I can't stomach the thought of it: my child's a thief. Nice thief. Pretty thief. Academic achiever thief. But, yes, a thief nonetheless.
What's the young pirate's booty of choice? My bedroom slippers.
I can't go a day without having to search the house for my bedroom slippers after one of her visits. Mind you, she's got big feet, but not big as mine. She's got great taste, but not the same taste in clothes. She just likes it because it's mine!
Some people say I ought to be grateful. I dunno. When I get home from work, I like to drop my bag, get a shower, and step out into cushy living as my lifestyle affords. Which isn't THAT cushy, you see. These bedroom slippers: they're like my polo gear, my automatically warming toilet seat, or whatever item you indulged beyond your means when you noticed some extra bucks in your budget that time. And she comes over, and wears them, and then hides them somewhere I can't instinctively find them.
Yes, of course, I understand the part about how she must love her daddy if she's putting her clean toes where my stinky toes go. It surely gives her some comfort to walk in my shoes the way I liked walking in my dad's shoes or smelling my mom's perfume when she was out of the room. I get it. It, you know, warms my cackles a bit. Sure.
But then I have to confront the thievery, yes? Where'd she get that? From me?
I only stole twice. First time was in fourth grade, when Vick and I stole magnifying glasses from Mrs. Armstrong's science stash so that we could burn leaves (and, ok, other students' hands). That was purely recreational. Second time, I didn't even KNOW it was stealing.
What did I steal? A car. But really, the guy was asking for it.
I had reserved a zipcar in the same garage as this guy's car, right. So I go to pick up the car. I follow the green signs to the zipcar parking space. I'd reserved a mini Cooper. I arrive on the floor with the zipcar sign pointing to the right, and when I look to the right, there's the green mini Cooper. A convertible, no less. As I approach, I notice the window is half open, and sticking my head in, I can see the key right on the driver side mat.
That was a little curious - usually the zipcar key is hanging by a string from the dash. The string broke, I figured.
Anyway, I check around the car for damage (one of zipcar's four simple rules), and I checked the driver side visor for the gas card. (Zipcars are awesome. For a few bucks an hour, you can drive up to 180 miles, and use their gas card for as many fill-ups as needed. You just have to return the car to the same space at or before the end of your reservation time.) Credit card in visor? Check! I was more concerned about the parking garage exit keycard, and I found it in the visor, too. Off I go!
After watching my daughter's softball game, and taking her for fast food, I drove the Cooper back to the garage in the nick of time! It was a fun ride. Someone had even left Scorpion CD's in the glove compartment! It's not my usual cup of tea, but I was rockin' and cruising! And stealing.
When I arrived back at the garage, it took me a minute to locate the garage card key. While at the entrance, which was blocked by one of those bars that the garage attendant raises up and down if you can't find your garage key, a guy calls over to me. I've got the top down but the music is blasting, so I turn down the volume.
"Hey, how do you like that car?"
"It's great," I say.
"Oh, yeah. How long you had it?"
"A couple of hours. It's not mine. It's a zipcar. I'm taking it back upstairs to the space. It lives here!"
"Yeah, I know," the guy says. And I notice two other guys trailing behind him: a younger white guy who looks mad, and a black guy with a garage attendant type shirt on.
"What do you mean? You have one?" I say.
"That's my car right there, so why don't you just pull over," he says.
"Man, what? This is a zipcar. Here's my zipcard. I'm parking upstairs. Here's the parking pass, and here's the gas ... card ... What's your name?"
And he told me his name, and it was the name on the gas, um, credit card that was in the visor! I kid you not, I didn't know I had stolen his car.
The younger guy starts to talk: "The cops are on their way."
"Well, I'm just gonna pull over to the side here and be on my way," I tell them.
"No, you should wait for the cops," the young one says.
I get my stuff out of the vehicle as quickly as I can. I stand up. I even hand the owner my business card, telling him to call me if he has any questions, and giving him the zipcard number, too. "Call them to verify that Sean Chambers had a mini Cooper reserved on the fourth floor during these hours today. Call them. You'll see. I'm no thief. You take it easy."
And I started to leave the garage.
I did have one question I had to ask: "The keys were in the car. The window was open. I didn't break into the car, you know that, right?"
"Yeah, I know. My wife is always kicking me about doing that," says the older guy.
"Well, I didn't drive far, I didn't use your card, no damage, no harm, no foul."
"Maybe you should wait," he says.
"I'm out. Call me if you need me," I say. And I was gone.
The moral to the story is that just because stealing occurs doesn't make it theft: cars, bedroom slippers...
That's the moral, right?
What was I talking about, again?
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Koppel, Suess, The Gays and R&B
John Stewart and Steven Colbert drove Ted Koppel from hosting his groundbreaking late night news show, Nightline, after 25 years. Things had changed since 1980 when Koppel's show debuted. In 2005, more late night viewers wanted their news flavored with a tone as absurd as the news itself. The Daily Show and Colbert Report were funny like life. Koppel was not. Koppel was just life.
It was like Koppel couldn't cope with the fact that logical insanity was the mood of the day. It replaced objectivity as the news ouvre of the day. But instead of getting Seussian with his, Koppel got more droll. More like Yertle the Turtle, who found you can't be king of the pond but for so long, instead of more like Dr. Seuss, who adjusts, digs deeper, keeps his art on par with the topics and tastes of the times.
Put a different way, people saw journalists as such a big part of the problem, and news gathering as such a part of the story, that they needed news reporters to show they understood that on every broadcast. (And The Onion thrives on the web because readers want that, too.)
Example: Colbert starts a recent interview about the heartbreaking suicides by gay teens by bashing the gay guest he's invited to discuss the topic. I think it's funny, but I know it's a set up just like the guest does: Colbert's faux-conservative delivery is the hot hook, and if you can stand the heat, he'll allow - even facilitate - whatever newsiness you'll help him burn into the brains of the audience. At the end of a long day, to get to my mind, it takes a hot poker, my girlfriend once told me. Colbert gets it and says, "Why not just tell the gay kid, hey, the clarinet player over there is catching it, too. It's not just you, it's being a teenager."
