Beauty or the Brain?

"And it’s not that we haven’t desired our AfroBoHo icons (damn near all nerds in reality) in sexual terms — I’m thinking of the Stephen Shames photo of a bare-chested Huey Newton holding a copy of a Bob Dylan album (which incidentally graces the cover of Robert Reid-Pharr’s new book Once You Go Black), and have you seen Zadie Smith lately, for that matter — but we are disturbed when our heroes speak back to our desires."
Mark Anthony Neal



I've been trying to figure out a way to say this for some time.

Years ago, the wonderful writer and editor Carol Taylor had a sign up in her NYC loft that read "Eroticize Intelligence." To me that had a number of meanings. One was to recognize that the best 'sexual organ' in the body is the brain: if your mind's not engaged, no matter what you're doing with the rest of the body, it's not going to be truly 'hot.' Also, since Carol is both very smart and very sexy, to me it meant that there was not and should not be some kind of division between those two attributes: one can put Einstein's brain in (insert name of favorite hottie here)'s body, and...umm... 'double your pleasure/double your fun" as it were.

So much of what passes for 'mainstream black culture' today celebrates the one-dimensional 'thug' image. Erotically that falls in with old-line stereotypes of blacks (men in particular) as purely physical beings, animals without brains, great in bed but dumb as dirt. You want them to be waiting for you when you come home at night for an evening's throwdown, but the idea of actually trying to talk to them, having a conversation, or being seen in public with them is anathema. Introduce them to your friends? No way. And lord help you if you try to have a meal with them (other than a McBurger combo meal) since they probably don't know how to deal with silverware.

Somehow this dumb brute image has returned, and we are (being forced to?) aspire to it.

We live with other stereotypes as well, namely that good looking people obviously can't be smart. Or that it is somehow 'wrong' to think of intelligent people as physical beings, crush objects for both their brains and their 'brawn' or whatever. It's "big head vs little head" (for us guys), one thing or the other. Either they're brainy or their beautiful, and never the twain will meet. And the idea that someone smart is also a physical being filled with desires and needs? Disgusting, Shocking and Impossible!!

Frack that!

There are any number of (black) people who are whip-smart and slap-yo-momma gorgeous. It's time we recognize that and honor them. I've had the pleasure of meeting and in some cases becoming friends with folk who I find both physically and mentally attractive. It is one hell of a rush to see that mix, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. (I've considered listing some of my favorite 'hot brain' folks but am afraid it would just get too long...although I really do feel the ...um...urge?...to give a shout out to Michael Eric Dyson, my friends John and Ernest, Elizabeth Alexander, Tayari Jones, the late Ed Bradley, who I want to be like when I grow up....see what I mean, and I haven't even got started in good yet!)

I don't feel that I am 'trivializing' these people or their brain power to say that these folks are also p-h-Y-n-e as well. If anything, the combination is and should be a great turn-on. There is nothing better than having an intense and stimulating conversation and intellectual interaction, followed up by an intense and stimulating physical interaction, where you give your bodies a chance to speak.

I'm with Carol: Black Nerds of the world Unite! It's time to "Eroticize Intelligence"! You have nothing to lose (not even the horn-rimmed glasses -- in fact keep 'em on: They're sexy!)

Late Summer Reading

One of my sisters and I are both members of the Black Expressions Book Club (I think she joined before I did). It is one of those 'Book-of-the-Month' type clubs that sells 'exclusive' (i.e. inexpensive hardback) copies of titles by African-American authors. My sister was on the verge of dropping them, however, because of her disappointment in the types of books the club choses to promote. Most issues are filled with a great deal of what the book business calls 'urban fiction:' stories from 'da hood,' featuring "thugs" and their women; or variations on the 'girlfriend' genre, made popular by Terri McMillan. A couple of things that don't fit these molds are there as well but for the most part these are our choices -- in addition to Christian literature, cookbooks, a few financial books, and a selection of DVDs.

Since in the main I don't read "urban lit" I really don't want to comment on it. The subject matter for the most part doesn't appeal to me, and looking through the pages of some of the works, the style (...or lack thereof...) of the writing doesn't appeal to me either, although there are exceptions. The Library's Young Adult/Youth Services person here speaks highly of Tyrell, by author Coe Booth. By its cover and subject matter (a 15-year old living in a homeless shelter tries to keep his family together and avoid the easy money temptation of the drug trade) it looks a good deal like any number of other 'Urban' books, but the quality of the writing and character development, it's refusal to supply a stock solution to the Tyrell's problems, make it a cut above the rest. So you really can't judge a book by it's cover.

