i seem to have lost myself in the auckland mist – prone to vanishing and reappearing like socks in a dryer. the weather taunting me as i thought only texas weather could…indecisive and cruel in its indecision. this morning it was almost warm, my bulky jacket purchased for my trip south was too much. and by lunch, the breeze had kicked up dark gray clouds and carried ice on its breath to spite my audacious show of only a sweater as i darted to the cafe – my coat languishing at my desk.
tonight is one of those nights when i miss my words. taken for granted for so many years, i never considered what i would do if i didn’ thave poetry. who thinks of those things? instead i wasted reams of paper on bad poetry and instead of marveling at the attempt i think i may have discouraged the ability right out of me…write out of me. even bad poetry might be a relief now…a starting point…a place to lay apology for neglecting white space on napkins where i used to scrawl phrases…the palm of my hand where starting lines would indeed start.
and it isn’t the same as blogging. blogging is to obvious a feat to offer the same freedom as poetry afforded me. i remember the first time i went skiing. i was high off the rush, the speed, the cold, the glory. i wrote a poem about my addiction to the powder and people approahced me – concerned about my apparent drug habit…and i love that ambiguity. the twist that shows how my mind works differently from yours…or in rare cases when i see that you see what i see.
this is long…i posted the link earlier and didn’t realize folks would have to log in…so here it is for you to read without all that…
We Still Wear the Mask
by W. Jelani Cobb
We could have known that it would come to this way back in 1896. That
was the year that Paul Lawrence Dunbar dropped a jewel for the ages,
telling the world that “we wear the mask that grins and lies.” The
poet’s point was that beneath the camouflage of subservient smiles,
black folks of the Jim Crow era were hiding a powder keg of other
emotions, waiting patiently for the chance to detonate. The thing is,
Dunbar never got the chance to spit bars with 50 Cent or throw in a
guest collabo on a Mobb Deep album. If he had, then he would’ve known
that grins and lies were only half the story.
These days, camouflage is the new black. Glance at hip hop for less
than a second and it becomes clear that the music operates on a single
hope: that if the world mistakes kindness for weakness it can also be
led to confuse meanness with strength. That principle explains why
there is a permanent reverence for the thug within the music, it is
why there is a murderer’s grit and a jailhouse tat peering back at you
from the cover of damn near any CD you picked up in the last five
years. But what hip hop can’t tell you, the secret that it would just
as soon take to its deathbed is that it this urban bravado is a guise,
a mask, a head-fake to shake the reality of fear and powerlessness in
America. Hip hop will never admit that our assorted thugs and gangstas
are not the unbowed symbol of resistance to marginalization, but the
most complacent and passive products of it.
We wear the mask that scowls and lies.
You could see which way the wind was blowing way in the early 90s when
Dr. Dre was being ripped off by white Ruthless Records CEO Jerry
Heller, and nonetheless got his street cred up by punching and kicking
Dee Barnes, a black woman journalist, down a flight of stairs. In this
light, hip hop’s obsessive misogyny makes a whole lot more sense. It
is literally the logic of domestic violence. A man is abused by a
larger society, but there are consequences to striking back at the
source of his problems. So he transfers his anger to an acceptable
outlet the women and children in his own household, and by
extension, all the black people who constitute his own community.
Nothing better illustrates that point than the recent Oprah Debacle.
Prior to last month, if you’d heard that a group of rappers had teamed
up to attack a billionaire media mogul you would think that hip hop
had finally produced a moment of black pride on par with 1968
Olympics. But nay, just more blackface.
In the past two months, artists as diverse as Ludacris, 50 Cent and
Ice Cube have attacked Oprah Winfrey for her alleged disdain for hip
hop. It’s is a sad but entirely predictable irony that the one
instance in which hip hop’s reigning alpha males summon the testicular
fortitude to challenge someone more powerful and wealthy than they
are, they choose to go after a black woman.
The whole set up was an echo of some bad history. Two centuries ago,
professional boxing got its start in America with white slaveholders
who pitted their largest slaves against those from competing
plantations. Tom Molineaux. First black heavyweight champion came up
through the ranks breaking the bones of other slaves and making white
men rich. After he’d broken enough of them, he was given his freedom.
The underlying ethic was clear: an attack on the system that has made
a slave of you will cost you your life, but an attack on another black
person might just be the road to emancipation.
The basis for this latest bout of black-on-black pugilism was Oprah’s
purported stiff-arming of Ludacris during an appearance on her show
with the cast of the film Crash. Ludacris later complained that the
host had made an issue of lyrics she saw as misogynistic. Cube jumped
into the act whining that Oprah has had all manner of racist flotsam
on her show but has never invited him to appear proof, in his mind,
that she has an irrational contempt for hip hop. Then 50 threw in his
two cents with a claim that Oprah’s criticism of hip hop was an
attempt to win points with her largely white, middle class audience.