So the Colbert guest says, "The clarinet player is probably being called a fag, too, on top of nerd. The difference is that the clarinet player, while maybe picked on daily, isn't going home to family or church folk who also are disparaging folks with his sexual orientation." Good, gay comeback for dat ass, a homothug might say! All Colbert guests need good comebacks, and are allowed them - are expected to provide them. In Koppel's journalism, things were not so balanced as his generation liked to think. Guests after a while, especially the politicians, either came on with a script and they stuck to it, which provided us with less and less information in the 80's, 90's and 2000's, or just stopped coming (literally, and maybe bud-doomp-boomp). No joy in Mudville, if you ask me, the average American black male liberal.
Back to the Example: Then the gay Colbert interview turns serious. A clip from Itgetsbetter.org shows the highest ranking gay US official on the site saying you can go as high as you want and love who you want, if you love yourself first. Biden, Clinton, even Al Franken - but no Republicans or conservative pundits - have done a similar clip viewable on youtube. Colbert agreed to do it, so long as it didn't involve "pegging" (bud-doomp-boomp)!
Koppel would have done an outstanding story about the tragic suicides of the teens. Koppel would not have had any jokes or other powerful means of informing the public of the absurdity of where we stand today. The truth of it is powerful: didn't 1980-2005 prove to journalists that the truth is not enough?
This might be a stretch, but R&B music got the same message some time ago. Its death knell was rung when Anita Baker and Luther Vandross - two of the best to ever do it - couldn't sell as well as Too Live Crew and N.W.A. It struggled until when? The emergence of The R. - and I don't mean Rakim. (I wish.) R. Kelly kept R&B relevant to the New School rap audience. When Diddy was producing Aretha Franklin, you had to know the soul of black music was hurtin'! But only hip hop captured the ideas, impulses and the dominant ouvre! (Tresa, sister, French major, what AM I saying??? It feels like the right word, though!) R&B couldn't match hip hop's grooves, plain and simple. Madonna, Prince, Michael, Janet - all schizophrenic with theirs, trying to find the staying groove. Jam and Lewis, Teddy Riley, and later, Lauren Hill, we thought: but where today? Kirk Franklin and Dr. Dre and (hiccup) Lil Wayne and (hack!) Alicia Keys came to run diss town.
I was riding the H-bus the other day past C. Dolores Tucker's house here in Philly, and I was reminded of something. While white and black conservatives (Bill Bennett and Tucker) were building alliances and together smashing Tupac CDs (I would have helped if they'd have just asked), only hip hop was putting black pain into a music that estimated the absurdity of it all - the context, I mean, the world at the time. Sure we need to pull back, but you don't pull back by just screaming, "Pull back!" Not if trying that hasn't worked repeatedly. I don't say resorting to "Pull back, nucka!" is the best alternative solution, but the market proves that intent plus ouvre win out in media. I mean, it's Kanye's world.
Likewise, it's Colbert's in the news, in my view.
Koppel is a superior journalist to Stewart, actually. (Sorry, John: Godfather.) To Colbert? Maybe. Maybe not, right now. Why then is Koppel on the History Channel? Well, hate to go here but: do you know how much money Koppel was making when he quit? How much money my fellow Wahoo Katie Couric is pulling down? Matt Lauer? Anderson Cooper? Tons. That's part of the story. You ought to give me the news and ONE joke. Dang. It's got to be like that when your product isn't providing the citizenry as much good stuff as Colbert. If he's showing you can be timely, informative, relevant, funny, and subversive - providing you with not only information but a framework for questions, for carrying on a conversation on your own, about the news AND the industry - that's just awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Sound gay? Like that clarinet player, I've gotten that as a smart guy my whole life. (Smart GOOD LOOKING GUY: my bag.) Gay, white, nerd, weird, names, names, names. And as sure as we learn we are (or are not) beautiful by others' eyes, it hurt. I got called that because I, skinny and black and living downtown but not "down," idolized folks like Koppel and Jim Kincaid, the Hampton Roads news anchor I emulated as a teenager (the newscaster happened to be friends with Koppel as a Viet Nam War correspondent, Kincaid told me). I survived it because of seeds planted by my grandmother (parting my thick hair like Mandela before anybody knew), and by the ouvre with which family and others in the community surrounded me (your mama was so smart, boy! your sister skipped a grade! "i ain't dumb!" - beave, "hi, seanpierre!" - pretty black girls, pretty white girls).
The old heads in journalism held it down during their reign, but didn't step it up in the 21st Century. They - the traditionalists - may all go the way of R&B if they don't get the message. They've got to be themselves, but that may mean stepping down or finding a co-host to provide that other thing. Or it may mean, god forbid, changing.
Koppel's recent diatribes in The Washington Post and elsewhere against Comedy Central's guys and MSNBC's lineup (The Olbermany) suggest that's the direction he wants to lead good, old fashioned journalists in. My advice: instead of becoming naysayers and arrogant and screaming, "We still were better," to that idea, throw up the deuces and...get Suessian. It's not just about being absurd, it's about matching the ouvre.
Did I sound like Kanye? DID THAT SOUND LIKE KANYE??? KANYE WAS RIGHT!!!
Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian. Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian.
Just like me.
It was like Koppel couldn't cope with the fact that logical insanity was the mood of the day. It replaced objectivity as the news ouvre of the day. But instead of getting Seussian with his, Koppel got more droll. More like Yertle the Turtle, who found you can't be king of the pond but for so long, instead of more like Dr. Seuss, who adjusts, digs deeper, keeps his art on par with the topics and tastes of the times.
Put a different way, people saw journalists as such a big part of the problem, and news gathering as such a part of the story, that they needed news reporters to show they understood that on every broadcast. (And The Onion thrives on the web because readers want that, too.)
