridden and cast iron about him then as compared to now. His youth and vitality is still intact, but now expressed with an austerity that is broad and silent like his shoulders in a suit that fits and falls perfectly. He still has room to grow, but such marks of the Delta have been erased. He is and is still becoming an American cosmopolitan. It has taken me sometime to see that my father actually immigrated from the coast into mainstream culture and has not really looked back except for moments when he brought us ginger beer and sugar cane on a summer afternoon, or put molasses onto my pancakes. Red beans and okra were all right for everyday.
----
Today I read over my blogs and decided that I did not like the one about my trip to Atlanta and the party at A's house last week. Too many "cools" and repetitive sentence structures dot its progression. I have also been glancing over the blogs of other black writers and academics. It has been "cool", but sometimes I think it is a world that I somehow remember being in, but left a little while a go to get some air. And now that I am sticking my head back into the rooms of chatter and dealing with the students and administrations of various university, I, all of a sudden, remember that I could not breath in those "spaces" (and I mean that in the full cultural theorist and just plan "theorist" sense of the word).
Mind you, I did all of this Africana blog surfing while listening to the song "I Am Afraid of My Cum" by the group Pissed. Had the demo on repeat. I downloaded it from Jockohomo's blog. I was also thinking about the next time I am going to shave my head.
Not to digress, but I think that the other part of me that can't find a place to express itself in the reading groups and woman dominated classes on Caribbean literature is not so willing to disappear just yet. -- this half of myself many people find to be weird, or as Das Experiment says: "It does not match the rest of you (me)." A lot of people think that when I say I lived in NYC, that I am from NYC and that since I love hip-hop music, rap, house music, etc . . . , that I don't listen to punk or rock music. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee that should give a couple of mofo's a major hint.
I mean I sat through the first semester of my 9th grade English class with 19-year-old white boys that smelled like Marlboros and wet hair. I learned a lot about sex from a curly red hair grease monkey who was on the wrestling team. The guys that I liked and had crushes on in physical education were a bunch of 15 -year-olds that hit puberty early and drank cokes in the parking lot only to disappear during 3rd period. I remember that they would shower and laugh and play after swim class; meanwhile, all the black guys were very modest and maybe they were scared. Conversations switched to Brass Monkey by the Beastie Boys (who no one could believe were white) when we finally all put on our underwear, before putting my underwear on my heart just pumped like a hummingbird. I was very shy. The only thing left in my head concerning those brief naked times was everybody speaking so slow. Guys calling each other "dawg" and stuff like that. The white guys did not act that way. They were still busy screaming and laughing under the shower heads.
I remember smiling at one of these "white" guys, the darkest one. He smiled back in "that" way, and I guess he knew that I like him. But he did not go any further. He seemed straight but not to care. And I think that has influenced me in a way. I had crushes on both black guys and white guys in high school, but I could only smile that way to the white guys. The black guys would simply call me faggot and with time I became an outcast until I hit puberty and grew up like a vine. Then, at seventeen, I heard less of the name calling.
But anyway, I am moving to something I have to think about more later. I could develop it into a nice essay I think, but I need to remember that world.
To sum up the post, I don't always feel comfortable with all the definitions of what it means to be black in the academe and at this point I doubt if I ever will. And just like the locker rooms of 1986, it is the boundaries built by the black guys that make me feel uncomfortable. There is a code of conduct concerning black professors and our various projects in the Western Cannon that baffles my sensibilities. If we can't talk about the spirits, drink beer, learn about the punk and ska movement, and kiss white boy grease monkeys I am not sure if I can participate. But of course, I do participate. Just in another way.
I am worried about my grandmother in Picayune, which is located on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain and East of New Orleans. I just don't think America cares about the Gulf, and is willing to show more optimism, support and cash to Iraq than to us.
But is that really the case? Friends of mine in Europe say that through Katrina, they see why Iraq is a disaster. This is the way we manage our wars and disasters in America, without a plan and by the seat of our pants. Sometimes it is a good idea, and sometimes you come up with craps.
New Orleans is a whole world that is falling into disarray. Its francophone remnants will be swallowed by the sea I am afraid, but time and migrating generations have already eroded much of that underlying fabric. Sometimes I wonder if the spirits have ordained it. I wonder if they are claiming it back, if their moment there of preeminence is long gone, and there is something in our lethargy towards the spirits that is causing this shake down. All this commercialism and the turning of fetishes into mere gimmicks has punched a whole in the levy. Maybe the spirits are inviting Our Lady of Guadaloupe (who is a synchronization of the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin) to take up some of the slake caused by the Anglo invasion. She is an earth goddess and I think that the marsh lands are in need of some serious sexual healing after all this erosion. . .
