Fruitvale Station and the Notion of Cultural Obligations

  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceVVVils8z4]

I believe in cultural obligations. This is something that my mother taught me at a very young age. I had to be about 8 years old when Young Guns II came out in the movie theater.  It was the sequel to the completely awesome and rendition to the story of Billy the Kidd starring Emilio Estevez and Lou Diamond Phillips. Needless to say I was pretty excited about it. Back in those days my mother would take my siblings and me to the movie theater about four times a year. So I was super stoked that we were getting a chance to go while this highly anticipated film was still showing. Even though I was in the 3^rd grade there was never a time in my life when I couldn’t watch rated R movies so naturally I recommended that we all watch the gun-toting western together. My older brother had different intentions.

“We should watch Mo Better Blues,” he told my mother.

“What! That stupid jazz movie? Don’t nobody want to see that crap. It looks hecka boring,” I protested from the back seat.

“It’s a Spike Lee joint,” he said with passive authority.

“So what it’s gone be boring,” I continued on.

My mother probably weighed the options for about a quarter of a second.

“We’re going to see Mo Better Blues,” she said in her ‘and that’s that voice.’

I was pissed and the most I could do about it was suck my teeth. I suffered through what seemed like five hours of music with no words and multiple hardcore sex scenes. Well the sex scenes weren’t bad but I would have much rather seen Billy the Kid and The Regulators kill all those backstabbing hypocrites that were trying to run them out-of-town. I didn’t understand it at the time but my mother was teaching me a very valuable lesson. Black people are obligated to support other black people even when it hurts. And while I was sitting in that theater watching Wesley Snipes, Spike Lee, and Denzel Washington get into debates about issues that I couldn’t care less about, it REALLY HURT. After the movie was over she spoke to me about our responsibility as black folk. She told me that if we don’t look out for one another then no one else will and I got it. Very reluctantly, I got it.

Now several years later I sit here in front of my house composing this entry a day before the release of Fruitvale Station a story about the life and tragic death of Oscar Grant. To be straight up about it, I really don’t want to watch it. And that’s not because I don’t think it will be a good film because I think it’s going to be great. As a matter of fact last Saturday I actually met a brotha that plays a role in the movie. No it’s not that, the thing is the incidents that are chronicled in the movie are still extremely painful for me.

I was one of the thousands of people who marched through the streets of Oakland demanding justice for Mr. Grant after he was shot in the back by transit cops as he lay down in handcuffs on New Years Eve of 2009. I AM OSCAR GRANT was the slogan and when I said it I meant it. Because I have been to the Fruitvale BART Station several times, because he had a daughter the exact same age as mine, because I went through a phase in which I had no idea where my life was going, and because we were both young black men growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area I empathized with him completely.  I wrote about it extensively. I became enraged about it and ultimately depressed when Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to only two years for Oscar Grant’s murder. This isn’t like a movie on Fred Hampton or Ghandi—No, this is something that I actually lived through. It’s not even old enough to be historical.

But alas Fruitvale Station is a black movie. It was produced by Forrest Whitaker and directed by another young black man named Ryan Coogler. It also stars Octavia Spencer and was of course filmed in my hometown of Oakland, CA. But I still do not want to watch the movie. It bothers me that the Black American experience is so saturated with pain that even our leisure activities induce a certain amount of trauma. Why is awareness always a tragedy in the mind of the young black man? The story of Oscar Grant like the story of Trayvon Martin reminds me that my life is completely dispensable and I’m torn because part of me does not want to revisit that moment but another part of me knows that I can never actually leave that reality.

Whether I want to acknowledge it or not does not make racism less prevalent. Even when I’m eating my ice cream at the creamery, viewing art at the museum, or smelling lavender roses at the rose garden, racism is always lurking. I realize that I try to run from my issues as often as possible. I don’t want to confront the pain of my subconscious mind just like I don’t want to deal with my emotions. I feel like the film Fruitvale Station is guaranteed to make me confront both and even worse it will make me confront both of these untapped entities in a very public setting.

Tomorrow is the local release date of the film. I won’t see it tomorrow but I will see it before it leaves the theater. And it won’t be because I heard good things about it or because I feel like I need to learn more about the life of Oscar Grant but it will only be because I feel like it is my duty as an African-American to support the film. I will support the film because that’s the way I was raised.

-YB

Soulful IV-Deeply Rooted/ July 6th 2013/The Beast Crawl Oakland

*Note-Hey people I'm hosting this event and I would love to see my friends from the blogosphere there. We're going to end Beast Crawl 2013 (http://beastcrawl.weebly.com/) with a bang!

“Soulful IV: Deeply Rooted” is a cultural explosion just waiting to happen. The line up includes a group of consistently published, standing ovation getting, conscious minded, game spitting, self-loving artists who know how to move the crowd and know just exactly where they come from. So if you’re not there on July 6th then tsk, tsk. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. Check out the stellar line up:

AUDACIOUS IAM is not only a national performance spoken word artist but she is a host, educator, empowerment speaker, social service worker, and youth advocate. She received her MFA from Mills College in the spring of 2013.

BRANDON HUGHES is a writer from Oakland, CA. He's been featured on CBS 5, was an invited guest speaker at Yahoo, and the Oakland Tribune wrote a full article on him, calling him ''a promising writer.” His novel, The Man Behind The Curtain, is set in Oakland, and is being taught in middle schools and high schools. BRANDON WILL HAVE COPIES OF HIS BOOK TO SELL AT SOULFUL!!!!!

CANDICE ANTIQUE WICKS Antique is an independent singer/songwriter and co-founder of Antique Music, a multifaceted project that uses music and theatre as a tool for education, healing and activism. She is also the lead singer for the band Antique Naked Soul, an a cappella band featuring renown beat boxer Tommy Shepherd, that uses loopers and beat boxing to create live beats on stage. Antique Naked Soul has opened for Les Nubiens, Mos Def, Talib Kwali and many more. CANDICE WILL BE SELLING MUSIC AT THE SHOW!!!!!!!!