Example: Colbert starts a recent interview about the heartbreaking suicides by gay teens by bashing the gay guest he's invited to discuss the topic. I think it's funny, but I know it's a set up just like the guest does: Colbert's faux-conservative delivery is the hot hook, and if you can stand the heat, he'll allow - even facilitate - whatever newsiness you'll help him burn into the brains of the audience. At the end of a long day, to get to my mind, it takes a hot poker, my girlfriend once told me. Colbert gets it and says, "Why not just tell the gay kid, hey, the clarinet player over there is catching it, too. It's not just you, it's being a teenager."
So the Colbert guest says, "The clarinet player is probably being called a fag, too, on top of nerd. The difference is that the clarinet player, while maybe picked on daily, isn't going home to family or church folk who also are disparaging folks with his sexual orientation." Good, gay comeback for dat ass, a homothug might say! All Colbert guests need good comebacks, and are allowed them - are expected to provide them. In Koppel's journalism, things were not so balanced as his generation liked to think. Guests after a while, especially the politicians, either came on with a script and they stuck to it, which provided us with less and less information in the 80's, 90's and 2000's, or just stopped coming (literally, and maybe bud-doomp-boomp). No joy in Mudville, if you ask me, the average American black male liberal.
Back to the Example: Then the gay Colbert interview turns serious. A clip from Itgetsbetter.org shows the highest ranking gay US official on the site saying you can go as high as you want and love who you want, if you love yourself first. Biden, Clinton, even Al Franken - but no Republicans or conservative pundits - have done a similar clip viewable on youtube. Colbert agreed to do it, so long as it didn't involve "pegging" (bud-doomp-boomp)!
Koppel would have done an outstanding story about the tragic suicides of the teens. Koppel would not have had any jokes or other powerful means of informing the public of the absurdity of where we stand today. The truth of it is powerful: didn't 1980-2005 prove to journalists that the truth is not enough?
This might be a stretch, but R&B music got the same message some time ago. Its death knell was rung when Anita Baker and Luther Vandross - two of the best to ever do it - couldn't sell as well as Too Live Crew and N.W.A. It struggled until when? The emergence of The R. - and I don't mean Rakim. (I wish.) R. Kelly kept R&B relevant to the New School rap audience. When Diddy was producing Aretha Franklin, you had to know the soul of black music was hurtin'! But only hip hop captured the ideas, impulses and the dominant ouvre! (Tresa, sister, French major, what AM I saying??? It feels like the right word, though!) R&B couldn't match hip hop's grooves, plain and simple. Madonna, Prince, Michael, Janet - all schizophrenic with theirs, trying to find the staying groove. Jam and Lewis, Teddy Riley, and later, Lauren Hill, we thought: but where today? Kirk Franklin and Dr. Dre and (hiccup) Lil Wayne and (hack!) Alicia Keys came to run diss town.
I was riding the H-bus the other day past C. Dolores Tucker's house here in Philly, and I was reminded of something. While white and black conservatives (Bill Bennett and Tucker) were building alliances and together smashing Tupac CDs (I would have helped if they'd have just asked), only hip hop was putting black pain into a music that estimated the absurdity of it all - the context, I mean, the world at the time. Sure we need to pull back, but you don't pull back by just screaming, "Pull back!" Not if trying that hasn't worked repeatedly. I don't say resorting to "Pull back, nucka!" is the best alternative solution, but the market proves that intent plus ouvre win out in media. I mean, it's Kanye's world.
Likewise, it's Colbert's in the news, in my view.
Koppel is a superior journalist to Stewart, actually. (Sorry, John: Godfather.) To Colbert? Maybe. Maybe not, right now. Why then is Koppel on the History Channel? Well, hate to go here but: do you know how much money Koppel was making when he quit? How much money my fellow Wahoo Katie Couric is pulling down? Matt Lauer? Anderson Cooper? Tons. That's part of the story. You ought to give me the news and ONE joke. Dang. It's got to be like that when your product isn't providing the citizenry as much good stuff as Colbert. If he's showing you can be timely, informative, relevant, funny, and subversive - providing you with not only information but a framework for questions, for carrying on a conversation on your own, about the news AND the industry - that's just awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Sound gay? Like that clarinet player, I've gotten that as a smart guy my whole life. (Smart GOOD LOOKING GUY: my bag.) Gay, white, nerd, weird, names, names, names. And as sure as we learn we are (or are not) beautiful by others' eyes, it hurt. I got called that because I, skinny and black and living downtown but not "down," idolized folks like Koppel and Jim Kincaid, the Hampton Roads news anchor I emulated as a teenager (the newscaster happened to be friends with Koppel as a Viet Nam War correspondent, Kincaid told me). I survived it because of seeds planted by my grandmother (parting my thick hair like Mandela before anybody knew), and by the ouvre with which family and others in the community surrounded me (your mama was so smart, boy! your sister skipped a grade! "i ain't dumb!" - beave, "hi, seanpierre!" - pretty black girls, pretty white girls).
The old heads in journalism held it down during their reign, but didn't step it up in the 21st Century. They - the traditionalists - may all go the way of R&B if they don't get the message. They've got to be themselves, but that may mean stepping down or finding a co-host to provide that other thing. Or it may mean, god forbid, changing.
Koppel's recent diatribes in The Washington Post and elsewhere against Comedy Central's guys and MSNBC's lineup (The Olbermany) suggest that's the direction he wants to lead good, old fashioned journalists in. My advice: instead of becoming naysayers and arrogant and screaming, "We still were better," to that idea, throw up the deuces and...get Suessian. It's not just about being absurd, it's about matching the ouvre.
Did I sound like Kanye? DID THAT SOUND LIKE KANYE??? KANYE WAS RIGHT!!!
Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian. Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian.