But what do I know. I am just babbling. For right now, I just can't get over the parallels between Gonaive in Haiti and New Orleans. Rivers. Honey. Hurricanes. Erzulie Frida. Erzulie Dantor. Neglect. Pandemonium. Poverty. Floating black bodies. Bloated black bodies. And this feeling that the Anglos never understood or cared about the creoles . . . really. That strange and Firmin feeling I got when I was growing up. People talking about us because we ate so much fish in our house. In Germany sitting with many African-Americans and listening to gospel music and talking about how "we" shall over come and what "we" want for "the people", and there being something else in the back of my mind. Something about our prosperity and a floor wash I found in my father's closet next to his shoe shine polish. Watching him pour rum and read book after book. Telling us it is time to "go make groceries" and pushing us around in the cart when we were small enough to fit. His baby blue blue jeans from Sears and the flip flops on his ashen feet that he was not ashamed of made everybody turn at Winn Dixie. He walked and carried himself with a jiggle, that I think I have inherited. Something just mud ridden and cast iron about him then as compared to now. His youth and vitality is still intact, but now expressed with an austerity that is broad and silent like his shoulders in a suit that fits and falls perfectly. He still has room to grow, but such marks of the Delta have been erased. He is and is still becoming an American cosmopolitan. It has taken me sometime to see that my father actually immigrated from the coast into mainstream culture and has not really looked back except for moments when he brought us ginger beer and sugar cane on a summer afternoon, or put molasses onto my pancakes. Red beans and okra were all right for everyday.
----
Today I read over my blogs and decided that I did not like the one about my trip to Atlanta and the party at A's house last week. Too many "cools" and repetitive sentence structures dot its progression. I have also been glancing over the blogs of other black writers and academics. It has been "cool", but sometimes I think it is a world that I somehow remember being in, but left a little while a go to get some air. And now that I am sticking my head back into the rooms of chatter and dealing with the students and administrations of various university, I, all of a sudden, remember that I could not breath in those "spaces" (and I mean that in the full cultural theorist and just plan "theorist" sense of the word).
Mind you, I did all of this Africana blog surfing while listening to the song "I Am Afraid of My Cum" by the group Pissed. Had the demo on repeat. I downloaded it from Jockohomo's blog. I was also thinking about the next time I am going to shave my head.
Not to digress, but I think that the other part of me that can't find a place to express itself in the reading groups and woman dominated classes on Caribbean literature is not so willing to disappear just yet. -- this half of myself many people find to be weird, or as Das Experiment says: "It does not match the rest of you (me)." A lot of people think that when I say I lived in NYC, that I am from NYC and that since I love hip-hop music, rap, house music, etc . . . , that I don't listen to punk or rock music. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee that should give a couple of mofo's a major hint.
I mean I sat through the first semester of my 9th grade English class with 19-year-old white boys that smelled like Marlboros and wet hair. I learned a lot about sex from a curly red hair grease monkey who was on the wrestling team. The guys that I liked and had crushes on in physical education were a bunch of 15 -year-olds that hit puberty early and drank cokes in the parking lot only to disappear during 3rd period. I remember that they would shower and laugh and play after swim class; meanwhile, all the black guys were very modest and maybe they were scared. Conversations switched to Brass Monkey by the Beastie Boys (who no one could believe were white) when we finally all put on our underwear, before putting my underwear on my heart just pumped like a hummingbird. I was very shy. The only thing left in my head concerning those brief naked times was everybody speaking so slow. Guys calling each other "dawg" and stuff like that. The white guys did not act that way. They were still busy screaming and laughing under the shower heads.
I remember smiling at one of these "white" guys, the darkest one. He smiled back in "that" way, and I guess he knew that I like him. But he did not go any further. He seemed straight but not to care. And I think that has influenced me in a way. I had crushes on both black guys and white guys in high school, but I could only smile that way to the white guys. The black guys would simply call me faggot and with time I became an outcast until I hit puberty and grew up like a vine. Then, at seventeen, I heard less of the name calling.
But anyway, I am moving to something I have to think about more later. I could develop it into a nice essay I think, but I need to remember that world.