I've recently been (re)reading work by black (and for the most part male) novelists of the 1960s and '70's: John A. Williams (photo at left), William Demby, William Melvin Kelley, John Oliver Killens and Rosa Guy, all of them very good writers, 'political' without being polemical, writers 'of their times' (and the Black Arts Movement) in the best sense of the word. And, sadly, for the most part not very well known to many readers today (Rosa Guy is much better known as a Young Adult author these days). The great wave of black women writers that came after them, with Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Ntozake Shange at its crest, seems to have washed them away from the collective memory. I thought this was a shame, and was curious about why that happened.

I've been thinking about this since The Other Half recently asked me for a list of '25 books every black man should read before age 40' -- one of those impossible tasks that folks ask people to perform on a regular basis. He was asking because his co-workers (or at least the black men under 40 he works with) think he's pretty intelligent and up on things, and wonder how he got to be that way.

The question really is impossible, of course. There are so many great titles to choose from, and how do you limit it to 25? And, for me at least, it tends to change from week to week, as I think of more things which excited me and lead, I suspect, to the formation of my world view. I asked some writer friends for suggestions as well for suggestions as well. Here's mine (not in any real order):

1 The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Dubois

2 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

3 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

4 The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

5 For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange

6 Native Son by Richard Wright

7 Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

8 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

9 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

10 The Autobiography of Malcolm X

11 Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady

12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

13 Fences by August Wilson

14 Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown

15 Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

16 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

17 I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

19 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

20 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

21 The Constitution/Declaration of Independence

22 The Plague by Albert Camus

23 Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan

24 A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J Gaines

25 Cane by Jean Toomer

As you might imagine, these are some of the works that deeply influenced me, helping to make me the person I am today. Not all of them are by African-American authors, or even had black people in mind when they were written, but all, I think, tell us something about the nation and the world we live in, and offer ways with which to navigate through it. You may also note I've included some works usually considered "women's books" to the list. It seemed essential for me to do that (their works have helped to save my life over the years).

FYI: Authors most frequently mentioned (their names/works came up more than twice) when I asked this question of friends and fellow writers were: Alice Walker, August Wilson, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, John Edgar Wideman, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, W. E. B. Dubois, and Walter Mosley.

Most frequently mentioned texts (again they got more than two mentions) were: Works by Baldwin and Wideman (people said "Anything" by these two), Black Boy and Native Son by Richard Wright, theater by August Wilson ("Collected Plays," Fences, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone"), works of Langston Hughes (Collected Poems, The Big Sea, The Ways of White Folks), novels by Walter Moseley (his 'Easy Rawlins' and 'Fearless Jones' series), The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye (Morrison), The Color Purple (Walker), The Fire Next Time (Baldwin), and DuBois'The Souls of Black Folk.


Emperor Marcus says: Go Forth and Read!

Barry, Barry, Barry!

I want to extend my heartiest congratulations to Mr. Barry Bonds, new Major League Baseball home run king. Last night he broke Hank Aaron's record of 755 career home runs. His is an amazing achievement, no matter how you slice it.

One day, I hope we will have a serious, sustained conversation about steroids, and other performance-enhancing drugs and other technological assistants (like Lance Armstrong's oxygen tent). For now however, thanks in part to the radioactive combination of Race and Sports, it doesn't seem possible to do that. All folks can do now it seems is scream at Barry Bonds.

People talk about Bonds getting bigger over the years (So have I, btw: it's hard for even me to believe that I could once pack myself into a pair of size 29 jeans, but I did it in 1984). His shoe size has grown. And look at that big bald head!


These same folks also forget that, so far, Barry has not tested positive for steroids (It's also difficult to say how, exactly, steroids would assist someone in hitting a little round ball with a big wooden stick. Seems to me you might need a bit of skill and talent for that in the first place). Nor do many remember the death threats, bad press, and snubbing from the then Baseball Commissioner that Henry Aaron got as he approached (Baltimore's own) Babe Ruth's "sacred record."

Okay, so Barry's not a 'nice person.' He's 'short on people skills.' He's 'surly' ... although somehow the Giants got him to dress up as Paula Abdul for their "American Idol" style mild hazing of the rookies this past year...I guess it's hard to be surly when you're up in a dress!





Sadly, this is often the case when a person of color doesn't want to play "the game." They become the "big scary black man" of SOME peoples obsessions (cf my previous post!) I'm reminded of the Baltimore Orioles' own 'surly' superstar, Eddie Murray. I remember the chants of "Ed-die! Ed-die" in the stands during his glory years. He too was not a great schmoozer of the local sports press, and was chided for being a 'dull' interview, non-responsive, aloof, surly.

When Ted Williams was here and inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way I'm proud to be in his company that way. I was never one much on words. For me to focus a lot on the individual, that's not the way I learned to play the game. Baseball's a team game. You win as a team, you lose as team. You also do so many things together, but it is not an "I" thing. That is one reason why I didn't maybe have the friendship with the media maybe like I could have. But I had to do what I had to do to make myself successful. That's what I learned, and that's what I preach today to my kids. And I still believe it. (Eddie Murray's Hall of Fame induction speech, 7/27/2003). As his Wikipedia entry notes, Murray also gave kids from Baltimore's Northwood Baseball League a dozen autographed bats, 24 autographed baseballs and 100 autographed Hall of Fame programs. Not bad for someone "surly and aloof."