Just like me.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Be Destiny, Be Positive
Friends of mine have created the digital positivity zone for African Americans called Bdestiny.com. It highlights entertainment, politics and lifestyles issues. It portrays blacks in a positive light, and provides useful as well as fun bits of information for readers.
With BDestiny.com, the great thing is that the content and the INtent provide a framework for rich family conversations. The site reminds me of what I used to get watching TV from the early evening into the night, when I grew up. From the time my dad got home at 5:30, until I went to bed around 9 or 10 or 11 (depending on my age), the televisoin was on. Because of the FCC, TV programs provided basic information and entertainment that was family-friendly. BDestiny.com does that. We watched a series of programs, and we didn't call them news, features, sports, etc. We called them dad's, mom's, Sean's, Beaver's, Billy's, and Tresa's. But each of "our" programs was one that the whole family could watch and learn something from, or critique. We got as much from the experience of sharing with one another about "our" programs as we did from the content itself that was being delivered to us.
Common time unites families, and spending time reading what's at BDestiny.com can become the grist for common time in the same way those TV programs grounded talks in my family's living room or at our dinner table.
The site's editors have a point of view - a decidedly positive one. Not because it sells - although it certainly does, and I hope they ultimately make tons of dough from their effort. But their site reflects their attitudes and their sense that what the world needs now isn't just love but reconstruction: and black people need it and deserve it as much as anybody else.
The neatest thing might be that they're really serving an audience broader than "blacks" or "African Americans." Anybody with access to media that competes with BDestiny.com has to find that what's in many of those other places - the abundance of empty rhetoric and useless, graphic, explicit content - is offensive and unhelpful. BDestiny.com is serving readers who are seekers of nourishment of an informational and spiritual sort, with an unabashedly African American bent, to boot.
And with so much of American culture dominated by African American sensibilities anyway, non-black web surfers find themselves at Bdestiny.com quite naturally: because what they're looking for is there as sure as it's on msn.com, slate.com, TheRoot.com, or the web versions of Ebony and Jet magazine. And Fox! (Just kidding.)
If you haven't already pointed your browser there, check out BDestiny.com. Not just because they list my blog as one worth reading. (Smile.) It'll put something good into your soul and fortify your spirit. It'll help the BDestiny.com site creators continue to dispel the all-too-prevalent "negativity narratives" taking up so much space in our virtual and actual universes.
With BDestiny.com, the great thing is that the content and the INtent provide a framework for rich family conversations. The site reminds me of what I used to get watching TV from the early evening into the night, when I grew up. From the time my dad got home at 5:30, until I went to bed around 9 or 10 or 11 (depending on my age), the televisoin was on. Because of the FCC, TV programs provided basic information and entertainment that was family-friendly. BDestiny.com does that. We watched a series of programs, and we didn't call them news, features, sports, etc. We called them dad's, mom's, Sean's, Beaver's, Billy's, and Tresa's. But each of "our" programs was one that the whole family could watch and learn something from, or critique. We got as much from the experience of sharing with one another about "our" programs as we did from the content itself that was being delivered to us.
Common time unites families, and spending time reading what's at BDestiny.com can become the grist for common time in the same way those TV programs grounded talks in my family's living room or at our dinner table.
The site's editors have a point of view - a decidedly positive one. Not because it sells - although it certainly does, and I hope they ultimately make tons of dough from their effort. But their site reflects their attitudes and their sense that what the world needs now isn't just love but reconstruction: and black people need it and deserve it as much as anybody else.
The neatest thing might be that they're really serving an audience broader than "blacks" or "African Americans." Anybody with access to media that competes with BDestiny.com has to find that what's in many of those other places - the abundance of empty rhetoric and useless, graphic, explicit content - is offensive and unhelpful. BDestiny.com is serving readers who are seekers of nourishment of an informational and spiritual sort, with an unabashedly African American bent, to boot.
And with so much of American culture dominated by African American sensibilities anyway, non-black web surfers find themselves at Bdestiny.com quite naturally: because what they're looking for is there as sure as it's on msn.com, slate.com, TheRoot.com, or the web versions of Ebony and Jet magazine. And Fox! (Just kidding.)
If you haven't already pointed your browser there, check out BDestiny.com. Not just because they list my blog as one worth reading. (Smile.) It'll put something good into your soul and fortify your spirit. It'll help the BDestiny.com site creators continue to dispel the all-too-prevalent "negativity narratives" taking up so much space in our virtual and actual universes.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Whiteness, Softness, Rockiness
If Muzak, or elevator music, is the whitest thing known to man, soft rock music, though also white, might be whiteness at its American best.
"Porquois?" you say.
Because it's a white thing that naturally and without resistance includes soul (which means blackness). To paraphrase Ralph Ellison, whatever else America is, it's also black, has been all the time, always. And so, unlike, say, the Constitution or banking regulations or white racial identity, which have their histories of being explicitly anti-black, soft rock music never had a history of being anti-black. (I don't think.)
Likewise, soft rock has never been black-dominated, or predominantly black-interested, like, say, funk. (Funk definitely has its rock roots, but besides the fact that rock is blues-rooted, funk provides its own deliberate nods to blues as well as other black music, such as gospel. My favorite funk riff - and Dr. Dre's, too, I think - is the vocal of Parliament singing, "Swing down sweet chariot, stop, and let me ride!")
And soft rock has no claim on theories of purity, so that's another reason I say its a best expression of American whiteness, if there's any. The white in soft rock is, at best, gray, likely going no lower than that 10 percent screen you can make using MS Word's color toolbar.
Nor has soft rock got any disdain for its international white connections - meaning, the Bee Gees are as legit a white rock contributor as Christopher Cross (whether either likes this or not)! So it's an inclusive whiteness, a phrase that's oxymoronic in most racial and other American English language contexts. (And maybe it's other languages, too. Some say some Asian ethnics want to be white as much as college age Americans nowadays want to be "Japanese by spring," to riff off (rip off) Ishmael Reed's satirical novel's title.)