DONTE CLARK (artistically known as DonBlak) is a 23yr old Richmond Native. He is a poet, activist, playwright, actor, and musically inclined people's champion who embodies the struggle of the people and uses his words to heal the wretched of the earth and unshackle the minds of the masses.

JAMES CAGNEY Oakland native James Cagney is a Cave Canem and VONA Fellow. He was a featured artist in Midnight In Mumbai, Miko Kuro's Midnight Tea, Celebration of the Word and San Francisco Public Library. His poems appeared in Ambush Review, Oaklandlocal.com and Sparring with the Beatnik Ghosts. JAMES WILL HAVE COPIES OF HIS DEBUT POETRY COLLECTION "DIRTY THUNDERSTORM" FOR SELL AT SOULFUL!!!!!!!

MUTHONI KIARIE is a Kenyan writer, living in Oakland, California. Her work has been published in Narrative Magazine, Generations Literature Magazine, 580 Split and The Weeklings. She is an MFA graduate of Mills College.

Hosted by Roger Porter

Trust me when I tell you "Deeply Rooted" is going to be THIS soulful (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IexQYkNO2Ec).

So plan on being in attendance and trust me you will be grateful that you came. And if you need more incentive check out how beautiful these Deeply Rooted writers are: http://beastcrawl.weebly.com/soulful.html See ya on July 6th.

What if Tupac was a father?

“June one-six seven-one, the day/ mama pushed me out her womb and told me 'nigga get paid.'”

Sometimes I wonder what kind of father would Tupac be if he were alive today. If he were still on this Earth then Father’s Day 2013 would have marked his 42^nd birthday. It’s difficult to conceive because he was so youthful when he passed away. He was rambunctious, vilified, and enlightened but seemingly lost. He often times performed shirtless and indulged heavily in drug use. Yet he is also America’s last ghetto hero.

No black man since Tupac Shakur has been completely comfortable both in the hood and on Hollywood movie sets. No artist since Pac has made outrageous behavior seem so relatable. Everyone has an opinion about Tupac because everyone feels like they knew him.  One either worshipped his words or was repulsed by them—with Pac there really was no in between. However the fact that we often times fail to internalize is that when Tupac was assassinated that night in Las Vegas he was only 25 years old, rich, ridiculously famous, and without any children.

In Essence he only had to look out for himself. Imagine though, if he would have had a son. Would he be all right with teaching his growing boy how to live a thug lifestyle? Would he have smoked so much? Would he have been as abrasive? Imagine if Tupac would have had a daughter. Would he have ever made another record like “All about you?”  Would he refuse to ever say the word bitch on a track like Jay-Z did once Blue Ivy was born? How would having a child impact his black male psychosis and the many references to suicide that he made on his albums?

“I smoke a blunt to take the pain out and if I wasn’t high I’d probably try to blow my brains out.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ElX6mLnb1g]

Tupac definitely would have had one more fear of death in addition to being reincarnated and that would be the thought of missing his children grow up. One can assume that this responsibility would have caused such a compassionate young man like him to slow his life down considerably. Perhaps his fatherhood would have ultimately caused him to return to the activist roots instilled in him by his mother Afeni Shakur. Maybe he would have begun to transition his burgeoning thug nation into a political party designed to destroy the depressing inner-city circumstances that he bemoaned in his music. He may have even started to slowly abandon the ghetto mentality that he so often celebrated. Can you imagine how impactful it would have been to see Tupac posing for pictures on the cover of magazines with his beautiful black family as opposed to merely showing off his tattoos and jewelry?

The tragedy is that we will never have an answer to any of these questions because he was taken away from us so soon. We never got a chance to see him settle into himself. We never got to see him mature and we never got to see him as a loving father. We can, however, safely say that if he put as much energy into fatherhood as he did into his music then being a good daddy would have been the most powerful trend of all the trends that Tupac started. As is, all we can do is mourn the man whose music continues to influence the world on a daily basis 17 years after his unfortunate demise.

RIP Tupac Shakur

1971-1996

-YB

Notes on Mortality

I read an article from the New York Times today about the ill health of the most beloved figure in the history of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Mandela. According to the article he is very near death. A reality that has caused mixed reviews in the nation that he once ruled. While most people are praying for his health to improve at least one woman has accepted the mortality of the former leader; “It is not easy, but we must think of his pain. He has given us so much. He deserves to rest.” When I came across this statements that was made by a 30-year-old South African woman it startled me a little. Her thoughts are so contrarian only because they are so real. When we agree to resuscitate those who no longer have the desire to live and when we refuse to pull the plug, are we really doing it for them or are we being selfish?  

If we really believe in heaven after earth then why are we so reluctant to let our loved ones go to paradise? My grandmother suffers. She’s alive and she remembers us and we can still kiss her once smooth but now prickly brown cheeks. We literally keep her alive. We make sure the medical staff at the convalescent home where she lives knows that we’re there and those of us who practice medicine make sure that she is getting optimal care. It makes us feel good when we put them in check. After we make sure they change her catheter and increase her dosage we feel like we’ve done the right thing. The only issue is she no longer wants to live. She’s expressed this to us in very plain terms. She wants it all to be over. We disregard what she says. We disregard the words of the wisest woman we have ever known— our mother, our grandmother, our great-grandmother—because we feel like she no longer knows what’s right. This only causes her to slip further and further into depression.