One of my co-workers fits the profile of the big scary black man, tall, bald, thick. He's like a human wall coming toward you. The guy also has a great personality, very warm and friendly, and is, in some ways, just a 'big kid.' I'm sure that this is really him, that his ebullience is genuine, but I've also found myself wondering how much of his personality was formed in order to put others at ease, so they would NOT be afraid of him. Not everyone has this ability to be 'nice', however, in order to allay other's fears. Should they then be judged negatively for that?


It's also a dangerous thing for baseball fans to romanticize too much about 'the good old days', although it seems to be woven into the fabric of the game. Babe Ruth was overweight, and had huge appetites for food, alcohol, and women. Ty Cobb was a racist (as were many other players of that era), and flat out mean to many people. While sports radio blares on and on about putting an asterisk next to Barry's name in the record books, I and many others wonder if we should also be considering doing the same thing next to the names of all those 'greats' who never had to face the amazing cornucopia of talent that was the Negro Leagues.

As Dave Zirin commented to me prior to his program here at the Library in Baltimore, white sports figures are usually 'given their humanity.' They are allowed to make mistakes, be fragile, and are also allowed to redeem themselves. Black and other players of color are seen as extensions of the equipment, simply cogs in a system, and often interchangeable (this is particularly true of Latino players). They...we (African-Americans in general, and black men in particular)...are something more than human when they're successful; something less than human when they fall.

In the hyperbolic world of sports talk, people's masks of politeness and correctness slip very easily. Folks think they can get away with saying just about anything. I urge us all to pay attention to the commentary that will be going around for the next week or so, or until the end of the season, as Bonds starts to approach 760 homers. Genuinely listen to what people have to say about him -- and think about what their comments says about them -- and us.

Bravo Barry!



Poetic coverage ("...on a cool Tuesday night near the shores of San Francisco Bay, 755 finally perished at the hands of a relentless, controversial invader from the west named Barry Lamar Bonds. Seven fifty-five is gone. Behold, 756.") from the Washington Post

Commentary from Salon's "King" Kauffman

Barry-mania from the San Francisco Chronicle

Dave Zirin on Barry ("756*")

(Still) Brutal Imagination

I was going to blog about other things (like this week's buzz word 'infrastructure'), but then:

In 2001, Cornelius Eady published a great book of poetry, Brutal Imagination. Written in the persona of the imaginary black criminal Susan Smith invented to take the blame for the drowning death of her children, the book also takes on the voice of other African-American stereotypes (like Uncle Tom and Steppin Fetchit), and ends with "The Running Man" series, about a bookish young black man who becomes a criminal. It is one of those books of poems that is as moving and satisfying as a good novel.

I thought about that book on hearing about the lastest news from Florida State Representative Bob Allen. Allen has been charged with solicitiation of an undercover policeman in a public park. Turns out he didn't offer the policeman $20 for a blowjob, and really want sex: he was just afraid -- of Big Scary Black Men...and also the weather:

State Representative Bob Allen says he was feeling nervous and offered sex to get away from a man he didn't trust.

"This (undercover officer) is a pretty stocky black guy, and there's other black guys around in the park that—you know!"

Allen said he was also frightened of the weather. So he fled to the men's room.

"I said the building is safer than staying out here, so I went back in and I sat down."

He said he offered the man in the men's room what he thought he wanted, just so he could get out safely.

"I went ahhh -- I'm about to be a statistic. You catch all kinds of people, so a legislator is like whoa! You know, especially one that's the (police union) guy of the year...this is too ironic!"


As one of those 'stocky black guys', all I can say is, "Yeah, Ironic. That's the word I was looking for."


When called, I come.
My job is to get things done.
I am piecemeal.
I make my living by taking things.

"How I Got Born" by Cornelius Eady
From BRUTAL IMAGINATION (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2001)

"Big Brother/Texas" (Black LGBT Writer Edition)

...or as poet Marvin K. White (shown at right posing for the paparazzi) called it, "Survivor, Lake Buchanan"

Back from an incredible few days outside Austin, Texas, at a retreat initiated by Redbone Press publisher Lisa Moore. Together with a reading at the Victory Grill in Austin, the weekend allowed a number of the authors she's published over the years to get together to meet, talk, share work, and bond (aka eat, drink, and live together), in a house overlooking the magnificent Lake Buchanan in the Texas Hill Country.



So often we hear: black men and black women don't get along. Gay men and lesbians can't work together. Get a bunch of black people together and they'll snipe and tear each other apart.






