The lull between Halloween and other fall and winter festivities always presents a rut of sorts for me. Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. I’ve developed a love for disguise, perhaps it also has something to do with the fact that I love playing characters, and my venture into comedy was the only other venue where I could do such a thing. Now my only opportunity to do so, that is in the real world, is on October 31st and the festivities surrounding it.
The other advantage about Halloween for me is that two days later, Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated, a tradition my family has, for nearly all 24 years I’ve been alive upheld. To memorialize those we’ve lost, welcome their spirits back for a few days. We leave them a customary glass of water, a piece of pan de muerto or piece of fruit; display their pictures and maybe a favorite trinket or two. We also celebrate the art associated with this holiday by either making or buying beautiful cut out papel picado, and on a few rare occasions I make crape paper marigolds that I was taught to make upon a chance meeting with one of the geniuses of the genre when I was only 10.
This year however we did not do these things. As I’ve explained in several posts, its not been an easy year for the Magtonic family. Death has been something we’ve confronted almost monthly. Death, something we’ve never really been the type to be afraid of, has shown its face in so many ways that I sometimes feel desensitized to it.
It begs the question how much can one person face his or her own mortality in such a short period of time?
8 losses — 2 amazing celebrations of life, filled with music, speakers, beautiful art, dancers love and laughter. One traditional Irish Catholic funeral bagpipes included. 2 traditional Filipino Catholic weeklong wakes, rosaries followed by a funeral and luncheon. One private family ceremony we were not invited to, though they were our family. One 40 days after death rosary, Filipino Catholic style.
To say I haven’t thought about how I’d like to be remembered, that it doesn’t cross my mind a few times a month, would be in vain. I think about it often.
As we approach December we also approach other news. My father’s impending minor, but also unpredictable surgery. It’s on his skull. He feels no pain; it’s merely a precautionary measure his doctors are taking. Though he is the king of comedy, albeit his own corny variety of the “weird uncle” sort, he has faced it with grace. He’s embraced the humor in it, but is inevitably scared, nervous and unsure. The months of diagnostics, waiting, and arriving at this surgery, though it has little to do with why the diagnostics began, have finally caught up with him. He had the “if I die” talk with us.
His demands were sweet, funny and saddening of course, but he was just being real. It is a minor procedure, he just wants everyone to know he appreciates them and that he takes nothing for granted so this speech has been given to all he loves, and reacted to in different ways.
He requests:
- That no one wear black at his memorial celebration. If anyone does, the must go home and change into a bright color.
- That everyone pick his or her favorite funk song to play in his honor at said memorial.
- That my best friend of 20 years continues to come over to eat and torture the women in my family about how hard it must be to live with all three of us.
- My mother does whatever makes her happy.
- That I am kind to my sister and continue to make him proud.
In light of how much I have displayed my appreciation for those I love, my bouts of nostalgia as of late, I have also been asking myself:
So how do I want to be remembered?
- I concur with Poppa Magtonic. No one wears black. I would prefer everyone wear orange or purple.
- I want a mariachi band, and kulingtan drummers to play.
- Video, embarrassing photos and stories are absolutely and 100% welcome as an homage to my insanity.
- Something to do with peacock feathers and papel picado as far as décor. I have a peacock feather tattoo; I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed I just find them exceptionally beautiful.
- Lastly a buffet or some extreme sort of meal is mandated. Food, good music, and laughter are what I’ve always been taught are the sources of life, so thusly that’s how I want to be celebrated.
Morbid or not having to face this sort of thing only brings back to reality how much we need to live out each day, and as pessimistic as I may be, I’m really working on that one. I can’t complain too much. The beautiful things about life, have truly shown themselves, I've seen birth, I've seen love (I have not seen fire and rain though I am about to break out into song, and I am by no means a James Taylor fan), it’s just been an excruciatingly difficult terrain to navigate as of late.
