moar radical love!

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
- Arundhati Roy

a.m. epiphany: radical love

so i finally got it. after months and years of reading folks like bell hooks, assata shakur and audre lorde and woc bloggers (check my links)

something about this post by the amazing brownfemipower
and where i was at at the time
and where im at right now
made it soooooo clear.

radical love
=
i am so deeply invested in your existence and your survival that i will do everything in my power to ensure that not only through you survive, you thrive
. . . regardless of whether or not i like you (at the time).

first.
there is a real difference between reading/seeing/hearing/experiencing something and understanding it, and reading/seeing/hearing/experiencing something and *getting it.*

bfp has been writing about this for some time, as have many others
and i've been understanding it
but for some reason
(which i will delve into later)
i didn't *get it* till very early this morning
when i was up for whatever godforsaken reason and perusing the interwebs.


second.
how fucking AWESOME is that?

and i mean that literally i was filled with awe
and just sat there

it's how we strengthen communities. it's how we build something that lasts.

it's how we get down to the heart of the matter. to what's really important.

in the comments, bfp uses the example of seeing a woman who you don't particularly like walking along the side of the road after being left there by her partner.
radical love demands (or, it *could* demand) that you assist her in some way. even if it's just getting her to a gas station.

i dunno that just made so much sense to me.

especially after the past week or so
which has included, gosh
the specifics entail a whole nother post
but suffice it to say
it made a lot of the things that i've done lately
and that other people have done
a whole lot clearer.

i dunno.
i'm still reeling. and excited.

and it's powerful because it recognizes that radically loving someone is greater, and bigger
than what they did to you this morning
or last week
or that one time

there's this quote about courage that i may be paraphrasing a bit.
courage is not the absence of fear, but the knowledge that something is more important than fear.

i think the same can be said about radical love.

i am committed to your survival, regardless of whether or not i like you. at this present moment, or ever.
because my existance, my survival is inorexibly tied to yours.
because if you survive, i survive.
if you thrive, i thrive.
because we will be looking after each other.

now. this is not about being a doormat.
this is not, im going to keep doing x for you while you rape me, beat my children, take my money, etc.
i think (and i suppose i should preface all of this with "i think," because that's all it is, is me thinking, no absolutes i suppose) that radical love is about loving yourself
learning to value yourself, unlearning those things which teach you otherwise
and learning to value others, again whether or not you like them.
and moving to exclude those things, people, institutions
that do not value us or our community.

so
(i think) radical love is not sitting around a campfire holding hands
it's NOT postracial
it's not a decontextualized "kuum bye ya ya"

(i think) it IS opening your home to folks that may have your family and friends bein like, well why the hell you doin that for
it is helping someone move/making a call/cooking meals/babysitting/driving/getting up early/staying up late/writing a letter/etc. when you'd rather be sleep or be on facebook
it is talking when you'd rather be quiet or shutting up when you'd rather speak and taking the time to learn which is appropriate when
it is saying i'm sorry
it is saying you should apologize
it is saying even though i don't agree you have a right
it is demanding accountability
it is saying no, im not gonna do that right now. or ever
it is saying no, i can't
it is saying no, you can't do that to me or my people
it's saying yes i will hold her
yes you can keep it
yes, and dont worry about paying me back
yes to i
yes to we
yes to us
yes to us being here and, if we so desire, remaining here

you know?

p.s. and i should explicitly add, that i am not the first person to put any of this forth. if you want to learn more, check the links and the folks i name up top. this is just me working through this after having finally wrapped my head around this concept.

madness to magnet pt. 2

something ive become more interested in over the past year is mental health and black folks.

that is, the former of the latter.

more specifically, the intersection of madness and blackness.

and madness as both
that "im going fucking crazy" you get from dealing with everyday stresses
bills traffic and alla that

and madness like mental illnesses
like depression, eating disorders
self-mutilation
suicide

and where the line blurs between the two
and how they are exacerbated and/or facilitated both by BEING black
and by NOTIONS of blackness


for example
many of us gotta deal with the everyday stress of getting home post-work, post-school, post-errands or what have you
gotta deal with the stresses of bad drivers or slow trains or long walks or detours or other ppl

and im interested in things like
how is that stress compounded
by me dealing wit all that stress as i try to get home
home, which ideally should be a place of safety, rest, healing, goodness
and i finally get on my street
and the first thing i (always) see is a rebel flag hanging from my neighbor's house

to say nothing of those colored folks who homes aren't safe due to things like the multiple forms of violence, lack or location
and how when it comes to shit like that being colored and having to live life so isn't a coincidence

when going "home" becomes a daily exercise in fear, anxiety, and anger
how does "going home" tie into madness?

