bar fly afternoons

it's been a bit of a minute.
not quite sure where this one's going. read against your own will.

The Market Place in asheville is a good spot to sit and contemplate. yet another gem.

underneath the voice of sam cooke peeling through speakers, conversations circulate.
a man- the color of bright pink sand says Jimi hendrix's sound is dynamic, pulsating with a social commentary in the chords of his guitar. and i'm listening, loving it- trying to keep my eyes steady and stoic as a fly on the wall, but I'm caught. we exchange smiles that hang on the edge of words, but smiles is all.

i sip a jalisco: tequila, chilli powder, syrup, and some other shit. it's pretty wonderful. a beer next to my tequila awaits me. everyone has been talking about this greenman esb and i'm ready to talk about it too. i'll sip it with the critical lens if a certified beer snob.

the woman next to him, his wife-friend, listens halfway. seems she doesn't know much about jimi and neither do i; although, i rock my purple haze t-shirt like jay rocks his che. I sit back and learn.

the ending to drake and swizz beats's fancy is in one ear bud almost falling out of my ear- the best part. I wish it were the instrumental. sometimes rap ruins a good track, as does the radio. just as talking during sex can ruin the mood. although, i do love his whisper to the ladies: go cinderella...


i've yet to find a person to speak to me the way music does and I don't think i ever will. don't really think it's meant to be that way.

the clouds are indecisive with the rain. it putters and pouts; it's the rain that constantly paints new jersey days. in decoded jay says we all may be walking different paths, but the same skies hover, the same streets give road to our feet, the same graffiti paints our backdrop. the setting can be a tricky constant.

in class, we did a fishbowl activity that loosed this very idea from my skin (thanks sonia). two students sat in the middle of a circle as the rest of the class watched them read a text- the text being photos. and that's the thing about objectives and what students will be able to learn. it's not always the intent of the teacher. it's not always about the author's intent. I watched classmates read photos of little black boys in the arms of white men; david Beckham spread eagle on Egyptian cotton; black boys with bruised and battered faces; the world gripped by two hands.

and i listened to how they read a text. the same text that projected in front of me? is jay right? were we seeing the same graffiti splashed wall? I saw how we bring our personal experiences, our memories, our worlds, our own texts to a reading. which, in many ways we already know. i saw how the interpretation of a text is often more important than the text itself. one's reading of a text reveals deeper insight into the reader and how his perceptions are connected to larger realms of seeing and perceiving.  watching it manifest in very real ways in class was scary and exciting. perceptions and identity are inherently linked.

                  (added) i was provokingly intrigued by those loud things unsaid. although we can't always articulate or even dare to put words in mouths, i watched  a silent space emerge-a discourse on the things which we do not speak- at least in mixed company and sure as hell not in a fishbowl. but i learned. willful forgetting is often predicated on social and political implications of silence. we dare not say we think the black man with the battered face deserved it because he is a gang member- or do we? we dare not say the little black boy in the arms of the white firefighter is rescuing  a subaltern identity. we dare not say david beckham is sexy if we are a man- or do we dare? doesn't that pronounce a sense of security in our masculinity as it stands? can't killa cam wear pink and get that pussy? (edging besides the point I know).  regardless, something held the silences. something presumed among the group. or was it? i felt it in our laughter and in our furtive glances at one another.

the silence in that activity enlightened me. we fold tape over our own mouths, but i would argue something hands us this tape. something makes us want to shut it  up- don't be heard, don't voice, don't stir. and the tape goes over mouths outside fishbowls and classroom walls. we attempt to do something Zelizer calls "willfully forgetting." but this word "forget" needs tending. i can't rest there, but I need to- for now. 


*now that i've edited this, this last piece doesn't seem to fit- mmm...o well).
when we watched brown sugar, our professor told us to look beyond the love story, but sometimes it is about the love story. sometimes it's okay to look there and see it.  sometimes it is a little mushy... a little murky.

because I feel like sid. and i am in love with this thing called hip hop. ricky ross now in the headphones.

pandemonium.