For those who've seen my rant post about the whole "Hyphy" generation, you know that this quarter-life-ian missed the hyphy boat and is feeling like current teenagers are on some other planet. I've officially crossed the line between adult and youth. The generation disconnect between myself and current college sophomores and below, is now visible and feels like its spans eons. But (!) I'm not the only one who feels this way. Peep this spoof on hyphy my cousin-in-law, a man of 32, put together. He's a dad so pardon the material. I find it, hilarious.
Although I have been lamenting on this blog, about my inability to do anything for myself, about not taking care of myself, I've continued to practice behaviors that are contrary to any change in that manner.
But, I finally hit a wall. Two weeks ago I finally made a decision instead of using the age old "deciding not to decide now, is making a decision" excuse.
I am applying to graduate school. For me. Yes the desperation got the best of me.
The desperation for a change.
The desperation for rigidity and structure.
The desperation to be self-sacrificing by means which I determine not by someone else's.
The desperate need to follow what I always knew I wanted to do. To take charge!
And so it is with this, that I say I am submitting my application tonight. With the hopes that as of January, I will finally get that fresh start I've been asking for.
Academia best be ready fah me.
I spend all day instant messaging, "chatting" and emailing people whom I left out east.
I get my news from race & pop culture blogs daily, between the hours of 7am when i get up because my body won't let me sleep any later than that and 10:45am when I have to be at work.
Once at work I instant message my co-workers, the owner and other people related to the business for questions, troubleshooting or general "a dude just ran by with no pants on" types of conversations.
I have put certain friends on a ban from text messaging me because I only get 50 per month and some will text a whole conversation, or text just to say one word.
At work we rely on computers to keep track of our inventory, our register is a program on our computer and we have a excel document that lists every item we sell each day as a back up.
When I get home, I talk to friends in the same ways as I did all day, who live on the west coast and are in grad
I have a confession: I am too dependent on technology. In the last few months I have depended upon it to find out if a loved one was alive, I have killed the disk drive in my lap top because I used it too much for work. I have lost my ipod and been left with out an alternative means of travel music as I no longer have simple cds, tapes or devices to play them in (ipod was found nearly 2 months later). Today I managed to loose an entire data file at work and had to redo nearly 200 entries using a back up that was made in August of last year. I have been phoned by my boyfriends parents because he didn't show up for a family function he had intended to attend and neither they nor I knew what was going on beacuse no one could get a hold of him for a few days. To be truthful, he has horrible signal and was working an an important and timely project all day.
The frustration of not knowing where he was, or being able to get a hold of him, for me was impacted by the loss of that data file. It was impacted by a situation a few months ago, nearly a year, where people I have almost daily correspondence with were unreachable for over a week. Several people (and i wrote a private post about this when I was really and truly frustrated a few weeks ago that I then deleted whence I knew what was going on) have been M.I.A. for a few months, the only evidence that they were alive was the "Last Log In" tally on their various web profiles.
And here I now am, writing about this as we speak, on a computer, to be posted on the web, while chatting with people who are away, at work and so on, wondering when I, when we, got to be this way.
The answer is really that we have no choice. I never write letters to anyone anymore. What for when I can email, text, call, or leave them a message somewhere. I did for a while write with an actual pen, and actual paper, those stories, feelings and moments I have wanted to give extra privacy to, extra work to before publishing them elsewhere, but have gotten out of that flow.
Today however, made me truly question what was going on. There is no way to get away from it, but perhaps it means I need a different grasp of reality. Perhaps I should get a piece of paper and write someone. I can't avoid the use of the computer at work, I can't avoid the phone calls, unless I get a carrier pigeon or two. But I could start reading the newspaper. I can back up every file I can. And, I can hate this dependency all I want, but obviously, there's nothing I can do about the fact that this is just how it is. I'm not really advocating that we go back to horse drawn carriage messenger services, but perhaps I can get over the instant gratification of typing "www.___________.com" and getting exactly what I want at my fingertips.
So all my San Francisco loving aside, this weekend, Barry Bonds record breaking 756th homerun ball was sold at auction for $752,467.