so there's ^ that.



then there's
the upperclassmen who shot himself in the head a few weeks ago at my school
who was a young black man
and the 11-year-old who hung himself because he was being taunted with anti-gay slurs
(and someone PLEASE run their mouth to me again bout how "no homo" aint homophobic???? or damaging to both self and community???)
and how the rates for suicide in black men have jumped so high over the years*

and especially wit the 11 yr-old it's like the first response is
HOW was suicide even an option
for someone so young
which then of course leads to the question how is suicide an option for anyone
ESPECIALLY for black men and women

who are supposed to be so strong
thuggin/"strapping young bucks"
bitchin
angry

im interested in how the historic construction of blackness
including the counter-constructions that formed as a way to combat the dominant narrative(s)
at the same time as they contribute to madness
have not left any room in our lives for madness
for pain
(see how apparently, stats on rates of depression in african american women are almost nonexistent)
shortness of breath
needing to sit down for a moment
needing to lower yr chin
for something other than prayer
just for a moment

so when these moments occur
it's like
yr not only failing personally
but also in terms of your identity
in terms of your blackness

i mean think of say, girl interrupted (both the book and the movie)

and really the movie is a perfect example because the only space made for black ppl black wmn specifically is the role of mammy, caregiver. it's completely unimaginable that mammy might me mental, might need help herself
although ooh the bell jar is a good example too cause at one point sylvia plath while she's in the institution kicks the black janitor, and i think that might have been the only reference made to blk ppl in the book, definitely in the part dealing with the institution
so we can take care of folks, we can be blank page you scribble on as they figure out their lives (shit edna st. vincent millay called her journal "Ole Mammy Hush Chile") we can be folks scapegoats and punching bags, we can be the one that sylvia plath kicks and winona ryder and her band of "troubled" youngwhitewomen simultaneously lean on/give shit to

but we can't be the ones
in the institution
on the therapist's couch
leanin on someone
getting help



and im not saying that being in the institution should be a goal or anything

im just wondering what madness-NOT-as-an-option
especially madness-NOT-as-an-option tied into WHO YOU ARE
has to do with the development of madness
and i guess more importantly, the RECOGNITION
and TREATMENT
of madness.



mmkay, looks like there's gonna be a part 3. lol. in which i WILL get back to kid cudi and crew and link all this together. hopefully it'll all make sense.



*and look at the first comment. my point exactly. madness, illness not recognized as anything other than a cop out. and now that we got what once would have been called a member of the talented tenth in office, there apparently is no reason for a youngblackman to feel bad/suicidal.

madness to magnet

besides the subtle to overt use of autotune, what do this:



this:



and this (sorry no official video for this song):



all have in common?

ding ding ding **black men in pain** ding ding ding!


so
i dont know if it's due to the recession
the general hard times
the advent of so-called hipster rap (imo this prob has the most to do with it)

but suddenly it seems like there are all these.....well, maybe not all these
but there are a definite handful of (black male) rappers
who are rhyming about being scared
alone
lonely
lost
vulnerable

who are in other words
subtly challenging
the popular construction of black masculinity
and the historic continuum of "THIS is what a black man IS"


am i the only person who finds this incredibly exciting?

to put it in some sort of context
it's not like there's not a precedent for it
or that kid cudi and co. are the first to rap about, you know, being HUMAN
Black Star (mos def + talib kweli) perfectly captured their pensive mood in the classic Respiration:
"so much on my mind i just can't recline/blasted hole in the night till she bled sunshine"

and way back when the immortal LL Cool J (and i mean that literally, that mf'r hasn't aged a day since 1987) was tellin us I Need Love:
Inside my soul because my soul is cold
one half of me deserves to be this way till I'm old
But the other half needs affection and joy
and the warmth that is created by a girl and a boy


but these newer songs to me seem different because generally speaking
in mainstream hip hop these admissions of vulnerability seem the exception rather than the rule
and space is made for them when they address say, a deceased friend
or in the case of LL, an acceptable longing for the company of a pretty girl

but to rap about alienation and despair that's unrelated to someone dying
(or maybe it is, but not obviously so)
and to be like yeah, this girl hurt me, hurt me real bad
as opposed to, you know, "i fuck em love em leave em cause i dont fuckin need em"
- which we're far more accustomed to -
and not only for one rapper to do that
but for multiple rappers to do that

and, most importantly, for it to be mainstream
(all these songs within the past 6 months have been plastered all over top 40)

something's a-shift here.