As a society we have been taught that to save the life of an individual is an outstanding deed, however, often times we fail to realize that some people don’t want to be saved. Don’t they have that right? It is a sin for a person to take his or her own life but the bible does not frown upon those that merely allow death to happen. In the case of my grandmother— who used to care for me everyday before I started school. Who taught me the most basic lesson of being a black man in America; “When someone hits you then you hit them back?” Who drug me along with her throughout the entire county of San Francisco on Muni, BART, and on foot—I think our main impetus for not letting her pass on is we don’t want to feel sad. We don’t want to plan a funeral. We don’t want to lose the center of our family. But what about her? Does her opinion of her own life even count anymore? Isn’t it wrong of us to disregard the suffering of another human being so that we sleep better at night?

My grandmother has lived nearly 90 years. She’s perfectly content with the impact that she’s had on this world but we can’t let her go. Even though she is mortal we seem to want her to live forever.

Is it ever ok to just let a person die?

-YB

This is Distortion

 

I thought about someone else the whole time I was with her. It doesn’t make any sense. The young lady who stole my attention isn’t more beautiful, or more dedicated, or more sophisticated. She is only more appealing because she is someone else. My mind runs faster when my body is still. Contentment can be so elusive. Happiness can appear to be so frightening when you’ve made peace with your own misery. When loneliness becomes your most inseparable friend often times you find yourself fighting on his behalf. Trauma from bad relationships can lead to emotional suicide and emotional suicide will always result in self-sabotage.

In a strange rearrangement of expectations the perfect lady can become a complete nightmare. Then one seeks to make her imperfect by all means. It is only then that a man can truly love her. Only when the subject of his passion is placed solidly underneath his foot. Only when she becomes weak enough for his love to become visible. He can still make out her image in the ripples of the tide. Her face is less clear but her heart is more tangible than it has ever been.

This is distortion.

-YB

On my 9th year of being a father

 

I recently paid for my daughter to go to a very cool summer camp and I suppose I should feel good about it but I don’t. I mean I do feel good about it. I feel great about her going to summer camp and having the opportunity to swim, hike, fish, and sing goofy songs but I’m not the least bit excited about the part where I pay for it. I know that being a good parent is all about sacrificing but sometimes it’s painful.

In my 9^th year of parenting I’ve learned that wanting the best for my child and wanting the best for myself are almost always two opposing ideas. I would like to be able to go to the bar during happy hour and buy a group of beautiful black professional women a bottle of champagne, I would like to go on a shopping spree and tear the mall up, I would like to stunt for just once in my life.

But stunt for what? And stunt for whom? Alas, I realize that for the first 22 years of my life my main goal was to impress females. To dress in a manner that begged them to pay attention to me. To put myself in the places that I knew they were going to be, to convince them that I wasn’t as insecure as I always felt. But now, in my 31^st year on this Earth, I understand that the only female’s opinion that truly matters is that of the one that was born unto me. When I am stressed I always keep her happy. I aim to liberate her consciousness on days that I feel as trapped as my brothers in the penitentiary. I love that little smart mouthed girl and I hope that when she is an adult she will be able to appreciate all of the daily sacrifices that are being made in order for her to have an amazing childhood.

-YB

Holding it all In

Forgive me. I’ve been going through one of those phases in which I do everything in the world except write. I mean I’ve been bringing work from my job home like everyday, I’ve been going out way too often, I’ve been doing my laundry regularly, I’ve been working out six times a week, and I’ve been spending way too much time on social media (honestly I’ve checked my Facebook about 12 times while writing this). I haven’t been journaling, my manuscript is somewhere deep inside my thumb drive collecting massive amounts of digital dust, and of course I haven’t been blogging. I did host a reading series on May 18^th entitled “Soulful III: Revolutionary Dreams” which was massively successful, but other than that I’ve been void of all artistic expression. I’ve had several super-dynamic, poetic thoughts that have popped into my head but I haven’t had the composure to actually sit down and write them out of my consciousness.

A man was killed by the Oakland Police this past Wednesday, the date was 5/29/13 and I had strong feelings about how the story was unraveling. Apparently the man had a gun and he, as well as the other occupants of his vehicle, was being pursued by police. At some point they all jumped out of the car and flea on foot. One of the men got into a confrontation with police and wound up dead…end of story. I wanted to write about how bizarre it all appeared to be. I mean, either you’re going to run or you’re going to shoot. It always seems like the Oakland Police Department is guilty of murdering those who are running. It’s just kind of strange to me. I was going to write about it but I decided to post the article on Facebook instead.

Then I saw a groundbreaking Cheerios commercial, which featured an interracial couple and their biracial child. The commercial is centered on how the little girl tries to rid her father of future heart disease by dumping a box of cereal on his chest—it’s amazing. Not only because the content is amusing but also because it features a freaking interracial couple. Wow! That is something that rarely ever happens within the confines of the multi-billion dollar behemoth that is American advertisement. But of course people just saw it and hated on it. I suppose these are the same people that believe their evil side-eyes in restaurants, and movie theaters are going to stop interracial couples from loving one another and procreating—yeah right. People can be so self-absorbed and disconnected from the general urge of humanity to elude all of societies expectations that they waste their energy hating what they can never change. This was another topic I was going to write about, however, by the time I got back from work the blogosphere was going nuts over the commercial. I felt like I didn’t really deserve to put my two cents in because I’m not biracial nor am I in an interracial relationship. So I just read about it, commented on it, and kept my mouth shut.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYofm5d5Xdw&feature=player_embedded]

Then there is the whole thing about me being 31 years old and therefore losing every trace of my metabolism. As much as I work out I still feel like a fat ass because no weight is coming off. I’ve gained about fifteen pounds since my amateur boxing days. Maybe the people who I run into on the streets can’t tell but I sure can. It’s wild because the older I get, the more I need to work out but I can’t because I don’t have the time due to work. Work sucks! At any rate I was going to write about it but I was busy sweating it out at the boxing gym trying to lose 10 pounds for the summer. I have also sacrificed my beloved brownie bites until further notice because each time I eat one it goes straight to my hips.