Today, whilst watching the Today show, I discovered that the owner of said ball is Marc Ecko owner/designer of the falling off Hip Hop brand of clothing Ecko Unlimited. His plans for the ball were what caught my attention not his celebrity.
In what I believe to be a really weird, but not nearly shock inducing enough publicity stunt, the man has created a website, to encourage the public to decide the fate of the ball. Saying he wants to "democratize" the debate surrounding what to do with this ball, that some believe is an "embodiment of cheating culture- not just in baseball."
Since when have sports ever been a democratic issue? Of all the issues in the world, this dude is worried about what is fair and true when a homerun baseball is concerned?
I hardly feel like this is a battle worth fighting, Mr. Ecko. To be quite frank, if you want to talk about a cheating culture, yes sports should be considered but your methodology is quite flawed.
To encourage this debate and "democratize" the fate of a piece of sports memorabilia he asks people to choose one of three options.
1. Bestow it: Return the ball to the hall of fame where items like it can be found.
2. Brand it: Burn an asterik into the ball, so we all remember it's not just a homerun ball but has a more deeply seeded history.
3. Banish it: Knock that shit into space.
I see the effort to be adult and political but wonder how much of it is being a sour sports fan by contrast, in fact when I tried to find another stock image of Ecko, or even something related to his clothing line and its sub brands, the only site it would link to was this voting site of his. Recently I've seen quite a few celebs in the news making an effort to be relevant and this just seems like a weird attempt to get out there again.
Barry or not, SF or not, just give the man a break and either give the ball to Cooperstown, or back to him.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention the real reason I find this weird. THE MAN PAID over $750,000 to engage the US in some sort of "thought provoking" debate? Really lame. He could have just written an article.
The area of San Francisco that I live in was an area inhabited by working class families from all over the globe. WAS: as in it was that way until I left for college. We had seen the number of school age kids decreasing as I moved further and further away from being that age, but by the same token there were always families like mine in the area.
Then, as expected, Gentrification hit my area as it did most others in San Francisco. It was happening while I still lived at home, before I ever ventured east for college but even still, it was always a weird thing to come home and realize, we were one of a few brown families in the area, and one of even fewer “original” residents in our hood.
Somehow in the years after adolescence I developed certain, aversions to different parts of the city. At one point I
found Chinatown so incredibly difficult to deal with because I worked there for 3 summers while home and grew sick of the hustle and bustle, the atmosphere and general attitude. Similarly I started to hate certain parts of the Mission district, which I began to correlate with memories of middle school, that painful time I don’t really think anyone wants to remember, now inhabited by tight jean wearing, Pabst Blue Ribbon swigging, anorexic hipsters/scenesters and recovering emo kids who make me feel like an alien in my own land.
My own neighborhood now inhabited by upper middle class white families, white/Asian families pushing babies with classically Asian eyes, but that are blue or with moppy blond heads, provokes similar feelings of estrangement. I get eyed at sometimes like, “who’s she?” It was frustrating at first. Why did I feel disconnected from this place that I so desperately needed when I was out east? Why did I feel this strong need to be here after living elsewhere, to return, but feel so far from it all?
I guess I didn’t expect the change, I guess I didn’t know how to reintegrate myself back into this community. How hypocritical of me. I had changed, expected people to understand was my city not allowed to do the same? Granted, it was a different kind of change, sometimes for the worst, but still, I was this city, this city was me.
But recently, on my way to the bank before work, I suddenly felt a strong appreciation for this place again. I don’t know if it was that I was walking a path, where things hadn’t changed much. Al’s Diner was still there, something about the sidewalk it self seemed unchanged. In classic San Francisco fashion we still had our Donut/Burger/Chinese Food joints, as much as some things change, some things stay the same. I can count on the Joe’s scramble at Al’s, or Vietnamese sandwiches at Little Paris in Chinatown and the awful smell of Durian fruit at the corner of Pacific and Stockton there.