Dare I say, soft rock is as American as jazz. Neither of those musical forms can claim any greatness without acknowledging the members of other racial and ethnic groups as essential contributors to these musics' essential forms (if such a thing as "essentialism" exists; and when we're talking things-racial, we at least have to debate that question).
Now, why would I even want any kind of "best whiteness" - to exist, I mean? It's funny. My lifetime - 40 years now - has been spent in two regions of the country, mainly. The cradle of the South - Virginia (Newport News is minutes or a few miles from Jamestown, as well as from Nat Turner's Hampton), and the most iconic setting of the urban Northeast, New York City: these two places are America, or certainly keys to its essence, if we can say it has an essence. And whiteness exists in both places. In Virginia, white is so prevalent it needs not mentioning. In NYC, it's articulated via ethnic identification; the white ethnics are identifiable from the non-white ones, but they are not so dominant, so superior-seeming, at least not reflexively or cheerfully or hopefully, as in VA. Even white people would be OK if nobody in NYC was white tomorrow, whereas not so true in Virginia, even at its most progressive, today.
So why? Because when I go to Virginia, I realize there are white people who still want to be white, gonna die white, and most importantly, gonna raise dey chirrens to be whites. (They're doing it now - right now! And while I don't love them for that, I do love them. Friend, for me, means friend.) So I have to think about it. It's also the case that it (whiteness) means something to black people - and I'm one of them. My language is black forever, and so goes my mind and body, everything but my non-white spirit. (In New York City, my spirit got blacker; it's been cool, and amazing to some of my friends and family members. Healthy for me, while not without costs. Though I don't have many people to talk to about the change; some brothas, but not many. More black women. An excellent development for The Sean Formerly Known as Nerd, to black women, and White Boy Sean, to black guys. Anyway...)
The true oxymoron is "best whiteness," and the irony in there for me is that it (a music, here) can't be the best if it's white, and it can't be white (meaning white like pure) if it's the best.
A best whiteness is just me holding out hope for my white-focused Americans' reconciliation with a part of themselves. (These are non-white people, too.) In this case, a best whiteness - soft rock - is a Southern boy's reconciliation to a world where irony is survivor awareness tool number one. I live at the post-integration station on the train line. My ride's still rolling, with me driving on some days. Whiteness, softness, rockiness, rolling along with my American blackness, too.
Rolling to the music of Paul Simon, Christopher Cross, Stevie Nicks, Toto, the Bee Gees, Bruce Hornsby, the Rembrants, Edie Brickell, the Carpenters, Sade (yes), Macy Gray (some of hers), and Amel Larrieux (maybe), dj'd by John Tesh (for my money, with Connie Seleca looking on), and some other sounds yet unplayed or unsung.
(first draft; for revision)
"Porquois?" you say.
Because it's a white thing that naturally and without resistance includes soul (which means blackness). To paraphrase Ralph Ellison, whatever else America is, it's also black, has been all the time, always. And so, unlike, say, the Constitution or banking regulations or white racial identity, which have their histories of being explicitly anti-black, soft rock music never had a history of being anti-black. (I don't think.)
Likewise, soft rock has never been black-dominated, or predominantly black-interested, like, say, funk. (Funk definitely has its rock roots, but besides the fact that rock is blues-rooted, funk provides its own deliberate nods to blues as well as other black music, such as gospel. My favorite funk riff - and Dr. Dre's, too, I think - is the vocal of Parliament singing, "Swing down sweet chariot, stop, and let me ride!")
And soft rock has no claim on theories of purity, so that's another reason I say its a best expression of American whiteness, if there's any. The white in soft rock is, at best, gray, likely going no lower than that 10 percent screen you can make using MS Word's color toolbar.
Nor has soft rock got any disdain for its international white connections - meaning, the Bee Gees are as legit a white rock contributor as Christopher Cross (whether either likes this or not)! So it's an inclusive whiteness, a phrase that's oxymoronic in most racial and other American English language contexts. (And maybe it's other languages, too. Some say some Asian ethnics want to be white as much as college age Americans nowadays want to be "Japanese by spring," to riff off (rip off) Ishmael Reed's satirical novel's title.)
Dare I say, soft rock is as American as jazz. Neither of those musical forms can claim any greatness without acknowledging the members of other racial and ethnic groups as essential contributors to these musics' essential forms (if such a thing as "essentialism" exists; and when we're talking things-racial, we at least have to debate that question).
Now, why would I even want any kind of "best whiteness" - to exist, I mean? It's funny. My lifetime - 40 years now - has been spent in two regions of the country, mainly. The cradle of the South - Virginia (Newport News is minutes or a few miles from Jamestown, as well as from Nat Turner's Hampton), and the most iconic setting of the urban Northeast, New York City: these two places are America, or certainly keys to its essence, if we can say it has an essence. And whiteness exists in both places. In Virginia, white is so prevalent it needs not mentioning. In NYC, it's articulated via ethnic identification; the white ethnics are identifiable from the non-white ones, but they are not so dominant, so superior-seeming, at least not reflexively or cheerfully or hopefully, as in VA. Even white people would be OK if nobody in NYC was white tomorrow, whereas not so true in Virginia, even at its most progressive, today.
So why? Because when I go to Virginia, I realize there are white people who still want to be white, gonna die white, and most importantly, gonna raise dey chirrens to be whites. (They're doing it now - right now! And while I don't love them for that, I do love them. Friend, for me, means friend.) So I have to think about it. It's also the case that it (whiteness) means something to black people - and I'm one of them. My language is black forever, and so goes my mind and body, everything but my non-white spirit. (In New York City, my spirit got blacker; it's been cool, and amazing to some of my friends and family members. Healthy for me, while not without costs. Though I don't have many people to talk to about the change; some brothas, but not many. More black women. An excellent development for The Sean Formerly Known as Nerd, to black women, and White Boy Sean, to black guys. Anyway...)
