miami novella: chapter tres LAS ARTISTAS

                                                       Mosquito Surfers on a Spider V 60 Amp

                                                      I See the Spotlight in You Opening Night

                                                                        Miami, 2018 

Miami is a hot world without mountains and a long rainy season. Miami Beach was like a temple to  Larry Caligula Flynt. Miami is too remote -  there’s the city, the Everglades, the Keys, and the sea. The state itself is Trumpian and racist. I felt blackity black in FL, not Berkeley Black which was to grow up on Cheeseboard pizza, Parliament, and progressive ideas. 

 The MIA is corrupt, lawless, prone to the wrath of God, too dark at night, and there’s too many weird bugs I couldn't identify. I did enjoy other wildlife like iguanas, wild peacocks, manatees, alligators, and egrets. I would stalk peacocks because they are quite beautiful in person. I became a peacock groupie. 

The Miami art scene is small; a kind of high school social hierarchy. It’s its own little mixed generation universe of weirdos, punks, and bougie hipsters. All were of variable background and aesthetic values. As hip, woke vocabulary evolved so did Miami's, but within a Miami context. Where we say BIPOC in the west, Miami would say Afro-Caribbean, African-American or Latinx, being a more accurate description of its population. 

Mami and papi, I would learn, was a term of endearment for non-white people. I thought it was corny, a slang I associated with the NYC suavecitos. Then I realised there is a sense of belonging expressed in the mami and papi. It's the sweeter equivalent of brother or sister. One just is.

There were a lot of art words for art people. Activation meant to get people involved in something active. The narrative is the story expressed in an artist's work. Diaspora was another since almost everyone in Miami is a part of one diaspora or another. Community was often used since everyone was a part of the place. 

Join us for a community activation celebrating the interdisciplinary diaspora narrative.

I could move nouns and adjectives around and have the same impact. That was another art scene word Miami liked, which came from tech capitalism. My favorite usage was storm impact windows. I think of Storm from X-Men making an impact because she's a bad bitch. 

The infuenceters in Miami were collectors, the glam and hip artists and galleries. One had to be strategic about which young and emerging artist to feature. Others, like the gem humans I worked for, would be experimental or academic. The rockstars of the moment were Black or Latinx artists doing mind blowing installations or mixed media. Frankie did one of a the lifecycle of the monarch with a greenhouse at the Museum of North Miami. Another amazing group exhibition was The Other Side of Now: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Perez Museum. Wynwood had been the center of the art scene until it turned into a tourist destination for graphic prints of flamingos, splatter pop art graffiti, overpriced coffee, and mannequins tempting the Supreme Gucci superstar DJ-skater-stripper by night.

Between Overtown and Little Haiti, Wynwood was a mecca of the young, tech savvy youth who partied at the beach or went to the gym. Every trendy boutique blasted electronica and reggaeton. Yeezy sneakers were more popular than Air Jordans with the young set.  A lot of young girls and women looked like variations of either Cardi B or a Kardashian. No one is particularly blonde in Miami. They had a different language than my generation: a person was hot, not beautiful or attractive. A party was lit, not just fun. A bad situation was hella sketch, not just awful ( somehow through social media and human migration, young Miami picked up a Bay Area slang adverb ). The young Miamian also used the improbable irregardless, which meant regardless, in a statement.

Sex was going on all the time in rapid fluidity either through hook-ups or by transaction. Sexuality itself was fluid, but less overt than more progressive cities. Miami culture, in general, is traditionally Latin straight-centered with a body commodity since a lot of people can make money being scantily clad.  

The local news wasn't very interesting to me. There would be an '  alligator invades a backyard pool' story or an ' iguana falls dead from a tree during a cold snap' story, or a high speed chase on the causeway because life really is like Grand Theft Auto. One hilarious story I came across involved a player for the Miami Dolphins. 

He got rooked by two prostitutes and somehow someone got the transcript of his 911 call. He left the two girls alone in his house to go workout, he said. When he returned they had ransacked the joint of jewelry, cash, clothing, video games, and gear. 

Dispatch: Sir, how much would you say was the value of your personal property? 

Quarterback: Oh uh...like $ 1 million, you know what I'm sayin?

In Miami, nothing was happening or going to happen without social media. Its use was crucial to market an exhibition or event. Email, like reading, was fast becoming obsolete with young Miami. Latin millennials were so slick, they would hack a free rent promo at a trendy luxury condo, live out the promo timeline, and then bounce. They didn't have to worry about the consequences of breaking a lease or their FICO score, which doesn’t exist in Argentina or Colombia. The family that owns the FICO patent are from Marin county in the Bay. No surprise there!

At the gallery, I worked for a super cool couple who met at the first iteration of the gallery in Wynwood in the mid 90s. They were good people in partnership with a shared loved of art.  After they remodeled and sold the Wynwood building, they moved up to Little Haiti into a another that had once been a gas station. They gutted it and turned the main space into a gallery with two adjacent studios. One was rented to a bookmaker and publisher, the other to a master printer who became a good friend I nicknamed Farmer Tom. Tom, like Pops, was from Detroit. I think that's what drew me to Tom - he had a soulfulness about him. Talking to him was like listening to a philosopher-printer. 