To sum up the post, I don't always feel comfortable with all the definitions of what it means to be black in the academe and at this point I doubt if I ever will. And just like the locker rooms of 1986, it is the boundaries built by the black guys that make me feel uncomfortable. There is a code of conduct concerning black professors and our various projects in the Western Cannon that baffles my sensibilities. If we can't talk about the spirits, drink beer, learn about the punk and ska movement, and kiss white boy grease monkeys I am not sure if I can participate. But of course, I do participate. Just in another way.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
The Picture Show
I went the movies yesterday. I had been sitting in the house all day again and I had major things that I needed to get done. So, I wanted a break from sitting in front of the computer and also knowing that I had to go to another doctor today made me anxious to move about away from my sleepy little suburb.
Add $60 dollars to today's visit, plus $75 dollars for some pills I bought a couple of days ago and an insulin co-pay that I anticipate to be about 10 dollars later today when I show up with my little RX card. I will probably have to drive back home in the middle of the night and call some guys in Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska that have been hired to do the farmed out administrative work that the powers that be have deemed fit for the poor bastards who have been unlucky enough to come down with an ailment they can't fix and who don't work for Coca Cola Inc., or Exxon, or simply choose not to work for them, etc . . . The person on the other line will be either a completely overworked cynical single mom who is my age but sounds like one of the guest actresses on E.R. (you know the one who played the Alpha female careerist who checked in with a heroin addiction, and faked one disease to get the medicine to help her kick her habit over the weekend), or the guy fresh out of college or the mosh pit working this job in the evening while he waits for the third person in his 3 party relationship to move end so he can dump this gig and concentrate on what really matters. I have had both at this RX outsourced service location. The second guy was so, so, helpful . . . I am SO for real, no sarcasm. I am sure that I asked for his name. I will call him today if things get heavy with the people in the white coats this evening. And the night staff is much nicer than the people who work during the day. That is a good thing to know when you are partically on the dole and dependent on your local pharmacy in more ways than anyone should ever know.
OK. Enough self-pity!
So, last night, I got to the movie theater. I must admit that Brokeback Mountain is number 3 on my list. First is Munich and the second is The Hostel. Unfortunately, with the opening of Underworld: Evolution on Friday, Brokeback Mountain will stay in the number 2 position for just one day. It is up for an Oscar, so that movie ain't going anywhere. Now, Munich and Underworld 2 are running neck to neck, with Underworld falling into a hair's length second place .
When I got to the ticket counter, Munich was not playing for another 45 minutes, and The Hostel was just a 20 minute wait. So I choose The Hostel. After taking a whizz, getting some Sweet and Sour Skittels (I love the way the burn the skin off the inside of my mouth) and a gigantic diet coke I went into the theater. I was the first one. Next was a mother and either her daughter or son, and their girlfriend or boyfriend. I situated myself in the center and stuck the gigantic diet coke into the holder. The super large drink is the best value at $4.50. It is only .50 cent more than the large and it comes with free refills. Wonderful when going to the movies with kids. But the cup is also hard enough to take home and re-use. It is not hard plastic like the cups you could take home from McDonald's centuries back, but when you drink something out of it without ice, you really feel the vastness of that vessel. Like your whole nose goes into it. It feels like I am looking into a parking garage.
Just before the movie starts, I started to remember what a co-worker at work was telling. me They have carded people inside the actual movie. Like people really do come and look around reading the ID's of people. I thought it can't be that bad, just some ole' Tennessee madness. The movie theater never fills up. There are a couple of thugs life coloreds that come up behind me. One ghetto fabulous couple. Some of "the children" are down on the lower level. A small blond lady about mid-forties and her giant of a man are one row down to my left. He leaned forward to look closer at the movie with an attentiveness I found disturbing. Even more astounding was that his girth in silhouette made him a breathing optical illusion. You could not tell if he was sitting upright two rows down from me, or if his leaning body was connected to the seat next to the woman. At times you could not see the woman's body. Her hair was like a long blond mop. His back was a mass of black and at moments, your could admire his limberness, the way his torso positioned itself inclined with his arms folded on the chair in front of him.
So the movie is really good. Especially if you have lived overseas for a while. It captures all the American love and lust for a European hiking tour by way of Europe's various national railroad systems. It starts out in Amsterdam, with the two young adults and one looking to be in his late thirties drinking, smoking and fucking. Oh! The bathroom sex of it!
The Hostel gives Europe a realistic skin over the overtly stereotypical depiction of fast girls, free pot and hot clubs. It also shows male bonding in a way that I think most guys (straight of gay) will enjoy. All the horse play, pranks, meeting girls in the sauna, very public sex, etc . . ., are all found in the movie. Brought back memories I must say, and on top of that, I started to realize why people would be carded in this movie. From my new found Tennessee eyes it was sheer debauchery. Forget Brokeback mountain (where were the Christian Right during My Private Idaho and Making Love by the way?), send your children to this heterosexual blood feast if you want to corrupt them.