The true oxymoron is "best whiteness," and the irony in there for me is that it (a music, here) can't be the best if it's white, and it can't be white (meaning white like pure) if it's the best.
A best whiteness is just me holding out hope for my white-focused Americans' reconciliation with a part of themselves. (These are non-white people, too.) In this case, a best whiteness - soft rock - is a Southern boy's reconciliation to a world where irony is survivor awareness tool number one. I live at the post-integration station on the train line. My ride's still rolling, with me driving on some days. Whiteness, softness, rockiness, rolling along with my American blackness, too.
Rolling to the music of Paul Simon, Christopher Cross, Stevie Nicks, Toto, the Bee Gees, Bruce Hornsby, the Rembrants, Edie Brickell, the Carpenters, Sade (yes), Macy Gray (some of hers), and Amel Larrieux (maybe), dj'd by John Tesh (for my money, with Connie Seleca looking on), and some other sounds yet unplayed or unsung.
(first draft; for revision)
Monday, August 2, 2010
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Draft 1)
I've come again to the point of wanting to take social dancing lessons. I attended a dinner cruise recently where people took to the floor with line dancing and stepping. I've seen the Country Music Channel where rows of Southerners kicked up their heels likewise. A cousin said she and her mom are taking dance lessons at a community center. My daughter showed me a hip hop dance lesson On Demand on TV. And so I want dancing lessons. I want to be in a room where everybody is listening to a style of music that's meant to be responded to a certain way. And I want to learn those ways. Where to go, where to go?
There are places that men and women go for dancing, whether the music encourages it or not. Many restaurants have separated off a dance area, and clubs exist, of course. But I don't want to dance to today's music; often I don't want to listen to it at all. So that leads me to social dancing. I want to dance with somebody.
Latin dance nights are what many have suggested, and salsa and merengue are fine. I'm finding myself wanting to dance slower, though. I'm finding myself wanting to almost waltz. I'm finding myself wanting to dress up, really dress up, and groove. But not dress up and dance to go-go or Maze or Chicago-style stepping songs. Maybe I want to learn the dances they did in the USO in the 1940s? I probably don't know exactly what I want to learn. They say the first step, though, is saying you have a problem, right?
I don't just want to do it because everybody else is doing it, though. I go through these phases of wanting to dance, and I'm back here again. So if you know of events or venues, holla at your boy! Know who and what you're getting yourself into, though.
I'm the guy who, as a kid, never was addicted to Soul Train the way I was hooked on Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling or Saturday morning cartoons. I never was known as being interested in musical performance or dance the way my siblings all were. Late in my high school years I did get tired of paying to attend parties and not dancing, but my wallflower tendencies kept up even through college. And it's definitely the case that most of my favorite musical genres inspire one to sway more than to downright get down. Or maybe that's not true, but maybe that's just how I hear it. Whatever the music is putting out, I'm proving nonresponsive.
*
Why do I want to dance now?
There are places that men and women go for dancing, whether the music encourages it or not. Many restaurants have separated off a dance area, and clubs exist, of course. But I don't want to dance to today's music; often I don't want to listen to it at all. So that leads me to social dancing. I want to dance with somebody.
Latin dance nights are what many have suggested, and salsa and merengue are fine. I'm finding myself wanting to dance slower, though. I'm finding myself wanting to almost waltz. I'm finding myself wanting to dress up, really dress up, and groove. But not dress up and dance to go-go or Maze or Chicago-style stepping songs. Maybe I want to learn the dances they did in the USO in the 1940s? I probably don't know exactly what I want to learn. They say the first step, though, is saying you have a problem, right?
I don't just want to do it because everybody else is doing it, though. I go through these phases of wanting to dance, and I'm back here again. So if you know of events or venues, holla at your boy! Know who and what you're getting yourself into, though.
I'm the guy who, as a kid, never was addicted to Soul Train the way I was hooked on Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling or Saturday morning cartoons. I never was known as being interested in musical performance or dance the way my siblings all were. Late in my high school years I did get tired of paying to attend parties and not dancing, but my wallflower tendencies kept up even through college. And it's definitely the case that most of my favorite musical genres inspire one to sway more than to downright get down. Or maybe that's not true, but maybe that's just how I hear it. Whatever the music is putting out, I'm proving nonresponsive.
*
Why do I want to dance now?
I've always had an old soul, and maybe my moon's in that phase again. I've been feeling more like Chuck D. By that I mean, I saw an episode of The Mo'Nique show recently featuring the rapper, a choreographer, and some young artists. Twice Mo'Nique got Chuck off the couch to become more involved in the show. The choreographer taught the host and guests some dance steps, and Chuck was good-natured but flat-footed. Then when the young artists performed, everyone stood to groove with them. Chuck clapped but didn't dance. But when I thought back to Public Enemy concerts or the one Fresh Fest I attended, I remembered, Chuck has never danced. He ran and jumped and pumped his fists: oh, he was active. But among the hip hop stars of a certain era, it was LL and Fresh Prince, or the Herbie Luv Bug-produced artists like Kid N Play, who danced. LL and Kane really were the only respectable rappers who also danced, who I remember. Everybody else was decidedly Sir Nose D'Void of Funk-like with theirs. ("I will never dance, Star Child!") Ice Cube said it straight up (Jackin' for Beats): "I don't party and shake my butt. I leave that to the boys with the funny haircuts."
(Aside: It's why hip hop can never save black people or the world - it's ignoring the core of its power to connect people. That core is to say "love" through the music. Instead, hip hop says Listen, first, and Get me paid, second, and Love, Maybe. Said another way, it shouts Avatar-ly, "see me!" but doesn't really mean what the Avatar tribespeople mean.)
*
Maybe that was all bs that I just wrote.