Artists and writers feud with each other all the time. People from different disciplines don't share a language with which to talk to each other....We all 'know' these are stereotypes, but sometimes it takes something as powerful as a weekend like this to bring home how wrong they really are. And also how there can be 'another way' for all of us to relate to ourselves and to each other. It was also wonderful and rare that artists from across so many different disciplines were able to talk and share work: poets, fiction writers, academics, visual and performance artists, critics...we really are the world! Most of the people there fell into more than one of these categories.




The venue was comfortable (even the couch I crashed on was wonderfully fluffy) with a stunning view of Lake Buchanan. My only caveat about the whole thing was how far FAR back in the hills the place was, and the two-lane highway => dirt road => goat path we had to take to get there. You know you're not in the city any more when a rabbit sits in the middle of the road and refuses to move for an SUV!

Otherwise, it was magnificent. And much too short. More, please, Ms Moore! What do you say: Same time next year?
Lisa and Eunice record for posterity

Farewells

Ingmar Bergman.

Almost singlehandedly, he turned "movies" into "films," and a space for serious philosophical exploration - then moved on to direct operas and write fiction. He should also be honored for introducing the world to Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, and the Wizard of Light, cinematographer, Sven Nykvist (shown above with Bergman).


Tom Snyder

I remember staying up late to watch Synder's "Tomorrow Show" when I was growing up (I even saw his famous interview with Charles Manson, but was fortunately both too young and too tired to be as disturbed by it as I probably should have been). A strange man with weird hair, smoking constantly, with a wild laugh. But also someone very rare nowadays: An intelligent talk show host with a point of view that actually talked to his guests. It was like watching a conversation with the smart but crazy uncle everyone tells the kids to stay away from. Sometimes you didn't know what he would do, or what might happen on the show...no I take that back. You did know a couple of things: you wouldn't be bored, and you'd be both entertained and enlightened by Tom and his guests. How far both late night television and talk shows have fallen!

ADDENDA: News of the passing of Michaelangelo Antonioni hit the press on Tuesday, making Monday the 30th a particularly dark day for film fans. Again a very serious artist (more dour in interviews than Bergman, who could be surprisingly sunny considering his work), and one not afraid of occasionally maddening ambiguity (the [in]famous ending of “L’Eclisse” for example). Like Bergman, Antonioni used movies to ask questions, to make us think, however uncomfortable that might be, and not to have us just sit back and watch disengaged.

I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain. I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case...I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. Ingmar Bergman

On the (Writer's) Block: Fear

I can't go on. I'll go on. Samuel Beckett



As Joan Acocella pointed out in an article in The New Yorker, Writers Block in some ways began with Coleridge in the early 1800s, and developed into a wide spread disease in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The romantic image of the Suffering Artist, struggling to reconnect with The Muse flourished. It didn't hurt that many American writers of the early 20th Century -- Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, etc -- were also prodigious drinkers (Tom Dardis' excellent The Thirsty Muse recounts some of their stories). There's nothing like being blotto to keep The Muse away, and destroy whatever artistic discipline they may have had. Interestingly, James Baldwin, not known for shying away from a good party, apparently also used to get up and write every morning, no matter what carousing he'd done the night before, and hungover guests would be awakened to the sound of him banging away on his typewriter.

I admire the dedication and work ethic of writers like Anthony Trollope who wrote a set number of words everyday before going to work in the post office, or Joyce Carol Oates, who can apparently write a novel while most of us are taking a shower and eating breakfast, or even Harry Potter's Mom, J. K Rowling, writing the seven title series at approximately 2 1/4 years per book. Me? I'm not mad at 'em, but, let's face it, I tend to be pretty lazy.

But I've been thinking about this subject, not so much because I'm blocked -- MY tendency is to do everything BUT write, rather than not being able to do so: I need to put in more Butt in Chair time -- but because it comes up from time to time whenever writers or artists get together. As always, I'm haunted by quotes: Samuel R. Delany's comment that "Not writing can be as much of a habit as writing" and Audre Lorde's command to her students to "Forget 'The Muse.' There is NO MUSE! You just sit down and work."

I wonder too, how much of our blockage (or my own hesitations) are based on Fear. Fear of failure, fear that we are exposing too much of ourselves in our work, even with names changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Even a fear of success: I've often said to people who have hesitated before applying for positions or grants and the like, "What's the worst thing that could happen? You'll get it and then you'll be forced to do the work!" (Amazing how much easier it is to tell someone something than to do it yourself, huh?:)

And there is that very large fear that the work is not "just right" or "perfect." Waiting for it to be perfect, or working on something until it is 'Perfect' can be a huge stumbling block. I'm not referring to being slapdash or shoddy, what I mean is, to take a personal example, is literally changing just one word in a story at least ten times before thinking it worth while to be sent out. Perhaps I was channeling Flaubert!