So yeah there you have it, a fist full of excuses as to why I haven’t been writing lately. I guess the next logical thing to do would be to make a commitment to incorporate writing back into my daily life and I promise that I would do that but I can’t write now because my clothes are done drying. I have to get up and fold them immediately. See ya next time.

Peace,

YB

You Need to go to this Event on MAY18th!

 

A Night of literary Performances

“SOULFUL III: Revolutionary Dreams” is almost here!

Be ready for six of your favorite poets and writers to light up the microphone on Malcolm X day, 2013.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWlvOolOic4] That’s Saturday, May 18th at the Grand Lake Coffee House (440 Grand Ave) in Oakland, CA.

ONLY $5 at the door.

If you don’t believe the insane amount of talent we have lined up then check the lineup:

Raphael Cohen—Raphael Cohen is a writer and performer committed to utilizing the word as a vehicle for social change. In 2007, he released Scrutinizing Lines, his first full-length poetry collection. Originally from New York, Raphael has lived in Oakland since 2001. He holds a MFA in poetry from Mills College, and currently teaches writing at The Bay School of San Francisco.

Joy Elan—Joy Elan is from Oakland and Berkeley, CA. She received her undergraduate degree in African American Studies at UC Berkeley and her graduate degree in Education at Stanford University. She wrote Signs of Life: Past, Present, and Future and performs spoken word in the Bay Area. She is working on a new book, Silence Is Not Always Golden: A Poetic Revolution, which is scheduled to be released Summer 2013. She is currently working with urban youth and raising her daughter in Oakland.Joy Elan's Websites: www.joyelan.webs.com and www.facebook.com/authorjoyelan

Kwan Booth—Kwan Booth is an award winning writer and strategist focusing on the intersection of communications, community, art and technology. He is the cofounder of Oaklandlocal.com and the Black Futurist Project, editor of "Black Futurists Speak: An Anthology of New Black Writing" and "Soul of Oakland: A People's Guide to The Town." He has been published in CHORUS, the literary mixtape” and “Beyond the Frontier: African American Poets for the 21st Century,” He writes at http://boothism.org/

MADlines—MADlines was born & raised in Seattle. She came up in the 206’s vibrant music and spoken word scenes. As one half of the dynamic two-lady rap duo, Canary Sing, MADlines rocked hundreds of stages and opened for the likes of Binary Star, Macklemore and Mystic. Since moving to Oakland three years ago, she’s released a solo Mixtape & attained a Master’s in Fine Arts degree from Mills College. She’s currently working on a Reggae/Hip-hop fushion E.P. called LOVE CHILD--to be released in the summer! Follow her on twitter @MAD_lines for updates! ~MADlove~

Scott Duncan- Scott Russell Duncan, frankly, is a lingerer and a lurker. He’s seen a president eat enchiladas, escaped being held hostage by nuns, fled Mills College with an MFA, and makes his lair in Oakland. Scott’s ancestors are Californio, Hispano, and Texian, so he’s half white guy and Mexican. His novel in progress is The Ramona Diary of SRD, a memoir and fictional travel diary about California.

Aries Jordan—Aries Jordan has been writing poetry since elementary school but it wasn't until 2010 that she began to share it with the world. In 2011 she released a collection of poems entitled " Journey to womanhood: A poetic Rite of Passage" through Black Bird Press. Her poetry has been featured in the "Pan African Journal of Poetry" 2011, "PACT Family Newsletter" 2012, and "Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marrissa Alexander.” Her writing has also been featured in The Oakland Post.

Please support our independent artists and buy their books at SOULFUL III.

The event will be hosted by Roger Porter.

It’s definitely going to go down so get ready! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g_e6RJRCPk]

Blaxploitation 2013

I never really liked the old Dolomite movies my uncle used to watch on VHS, but I did have an affinity for The Mack starring Max Julian. Even as a young child (come to think of it I was probably way too young to be watching a movie about a gangster pimp. At any rate…) I thought Goldy, the lead character, was the coolest thing walking. The fact that it was filmed in my hometown of Oakland, CA also factored into my enchantment with the movie. My uncle dug Goldy too. He was into the loud clothes, and the flamboyant hats. He liked the classic pimp lines like; “Mutha ****** can you buy that?” and “Next time you hear grown folks talking shut the **** up hear!” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkgz1FR9TO4] 

This was of course before Spike Lee, John Singleton, and a few others began trying to make dignified movies about black people trapped in American ghettos. So for my uncle’s generation if you wanted to see black folks on the big screen you had to see African-American culture as interpreted by a few white men. What I mean by that is that The Mack as well as almost all other Blaxploitation movies were written, directed, casted and produced by middle aged white dudes. The objective of these movies was not to show the humanity of the characters but rather it was to make the most money possible and to do it in a way that was completely nonthreatening to white America.

In today’s “post racial society” one would assume that America has moved far beyond these one-dimensional cultural snap shots. But then again if one were to do so then one would be absolutely wrong.

21^st century entertainment has been sabotaged by the viral video. No matter if it’s someone rapping, mocking his girlfriend, or fighting, it’s all about how many views you generate. In fact the lure of the viral video has become so strong that even news media has gotten involved. Every year a new African-American eyewitness to a crime becomes the latest Internet celebrity. From Antoine Dodson to Sweet Brown to Charles Ramsey— all of them represent that loud, attitude having, unemployed, unlettered African-American’s that our White-American counterparts can never seem to get enough of. In essence they are the latest form of Blaxploitation.