If you really want to know the deal, I want to dance with a woman. I always love being on the floor doing my two-step with Jawando, my homey who made me feel less self-conscious about just doing what I do from high school forward, and who stood by me even when those steps were offbeat or just off. But I want to two-step with a girl. There, I said it.
But what's happening is, I'm psychologically standing on the wall, like the woman in Sam Cooke's Cha Cha Cha.
"Took my baby to the hop last night
and what to my surprise
when we got there, she hit me with the news
right between the eyes:
she said she couldn't do the Cha Cha Cha"
I came up on this music as well as anything else my ears could hear, which was most kinds of popular music in the 1970s and 1980s. I love funk the most, but it's undeniable I'm of the hip hop generation, or that one on the cusp between when pop overtook rock and Soul/R&B, and hip hop came to dominate it all. Content-wise, hip hop does not harken back to Sam Cooke leading his girl who couldn't Cha Cha Cha onto the floor, and teaching her until "she was doing it better than" him. And of course, hip hop follows Michael Jackson saying "life ain't so bad at all livin' off the wall." In my lifetime, dance music was hip hop, House, or electronica-infused variations of them.
Some of hip hop has that element in common with jazz: makes me want to listen, but to sit down and listen. Doesn't get me to dancing with a woman.
What do women want to do?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Rambling On Parenting
When we think of black fathers, so often, the reflexive narrative people start telling has to do with absence or abandonment versus engagement and re-engagement. I'm going to see where talking about things in terms of the latter gets me for awhile. See how that way of doing it - talking about fathering as engagement and connection versus silence or absence or not-there-ness - works.
I know it's not just spoken about this way regarding black fathers: it's the whole "man works all day," "moms are more nurturing," "kids need their moms" mentality that pervades our language and lives. Half-truths that amount to bad scaffolding at best, and let dads off the hook, and yet also support a narrative that empowers moms who might be manipulated (further) if things didn't at least linguistically lean in their favors. But I want to do a fixer-upper on the fathering narrative. See if I can make that my odd job, like Harrison Ford and Jesus, in between accomplishing my big mission, during the downtime away from my calling.
Harrison Ford, it's rumored, supported himself between acting jobs by doing odd carpentry jobs. I'd starve if that were my only option for income. But I knocked out an Ikea dresser tonight. Took a month. Had never done it before. Tonight, finis!
I wrote a poem once and had a character in the poem mention an Ikea dresser. Yet I'd never been inside an Ikea before a month ago.
Why'd it take me a month to put this dresser together? Because I so, so, so wanted to hammer it. But Ikea stuff is like computer stuff: if you've got to force it, or hammer it, you're putting it together wrong. But I couldn't figure out how to put the dresser fronts on, and I just stopped cold in my tracks. Left it for weeks. I'm a writer, not a carpenter. I got Jesus, but not that part of Him.
Why didn't I just hammer away? Because my friend - a handy sort - once helped me to move, right? And we'd packed all my stuff except a few wall decorations that we had to take down. Photos in frames. Special stuff, he thought. Then he realized I'd saved them for last because they were nailed to the wall, not just because they were precious photos to me. Nailed the frames. I'd forgotten all about that technique that I'd used to put up my photos until that particular moving day. For years those photos had sat still on the wall. Secure. Stuck, even, for a long time. Damaged upon removal from the wall, though. It wasn't how they were supposed to have been hung. Duhh, right? You couldn't have told me that back then. I wouldn't have listened.
The dressers, tonight, turned out all right. They look good, that's for sure. Drawers slide in and out, secured on metal brackets for a smooth pull. It stands on its own now, no longer needing me to brace one side so the other side won't fall. It holds together nicely whether I'm there or not. Pieces aren't leaning against the wall or lying about on the floor. Everything has a place.
There are some extra screws, but no screws are loose.
I'm thinking of this all as a metaphor for scaffolding a child's growth, and a parent's growth. I'm thinking about my kid, where we're at in our father-daughter relationship now. There have been times where I was sure I was present-enough, and others where I felt I was too far away. As parents know, some of those times occur when you're holding the baby in your arms. Our minds travel. I remember the months leading up to, say, 24 months, when my preoccupation was getting this kid to laugh. I'd do it, then see if she'd imitate me.
I remember trying to get her to imitate my sleepy moods, too. Ever done that as a parent or babysitter? I remember coming home from school with her and feeling exhausted. Sometimes I'd just put us both down on the bed, and look at her, then close my eyes, sort of "instructing" her to do the same. Rarely worked. Most times, I'd have to lay back, nestle her on my chest, and wrap both arms around her tight so she wouldn't fall off as I took a nap and hoped she - unable to escape my grasp - also would. I remember the jerk white kids in Caroll Gardens Park who wouldn't let her swing on Veteran's Day that year ("because you're a nickel," they said), and trying to explain why we rushed them off the swing and THEN moved on to another activity (and didn't just move on without the confrontation), thinking I'm scaffolding how to stand up to silliness in the late 1990's. (Upon confronting the grown-ups, never could figure whether it was the white parents or the black nanny that taught the jerk white kids "nickel.")
I remember letting two seven year olds paint the walls of the child's bedroom after the hardware store specially made a color just for her. Carving jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, riding bikes, letting her drive before she was a teenager in the CVS parking lot...things dads do. Maybe moms do them, too: I'm sure some do those things and others and more. I remember a few years where a group of us - single moms and single dads - went to church together, shared dinners, Halloweens, Kwaanza, New Years, and especially, roller-skating sessions at Empire Skate in Brooklyn, off Flatbush Ave.
I used to attend a church where they made a point of celebrating men every week. Every week, men were mentioned as special creatures, and fatherhood was lauded. A supporter of feminists / womanysts, I at first enjoyed the recognition rituals just intellectually, so I told myself; but then more and more realized I returned as much because I was yearning for that recognition as I was applauding the idea in general. I needed the support: the scaffolding.