On my way home, I passed the home my father first lived in when he came from the Philippines, just a block or two from where we live now. His cousins all stood outside as it’s still their family home, waiting for a limo to take them to a funeral for one of their siblings. Not as sad of a moment as one might expect, she lived a good long life. There they stood, my extended family, still in that building after all these years, still the church going folk they’ve always been. I felt a moment of awe. They were still there, we were all still here. The aunties and uncles still dressed to the nine’s carrying rosaries, a few with canes now. The teenage girls, still acting like any event is a fashion show wearing completely matched outfits of black and white, even down to the sunglasses and purses. I wouldn’t be attending the funeral, as I was just 10 minutes away from a shift at work. Dad would go, and I would tell him what I’d seen and he’d laugh because indeed nothing had changed. I’d walk up the stairs into the living room where he sat, waiting for his brothers to arrive as the church where services would take place is around the corner from our house. I’d enter a usual Magtonic style rant about the teens and their materialistic weird Filipino-ness I’d just passed. He laughed, said, “You’re that way too sometimes,” I guffawed. “You’re wearing an adidas Philippines track jacket Nic,” he said. And that, I could not deny.
And while it’s true there’s this eclectic mix of change and past in my life I have to say I’ve become grateful for it all.
Last night, doing what I do, I found this post on okayplayer.com a site I used to frequent a lot as The Roots are one of my all time favorite groups in music history.
"The Roots Say Goodbye To Hub after 17 years
Let me end all speculation ladies and gentlemen and officially announce that yes indeed Hub played his last show as a member of The Roots on August 31st of this year.
One has to understand off the bat to be a member of this group is to sacrifice your life. If you look at it (and this is applies to most of the artists that you talk about on this site) there is nothing "normal" about our lives. Well at least my life. (Hold the violins please.... there is cool shit like 1am jams with Prince in his living room watching Joni Mitchel dance like a teenager.....but there is also a downside like being in your mid 30s and your dating life is still on some high school shit.)
Even as i write this i got 34 minutes to haul my ass to rehearsals for the VH-1 tour. (this is after sleeping for 5 hours fresh from working with the Score winner of the VH-1 Hip Hop Awards, which came after a 4:30am lobby call to the Las Vegas airport, which came after all the crazy MTV activity and gigs i had to do, which came after the morning flight and the 6am lobby call from Montreal which came after the 10 hour mission to get a lawyers affidavit to get me into Canada (a mere half hour before stagetime)---of course not before trashing my entire house looking for my lost passport.---that was just 48 hours.
try to make that 17 years. This isn't a pity party. Nor an explanation. Just a confirmation.... I say we use this moment and opportunity to raise our cyber glass and toast Hub in his new endeavors.
(raises glass) -?uesto "
Aw shit! The Roots have for some time been a group that for me, mixed the funky jazzy music my parents raised me on, with the the music my cousins had taught me to love, hip-hop. As the source for this quote was ?uestlove himself, I get it. I understand. Its a tough game, he also points out that its happened with 3 (Rahzel/Scratch/Ben... tear) other members, but Hub, Hub has always been there. As tough as it was to hear, the cost of fame can clearly be weighted. The cost of anything done for that long of an amount of time where one sacrifices a lot for their group, can surely run one down. Hm, something I might have said to myself a few months ago?
Either way, as sad as it is, I'm a grown ass woman so I'll let one tear shed. That's all the tears I have for something silly like a band I like breaking up. I don't have time or energy to do any more mourning, don't get me wrong, I don't wanna cry for days, it was the shock that got me. And let's be truthful, I haven't been too down with some of the stuff they've put out lately anyway. I'll still have Organix, Illadelph Half Life, Do You Want More, and Things Fall Apart as my favs. So as ?uest said at the end of his post, the show will go on like it did before. Hub will be missed.
"I'm just jealous that I wasn't born Latina."
She says in this article.
And now, off to cool my jets.
This is a paper I wrote my senior year of college, found it and it really hit home. I modified some, but its generally a feeling I hold true to this day.
I Used to Love H.E.R, but… what if the Microphone is a Metaphorical Penis?