John Shannon and Becky Schreiber of Schreiber Shannon Associates (link to their old website, soon to be updated) closed out the 2007 Maryland Library Leadership Institute with the following quote from Marianne Williamson. Parts of this I'd heard before, but it remains incredibly powerful, and resonates very, very deeply with me:



Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles

So: What am I hiding by avoiding work? What 'old tapes' are playing in my head telling me I'm not worthy which stop me from writing, which hold me back from being my best? Interesting questions....

Eyes on Texas: The Redbone Press Revue

It's gonna be hot (and not just because the weatherman is calling for a weekend in the 90's!)


THE REDBONE REVUE: A READING OF BLACK LGBT WRITERS!
Sponsored by ALLGO

When: Friday, July 20, 2007
Time: Reading – 8:00 p.m. / Dance – 11:00 p.m.
Where: The Historic Victory Grill [1104 East 11th Street – Austin, TX 78702]
Cost: Donations Accepted!
Contact: Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano – (512) 472-2001 / lorenzo@allgo.org

For the first time ever, Austin will bear witness to a gathering of some of the most prolific LGBT Black writers in the country, the RedBone Revue. Hailing from across the United States, RedBone Press authors include: New York-based Samiya Bashir, Austin-based sharon bridgforth, Los Angeles-based Ernest Hardy, Baltimore-based Reginald Harris, New York-based G. Winston James, Austin-based Ana-Maurine Lara, D.C.-based Lisa C. Moore, and Oakland-based Marvin K. White.

A dance will immediately follow the performance with a live DJ spinning Hip Hop, R&B, Salsa, Merengue, Reggae and Reggaetón. So come prepared to experience a one-of-a-kind evening of artistic breadth and non-stop dancing until 2:00 a.m.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ARTISTS!

Melvin Harris 1903-2007

(with Melvin in Annapolis, Thanksgiving 2005)

It's difficult for me to even begin to think about all the things I could say about my 'Uncle Melvin.' First off, to make it easier on myself and others I've been referring to him as my grandfather for a number of years. This is not accurate. He was, in fact, my grandfather's uncle-in-law, and married to my great aunt (i.e. my great grandfather's sister), Edna Harris. The explication of this blood tie, however, doesn't really do him justice because he and Edna were my main 'parents,' raising me here in Baltimore from when I was three years old. "Grandfather" while not to-the-letter true, comes closest to the mark. "Father" has some level of accuracy as well.

I would joke sometimes that underneath his somewhat gruff exterior -- a friend from high school still recalls the rough-voiced grilling he got from Melvin on the phone the first time my friend called our house -- was an equally gruff interior. Because under that, the man was a real pushover. In his later years his edges smoothed somewhat, so most people knew his softer side -- although he still had a tendency to ask you questions that made you uncertain if he was concerned or just wanted to get in your business.

To the end he looked to be in his 80's, perhaps 90. He always credited his religious faith for this (Heathen that I am, I feel moved to add that it's not clear how much credit for his being 'well preserved' should also go to his occasional shots of 100 proof Old Grand Dad as well). He managed to live on his own very well up to last fall, cooking his own meals, traveling on senior citizen bus trips to Atlantic City (where he'd spend his $10 in quarters, walk the boardwalk, eat at a buffet, and be ready to return home), complain about the Orioles and the Ravens. His wife of over 50 years, Edna, died a few years ago (at age 102), and he had a '90-something' girlfriend, whom he would talk to on the phone once or twice a day between their visits to each other's senior apartments. Many of the women in his building would cook for him: later after his move to a nursing facility where his great granddaughter works, all the women on staff there fell in love with him as well, calling him 'Pop Pop.' One of the last big events in Melvin's life was to meet his infant great great grandchild. He held her for a while, then both decided to take a little nap together.

Melvin decided to wait until after age 100 to become 'famous': he was part of an article on "Hack" cab drivers in the Baltimore City Paper; feted by the Pennsylvania Avenue Branch of the Pratt Library during their "Salute to The Avenue" for his reminiscences of that once bustling entertainment hub (I still remember him calling Billie Holiday, "That girl who used to live around the corner"!); appeared in a film on Baltimore Past and Present directed by teen members of the Wide Angle Youth Media program
; and, this past March, cut the ribbon to open Maryland General Hospital's Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) Unit.



Melvin slipped away very quietly last Friday, July 6, 2007. The women at the FutureCare facility where he'd been living since February said they had gone in to check on him early that morning and he said he was fine. When they went back into the room, they thought he'd just drifted off to sleep. And so he had. Although 'expected' his loss was still a surprise for all of us. He seemed perfectly capable of going on and on forever

I cannot repeat Robert Hayden's famous lines from "Those Winter Sundays" here -- many of us were able to thank Melvin for all he had done and meant to us over the course of his many years. For that I am grateful. Things got a little tense around the time I came out to him in the '80s (some friends even questioned why I would do that, since people his age 'Wouldn't Understand'). Years later, as he became more comfortable with who I am, he told me that he considered my life-partner to be like 'another grandson' to him. I nearly cried.