(to be cont'd........)

lucille clifton, "sorrows"

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

quick share

the beautiful cree summers.

my newest love: Nneka

Nneka - Heartbeat
Uploaded by FourMusic. - See the latest featured music videos.

j'adore. i want to buy all of her albums and make lots of babies with her. preferably at the same time.

briefly,

I believe in the separation of church and state, in the plurality of religious thought and beliefs, in the recognition of a difference between "spirituality" and "christianity," and in the right to reject any belief system that does not lie in accordance with what you believe to be true.

honesty and me cont'd (a reply)

the more figurative response is that you might have to think about the more esoeric purpose of why you right? Do you just need to let the written word flow and whoever recovers the text recovers the text?

It seems like you like honesty working as a two-way street. Rather than, as gil scott heron says, "turn your sick soul inside out so the world can watch you die", you want a space where you can mine the intra-personal and not interrupt your various communal connections.

I guess that leads into another question: why do you write? and, attached to that, who do you write for?

part of writing is realizing that you can't reach/write to everyone. It's gonna be process that will inevitably reach some and alienate others.

- free like driftwood

word.

i mean, isn't that what life is (among a few other things)? a process and a project that will reach some and alienate others?

(writing a life if you will)

lately i've been thinking about the role that writing plays in my life, and that i want it to play in my life. thinking about it so gently that i only noticed it fairly recently, now that the din of academia has quieted somewhat.

which is one reason why this blog came about. (that and a vain assumption that someone somewhere cares what i think cough cough)

yesterday i was talking to a friend about writing to recover ("from some bearable blow" as the poet says), and writing in the midst of recovering (and how the writing inevitably echoes the blow).

at this moment i am not interested in dying (although i have been in the past), and i am not interested in having folk watch me die.

i am interested in evolution and that over-used yet sincere word, growth. i am deeply interested in what comes next.

now, concerning the intra-personal and my communal connections, and the simultaneous preservation of both.

FLD, yes, you nailed it. that is exactly what i want. and i think my anxiety arrives because i know that may not always happen. in fact i know it wont.

and im talking about my writings period, not just as far as this blog is concerned.

thinking about family-gathering times
thanksgiving and such
and thinking about my status as the golden child of my immediately extended family
cousins and such
and my status as only child
and the only twenty-something, everyone else is either much older or much younger
and how all these things isolate me
how i allow them to isolate me

thinking about how my parents decided to come up today instead of tomorrow
and my panic over my cluttered house
and unwashed clothes and dishes

thinking about how someone who i love says something
like why would you
or does something
like take a phone call
that cuts to my core

thinking about James Wright writing
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom."

thinking about all of these things.

and my body being my tongue
my blood-filled mouth
my body being only the parts
skin tooth and smile
that i've allowed others to see

what i am interested in is breaking. (in fact it's been what i've been doing for some time now)

breaking from this skin
breaking into blossom.

i believe that my writing is integral to this process of breaking.
especially at this juncture.

when im beginning to
understand
heal
leave
reach
return

would it really be that bad if people saw who i really was? who i am?

(the middle-school angst of that last statement made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.)

i guess at this point, and in this space, i'm writing primarily for myself.

not that im not aware that there's an audience. in certain writings i will actively seek them (my fiction work for example).

but im opening the two-way up to the possibility of disruption.

of someone that i know and care about not liking something that i've written
being angry
being scared
being anything else but approving and supporting.

because this is about growth
this is about exploration
this is about what's necessary
this is about recovery

and in my recovery people may recover what they may.

sunday show and tell

my morning peace:



YES, first of all, to janet jackson. YES to q-tip. YES to dilla beats. YES to beautiful cinematography and direction by mark romanek. YES to showing lived black realities (albeit stylized) of aparthied south africa. YES south africa. YES sohpiatown. YES YES YES beautiful black people, always.

survival: what do it mean and for who

first this, written by brilliant black feminist Alexis, founder of brokenbeautifulpress and all around bad-ass: Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing.

this isn't going to be a commentary on her post. i loved it. def had me thinking about motherhood (which is something im deeply interested and as i get older i find im thinking about it in more nuanced ways, blog post for another day) and my own mother and her struggles (n the nature of shared struggle. sometimes me and her aren't always about our own struggles because we're so busy being strong for each other. what does that do to our relationship? blog post for another day.)

this is in response to a comment on the article made by brilliantmind/brilliantpoet/mydearfriend Rickey. long story short, a mutal friend posted Alexis's blog in a note, tagged us. at one point in his comment Rickey asked quote