I started doing basic administrative tasks in prep for the next exhibition. Then the installation phase began. Installs could be hard and complex depending if it was a group or solo show, its context and theme. During the installation phase, days could easily go into 10 - 12 hour stretches. Once the show had been curated, the installers came in. My job was to help coordinate and be the point person on site. 

The installers were a gang of artists and musicians themselves who could do the craziest things by cleat, fabrication, wiring, build-out, knocking out walls, buzz saws, hammers, drills, ladders, lighting, or with a scissor lift. The more complex an installation, the better. Most were Gen X mad scientists, a few were older millennials with the DIY analog ethos of a Gen Xer. While I worked on the back-end with images, I was also their back-up if they needed a hand. We’d geek out on music and I’d put on a fun playlist - 80s metal or hip hop, punk, 1970s rock, or funk.

‘ And where are you from?’ One geezer punk asked me.

Sigh. ‘ Berkeley…California.’ in my best friendly-fuck you tone.

The look on that dude’s face was priceless. Within seconds he processed that I was from a part of the country others may aspire to. Miami inspires images of Escobar and Miami Vice. Berkeley inspires images of academia and Philip K. Dick. What did you expect, homie? Minnesota? Illinois? 

We were cool after that. It’s a hobby of mine taking the salt out of men who think they’re the shit. What are women doing in other places? Where are we from, indeed? These are good questions.

A few installers were part of the noise punk scene that was at its peak between the 90s - mid 2ks. I heard shows were chaotic, fun, and experimental. One of my favorite shows at the gallery was a group show of several artists and musicians called I See the Spotlight in You. They were a squad of men and one woman who went back over 20 years together. They had fascinating stories of the drug wars, dead bodies, and noise shows at Churchill's Pub. Cocaine Cowboys is a trippy, low-budget documentary about 80s and 90s Miami.

‘ I once saw a crack house on fire.’ Cliff, who curated the show, told me. ‘ Completely engulfed in flames! No one came - no MFD, no cops. The street was deserted and I just watched it burn. No one was in there. That was one of the saddest and most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’

The one woman was Jan of Jan & Dave, a popular noise band duo that played on opening night of Spotlight. Their theme was mosquito surfers. They had been together for years; weird avant garde punks devoted to irony and sarcastic theater through rock n roll. They made awesome mosquito props to decorate their amps, fake blood splattered around the stage, on their instruments, into their faces, and at the audience. 

Dressed up as mosquitoes themselves, they screamed into their mics about being a surfing mosquito from Mars who sucks the life out of humans. While younger people stood dumbfounded ( What the fuck is going on? Where is DJ Aoki? This is weird. I can’t put old people on my Instagram! ) The Gen Xers and Boomers in the room were cracking up.

What an awesome night that was!

The hardest installation went on for an entire arduous month. It was a conceptual solo exhibition by a Spaniard who was doctoral candidate at Goldsmith's in London. The artist's dissertation was a mix of what humans ingest relative to our environment ( hair, microbes, bone, blood, sodium, dirt, et al ) the geology of the region, sculpture, and grillz, trap rap bling, which is rooted in African adornment. The Spaniard had done research for a few months between Colombia and Haiti. 

My job was to support the artist with setting up a workshop for others to make small clay sculptures called bocadillos for the exhibition, source materials and supplies, and show them around the city's local and historical spots.

Then we went on the hunt for iguanas parts. For a fauna aspect to the show, the Spaniard wanted to use iguana tails submerged in tubes with formaldehyde as part of the exhibition. I remember getting formaldehyde was impossible since it's a controlled compound. The artist sourced another viscous synthetic material called formalin to the preserve the tails. 

Four of us drove up to Broward to meet an iguana hunter. Apparently there are iguana and python hunters in FL because both are invasive species to the region that destroy vegetation, takeover swimming pools, and eat other native creatures. 

The iguana hunter was a FL bro who drove a black 4x4 truck and set-up shop in part of a warehouse in Broward. Iguanas are beautiful to me up close, but to him they were just his line of work - like a bone collector.  He told us he was a 3rd generation hunter himself. We got several tails from the iguana hunter and stored them at Jake's house in a freezer. Jake was the genius-muscle at the gallery. It was his job to help rig or engineer whatever hairbrained scheme someone came up with ( moving parts, lighting, and sound ). 

Jake was a skate-punk who liked Slayer growing up in New Mexico.  He joined the navy after high school where he learned mechanical and electrical engineering. He now goes to far flung and exotic places working on satellite systems for cruise ships. Jake is essentially a nomadic nerd and one of the coolest, funniest people a person could encounter. His Instagram posts will have me on the floor. He could be working on a project in Dubai, but homie will post a photo of the burrito he had for lunch. Weird bathroom signage in Japan. A gigantic plate of pasta in Italy. He may experience the landscape of a place, but he lives for the food. 

For the Spaniard's show, a line was drawn at captions in Esperanto for his work. That was too esoteric for Miami. We switched to English and Spanish. For opening night everything was lit under black light, which visually was very cool. The exhibition was a lot of detailed, complex minutia, but a fascinating process and experience.