I am also grateful to have grown up around someone from the Old School, even if I did hate it when I was younger, as well as someone who so easily navigated between the "Saturday night social and the Sunday morning service," to borrow a phrase from Albert Murray's Stomping the Blues, listening to jazz and pop on Saturday night (with a set up of scotch, braunschwager, Limburger cheese and crackers), then listening to gospel or going to church Sunday morning. This was the range of Life, and neither contradicted or canceled the other out. Quite obviously my continuing love of all forms of music comes in large part from him.

My sister sent this along after hearing of Melvin's passing:

Reggie,

When you called me this morning with the news regarding Uncle Melvin all I could do was smile. There is a feeling of peace and calmness that fills my heart when I think of his transition to the future.

He enjoyed GOOD MUSIC, GOOD FOOD, GOOD COMPANY, GOOD HUMOR, GOOD LIQUOR, AND GOOD WOMEN..........Uncle Melvin LIVED!
He truly shared his life with all of us and gave us "little pearls of wisdom" just when we needed them. Whether we thought so or not!

Uncle Melvin was the only person I know or will ever know in my lifetime with a total re-call from memory every street and intersection (including the Beltways) of the City of Baltimore. He took with him the grid to the City of Baltimore.. and I mean how it was back in the day and how it is today! I know this for a fact because I called him one day when I was downtown trying to find the Maryland Board of Nursing office that is located out near Baltimore County somewhere. I called "Unc", told him where I was, where I needed to be and he talked me through the city all the way out to where I needed to be.

I am humbled and honored to have known a man such as Uncle Melvin. My life has been enriched so much having known him. I thank God for the Father, Uncle, Griot, Confidante, and Friend. I will carry in my heart through eternity.

God has allowed me to hold court with a King and be in the presence of Royalty in my lifetime.

Marva.

A wake for Melvin Harris will be held on Thursday, July 12, 2007 from 4-8 pm at Miller's Metropolitan Chapel, 1639 N Broadway, Baltimore Maryland (410-327-2777)

Services will be held Friday, July 13, 2007, (wake at 10:30 am, funeral at 11 am) at Macedonia Baptist Church, 718 W. Lafayette Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland (410-669-5776). After the service, we'll be traveling to Annapolis to place Melvin next to Edna.

*****

Here's a 'Melvin poem' from 10 Tongues which I last read at the American Library Association Convention's Many Voices One Nation reading in Washington DC this past June:


The Reading

Words remain a mystery to him,
forced to turn from one-room school-

house to fields after Grade 8.
Words came from preachers,

God, some unseen
somewhere else.

And now this boy
approaching middle age,

reading him a poem
about the past:

the years of bouncing vans
across the South,

eating in the back of restaurants,
pissing in the woods,

sleeping in the truck or with strangers
while the white owner settled into a hotel;

the taxi driver playing ferryman
for others across the city,

called first Colored, then Negro, then
Black (he hated that),

now African-American -
(We are a People of Color he still insists);

the ones who never tipped,
the whites who called out Nigger from the window,

then turned and said, Oh,
I don't mean you;

the women gone:
mother lost to madness,

first wife lost to madness,
second wife consumed

by old age uncomfortably
like madness;

gone:
son in California,

daughters dead, grandchildren
seeds scattered on a shifting breeze.

One alone is left,
not even his blood,

her kin, dropped
on them like Isaac

on Abraham and Sarah past the age
when both could think of flowering,

one who returns
with increased infrequency,

to talk, cook,
watch a ball game,

half-listen to his stories,
the cast them later into lines upon a page -

for all his book learning
dumbstruck before the wisdom of this man

called illiterate
behind his back.

The voice reading quivers,
stops.

You write that?
A nod and shrug,

a whispered Yes. Pages fold
with a sound like cracking eggshells.

He nods and clears his throat.
Read another one, he says.

Carrying On

I am very pleased to be part of this project. It is our first attempt at a bibliography like this (so be kind!:) -- the next edition should be even better. At only $10 each, it's a real steal -- Get 'em while they're hot!

Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books is a seminal reference work, featuring over 600 titles by and about black Same-Gender-Loving (SGL) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer-identified (LGBTQ) writers and culture, as well as interviews and articles about black SGL authors.

A must-have for booksellers, librarians, academics, community-based organizations, book clubs and readers interested in black LGBTQ books and authors, all proceeds from sales of Carry the Word will benefit Fire & Ink, Inc., supporter and advocate for SGL writers of African descent. Carry the Word is co-published by Vintage Entity Press and RedBone Press.

Steven Fullwood and Lisa Moore talk about Carry the Word on GayRadio.com

Purchase the book (PayPal via Vintage Entity Press)

Dancin' Dancin' Dancin'!