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/antoine-dodson-renounces-homosexuality-to-become-a-hebrew-israelite/5182bb0dfe3444064200027e

I have no idea how respectable news outlets around the country can get away with showing black people with scarves on their heads screaming and yelling in unnecessarily dramatic fashion and pass it off as an honest account of what took place. And in the case of Antoine Dodson they even conducted a secondary interview. Since when did crime become comedy? Since when did the 5 o’clock news become Showtime at the Apollo? Just like Superfly, Shaft, and Goldy the Mack, nothing should be taken too seriously when it comes out of the mouth of a black person. It’s strictly for entertainment purposes only.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBJowiFQj_c&feature=youtu.be]

-YB

Who stole the soul?

Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Scarface?  

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-Qn0FG2dQ&feature=share]

The Physicality of it all

The physicality of it all. Words are for the weak. Words are so limited. Let me love on you. Be who you are outside of me. Support me. I got you. Do you got me? I shouldn’t be asking. I shouldn’t have to ask. I’d rather lay down than stand up and fight. Let’s be in silence. Follow my lead. You can trust me. Sometimes things don’t come like they should. Sometimes they come too fast.

The kisses. The abandonment. The love. The inconsistencies of a partnership. The affection is gone. The conversation is limited. She had bad nerves while I slept. I slept hard. She couldn’t sleep at all. I didn’t notice until the morning came. I didn’t feel her energy so I apologized. She didn’t accept.

I lost her. Even though she still cums, I lost her. Good intentions dissolve in physicality like sugar dissolves into water. A chemical change. She stops returning my text messages. She misses all of my calls. When I inbox her she doesn’t inbox me back. She must have not gotten that email. Unwanted silence. Distance. Disconnect.

I see her at the Lake. Everyone is always at the Lake. She smiled a painful smile. It wasn’t fake; it felt removed. It wasn’t painful for her; it only hurt me. I know what a genuine smile from her feels like. That wasn’t it. No small talk. No hugs. She’s just a pleasant stranger. She walks her way. I run in mine. Finality can be overwhelming. The lack of hope. The confirmation of failure. The reassurance of loneliness. I kissed her too soon. I had a dream and when I woke up she was gone.

-YB

Writing my Sickness Away

I woke up sick this morning; sick in my mind, sick in my body, and sick in my spirit. I feel like I may be drawn to misery in the same way that insects of the night are drawn to streetlights. Even when things are well for me I always make room in my heart for pain. Or maybe I had too much to drink last night. It’s always deeper than it is. Last night I sat across the table from an old friend who I have known for over half of my life. We probably see one another an average of once every two years so when we link up we are forced to cram everything that has happened in our lives into one conversation. How’s work, how is your daughter, who are you dating, what you been doing, who do you keep in touch with, how is your family, how is your cousin; and I then I tense up. I cover my ears and brace for the pain because the trigger has been pulled.

My cousin ain’t doing so good. He’s on the streets. He stole from my aunty. He has problems separating fantasy from reality. For him there is no real line between the past and the present. They say he’s schizophrenic. Sometimes he takes his medication but most of the time he doesn’t. But of course I don’t say all of this when she asks. “Awe you know, he’s out there doing his thing.” Then I look into my glass and take a sip. Next question please? And the small talk has just gotten a whole lot smaller.

My mother is the older sister of his father. When I was a young boy and my uncle was full of tall cans of Old English malt liquor, he used to break down in tears as he recounted the story of my mother picking him up out of the Arkansas snow because his other sister had kicked him out of the house for peeing in the bed. My mother then placed him in her bed and after he stopped shivering he slept through the night.

My cousin and I grew up really close. I signed up for football then he signed up for football. He ran track one year and the next year I did too. He was a lot larger and more athletic than me but I had a bigger personality. In essence I ran my mouth a lot but no one ever tried to fight me because they knew that he was my cousin. It worked out really well for me.

By our senior year in high school I had given up on sports while he excelled. I ended up going to college to pursue a career in writing and he got a full athletic scholarship at a division one school. It was a major accomplishment for him and everybody considered it to be a big deal. There was a banquet thrown for him and the other scholarship athletes on campus that was attended by my grandmother, his father, a few dozen other relatives, and various local media outlets that were itching to cover a positive story involving black youth. I considered the path that my life had taken to be pretty normal but his was extraordinary. After all, as young black boys growing up in the ghetto, naturally we wanted to one day become professional athletes. When we entered the 10^th grade I was about 125 pounds soaking wet with Timberland’s and I knew then that I had no chance at all of going to the NFL, but he still did. He was about to make it, unfortunately for him however, he didn’t view things that way.

He wanted to go to another school, a school that was an NCAA powerhouse and a school that a few ballers who had graduated from our high school the year before we did were attending. They sent him on an official recruiting trip and he had a lot of fun. Too much fun. He committed before they offered. He told the coach he wanted to go there, no question about it. But as national signing day approached they gave his scholarship to another kid. He couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t fair. He cried about it, he told me in confidence. He cried about it a lot. He expressed to me that the whole thing was fixed. That old punk ass coach knew he wasn’t going to offer him a scholi in the first place. That it was all a game. That people were playing with him. Why were people always playing with him?

I was a little bit taken aback by his testimony but not too much. I figured it to be a very minor setback, something that he would get over as soon as he got situated in college. There was truth to my assessment but ultimately my reasoning was completely skewed by my on denial.

He was, for his freshman year, the big man on campus. He dominated on the football field taking a starting position from a senior less than halfway through the season. He even picked up a fumble and ran it back 60 yards for a touchdown at a game attended by our whole family. In they end, however, they lost that game. They lost nearly all of their games and my cousin was quickly losing focus.

He did a lot of partying and was getting into a lot of trouble. When he came back for Christmas breaks he had several fight stories that sounded like scenes from the old Patrick Swayze movie The Outsiders. By Spring break he had revealed that he had gotten a woman pregnant and was on academic probation and by the end of the school year he was asked not to return to the University.

He didn’t sweat it much. He figured he would get more scholarship opportunities, and he did (he actually got a couple more). He spent most of the summer bonding with his newborn son.

