Dreads, Rastas, Beaches, Plantations

Returning to Rastas and White Girls, the poem I wrote a few weeks earlier, I am thinking of Jazid again, as I had a conversation with an actor who has lived in Miami for a number of years about the reggae scene in Miami. She knows the arts scene well down here, and mentioned that there is a big difference between the men with dreads who I would meet at Jazid, and Rastafarian or more rootsy hangout spots. Her point was, the sort of dread who might express some form of spirituality through locks would not really hang out at Jazid, and almost certainly would not casually date white women.

As we all know, dreadlocks doth not a Rastafarian make. But thinking of the public political meaning of dreadlocks, whether intentional or not, paired with sorority/suburban/college party sort of girl, this throws the narrative trope of the hypersexual black male alongside a virgin/whore dichotomy.

The trend in Caribbean tourist spots that enables black males to use their bodies for profit does not empower white women who benefit sexually, although they ...in terms of the tradition of whiteness, as long as they sneak down to the slave barracks for their sexual pleasure

And isn't that the white male fear, that black men are hypersexual creatures, from whom white women should be protected, much of the violence toward black men comes from that deep seated subtext. So here we are, in a damn plantation mentality. That's the impression that the blatant disproportion in the color of the men and women partying at Jazid made on me. A plantation mentality, dressed up as girls gone wild. For the white girls, they choose between virgin and whore.

Jazid that night also reminded me of how stuck in these narrative dichotomies the Caribbean still is, in many ways. Unspoken white privilege, understood on "private" beaches where people of color are questioned and asked to move, whether they are hotel guests or not, is commonplace. See Down and Out at a Westin Beach by Marlon James for a personal account. Appropriation extends from the land to people's bodies. Sure, the men who engage in sex tourism are choosing to market themselves as studs, and I do not challenge individual men and women to ascribe blame. I notice the metanarrative, of bodies for sale, that this behavior plays into.

Strong words from the most fear-filled, tremulous writer I know. What the hell, today I'm in a tell it like it is mood.

Books and Books

Have I raved about this new favorite spot yet? Books and Books is an independent bookstore in Miami (that rare, nearly extinct bird). I go to the store in Coral Gables (pictured above), but there are also branches on Miami Beach, in Bal Harbor and the Cayman Islands as well! The calendar of author events is so good I sometimes feel as though I've been spirited away into some kind of literary dreamscape. The point of my overwrought superlatives - I never cease to be amazed at the wealth of art, literature, poetry and other creative opportunities in Miami. This is partly the joy of low expectations, but I do think this is a city on an upswing. Of course, in the months since I moved here I have gravitated toward my interests. My point is, either I moved here at just the right time, or this city is not asvacuous as the view from South Beach suggests.

Recent highlights include the Miami Book Fair, South Beach Comedy Festival, philosophy lectures at the University of Miami, the Jewish Film Festival, discovering West Coconut Grove, all Books and Books, all the time...and these are events I've been able to attend, not a full calendar; I'd never get to work if I attended everything I wanted to!

I do feel frustrated that museums cost a lot, and sometimes it is difficult to get as immersed in the art scene as I would like to be. Mostly, contemporary art is daunting because I just don't understand! Still, there's so much to do here, and that's not so good for my bibliographic ADHD. My greatest strength and weakness is how much I absorb, the scope of my interests, from art to tennis and radio and piano and more. Jill of all trades and mistress of none.

I absorb a little too much I think, maybe I should put some blinkers on to write, and tune out some frequencies, interesting though they may be. But then again, who wants to be a mistress....

Gotta Throw that Monkey off My Back

Robbie Williams - yes, you heard me - singing a version of the Nat King Cole song. He's quite good, and Swing When You're Winning, the album it's on, is a good listen. If you've seen Finding Nemo, that's him singing Bobby Darin's Sailin' at the end of the movie.

A buzzard took monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said-- Now listen, Jack

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
Ain't no use in divin'
What's the use in jivin'
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.

The buzzard told the monkey "You're chokin' me
Release your hold and I'll set you free
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said

Your story's so touching but it sounds just like a lie

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.

(instrumental interlude)

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top

If only I could get my hands on a dictionary of 40s slang. When I hazard a guess, I think it's a veiled drug reference, since quitting is throwing the monkey off your back....

Elizabeth Nunez

I interviewed Elizabeth Nunez last week. Originally Trinidadian, Nunez is Distinguished Professor of English at Medgar Evers College. Her 2006 Prospero's Daughter was the One Book One Community selection at the Miami Book Fair, and during a long career at CUNY she has taught writing and engaged in what she calls "literary activism" for many years.

I was so starstruck! I first heard her speak last year when I visited Miami, at the 06 Miami Book Fair, and fast forward to today, it's pretty good fortune that I got a sit down interview with her.

Nunez was here for a reading hosted by the Consulate of Trinidad and Tobago, and the evening was a fun crowd, book lovers and Caribbean people whose faces are growing familiar, as I mix and mingle in this place.

This is definitely the start of something new, I love interviewing! Not only is interviewing an art form I'm learning to enjoy in and of itself, but I am learning to allow people to speak, instead of imposing myself on the work. That will definitely help my writing along. So many ideas, and interesting avenues of thought to pursue, so many interesting people to meet. I'm excited!