Being a parent who isn't living out and hasn't lived out the fantasy of being able to duplicate my upbringing in my child's life still causes residual regret. Will Smith talked about that once: how his oldest son will never know the sensation of running into mom and dad's room for safety during a thunderstorm. How he feels about that. As proto-providers, it grates to know that's one we missed giving our kid...grates when I know how I can still feel that security-vibe obtained under the covers between my own mom and dad during Tidewater storms.
See, there's one of those places where I've gone in my mind sometimes, holding my kid, or watching her do something amazing: to those moments of comfort during thunderstorms. And that's what I do: but I don't go off for long, either physically or in my mind.
But just like it's OK for me to have started the Ikea dresser, left it awhile, and returned when I was better able to put the finishing screws in tight but without the hammer, I think my parenting m.o. is OK, too.
Hmmm...
I know it's not just spoken about this way regarding black fathers: it's the whole "man works all day," "moms are more nurturing," "kids need their moms" mentality that pervades our language and lives. Half-truths that amount to bad scaffolding at best, and let dads off the hook, and yet also support a narrative that empowers moms who might be manipulated (further) if things didn't at least linguistically lean in their favors. But I want to do a fixer-upper on the fathering narrative. See if I can make that my odd job, like Harrison Ford and Jesus, in between accomplishing my big mission, during the downtime away from my calling.
Harrison Ford, it's rumored, supported himself between acting jobs by doing odd carpentry jobs. I'd starve if that were my only option for income. But I knocked out an Ikea dresser tonight. Took a month. Had never done it before. Tonight, finis!
I wrote a poem once and had a character in the poem mention an Ikea dresser. Yet I'd never been inside an Ikea before a month ago.
Why'd it take me a month to put this dresser together? Because I so, so, so wanted to hammer it. But Ikea stuff is like computer stuff: if you've got to force it, or hammer it, you're putting it together wrong. But I couldn't figure out how to put the dresser fronts on, and I just stopped cold in my tracks. Left it for weeks. I'm a writer, not a carpenter. I got Jesus, but not that part of Him.
Why didn't I just hammer away? Because my friend - a handy sort - once helped me to move, right? And we'd packed all my stuff except a few wall decorations that we had to take down. Photos in frames. Special stuff, he thought. Then he realized I'd saved them for last because they were nailed to the wall, not just because they were precious photos to me. Nailed the frames. I'd forgotten all about that technique that I'd used to put up my photos until that particular moving day. For years those photos had sat still on the wall. Secure. Stuck, even, for a long time. Damaged upon removal from the wall, though. It wasn't how they were supposed to have been hung. Duhh, right? You couldn't have told me that back then. I wouldn't have listened.
The dressers, tonight, turned out all right. They look good, that's for sure. Drawers slide in and out, secured on metal brackets for a smooth pull. It stands on its own now, no longer needing me to brace one side so the other side won't fall. It holds together nicely whether I'm there or not. Pieces aren't leaning against the wall or lying about on the floor. Everything has a place.
There are some extra screws, but no screws are loose.
I'm thinking of this all as a metaphor for scaffolding a child's growth, and a parent's growth. I'm thinking about my kid, where we're at in our father-daughter relationship now. There have been times where I was sure I was present-enough, and others where I felt I was too far away. As parents know, some of those times occur when you're holding the baby in your arms. Our minds travel. I remember the months leading up to, say, 24 months, when my preoccupation was getting this kid to laugh. I'd do it, then see if she'd imitate me.
I remember trying to get her to imitate my sleepy moods, too. Ever done that as a parent or babysitter? I remember coming home from school with her and feeling exhausted. Sometimes I'd just put us both down on the bed, and look at her, then close my eyes, sort of "instructing" her to do the same. Rarely worked. Most times, I'd have to lay back, nestle her on my chest, and wrap both arms around her tight so she wouldn't fall off as I took a nap and hoped she - unable to escape my grasp - also would. I remember the jerk white kids in Caroll Gardens Park who wouldn't let her swing on Veteran's Day that year ("because you're a nickel," they said), and trying to explain why we rushed them off the swing and THEN moved on to another activity (and didn't just move on without the confrontation), thinking I'm scaffolding how to stand up to silliness in the late 1990's. (Upon confronting the grown-ups, never could figure whether it was the white parents or the black nanny that taught the jerk white kids "nickel.")
I remember letting two seven year olds paint the walls of the child's bedroom after the hardware store specially made a color just for her. Carving jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, riding bikes, letting her drive before she was a teenager in the CVS parking lot...things dads do. Maybe moms do them, too: I'm sure some do those things and others and more. I remember a few years where a group of us - single moms and single dads - went to church together, shared dinners, Halloweens, Kwaanza, New Years, and especially, roller-skating sessions at Empire Skate in Brooklyn, off Flatbush Ave.
I used to attend a church where they made a point of celebrating men every week. Every week, men were mentioned as special creatures, and fatherhood was lauded. A supporter of feminists / womanysts, I at first enjoyed the recognition rituals just intellectually, so I told myself; but then more and more realized I returned as much because I was yearning for that recognition as I was applauding the idea in general. I needed the support: the scaffolding.
Being a parent who isn't living out and hasn't lived out the fantasy of being able to duplicate my upbringing in my child's life still causes residual regret. Will Smith talked about that once: how his oldest son will never know the sensation of running into mom and dad's room for safety during a thunderstorm. How he feels about that. As proto-providers, it grates to know that's one we missed giving our kid...grates when I know how I can still feel that security-vibe obtained under the covers between my own mom and dad during Tidewater storms.
See, there's one of those places where I've gone in my mind sometimes, holding my kid, or watching her do something amazing: to those moments of comfort during thunderstorms. And that's what I do: but I don't go off for long, either physically or in my mind.
But just like it's OK for me to have started the Ikea dresser, left it awhile, and returned when I was better able to put the finishing screws in tight but without the hammer, I think my parenting m.o. is OK, too.
Hmmm...
Saturday, July 24, 2010
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