"Although something else to think about it what "black mother" is this article referring to? I heard "lower-to-working class black mother." I'm not sure if I hear "middle-to-upper class black mother.""

mmmmm. which just got me going. i left a long ass comment is response then decided to turn it into a blog. (so alot of this is just copy and paste but hey, no need to make my fingers all tired lol)


mmkay.


so. at one point in her blog Alexis says "We are people of color. The whole system wake up every day trying to exterminate our bodies and our spirits. Our very survival is queer."

which is so powerful, right? esp if we use Michael Warner's idea of "queer" = not just opposing heteronormativity, but normativity itself.

the norm says we weren't meant to survive. and by we, i mean black/colored/queer folk. we weren't supposed to make it. we still aren't. we know this.

what i've been thinking about is just how class plays a role in the survival of black folks. esp in how black folks of a certain class talk about these issues of survival. esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it.

(and hey. i come from a middle class background, born and raised in a predominately black southern city. i attended undergrad at a northern, private, "elite" liberal arts college, and im working on a masters degree at a public, southern university with it's own "elite" history. this is my context. this is one of the places that i write from, and this is the primary place i am writing from in this post. back to)

esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it. how we may unconsciously appropriate the struggles of working class folks as we explore/talk about/define being black, and the struggles thereof.

to some degree this is understandable. we spend our time reading a loooooot of revisionary texts. and since the vision that these texts are re-ing is a white middle-to-upper class hetero one, we spend a lot of time reading about working class queer colored people, understanding and adopting their/our struggle. and sometimes in the name of solidarity, we dont reeaallly interrogate our own subjectivity in the midst of all this resistance and revolution.

(following examples not meant to call anyone on the carpet hence no names because while i dont agree i think i understand where they coming from)

for example, there's this one young black college educated woman i know. she posted a link to this on her FB: LA Rep. Considering Plan to Pay Poor Women $1000 to Have Tubes Tied, along with an all caps angry note about the government wants to sterilize her.

while yes this definitely warrants anger (like theFUCK????? on SO many levels), and yes an injury to one is an injury to all in that these ideas of black women are applied to our bodies across the board regardless of class or achievement (we can look at the media reaction to michelle obama to see that), at the same i thought she was kinda doin a little dance of misappropriation there because of the following: she didn't live in louisiana nor was she from louisiana, she didn't come from a working class background, she wasn't in any kinda situation that might make make her go, hmm that $1000 might be fuckin worth it, she wasn't in any kind of situation where she might have to make that choice. it was her, but it wasn't HER they want(ed) to sterilize.

and in a way she performed a kind of erasure. by saying HEY look at what they are trying to do to ME, ME ME, as opposed to saying HEY look at what they're trying to do to THEM, and finding another way to show the connections between THEM and US without making it all about ME.

(i feel like a race traitor even typing this. and what does that say? somehow i got it in my head that it's a betryal to point out that black folk aint monolithic. who told me that? where'd i pick up that idea?)

im not saying that those of a certain class shouldn't concern themselves with the issues of another class, esp cause in certain instances race can blur class lines. but as rickey pointed out, at certain points this article seemed to be speaking more to the lived realities of working class black mothers. which is fine. there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

what we're talking about is survival. and how folks of color survive.

i guess what i'm wondering is if we took into account the lived realities of middle and upper class black women? how would the notion of "survival" change? how would the notion of struggle change?

cause the struggle isn't always about having to hustle to put food on the table. or about some white govmnt man trying to keep you from making babies. sometimes struggle looks like the only black face in the classroom tensing up when someone mentions hip hop and everyone either looks at her or tries not to look at her. and feeling silly/ashamed about feeling stressed because she's got food to eat and a place to stay and things could be much worse. and she feels silly because she's been told by her mom by her girlfriend who's pregnant and working two jobs lil wayne and by that book on black feminist politics that TEH STRUGGLE(tm) looks like THIS: _______ and since ______ dont look nothing like what she's going through then she's not actually struggling, so there's nothing to survive, only to enjoy.

obviously this is personal. but isn't it always, especially the political?

i guess what i am asking for is an interrogation into the notion of "survival," and by extension, "teh struggle" as it applies to colored folks, taking into account issues of class, gender, sexuality, place, etc. multiple subjectivities. what does survival look like for Whitley (yes, THAT whitley. i went there. dont you love it.)? or for, hell, michelle obama? or for a black middle class family in Salt Lake City?

multiplicity of subjectivities. multiplicity of struggle. multiple ways to surivive. i want to know what they look like.

oh and i can't

stop listening to this song.