All told, she was charged her with that most heinous of hip hop’s
felonies: hateration.
But before we press charges, isn’t 50 the same character who openly
expressed his love for GW Bush as a fellow “gangsta” and demanded that
the black community stop criticizing how he handled Hurricane Katrina?
Compare that to multiple millions that Oprah has disseminated to our
communities (including building homes for the Katrina families,
financing HIV prevention in South Africa and that $5 million she
dropped on Morehouse College alone) and the point becomes even more
obvious.
In spite of or, actually, as a result of — his impeccable gangsta
credentials, 50 basically curtsied before a President who stayed on
vacation for three days while black bodies floated down the New
Orleans streets. No wonder it took a middle-class preppie with an
African name and no criminal record to man up and tell the whole world
that “George Bush don’t care about black folks.” No wonder David
Banner a rapper who is just a few credits short of a Master’s Degree
in social work — spearheaded hip hop’s Katrina relief concerts, not
any of his thug counterparts who are eternally shouting out the hoods
they allegedly love.
The 50 Cent, whose music is a panoramic vision on black-on-black
homicide, and who went after Ja Rule with the vengeance of a dictator
killing off a hated ethnic minority did everything but tap dance when
Reebok told him to dismantle his porn production company or lose his
lucrative sneaker endorsement deal.
But why single out 50? Hip hop at-large was conspicuously silent when
Bush press secretary Tony Snow (a rapper’s alias if ever there was
one) assaulted hip hop in terms way more inflammatory than Oprah’s
mild request:
Take a look at the idiotic culture of hip-hop and whaddya have? You
have people glorifying failure. You have a bunch of gold-toothed hot
dogs become millionaires by running around and telling everybody else
that they oughtta be miserable failures and if they’re really lucky
maybe they can get gunned down in a diner sometime, like Eminem’s old
running mate.
(We’re still awaiting an outraged response from the thug community for
that one.) Rush Limbaugh has blamed hip hop for everything short of
the Avian flu but I can’t recall a single hip hop artist who has gone
after him lyrically, publicly or physically. Are we seeing a theme
yet?
It’s worth noting that Ludacris did not devote as much energy to Bill
O’Reilly — who attacked his music on his show regularly and caused
him to lose a multi-million dollar Pepsi endorsement as he did to
criticizing Oprah who simply stated that she was tired of hip hop’s
misogyny. Luda was content to diss O’Reilly on his next record and go
about his business. Anyone who heard the interview that Oprah gave on
Power 105.1 in New York knew she was speaking for a whole generation
of hip hop heads when she said that she loved the music, but she
wanted the artists to exercise some responsibility. But this response
is not really about Oprah, or ultimately about hip hop, either. It is
about black men once again choosing a black woman as the safest target
for their aggression even one will a billion dollars is still fair
game.
Of all their claims, the charge that Oprah sold out to win points with
her white audience is the most tragically laughable. The truth is that
her audience’s white middle-class kids exert waaay more influence over
50 and Cube than their parents do over Oprah. I long ago tired of
Cube, a thirty-something successful director, entrepreneur and married
father of three children records about his aged recollections of a
thug’s life. The gangsta theme went cliché eons ago, but Cube, 50 and
a whole array of their musical peers lack either the freedom or the
vision to talk about any broader element of our lives. The reality is
that the major labels and their majority white fan base will not
accept anything else from them.
And there we have it again: more masks, more lies.
It is not coincidental that hip hop has made Nigga the most common
noun in popular music but you have almost never heard any certified
thug utter the word cracker, ofay, honky, peckerwood, wop, dago,
guinea, kike or any other white-oriented epithet. The reason for that
is simple: Massa ain’t havin’ it. The word fag, once a commonplace
derisive in the music has all but disappeared from hip hop’s
vocabulary. (Yes, these thugs fear the backlash from white gays too.)
And bitch is still allowed with the common understanding that the term
is referring to black women. The point is this: debasement of black
communities is entirely acceptable required even by hip hop’s
predominantly white consumer base.
We have lived enough history to know better by now to know that
gangsta is Sonny Liston, the thug icon of his era, threatening to kill
Cassius Clay but completely impotent when it came to demanding that
his white handlers stop ripping him off. Gangsta is the black men at
the Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi who beat the civil rights
workers Fannie Lou Hamer and Annelle Ponder into bloody
unconsciousness because their white wardens told them to. Gangsta is
Michael Ervin, NFL bad boy remaining conspicuously mute on Monday
Night Football while Limbaugh dissed Donovan McNabb as an Affirmative
Action athlete. Gangsta is Bigger Thomas, scared, confused and
mystified by the ways of the white world.
