I am Trayvon Martin

Over the past few weeks, the story of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin in Florida, has become impossible to ignore. I read about the story shortly after it occurred on a number of Black websites and blogs. Thanks mainly to them and radio programs across the country, the story is now front page news.

Now that it is, people are talking. And writing. And protesting.

Toure wrote in Time about the "talk" many Black boys get. Some commenters felt the article was racist.

Ha. When my father gave my brother a variation of it back in the 90s, I doubt he was trying to be racist. More like protect his son from the harsh realities of racism.

 There was a Million Hoodie March.

There have been stories about the history of the hoodie.

Geraldo blamed the hoodie.

Someone should let Old Navy know one of their staples is a sign of thievery and violence.

Obama weighed in. And then Santorum and Gingrich weighed in on Obama's weigh in.

The Miami Heat donned hoodies.

And so did I.

 Why?

Because my husband K once had guns drawn on him by the cops because he fit the description... the description... of a thief in the neighborhood. Black and whites jumped the curb he was standing on holding bags of groceries. He was ordered to drop them. He did. The guns remained aimed squarely at him. His little cousins screamed in fear. One yelled, "Don't shoot my cousin. Please." His uncle was angry. Eventually, they left. It was a mistake. But he matched the description. Tall male black wearing jeans and a baseball cap.

Those damn Yankees.

He had only been in the U.S. a couple of years. He had lived in Brazil and Trinidad before.

Oh, those damn Yankees...


****

Why?

Because my brother, at about Trayvon's age, once found himself surrounded a few blocks from home. He had been walking from work. An old lady thought he looked suspicious. Called the cops. At least the guns hadn't been drawn.

****

Why?

Because hoodies and hats can be removed, our brown and black skin can't.

****

Why?

Because Skittles and iced tea aren't weapons. Neither are wallets.

****

Why?

Because as Dr. King wrote,  "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

****

Why?

Because I am Trayvon Martin.

Glimpses of today

It might be a lot too handle sometimes, but I love my hair.

Centered in Eden: Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck

 (Source)

From Brain Pickings:

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.


2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.


3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.


4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.


5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.


6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

But perhaps most paradoxically yet poetically, twelve years prior — in 1963, immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” — Steinbeck issued a thoughtful disclaimer to all such advice:

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Fallen Princesses

A couple of weeks ago, Lindsay Lohan starred as Repunzel in a (surprisingly) funny skit on SNL. A couple of days ago, I saw another not-so flattering depiction of the famous Princesses by photographer Dina Goldstein.

These pictures are startling, creative and starkly beautiful. Check out some of my faves.

 Snow White and her prince. And her own little ones, sans dwarves.

 Rapunzel battles cancer and loses her long locks.

 Jasmine, Arabian princess turned desert soldier.

 The Little Mermaid, not so much under the sea as behind glass.

Belle must maintain her beauty, no matter the cost.

See them all here.

Song for The Day: "Green Eyes" by Erykah Badu

Still one of my favorites.

Stations on Skin

Every week during Lent, my pastor conducts Stations of the Cross on Friday nights.

Sometimes, I just walk around the sanctuary, going from station to station, concentrating on Love's ultimate Sacrifice.

I came upon a very unique presentation of the stations by a truly gifted Christian artist named Scott Erickson. He designed ten different tattoos representing the iconic stops of the Passion.

A number of volunteers got inked with the designs. Brilliant photos were taken, printed and enlarged for a gallery. A gallery of the Stations of the Cross. He writes:

"...Around 30 of the tatooees showed up and were the actual living “Stations of the Cross” while hundreds of art enthusiasts came by and interacted with the show.

 It was an awesome night.

...  Before the gallery opening, one of the tattoo participants asked me what the most surprising aspect of the project was. Was it that so many people got tattoos? Thinking about it, my response is that I was surprised by how thankful everyone is who partook in the show by getting a tattoo. Pretty much everyone who got a tattoo thanked me for putting on this project and working hard on the designs. Their tattoo process meant a ton to them and they just had gratitude for being in a community that provided them the chance to get a meaningful tattoo.