The aspect of 'civilization' that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism - both of which are fairly recent innovations - but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order...Ecstatic rituals still build group cohesion, but when they build it among subordinates - peasants, slaves, women, colonized people - the elite calls out the troops.

Barbara Ehrenreich -- Dancing in the Streets

I purposefully took a copy of writer Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets, along when The Other Half and I went on a recent visit to Chicago, because I knew I would see its subject in action. In addition to catching up with friends and visiting a city we enjoy but had not visited in at least five years, the Other Half and I also went to attend the festivities surrounding the International Mr. Leather contest(Link NSFW) in general, and the Old School Dance hosted by the black leathermen’s group, Onyx, on Saturday night in particular.

Subtitled "A History of Collective Joy," Eherenreich’s book, looks at how Western cultures at first enjoyed large group celebrations, and their eventual suppression by forces both religious and economic. Although we see some outbursts of this kind of thing from time to time -- Carnival for example, especially in Brazil (and pre-Katrina New Orleans) and Junkanoo in The Bahamas -- it is a rare thing for those of us in the ‘civilized world’ to let our hair down and dance, frolic, play, with two or three hundred, or a thousand strangers, who by the force of the revels suddenly turn into our closest friends.

This Eherenreich feels is a shame, and possibly psychologically damaging. She notes the interesting correlation between the ‘birth of melancholy’ (what we now call depression) in Europe and the end of the feast days, saints days, and other group rituals brought on by various puritanical sects during the Reformation and afterwards. Now it seems that only at sporting events, football in the US, soccer (football) in the UK and elsewhere around the world, or large rock concerts, does that same level of group ecstasy reappear. And even in the world of sports, where collective actions both bad (‘Hooliganism’) and banal (remember The Wave?) have sprung up organically, with the rise in ticket prices and the continued rise in ticket prices ($25 - $65 for our woe-filled Orioles, unless you want to sit in the nosebleed section) and introduction pricey sky boxes geared more for corporate schmoozing than for watching a game, this outlet too appears to be endangered.

(Oddly enough, not long after coming back, I woke up to the sound of my partner watching clips of the tribute to Freddy Mercury on You-Tube. Watching a stadium filled with fans screaming and clapping in unison to “Find me somebody to love” – now that’s ecstasy.)

I’ve experienced such bursts of collective joy a number of times, and usually on a dance floor, surrounded by happy party goers, heartbeat taken over by the driving pulse of a wicked bass line. The only times I regularly see glimpses of Dr. King's 'Beloved Community' is on a dance floor.

Although Eherenrich makes only passing mention of it, gay men have developed a series of events of group ecstasy (in more ways than one), the much maligned Circuit Party. Although I’m not a White Party in Miami kind of guy, I have been to Montreal's amazing festival, DiversCite, where thousands of people gather around four stages erected in the streets at the edge of the city's "Gay Village" to dance and bounce to a range of musics.

While not an official ‘circuit party’ IML it does boast one of the grand dances of the year, the annual Onyx Men of Color Old School Dance Party on Saturday night. Dark, crowded, loud -- glorious -- it is always one of the highlights of the weekend, and M and I have a great time. Mid-way through the party we were surrounded by a room full of men (and some women) in various forms of (un) dress or costume/drag/fetish gear dancing, cheering, and pumping their fists in the air as the DJ spun a sampled Dr Martin Luther King Jrs. "I have a Dream" speech into a dance mix set to a throbbing house beat. ‘Free at last, free at last’ he said, as we chanted along, hands in the air, filled with what can only be woefully described as pure joy.

Did things get a touch...Excessive? Sure. All our friends ask us for salacious details from the event when we returned. A grin and the phrase, "What happens at IML stays at IML," is our standard response....We did see a couple of people that were far too high – one seemed to have his engines racing all weekend, so it was hard to tell whether he was naturally hyper or medically enhanced. One couple ran afoul of Palmer House hotel security, and, we believe, were escorted off the premises, as rumors of their having sex on the outdoor fire escape swirled around them. At least one ‘how much can you **** in one weekend?’ porn film was rumored to be filmed during the event. The gay porn industry also held an awards event during the same weekend, so various ‘stars’ were to be seen everywhere from dance floors to breakfast spots. And why is it that it’s never the people you want to see exposing themselves who invariably are wearing the least? But overall, the event was a model of, well, joy, and friendliness, along with more than a little playful erotic showing out. Backs were rubbed, butts were grabbed, nipples were pinched -- and these were just ways strangers would say 'hello' to each other....

The weekend (and Ehrenreich) also reinforced something that appears in David Nimmons' The Soul Beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men -- how amazing it is for thousands of men to gather and there be no fights, no shootings, and no violence. With all the alcohol (and drugs) available and flowing, with all the pumped up gym boys (did someone say steroids...I mean ‘supplements?’) if this were a straight crowd there would have been some kind of shoving, pushing, punching going on (sorry hetero friends, but you know it’s true). Shade was thrown, not punches. All acts involving fists were consensual. An old joke but perhaps true: gay men it seems really would rather F*** than fight.