Surely our ancestors’ struggles were about more than creating
millionaires who could care less about us and tolerating their violent
disrespect out of a hunger for black success stories. Surely we are
not so desperate for heroes that we uphold cardboard icons because
they throw good glare. There’s more required than that. The weight of
history demands more than simply this. Surely we understand that this
clash is not about hip hop or even self-promotion; it is about acting
out an age-old script. Taking the Tom Molineaux route. Spitting in the
wind and breaking black bones. Hoping to become free.
Or, at least a well-paid slave.
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1. The Long Way Around
Words & Music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, Dan Wilson
My friends from high school Married their high school boyfriends Moved into houses In the same ZIP codes where their parents live But I I hit the highway I’ve been a long time gone now By takin’ the long way I met the queen of whatever No I It’s been two long years now But I’m takin’ the long way Well I fought with a stranger and I met myself But I Well I never seem to do it like anybody else Takin’ the long way Words & Music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, Dan Wilson |
my dad will talk to anyone. not will…does. i think that is probably his favourite part about working at fat catz…he gets to talk to customers all day. they are perfect strangers who sometimes become slightly less stranger and much more personal.
i’ve watched him do it for years. he reads the name tags of folks at grocery stores or movie rentals and asks them about their day. he holds the door for whoever is coming in front or behind him and smiles brightly and comments on the weather.
i’m not sure i ever thought it was strange exactly. when i was at that akward stage early in my high school years, when everything is embarassing, i used to roll my eyes when he did it but it was my dad and it was what he always did.
and now i do it.
now i talk to strangers. and i never thought it particularly rude or intrusive.
growing up as a military brat we moved a lot. moving means everything is new. schools, houses, friends. only before people become friends they are strangers and someone has to break the ice. being new, it always sucks to be the one to have to do it…no sure footing to stand on.
by the time i was at my second high school i had the grand idea to start the ambassadors club. the notion was that someone would come down and meet new students, show them around and eat lunch with them. that was always the worst for me…walking into a noisy crowded lunchroom scanning it furiously as if scanning it would produce a familiar face.
it wouldn’t.
i’d be left holding my tray and walking to some as yet undetermined place trying desperatly to look like it was determined.
and so it continues. 15 years later and i talk to strangers. sometimes becuase they are traveling alone and i know what that feels like…sometimes exciting sometimes excrutiating. sometimes i talk to people because i’m nosey or i’m bored and they are interesting. where are you from? why are you here? isn’t this a strange seating arrangement?
i met S like that…talking to a stranger on the bus…he was the stranger – stranger no more.
but the other day someone mentioned that what i do is intrusive…
and it caught me off guard a little. i wracked my brain trying to decide if i push too hard, talk too much (yes i talk a lot…but this is in a different context), too much…
and i don’t know how to answer that.
i try to offer of myself the things that i most want offered to me. i try to understand people because i want to be understood. i talk to strangers because i like to be talked to…but that’s just me, how do i know otherwise.
and what i’ve come to is that i can’t know. all i can do, all i can be is what feels right to me. living by rules that i would be comfortable with someone else offering back to me in return.
so i’ll keep being my father…smiling at strangers, asking them about their day. because when i watch the faces that my father leaves in his wake, overwhelmingly they are smiling. and for the few that aren’t…i can’t help but believe that it has nothing on God’s green earth to do with my father…or me.
i liked pirates of the carribean. heck…anything with johnny depp is starting on the right foot. so even though i don’t go to the movies very often, i was eager to see the second installment of the soon to be trilogy.
so, to pass the time our last night of vacation we ducked into the movies after some thai food.
yeah…
it was awful.
it was long and meandering. it was the antithesis of anticlimactic – it was multiclimactic to the point that is ceased to be climactic at all. jack was a paridy of himself instead of the quirky weird person he was last time. the characters are trying too hard to have depth and in general it was a painfully long movie that left me ticked that i gave it my money – but more importantly my time!
both of…no deaths at the hands of the other, no one left at the top of the glacier or the bottom of a sound.
it was an amazing trip…sometimes unnerving…like showing up in queenstown without reservations. not realizing that of all the places we needed them (and indeed had them) queenstown was that place. a winter wonderland…folks from all over the country and world show up to the remarkables (one of only two mountain ranges in the world that arrange themselves north south – the rockies is the other) for skiing, snowboarding, and general wintertime glee.
but we had someone looking down on us because we got a place almost immediatly, with a bathroom, at a discount rate.
the weather turned out beautifully for most of our trip. the only place it didn’t work in our favor was milford sound…where the clouds hung so low and drenched people and cameras, dimming the beauty that is waterfalls cascading through rock and into the sound. but without the rain we wouldn’t have had the waterfalls. and accompaniment to the rain was a herd of dolphins. frolicking and playing in the wake of our boat as dolphins tend to do. the captain was kind enough to make slow circles back and forth for a while so we could enjoy them until they tired of us and went on their way.
from there we found ourselves on yet another bus (if i don’t see a bus for a few months that will be just fine!) and headed to kaikoura for whale watching.