There have been many comments from outsiders on this project and everyone feels like they should have a place to say their opinion. Well good for them. For me though, I know this was worth doing for the fruit I’m seeing in this community and in the lives of the people who participated. It’s been such an honor to be able to be involved in this."

 It's such an honor for you to share your work with the world, Scott! I'm actually eying a couple of his designs for my future tattoos. It's getting about that time. :-)

A Love Supremely Spiritual

From NPR:

John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme in December of 1964 and released it the following year. He presented it as a spiritual declaration that his musical devotion was now intertwined with his faith in God. In many ways, the album mirrors Coltrane's spiritual quest that grew out of his personal troubles, including a long struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.
From the opening gong and tenor saxophone flutter, a four-note bass line builds under the sound. This simple riff becomes the musical framework for the rich improvisations that comprise John Coltrane's 33-minute musical journey.


"I remember they cut the lights down kind of," says McCoy Tyner, who played piano on A Love Supreme as a member of Coltrane's band in the early and mid-'60s. "The lights were dimmed in the studio. I guess they were trying to get a nightclub effect or whatever. I don't know if it was John's suggestion or whatever. I remember the lights being dimmed."

It made sense to try to imitate the dim-lighted intimacy of a club during the studio recordings, he says, because it was on stage during live shows where the quartet would explore, practice and rehearse new material. He says there was an amazing unspoken communication during the "Love Supreme" sessions. In fact, he says, Coltrane gave very few verbal directions. Tyner calls the album a culmination and natural extension of chemistry honed through years of playing together live.

"You see, one thing about that music is that it showed you that we had reached a level where you could move the music around. John had a very wonderful way of being flexible with the music, flexing it, stretching it. You know, we reflected that kind of thing. He gave us the freedom to do that. We thought of something, 'Oh, then we'll play it,' you know? And he said, 'Yeah, I have a feeling'—you know? And all that freedom just came together when we did that record."
It was that free-wheeling openness which allowed the musicians—Coltrane, Tyner, along with drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison—to build a complex four-part suite around a relatively basic musical idea.

Lewis Porter heads the masters program in jazz history and research at Rutgers University-Newark. He's the author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Porter says that simple idea culminating in the first movement with an unprecedented verbal chant by Coltrane forms the foundation of the entire suite. It's a theme Coltrane consciously uses in subtle and careful ways throughout A Love Supreme.

For example, toward the end of part one, "Acknowledgement," Coltrane plays the riff in every key.
"Coltrane's more or less finished his improvisation, and he just starts playing the 'Love Supreme' motive, but he changes the key another time, another time, another time. This is something very unusual. It's not the way he usually improvises. It's not really improvised. It's something that he's doing. And if you actually follow it through, he ends up playing this little 'Love Supreme' theme in all 12 possible keys," says Porter. "To me, he's giving you a message here. First of all, he's introduced the idea. He's experimented with it. He's improvised with it with great intensity. Now he's saying it's everywhere. It's in all 12 keys. Anywhere you look, you're going to find this 'Love Supreme.' He's showing you that in a very conscious way on his saxophone. So to me, he's really very carefully thought about how he wants to present the idea."

While A Love Supreme is a recognized musical masterpiece, it had enormous personal significance for Coltrane. In the spring of 1957, his dependence on heroin and alcohol lost him one of the best jobs in jazz. He was playing sax and touring with Miles Davis' popular group when he became unreliable and strung out. Alternately catatonic and brilliant, Coltrane's behavior and playing became increasingly erratic. Davis fired him after a live show that April.

Soon after, Coltrane resolved to clean up his act. He would later write, in the 1964 liner notes to A Love Supreme, "In the year of 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life."

But Coltrane didn't always stay the clean course. As he also wrote in the album's notes, "As time and events moved on, I entered into a phase which is contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path. But thankfully now, through the merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been fully reinformed of his omnipotence. It is truly a love supreme."

Read the rest here. Listen below.

“A man’s physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world.” -C.S. Lewis in "The Weight of Glory"

The Harlem Renaissance: Music, Religion, and the Politics of Race

My good friend David told me about this series. If you have some time, listen in and learn. And enjoy!