“Little [GIRL], you’re not allowed to stay/ You have to evolve inevitably/ And I’ve sure come a long way…” — “Getting Grown,” Cee-Lo Green
Scholars of 19th century female authors often ask “Is the pen a metaphorical penis?”. Over the course of my career as a hip-hop fan I have asked, a similar question, “Is the microphone a metaphorical penis?” One scholar notes, that “artist’s most essential quality, is masterly execution, which is a kind of male gift, and especially marks off men from women... The male quality is the creative gift.” I ask this question of the microphone, as the microphone is often equivalent to the pen in hip-hop, as they both become the way an artist communicates to an audience. At this juncture in our nation’s history, hip-hop has become synonymous with black male voices, and expressions of black masculinity, and in creating a space for women in hip-hop, one aspect of hip-hop that has seemingly left out women, is the way that hip-hop has been gendered as a woman when an artist expresses their love of the art form, truly supporting the notion that the pen/microphone is a metaphorical penis.
For some time now I have truly felt that hip-hop had been “the only man I could depend on.” I say this taking the risk of personifying hip-hop as a man, when so many of the male voices I was hearing were telling me it was a woman. In any case hip-hop has served different purposes for me over the course of my life, but over all has acted almost like another older brother among my many pretend ones, another prevalent and important male voice(s) in my life.
In my early childhood, groups like Outkast, Goodie Mob, Run D.M.C. and N.W.A. would speak to me through not only male voices but through my older male cousins taste’s in music. As I got older, artists would speak to me on my own. Warren G & Nate Dog, Snoop and Dr. Dre would talk to the girl who had run with pre-adolescent gang bangers, Richie Rich would remind me that there was “something about the west coast, that [made] me wanna ride (shake it west side, throw your hands up lets ride)”, and Tupac would become the first rapper I could ever remember having a crush on. Mos Def and Talib Kweli, The Roots — oh Tariq/Black Thought how you spoke to the backpacker inside— would set me upon my underground venture when I’d swear that I listened to the Mountain Brothers because they were good, and not just because they were Asian. Regardless, hip-hop has been through everything I have been through, has been along side me, a shoulder to cry on, a voice to reassure me, or feed fuel to my fire when need be. All of this through mostly male voices, sounding like older brothers, uncles, friends and in extreme cases boyfriends as they reminded me I was beautiful.
There was a time however when no voice spoke to me more clearly than Cee-lo did in his track, “Getting Grown,” off of Cee-lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections. The track really hit me at a moment where I was dealing with my own growth spurt. Senior year had come and senior year was about to go. I felt like he was talking specifically to me in his first verse of this song, simply change “boy” to girl, and there was my Uncle Cee-lo telling me that yes, my new life was coming, and not to fear it (quoted above).
“Magtonic,” he’d say between sections, “[You] never won’t be perfect I know/ but workin on it is worse than [you] know / Life is just learning as you go.” Most of all he’d tell me “Oooo, time changed but it feels the same/ There's no tellin what tommorow will bring/ Even if I could I wouldn't change a thang,” letting me know I wasn’t alone. He would reassure me as he concluded, “Say, young [woman], there's no need to cry/ Because I know you will get by/ Look your destiny in the eye.”
DAMN. That was it. The song had done something to me, had changed my outlook in such a way that I was ready for the end, ready for the beginning. And I started thinking, this kind of voice, is the voice hip-hop had been when “it found me.”
It’s arguable that voices like Cee-lo’s, do not reflect standardized visions of black masculinity that we see elsewhere in hip-hop, the second I heard this song I was reminded that in my eyes, hip-hop is not the “chick” Common met when he was ten years old, but that hip-hop is truly a matter of black male voice, and black masculinity. It is my firm belief that anyone who loves hip-hop loves H.I.M. as opposed to H.E.R. So I ask, if hip-hop were a person why would it be a woman, when the voices that we hear the most, are male? Someone pointed out to me that it’s an art flooded with men, so of course hip-hop will be personified as a woman, hyper-hetero-masculinity being a key component in the structuring of hip-hop personas and hip-hop content. And yet another person pointed out that in industries that are dominated by men you will often find that they gender objects as women, as if it were some symbol of control and as if it somehow upheld notions of patriarchy, and the mastering of domains (ships and cars being named after women were the first things that came to mind).