And this is something we do all the time: as we were dancing with the leather boys in Chicago, Washington DC hosted its annual black gay pride, and there was a similar event in San Juan that same weekend. No one seems to notice or even mention when thousands of (gay, bi, lesbian, and transgendered) people of color gather peacefully. A few (usually straight, I'm sorry to say) black knuckelheads run amok, however, and it's a national emergency.

Have we perhaps hit on something? An ‘escape valve’ for our selves and our culture? I’m not sure: the LGBTQ community has a lot of problems, and Nimmons himself admits to glossing over the problem of drug use in his discussion of The Circuit. However I noted with interest that the protesters surrounding the recent G8 Summit ended their work with a free outdoor rock concert and dancing. And this Saturday 7.07.07, the Live Earth concerts hope to raise awareness surrounding issues of global warming and the environment. I always did like the quote attributed to 19th and early 20th Century anarchist Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to join your revolution.”

Memorial Day 2007

Remembering, with particular thoughts of the men and women now buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetary



Facing It
from Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa


My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.




A clip from composer William Grant Still's In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy

RFK Redux

Many thanks to the usually poetry-oriented Great American Pinup Blog for bringing this speech back. Would that we could bring Bobby back as well

Robert Kennedy from a speech delivered to the Cleveland City Club on April 5, 1968 one day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated...


Mr Chairmen, Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

You call yourself ...what?

I think I have come not to a certain wisdom but perhaps to a certain sense. I think of myself as a writer. What does being a writer mean to me? It means simply being true to my imagination. When I write something, I think of it not as being factually true (mere fact is a web of circumstances and accidents), but as being true to something deeper. When I write a story, I write it because somehow I believe in it - not as one believe in mere history, but rather as one believes in a dream or in an idea.

Jorge Luis Borges, "A Poet's Creed" from This Craft of Verse.





I recently had the pleasure of teaching a workshop at Coppin State University, and one of the students in the class asked me a question. I answered it, but I’m not entirely sure I gave her quite the response she was looking for. The young lady’s question was:

“What makes you a poet?”

Now, this is what I think she meant (and the question I did not answer then): I think she meant, how come our teacher has brought YOU in here and said, “HE is a poet?” Is it because you have a book? Because you’ve been published in journals? By virtue of going to workshops? Winning awards and recognition from teachers and academics? How come you get to call yourself a poet?

I partially answered this question by saying I tend NOT to call myself a poet, although I do write poetry. If pressed, I call myself a writer, because I write in a number of genres, and also because ‘Poet’ does function for me as a kind of title, as something that one gets bestowed upon them (although I’m not entirely sure who would do this form of anointing or granting of knighthood/ ‘poet-hood’).

There are a number of people, particularly but not exclusively, on the spoken word circuit that call themselves poets, or have ‘Da Poet’ in their stage names. Teens and young adults fill notebooks with writing and rhymes, and consider themselves poets. Kinko’s, desktop publishing software, and on-line printing services has enabled anyone to put out a book or chapbook, enabling the world to consider themselves poets.

I suppose part of what separates the wheat from the chaff as it were is consistency, determination, stick-to-it-tive-ness, moxie, and doing the work, actually writing, and being serious about your work (if not necessarily about yourself) that allows you to self-declare. Having the work published in different venues, awards and accolades, mention by instructors may be considered the outward signs of that seriousness, the attention you pay to your craft, to the art. But I think all of us who write know of others whose work we admire who have difficulty getting published or the recognition they deserve. Yet we consider them fellow poets.

The answer I gave, which, as I said I’m not sure satisfied my young interlocutor, was that being a poet is as much a mindset as anything else. If prose writers love sentences, or the paragraph, poets love words. The texture of certain words, what happens when they are placed next to other words – even what happens if you reverse the order of how those words are placed together – these are the things that excite me into poetry. Since I do write in different forms, it a poem occurs as opposed to an idea for a story or article, depending on the aura of the event, image, or phrase that I encounter. Some images to me declare themselves immediately to be poems, others as stories, still others as something that demands further exploration and explication. And yes, there are others that could ignite the desire to use all these modes to explore them.

Poetry is something that happens internally, something that has occurred on a particular rung of the DNA ladder, that moves someone to cast specific words into lines across a page. Poetry is as much a way of seeing the world, a mindset that causes you to have certain visions of the universe and how to express those visions to others, as it is a matter of what someone calls you, how many awards you win, how many teachers bring you into their classrooms to stand in front of their students and declaim, and assist them in their own explorations.

I ended by quoting something Harryette Mullen said when asked to define poetry (and reminded the students that she meant this in all its connotations): “Poetry is words playing with each other.”