The girls in this movie were amazing. The two sirens really were that, hot Eastern European girls, and the woman at the check-out counter was not bad either. The guys less so. Except for the Icelandic 30 something, they were cute guys, talking about soon to be contemplated dissertations, Bar exams, and some future world in tones I vaguely remember in my own life. That fake machismo manner is a hallmark of a twenty something I think. There is no way you can know so much about the world. The idea that somehow your life is going to change when you get back from this 3 or 4 week excursion through Europe is somehow very American. We never force our coming of age, in all actually, coming of age forces us.
So, I won't say anymore about the film except that it is full of gore. And is not even the right word. In all actually, the real terror was my bladder splitting open after drinking that giant coke, and me not wanting to seem like a complete pansy getting up to use the bathroom for the second time. I had gone just before the movie, in the first have of the movie and now I gotta get up during the bloodletting. I know. I know. I know already, but I had thug and thug love surrounding me, and if I learned anything in NYC working with homeless kids in Time Square, you got to wear a mask or anything will jump on you (and I mean that in the Sethe's swollen feet running from Teacher in the Oprah Windfry movie production sense of the phrase). And I must say, that reflex was still in motion despite all the intellectual gender role games and Foucault jumping jack exercises of power and representation I can recite in my mind. Well that was a moment of honesty with the audience, a quick synaptic shock confessional wave of thought that keep my ass in my chair. I must also say I didn't want to whizz for the third time that evening because the movie was so good, but the bladder pressure was adding to the intensity I must say.
The silence I heard in the audience was identical to that in the Mel Gibson The Passion of the Christ movie. And there is a touch of Bob Guccione's Caligula in the film. It is not found in the grandeur (the is none) or the decadence (there is plenty), it is in the excess. This movie is gruesome to excess. One couple got up and walked out. Everyone else simply watched, knowing that more and more of this bodily harm was going to happen. I left the movie a little light headed. I drove to that massive big chain store that is swallowing America, picked up some shaving cream and a pack of razors (there needs to be a Congressional hearing on the price of men's razor refills, but cudos to Gillette. The Mach 3 Power is really superior to the Mach 3 Turbo refills, it is well worth the extra dollar.), then missed my turn off of Charlotte Pike and had to drive through TSU to get home.
But in the morning, I felt OK. Don't even remember that scary feeling.
Just started my day.
I had big project due at 8:30 am.
Finished and arrived right on time.
Add $60 dollars to today's visit, plus $75 dollars for some pills I bought a couple of days ago and an insulin co-pay that I anticipate to be about 10 dollars later today when I show up with my little RX card. I will probably have to drive back home in the middle of the night and call some guys in Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska that have been hired to do the farmed out administrative work that the powers that be have deemed fit for the poor bastards who have been unlucky enough to come down with an ailment they can't fix and who don't work for Coca Cola Inc., or Exxon, or simply choose not to work for them, etc . . . The person on the other line will be either a completely overworked cynical single mom who is my age but sounds like one of the guest actresses on E.R. (you know the one who played the Alpha female careerist who checked in with a heroin addiction, and faked one disease to get the medicine to help her kick her habit over the weekend), or the guy fresh out of college or the mosh pit working this job in the evening while he waits for the third person in his 3 party relationship to move end so he can dump this gig and concentrate on what really matters. I have had both at this RX outsourced service location. The second guy was so, so, helpful . . . I am SO for real, no sarcasm. I am sure that I asked for his name. I will call him today if things get heavy with the people in the white coats this evening. And the night staff is much nicer than the people who work during the day. That is a good thing to know when you are partically on the dole and dependent on your local pharmacy in more ways than anyone should ever know.
OK. Enough self-pity!
So, last night, I got to the movie theater. I must admit that Brokeback Mountain is number 3 on my list. First is Munich and the second is The Hostel. Unfortunately, with the opening of Underworld: Evolution on Friday, Brokeback Mountain will stay in the number 2 position for just one day. It is up for an Oscar, so that movie ain't going anywhere. Now, Munich and Underworld 2 are running neck to neck, with Underworld falling into a hair's length second place .