And that’s when a friend who was writing her thesis on female authors of the 19th Century pointed me in the direction of a few texts that look at the paternalistic nature of language and male domination of the literary world. Margaret Homans writes, “Women’s place in language, from the perspective of an androcentric literary tradition, is with the literal, the silent object of representation, the dead mother, the absent referent, so that within a literary text the shift from figurative to literal connotes a shift from the place of the signifier, the place of the speaking subject to the place of the absent object.” If we apply this to hip-hop we can see a similar pattern as men personify hip-hop in terms of being a woman, and only become the subject in their own work through either a boast or a confessional, which are also attributes of male identity, as they are “master’s of a the creative gift” and as the only way they can critique themselves, their ability to master something without compromising their role as masters is to turn such critique into a confessional. Where as women, in both the 19th century and today, “Women who do conceive of themselves as subjects — that is, as present, thinking women rather than as “woman”— must continually guard against fulfilling those imposed definitions by being returned to the position of the object.” Women in the rap world, as they are forced to defend themselves, in such a way that even if they boast as men would, they remain the object their work speaks of In some cases however there can be an exception to the rule.
“Maybe it shouldn’t be us two/ and maybe I’m just not the one whose right/
and maybe we can’t be together tonight/ and maybe you need another girl/
and maybe I just can’t be in your world/ and maybe we just can’t be together/ for you, whatever.”
The second time around she tells us that no, maybe she was wrong the first time.
“Maybe it should be us two together/ and maybe I’m the one for you forever/ and maybe we’re supposed to be together tonight/ and maybe everything is just right/ and maybe I’m your love till the end of time/ and maybe I’m supposed to be your and you mine/ and maybe yes its all right/ and for you still forever.”
What Grae is saying in her lines, the contradictory sentiments she is going through, is not only what other hip-hop artists have expressed when they themselves are personifying hip-hop as a person, but she is also portraying it in a way that some how seems more real, more serious and more true to the actual industry and what goes on it. In contemplating her dilemma, to sign, not to sign, to love him, not to love him she says, “catching feelings truly upset when he had to go school me on the ways of catching a mate,” and is in other words expressing her frustration with having to be taught how to act within this industry, and how to find a record label (or “mate”) she is told by men what she must do as a woman once again asserting traditional gender roles. Yet as this is a common experience I once
again must question if men could see exactly why, as a result of this very dilemma, hip-hop should be seen as a man.
Common, in “I Used to Love H.E.R. expresses his own frustration in his relationship with hip-hop saying “I did her, not
There is a commonly held belief that hip-hop and love songs do not mix, that hip-hop love songs inevitably fail. However, the few exceptions to this rule have always been when the love of the very art from is discussed. In “Love Jones” an article by Miles Marshall Lewis (The Village Voice, 3/9/99) he reviews Things Fall Apart, by The Roots, but begins arguing that at the time he reviewed the album, the new version of a hip-hop love song was not going to sound like L.L. Cool J’s “I Need Love,” but would instead exhibit a “love jones” for hip-hop itself. Only one artist that I am aware of has been able to express this love through the personification of hip-hop, but has done so with out gendering it and I would go as far to argue that while Grae’s attempt to personify hip-hop as a man is fitting of her work, and Common was the first to ever do this so explicitly, this artist does so flawlessly, without subjecting the listener to view hip-hop as a male or female creature.