AMAZING!
these things are beyond huge…they are bigger than our boat. we saw two of them up close and one from a distance. the sea was calm, the mountains lightly dusted with clouds at their peaks, the sun filtering through to highlight the immense size rising itself up so that its tail arches out of the water and then glides delicately down to feed in the 5km depths at 0 degrees C for another 45 or 50 minutes.
we ended our adventurer…or rather we began the ending of our adventure with a trip across an actual sound (since milford is techincally a fijord) back to the north island. we were lucky enough to catch te papa (the national museum) on its one late night a week and so we browsed for a little while before hunger consumed us (and made us a wee bit cranky with each other).
the following morning we began the epic ride home. what should have been 11 hours in transit (too long on its own) became almost 13. a car accident, some kid throwing up and assorted other drama held us back.
but finally, finally, we are home. pictures will be up soon…in the meantime, know that i had an amazing time and this truly is a beautiful country.
so far there have been planes trains and busses. there have been clear skies, rain, ice…and possibly snow tonight. we’ve seen mountains, rivers, glaciers…and tomorrow a sound that is technically a fjord and simply misnamed.
climbing franz josef glacier has been my highlight. we did a 3/4 hik instead of a full day or a half day. i think it was the right choice…the half day was too short and not enough challenge and the full day would have been too long looking at ice.
but what beautiful ice. crevices and caves and sculpted piecs glowing blue in the bright sun. i thought i’d be freezing but i peeled layer after layer off and soaked in the reflections of sun off of ice. ice pick in hand i navigated deep orges and steps carved by our guide. and at one point we slid down a natrually made slide. stunning doesn’t begin to describe it. once in a lifetime doesn’t begin to explain it. and pictures won’t do it justice…but i’ll post them once i’m home so you can try to imagine the beauty i got to take in firsthand.
the other interesting thing about this trip is the coloring of the rivers. blue green or green blue depending on your perspective. all fed by the glaciers (the lakes are the result of glaciers as well and share similar coloring) and are freezing all year round. but their interestin coloring comes from something called glacier flour – rocks ground finer than dust by the pressure and movment of glaciers over years. it is so light it suspends in the water and appears clear. and even left to settle out…it doesn’t.
majestic.
we’re in queenstown now…surrounded by the remarkables (the mountains engulfing this ski town) and in the shadow of what looked like snow clouds. tomorrow we head to milford sound.
so it is, the eve of our trip south, and “nervous” kicked in last night. for me anyway. all of a sudden i felt this huge surge of responsibility…i really want S to like it…not just this trip but travel in general. i want him to relax and have fun and forget about his thesis if only for 11 days as we tramp through snow and ice, warm ourselves in front of sitting room fires, and soak in spectacular scenery from boats, buses and trains.
tomorrow we head out…i’ll keep you posted either as we go or when i return.
it isn’t something i typically have a lot of…or at least it isn’t something i broadcast. i don’t appreciate our flag and pledge used as weapons to silence a dissenting opinion or to “prove” some point. istead, i feel that in most cases my patriotism is expressed in my big mouth complaining about what the ails my nation. after all…that is part of what makes our country grand.
that said…i like to praise us too…
it goes both ways in my world, and just like i won’t let us, as a nation, pretend we can do no wrong, i don’t believe we should be the poster child responsible for ALL the world’s ills. you wanna talk fuel consumption, waste, pollution or war mongering…i’m on board to talk about how we’re in the wrong.
but i don’t accept the idea that we are responsible for all violence or crimes of conscience the world over, especially when you consider rape, pillaging and murder predated our inception a mere 200 + years ago.
for all our faults, there is still a lot of beauty. america is the home of my family – as far back as i can track it and that is delightful to me. the south is home of folks who will give you a smile and a “hello sweetie”, not in a condescending way but in a familial way. in the norheast you can find every country of the world represented and the food to match, to the west is some of the most progressive and/or cutting edge thinking our country has to offer us.
it comes up because my boyfriend…from here on referred to as S…and i got into a friendly ribbing of each other’s countries. actually it started with him talking – not rudely but not favorably – about the states. he sounded surprised when i chimed in with praise for my home country (as much as i have a home country).
but in all things moderation…critiscism and praise…even for america.
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