When I got to the ticket counter, Munich was not playing for another 45 minutes, and The Hostel was just a 20 minute wait. So I choose The Hostel. After taking a whizz, getting some Sweet and Sour Skittels (I love the way the burn the skin off the inside of my mouth) and a gigantic diet coke I went into the theater. I was the first one. Next was a mother and either her daughter or son, and their girlfriend or boyfriend. I situated myself in the center and stuck the gigantic diet coke into the holder. The super large drink is the best value at $4.50. It is only .50 cent more than the large and it comes with free refills. Wonderful when going to the movies with kids. But the cup is also hard enough to take home and re-use. It is not hard plastic like the cups you could take home from McDonald's centuries back, but when you drink something out of it without ice, you really feel the vastness of that vessel. Like your whole nose goes into it. It feels like I am looking into a parking garage.
Just before the movie starts, I started to remember what a co-worker at work was telling. me They have carded people inside the actual movie. Like people really do come and look around reading the ID's of people. I thought it can't be that bad, just some ole' Tennessee madness. The movie theater never fills up. There are a couple of thugs life coloreds that come up behind me. One ghetto fabulous couple. Some of "the children" are down on the lower level. A small blond lady about mid-forties and her giant of a man are one row down to my left. He leaned forward to look closer at the movie with an attentiveness I found disturbing. Even more astounding was that his girth in silhouette made him a breathing optical illusion. You could not tell if he was sitting upright two rows down from me, or if his leaning body was connected to the seat next to the woman. At times you could not see the woman's body. Her hair was like a long blond mop. His back was a mass of black and at moments, your could admire his limberness, the way his torso positioned itself inclined with his arms folded on the chair in front of him.
So the movie is really good. Especially if you have lived overseas for a while. It captures all the American love and lust for a European hiking tour by way of Europe's various national railroad systems. It starts out in Amsterdam, with the two young adults and one looking to be in his late thirties drinking, smoking and fucking. Oh! The bathroom sex of it!
The Hostel gives Europe a realistic skin over the overtly stereotypical depiction of fast girls, free pot and hot clubs. It also shows male bonding in a way that I think most guys (straight of gay) will enjoy. All the horse play, pranks, meeting girls in the sauna, very public sex, etc . . ., are all found in the movie. Brought back memories I must say, and on top of that, I started to realize why people would be carded in this movie. From my new found Tennessee eyes it was sheer debauchery. Forget Brokeback mountain (where were the Christian Right during My Private Idaho and Making Love by the way?), send your children to this heterosexual blood feast if you want to corrupt them.
The girls in this movie were amazing. The two sirens really were that, hot Eastern European girls, and the woman at the check-out counter was not bad either. The guys less so. Except for the Icelandic 30 something, they were cute guys, talking about soon to be contemplated dissertations, Bar exams, and some future world in tones I vaguely remember in my own life. That fake machismo manner is a hallmark of a twenty something I think. There is no way you can know so much about the world. The idea that somehow your life is going to change when you get back from this 3 or 4 week excursion through Europe is somehow very American. We never force our coming of age, in all actually, coming of age forces us.
So, I won't say anymore about the film except that it is full of gore. And is not even the right word. In all actually, the real terror was my bladder splitting open after drinking that giant coke, and me not wanting to seem like a complete pansy getting up to use the bathroom for the second time. I had gone just before the movie, in the first have of the movie and now I gotta get up during the bloodletting. I know. I know. I know already, but I had thug and thug love surrounding me, and if I learned anything in NYC working with homeless kids in Time Square, you got to wear a mask or anything will jump on you (and I mean that in the Sethe's swollen feet running from Teacher in the Oprah Windfry movie production sense of the phrase). And I must say, that reflex was still in motion despite all the intellectual gender role games and Foucault jumping jack exercises of power and representation I can recite in my mind. Well that was a moment of honesty with the audience, a quick synaptic shock confessional wave of thought that keep my ass in my chair. I must also say I didn't want to whizz for the third time that evening because the movie was so good, but the bladder pressure was adding to the intensity I must say.
The silence I heard in the audience was identical to that in the Mel Gibson The Passion of the Christ movie. And there is a touch of Bob Guccione's Caligula in the film. It is not found in the grandeur (the is none) or the decadence (there is plenty), it is in the excess. This movie is gruesome to excess. One couple got up and walked out. Everyone else simply watched, knowing that more and more of this bodily harm was going to happen. I left the movie a little light headed. I drove to that massive big chain store that is swallowing America, picked up some shaving cream and a pack of razors (there needs to be a Congressional hearing on the price of men's razor refills, but cudos to Gillette. The Mach 3 Power is really superior to the Mach 3 Turbo refills, it is well worth the extra dollar.), then missed my turn off of Charlotte Pike and had to drive through TSU to get home.
But in the morning, I felt OK. Don't even remember that scary feeling.
Just started my day.
I had big project due at 8:30 am.
Finished and arrived right on time.
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