On one day in August we took the baby on a family tour. We went to our grandmother’s house in Bayview Hunter’s Point and we took him to see our aunty on Havenscourt, and then our cousins on 90^th. The little guy slept peacefully and very rarely cried. When we took him out of his car seat and into the cold San Francisco night air he wasn’t tripping. Even when I, at the age of 19, drove way too fast over the Deep East Oakland speed bumps he wasn’t afraid. He was with men that would die for him and he knew it. He was chilling. He was good.

When we got him home his mother was exasperated. She snatched the baby and said very little to us because we didn’t matter. She was very displeased and it showed but one got the sense that she felt as though it wasn’t worth talking about. For all intents and purposes her relationship with my cousin was over anyway and when she went back to school a few weeks later she made it official. It was only then that he became truly unraveled.

As I made it through college and experienced my own fair share of drama and got my own girlfriend pregnant and was nearly ousted from school myself the women of the family began to whisper. “You know your cousin ain’t right in the head no more. He’s a little off, a little touched. Do you know what he said to me the other day…?”  And this would always be followed by their laughter, a very disturbing defense mechanism that would piss me off. No one ever really wants to deal with pain so people force humor into things that aren’t funny.

Nevertheless I refuted their claims for years. I even argued with my uncle, his dad, about it. I would say he’s just a little down because his football dreams are finally over. It’s only natural. He’ll bounce back I said. All ya’ll are doing way too much.

As the years went by I managed to graduate from college but he didn’t. I established a very solid relationship with my daughter but he was asked by his son’s mother not to come around them due to his strange behavior. I was able to maintain a job— no matter how lame it was—but he wasn’t.

We were about 23 years old I when I got word that he was living in a shelter in Palo Alto so, of course, I went to go see him. By that time I could no longer deny the reality of it all. My cousin was gone.

As elementary school age children my cousin and I, along with all of the other neighborhood children, would play games of hide and go seek deep into the night. Sometimes one of us would fall and scrape our knees and elbows. In which case we would cry a little bit, go inside to get a band-aid, and come right back outside to play. When we ran track my cousin pulled a hamstring. He missed a few track meets but a few weeks later he was right back on the relay team. So when it was discovered that my cousin had a mental illness I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t bring it back. I can’t express the hopelessness that I felt knowing that he would never get better. That he would never fully recover and even worse, there was nothing that I could do to help him.

I tried very hard though. He was hungry so I bought him Round Table Pizza. I saw that he needed shoes so I bought him some. I literally gave him the coat off of my back because he was wearing a dusty old blazer with no hood and the October rain was going to start coming down soon. But giving him all of those material things ultimately didn’t matter because I couldn’t give him peace of mind.

As we walked down a street close to Stanford University he spoke to me in a strange kind of whisper that seemed very distant and very loud at the same time. And he talked to me slowly, reminiscent of Master Splinter in the Ninja Turtle movies. Like he was trying to sound very wise. We passed a bar and he asked to go in. I told him I wasn’t going to buy him alcohol. He then told me that he was trying to use alcohol to stop smoking weed in the same way that heroin addicts use methadone to quit their habit.

We walked into Walgreens to get him basic necessities and he asked me to buy him some painkillers. I told him that I was not going to buy him drugs and he became irritated but quickly got over it. He asked for some candy instead and I obliged.

A few hours later we were back at the shelter and I had to leave him. He said thanks. I said be cool and that was that. Every interaction I have had with him since then has been the same way. He oscillates between his former self and some dreamy voiced person whom I wish I had never met. He goes out of his way to try to get me to remember events that I did not attend and he asks me for money. I cannot help my cousin.

I miss my cousin and it sucks to know that although he is still alive he will never come back. So many memories from our childhood are dead because he can’t remember that he was there with me. And right now I want to call him up but he doesn’t have a phone number. I want to swoop him up but he doesn’t have an address, so I write about it. I write until I don’t feel sick anymore. I write about it because really, there isn’t much else that I can do.

HerStory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-pAVMGrDs7A EPIC! That’s the first term that comes to mind when I think about the long journey of bringing “Herstory” to fruition. It was March 30, 2012 when I sat down to conduct my first interview with Niema Jordan in my shabby East Oakland living room. When we finished recording our conversation I thought the project, in its entirety, would be complete within two months. I was hella wrong.

So many bad things happened that my selective memory won’t even allow me to recall most of them. I do remember amicably parting ways with my original editor halfway through the project. I do remember at least two other people committing to the project only to back out once they were able to truly internalize the fact that I could not pay them. And well, everything else is a blank until I reconnected with a fellow Skyline High School graduate who possessed the skill set and the passion to bring Herstory back to life. It was February 11 when she committed to the project. Now seven weeks later it’s done.

I’m high right now. I mean I’m super elated. I’m glad that Herstory survived all of the abandonment that it was exposed to in its infantile stages. I’m glad that beauty still exists in this world and I am so grateful that I have crossed paths with three super dynamic black women that opened up to me and told me their stories. With no further ado this is Herstory:

The Delusions of a Creator

It dawns on me now how delusional an artist must be to persevere. When an artists’ work is rejected by company after company, publication after publication, and when he loses contest after contest then—in order for him to keep his dream vivid—he must draw the conclusion not that there is something wrong with his work, but that none of these highly respected entities know what they are doing. That his artwork is misunderstood. That there is a conspiracy in place so that his voice will never be heard. This may strike some as an illogical approach to determining why the artist has not yet found success but to the artist it is not a stretch. It is normal for the artist to think outside of the confining limitations of rational thought. After all, his identity is wholly based on his ability to do so. He never fit into any group that he felt he was supposed to belong to. He never travelled in the direction that would have made his life simple and bearable. At some point he became addicted to enthralling audiences with very well crafted portraits of his own suffering. The audiences always paid him with healthy rounds of applause but rarely with money. He always accepted this as his lot in life. He always embraced his role as that of the struggling artist until the day that he couldn’t.