In “Act Too (The Love of My Life)” off of The Roots album, Things Fall Apart, Black Thought opens the song with a verse describing a seemingly spiritual experience. But quickly follows with:
"When it came to gettin mine I ain't tryin, to argue/ Sometimes I wouldn'ta made it if it wasn't for you/ Hip-Hop, you the love of my life and that's true/ When I was handlin the shit I had to do/ It was all for you, from the door for you/ Speak through you, gettin paper on tour for you/ From the start, Thought was down by law for you/ Used to hit up every corner store wall for you /We ripped shit, and kept it hardcore for you/ I remember late nights, steady rockin the mic/ Hip-Hop, you the love of my life.”
However, in an attempt to make this truly “I Used to Love H.E.R.” Part II, Common steps back into the scene and continues his masculine bantering saying things like:
“Usin, no protection, told H.E.R. on _Resurrection_/ Caught in the Hype Williams, and lost H.E.R. direction/ Gettin eight/ate in sections where I wouldn't eat H.E.R./ An under the counter love, so _Silent_-ly I _Treat_ H.E.R./ Her Daddy'll beat H.E.R., eyes all Puff-ed/ In the mix on tape, niggaz had her in the buff/ When we touch, it was more than just a fuck/ The Police, in her I found peace (like who?)/ Like Malcolm in the East/ Seen H.E.R. on the streets of New York, trickin off/ Tried to make a hit with H.E.R. but my dick went soft…”
The era of hip-hop has been synonymous with the black male voice, as it is the one of the only mediums that has allowed the expressions of black masculinity to exist, and be presented to a mass audience. However, because it has stood alone amongst other aspects of mainstream media as the only outlet for these men, the generalizations regarding black masculinity that have been perpetuated by rap personas — the balla, the thug, the multimillion dollar hip-hop mogul, the pimp, the black nationalist— force me to admit that there is a possibility that the answer to my question is simply the fact that these representations of hip-hop as a woman are a “give in” as this medium is wrought with masculine bravado and performances of machismo. To complicate my question, I must say that when discussing this paper with others, one person noted that if the mic really is a metaphorical penis, it might be weird to sing into a mic if it looked like a vagina, or was a metaphorical vagina. And yet another person presented me with the notion that if the mic is a metaphorical penis then perhaps a lot of these artists should consider the fact that they must look like they are performing oral sex (symbolically and quite literally in appearance) upon a man. These simple questions make me wonder if it perhaps isn’t that I am arguing that hip-hop should only be seen as a man, and not a woman, but rather that as hip-hop is something so personal, spaces should be created where upon women and or men, can discuss their jonesing for the art, with out feeling the need to say, “I love it like I would love a man/woman,” but instead simply say “I LOVE HIP-HOP/ I HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIP-HOP!”
Marshall argues that those who attempt to address this jonesing, are exhibiting a sort of self-reflection, or expression that when broken down, is simply an expression of a pure interest in the art, a pure involvement and pure love. If that is the case, loving hip-hop to whatever degree, purist or not, is loving not only the music, but also the voices behind it, be they male or female, and it is just that in my eyes those voices are my brother’s, my lover’s and my best friends.
I know. Another reflective blog. I have some actual critiques in the works, things I've been meaning to publish but the fact of the matter is that the aftermath of my hell year has been hitting its peak and I'm starting to come down again.
I completely unloaded on my best friend last night. He left me with a lot of questions but also I got to say a lot about what is going on.
The biggest dilemma I'm feeling is trying to decide what behaviors and moods to be accountable for, and when I can make legitimate excuses for them.
He understood, and didn't at the same time. I didn't expect him to understand entirely. He called me hun, it bugged me. I had to step away to cry, let it out not hold it in. Me crying bugged him.
So I let it out. Let a lot out. Stopped for a minute and released some of this shit this year has brought me. And in the end, although I was feeling a mixed bag of emotions because of the things that came up in our conversation, for the first time in months I didnt feel anxious. I didnt have that burning feeling that rises up to my throat. I felt empty. For a moment, I was able to recognize that the last two weeks, have actually been better. That today, whatever came with it, would be, at least on an internal level, better.
I'm sure I got a handful more of these moments to go, but in some weird way, whatever comes with the fall I feel ready.