Writing in Obscurity

The other day my friend SteveG celebrated his 100,000th visit to Philosopher's Playground, quite an accomplishment indeed!

That got me to thinking about the obscurity I enjoy on this site. I do relish that I post here in quasi-obscurity; this is a secret place because I write under a pseudonym, and I have had a grand total of about three readers per year since I started posting on this site.

In writing, so much of what I fear is revealing myself. Of course my ego is a big part of the problem, I want to get it right and look good doing so. But my worry about saying the right thing is a bit more precise than that. More than a fundamental mistrust of what others think, I do not trust what I have to say. As soon as I think a thought I wonder if I'm sufficiently political, the right politics, and oh I don't want to obscure the personal that's a deeply held value as well, that the personal is political. Too emotional? Not revealing enough? Too self absorbed? (irony of ironies, that most self absorbed thought pops up quite frequently). Should-ing all over myself before I can get anything coherent down onto the page, in other words.

Much of this journey to find my own voice is the simple need for practice. The more I write the more I learn to hear it, the still small voice.

I think of SteveG, who has a funny, quirky personality, and whose blog is so reflective of the person that he is. Same for Aspazia, whose site is so her.

I realize that I am not unusual, writer's block is not at all new, and a lack of confidence in one's own voice is as old as the story of inequality, real and perceived. This is the human condition outside of the Garden.

But in thinking about why I write, and why I'm committing to this journey, I realize that the fundamental source of this unmoored feeling is that I live with many selves, many voices, and I inhabit many places, in memory and in my daily life. We all, do, we have game faces, work faces, personae that belong to the family environment.

Politics, in that mix, is difficult, and personal life unsure, as I don't come from any one place and politics seems to be about the answers, not the questions. (By politics I don't mean electoral machinery, but the Classical notion of it, the basic questions of how to best live in the world with others, that transcend national spaces, questions that are about humanity in general).

Will writing heal that rift? Writing is deeply connected to healing, its therapeutic value cannot be underestimated. But there's something about formation and creation in the process of engaging with the word and the world, so I'm not only repairing the effect of a bad habit of fearfulness, but participating in the creation of something new.

That is why I write.

And I'm writing this to myself now - I've decided to continue to write in obscurity for a while, to develop the habit of saying what I think. Kicking the should out of appropriate, well behaved, right answer sort of writing. What would I say if no one were listening? What would I say if I weren't listening?

I'm finding more and more that writing is less about squeezing my ideas out, formed as words, but allowing them to take shape as I go through the process. That is political, but not in a public way.

So I'm not sure what my voice sounds like yet. But as I discover it I think I will inhabit causes, advocacy, and find a direction toward a life that is lived for others, without getting caught up in the paralyzing stink of should.

Fictional Selves

This is the time of year when self assessment tends to come to the surface, at least in the overthoughtful sort of personality. Not that I would know anything about that...

The corrosive effect of a fictional self comes from the attribution of a whole other life based on one choice, or event - I imagine that we tend to fixate on how our lives would have been better. While Sliding Doors is a good movie, and it might be fun to reflect on how life would be different had I done this or that, fixating on that possible, imagined self cannot be good.

This lack of complexity in thinking about oneself and one's capacity to create good in one's life is, in its extreme form, an instance of monomania. That is a strong term I realize, but think about how easy it is to fixate on the fictional, possible me, had I not quit ballet, or had I chosen that job instead of the one I did.

I got this idea from a New York Times article called The New Year's Cocktail: Regret with a Dash of Bitters, here

It's so well written; I think sometimes about the person I would be, had I never quit ballet, or had I kissed him that time instead of turning my face away. True, an infinite set of possibilities does follow from each choice we make, but attributing an entirely different self because of that single outcome - well that's just a recipe for crazy.

Anyway, the article is well worth a read, I liked this bit:

Even the perspective from which people remember slights or mistakes can affect the memories’ emotional impact, new research suggests. A recent Columbia study found that reimagining painful scenes from a third-person point of view, as if seeing oneself in a movie, blunted their emotional sting and facilitated precisely the sort of clearheaded self-perception that Dr. King described.

Widen the screen just a little, in fact, and a particularly prominent and disturbing lost self can be seen as merely one guest in a room full of permutations, good and bad. And each of those selves must have an idealized doppelgänger of its own.

It's easy to disdain people who believe that "everything happens for a reason", as naive, but perhaps they're on to something. Not necessarily because of their faith in a being that controls the universe. Faith is incidental to the attribute this article describes, called complexity. Understanding that (mis)fortune is not entirely in one's own hands seems helpful. As attractive as existential philosophy seems, I do not know that the fundamental, absolute primacy of the individual, and individual choice, is a realistic perspective on the world. It certainly is not a helpful one.

Why am I going on about this? Well, it's easy to think of January 1 as some sort of reset button. It seems most rational (and it is clearly pragmatic, as it contributes to psychological well-being) to understand that we do not start afresh but we continue.

Having said all that, a reflective mood is hard to resist, and I do have thoughts on what I'd like to try, or do differently, or quit doing. Don't we all. I just need to refrain from attachment to my doppelgänger, when she comes to mind. The one who can dance in toe shoes.