One day he woke up and he had an epiphany. During this moment of clarity he realized that he was tired of being broke. He was tired of dreaming. He needed success to happen in a hurry. So naturally he began to think of creative ways to package his soul in order for it to be sold to the masses. The problem arises when the artist comes to terms with the fact that, up until this point, he has been solely responsible for everything that he has created. He has been his own producer, editor, manager, composer, publicist, etc. But now in order to make a career out of his passion, he must depend on other people. He must beg for admittance into a world that he thought he was familiar with. And he must place himself at the mercy of those who have never done what he can do, and could care less about the blood that had to be shed in order to tell his story in such an intense manner. The one question that they are all concerned with is; Will it sell?

He finds himself bewildered by the question because he has never really considered it. He notes to himself that it is a very necessary question to ponder if he wants to make money and he admits that he knows very little about the business side of art. So he waits. He waits for a call back. He waits to be published. He waits until he wins a contest. He waits to make money. He waits to be “discovered.”

During this time he tries to make his style similar to the artists who are currently “making it.” He notices that they all sound the same. They aren’t necessarily bad at what they do but nothing about them is different. After a while he gives up on this disingenuous pursuit of trying to sound like someone else. He says out loud to anyone that will listen that at some point he will change the world; he only needs the opportunity to do so. In his own mind, however, he knows that he must create this opportunity for himself. And deep in his subconscious mind—percolating through his soul—he has his doubts. He doubts if he possesses the energy necessary to change the world all by his lonesome.

He openly hates all of those who are “making it” and dismisses their styles as trite and irrelevant to the general betterment of mankind. He says to himself in secret that he is better than them. That they were born with connections that he himself will never have. That the ultimate fear of society is that one day he will find a way to release all of the voices in his head and then instead of the artist slowly going insane the masses would have to recognize how truly delusional they have become.

In this way the artist must be obsessed with his own individuality and cling to his craft in the same way that a dying man clings to his life. He must only be concerned with his own interpretations and his own perceptions of reality. He must be contrarian everyday. He must relish standing alone more than he relishes success. He must worship the art and not the money, which will always cast him out of society.

A Brown Girl's Lips

I like the bottom one the best. I like the way it hangs and glistens. I like the fact that she can’t conceal it. I like the black mole that decorates the left side. I like it when she smiles and when she pouts and when she laughs. I like it when she bites it…

The top one is civilized. It’s conservative. She presses it down on the bottom one when she is trying to concentrate. It doesn’t curve as much when she smiles. Her top lip is somewhat ashamed of itself. It doesn’t portray her emotions but it compliments the bottom one rather well.

Together they bring balance. The lady meets the savage. They come together to bring her melody into the world. They come together to make sure she always gets her way. The girl is so spoiled.  I could run from her but I could never leave her. She plays the games that I like to play.  She likes the dances that I know how to do, and she always moves in my direction. She rotates around me as I spin on my axis facing her constantly. The light that I generate illuminates her and she gives me divine purpose. We understand one another and what we don’t understand we’re ok with.

I don’t love her at the moment but I find her energy to be very necessary. She isn’t one of the beautiful ones that I mistakenly let go while drunk with the hardships of my past—quite the contrary—she is the one that needed time to grow.

I don’t control her—can’t control her, but she wants me to think that I can. I like the games that she plays. It took me a long time to really confess it to myself but I do. I play games too. The truth is that I follow her lead and this is the one thing that I could never allow her to know.

YB

Notes on Christopher Dorner

Christopher Dorner has been burned alive without receiving a trial or anything close to due process of law. As more audio evidence surfaces of police officers screaming; “Burn that mother fucker down!” The more it appears to resemble a public lynching. It baffles me because we constantly speak of progress being made on the racial front in America and we point to Barrack Obama sitting in the white house as proof of this but the Oscar Grants continue to happen. The Trayvon Martins continue to happen. The executions continue to happen.

I should say before I continue that Christopher Dorner was a terrible person at the time of his death. He was a narcissist who used corruption within the LAPD as a springboard to express his admiration for Ellen DeGeneres and Tim Tebow. He killed an innocent couple and one has to draw the conclusion that he did all of these things, in large part, for personal fame. Moreover, Christopher Dorner should not be considered a revolutionary. Nor should he be considered a martyr. With that being said Dorner should also never be called a liar.

He spoke of wanton discrimination within the Los Angeles Police Department and called out a fraternity in blue that had been allowed to operate with impunity even after the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots shined a spotlight on the department enabling the whole world to see the atrocities that they were allowed to get away with. And even if we dismiss “The Christopher Dorner Manifesto” as crazy talk from an attention-hoarding lunatic, we surely cannot dismiss the fact that police departments around the state of California were aiming to kill him. Bringing Dorner to justice was never an option. Torrance PD proved this when they shot two Hispanic women on sight—one of them 71 years old—because they thought they were the fugitive. This should indicate to the general public that law enforcement feared what Dorner might say in trial or the in letters that he may have sent to loved ones on the outside. The officers who he would have surely implicated feared for their careers. Basically Dorner knew too much therefore he had to go.

In instances such as this one we must be careful not to read the world as if it were a Marvel comic book. That is, there is no such thing as pure good versus pure evil. We cannot say that Dorner was justified for targeting the families of the same police officers that he claimed ruined him. We also cannot say that the LAPD was justified when they cornered the accused cop killer into a cabin and shot several canisters of flammable tear gas at the structure until it started a blaze that ultimately burned him alive. (For the record I am aware of accounts of a single gunshot being heard sometime shortly after the blaze was ignited which would suggest that Dorner might have actually committed suicide. However it doesn’t really matter. The intentions of the LAPD were to burn him up. There was no attempt to wait him out or to thoroughly negotiate his surrender).

Christopher Dorner is dead but justice surely hasn’t been served. With each murder of someone deemed a terrorist be it Osama Bin Laden, George Zimmerman’s worst nightmare Trayvon Martin, or whom ever else, we move closer and closer to functioning like the fascist countries of the olden days and those third world countries that we are supposed to be showing “the light of democracy.” As a nation we need to quickly check ourselves before our collective belief in the constitution itself is murdered by the disenchanted masses.

-YB

Lines From the Piedmont Rose Garden

I sit down at the Piedmont Rose Garden but the roses do not grow; they do not blossom, they do not bloom. My inspiration hath been circumcised, butchered for its own good. It is early February and very few things can grow in the cold. The grass grows more slowly and the soil clings to itself.

Behold for I am lost-

My heart groweth cold but at least it still grows. It bends toward a sun that hasn’t been seen in years. The water in the lake is cold but not frozen. My thoughts create steam. The steam dissipates, and then I have nothing. I have nostalgia like so many baseball cards hidden underneath my bed at night. If it can’t be seen then it can’t be stolen.

The roots of the tree before me plunge downward even further than my soul does. I see cowards in the darkness. I see the weak and I distance myself from them hoping that this will make me strong. My distance disallows me to follow people so it can’t be entirely bad.

I see the ugliest things in the world wrapped in the most beautiful skin imaginable. I touched her lips before I kissed her. I sinned with her long before we lay down. I got up first. With sweat beading on the tip of my nose and soaking my brow I opened the window and allowed the winter chill soothe my flesh.

-YB

Bay Area FM Radio Has Officially Lost Its Soul

 

If you’ve tuned in to Bay Area FM radio over the past couple of years you’ll have noticed that it has quite literally lost its soul. When I was in high school there were two hardcore soul stations and now we have none. In the most heartbreaking case of corporate takeovers in recent memory Entercom Inc bought out 102.9 KBLX.

KBLX was that station that you hated when you were little because it was the only thing your parents ever listened to (grown folks music) yet when you finally got your own car you found yourself instinctively dialing it in as one of your six favorites. KBLX never played rap music. If anything they would take a hip-hop song remove the lyrics and add a saxophone solo. I do believe KBLX was very instrumental in the underground unwrapped movement (pun intended). Things, however, were doomed to fall apart. When I turn to the station now I hear the Notorious BIG, Will Smith, and other rap songs played by disc jockeys that look nothing like me. When I listen to “The New” KBLX on the way to work in the morning I don’t hear my Cousin Kevin Brown airing live from San Francisco I am forced to listen to a prerecorded broadcast of Steve Harvey. It’s an utter disgrace.

98.1 Kiss FM was also a soul station but it played more upbeat records than KBLX. If KBLX was playing Marvin Gaye then Kiss was playing The Gap Band. If Kiss had your head rocking to Teena Marie then KBLX was grooving to Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. But now the flavor on Kiss 98.1 has been diluted. For some reason they thought it was a good idea to play 1980’s punk rock like Blondie and Eurythmics. It’s so bizarre because no formal announcement has been made as to why the change has taken place. Faithful listeners are left scratching their heads and most of them wanting to tune out but there is really nowhere else to go.

What happened to black radio with positive and charismatic black disc jockeys? Corporations are going to continue to ravage our African-American culture until we’re left with nothing unless we do something about it. We need black radio back, black owned businesses, and a sense of black worth that is not entrenched in consumerism. Dr. Martin Luther King saw the power in Black Radio over 45 years ago. It’s a shame that this too has been taken from us.

-YB

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdnMfGtAxM&feature=player_embedded]

Notes on MLK Day

 

Nothing says nostalgia like taking a day off from work and sleeping in. Adult life is all about catching up and today I find myself catching up on all the hours of sleep that I have missed stressing out over issues that I have very little control over. It’s not a Saturday morning and Garfield and Friends as well as The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show have stopped airing a long time ago but I still feel at peace. Never mind the fact that I have pick up my daughter in a few hours and the rest of my week will be crazy hectic because none of those things matter at present. I’m lying under the covers in my underwear with the blinds to my windows closed so that rays of light must fight to enter my space. I have shelter from the unusual California cold and I am writing. I said I am writing, I am doing that thing that I fell in love with decades ago. On the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. I am expressing myself in a way that would have gotten my enslaved ancestors killed. As I put these letters to this page I realize that in terms of the very foundation of this country I am committing a subversive act. I live to rebel. There is no other feeling like the rush of blood that I get from fighting back. I have always been hypnotized by the notion of going into a forbidden place and letting everyone in there know that I have arrived. To write lines from within this skin is the equivalent of being a vanguard soldier and I will be on the battlefield until I die.

YB

Artistic Suicide Watch

How did I become so afraid? My manuscript is somewhere deep in my subconscious mind buried by my fear of commitment. That story that I began so many years ago hurts when I try to write it down. I don’t like stirring up old ghosts but I know it is the only way that I can truly release them. I’m scared of failure.

I have lived everyday of my life surrounded by death and violence. I have taken a natural attitude towards gunshots, HIV, and the threat of false detainment but somehow that unwritten manuscript frightens me to my core. Those many thousand words have remained trapped in my heart and they have become a burden on my soul only because I allow them to be. At some point I have to believe in my story enough to let it feel the rays of sun that are awaiting its presence here on Earth. I must somehow release the puss from the gory wounds of my life so that the youth of today may be forewarned and so that all of my peers who suffer in the same manner may be consoled knowing that they were never alone.

I run for at least three miles everyday from my past and when I am standing still I hide behind a goofy smile. I live the life of a coward standing on a bridge moments away from committing artistic suicide. Will I jump, will I continue to run, will I hide, or will I finally confront my pain and write?

What does the future hold?

YB