Another memorable exhibition was framed around avant garde feminism ( another concept that is adored in the Bay Area, New York, and Japan, not so much in Miami ). It had everything from painting, graphic art, angry spoken word, sculpture, written text, experimental video, and a staircase designed by a gallery artist and fabricated by undergrad students. 

The staircase haunted my dreams. It hadn’t been constructed or finished correctly and there was a lot of behind the scenes wrangling and disagreement. Between competing demands, well intentioned but unrealistic expectations - humans clashed. The staircase moved several times throughout the gallery during the hot and humid opening night. Myself and a few other people rolled the staircase outside behind a makeshift stage in the parking lot. A vinyl fabricator recovered it in Pantone colors to match the colorstory of the exhibition, while a South Korean pop band rocked out.

My greatest accomplishment was helping an Icelandic artist with his vision for a video installation. He was fascinated with America’s love of marching bands, but he was having a hard time finding a local high school to participate. Most of the public schools around Little Haiti and into North Miami were predominantly black and Haitian. Iceland was also baffled by the complex American paperwork and waivers required to use minors’ image in a video.

Ask a sister from the Bay! We get shit done, sun! 

First I tried Edison High School up the street. Edison was like a prison compound for teenagers. It was an excruciating example of underfunded public education in a conservative state that is determined to prepare young black kids for service jobs or incarceration. I had to go through metal detectors and check-in with security. I still couldn't get anyone to chill long enough to connect me to the marching band director. The staff at Edison moved as if in constant damage control within a racist society in decline, similar to the public school culture of East Oakland. 

Then I hit the jackpot with North Miami Senior High School. The baddest high school marching band in the city. 

Mr. Virgil was the marching band director. What made him different was that he was from Trinidad and played no games. He ran the band like a boot camp because it was a pathway for kids to get scholarships to the HBCs in the region, which several had already scored. The band leader was a charismatic Haitian-American who needed to be in Homecoming. He had gotten a full ride to North Carolina A&M. 

Once we worked out the logistics and funding, I met the Icelandic artist and his film crew at the school football field for a day of shooting. This involved a camera, a drone, and colored smoke bombs  on another hot and humid day. Most summer days in Miami are hot and humid except in winter when it's more bearable for human existence. I spent a grip on hair products in the time I lived there. It was either that or spend my days looking like a Fraggle Rock. 

Iceland and his assistant wore parrot costumes he found on eBay. His vision was for them to play melancholy parrots adrift in a weird tropical landscape as they walked around ignoring the marching band. The band was symbolic of the American spectacle, which we cherish because entertainment gives our lives meaning. 

It was awesome to watch the process unfold that day. The kids were stealth performing in full uniform around artistic chaos and summer heat. They did hip hop beats, funk beats, and church beats - with massive horns and snare drums. It was quite a get down scene. I learned I'm good at bringing people together, from different countries and cultures and making things happen. I would do a project like that again. 

The most trippy people I encountered were the Rubells. They are big time art patrons and collectors. I paused on the name. Rubell? Is someone related to Steve Rubell? Sure enough the husband was his brother. That meant serious New York wealth and the Studio 54 legacy. The Rubells took their over-the-top modern art collection (Basquiat, Kehinde, Warhol, the Georges, Kusama, et al) and bought a massive space in Allapatha, a Dominican neighborhood mixed with warehouses and shotgun bungalows. The Rubells remodeled their place into a brutalist museum filled with maximalist modern art. During Art Basel, I managed to get in a visit before I left Florida. Other than time with friends, that was a super cool way to end my art life experience in the Magic City.  

Ven a Bailar ( On the Floor )

JLo and Pitbull

the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie: PART II

                                     

                                            I'm Tired of Being the Angry Black Woman.
                                        Paula Akpan and Harriet Evans portrait project,
                                      Hudson Valley Centre for Contemporary Art, 2014

The modern age pulled a clever trick. We don't have to deal with difficult people at work in person anymore. In-your-face-antics can now be in an email or on a Zoom! 

Since June, I was having a hard time coping with the mean consultants who communicate like corporate pit bosses. Lots of NOs and RIGHT NOW, TODAYs. There are two villains to this story:  Hagatron and her protegee, the Blue Meanie.

You made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Figure out what went wrong and learn from it. Have a great weekend! 

That was Hagatron to me for putting the wrong checks in an envelope. This is what I call psychological terror.  After a lifetime of American women being shitty, competitive, and shady I became - wait for the 21st century term - triggered by embedded trauma. What such communication conveyed to me is this person can be abusive and arrogant. She didn't have to cc several other people on something so utterly superfluous. That was intentional to embarass me. Sigh. 

She hates me because I'm black! Boo hoo.  No, no that's not quite it. She's not used to dealing with smart black women who are cuter than her. I'm not special. I'm just talking cold, hard facts! Twice the Hagatron dished a microaggression at me - about my ( younger ) age and my hair. 

Blue Meanie sent me condescending messages as if they were running the show, not providing a service. 

I'll walk you through the process so you can do it yourself. 

I'm not in kindergarten, heaux. 

It had been like this for weeks with these two. Other colleagues got hit, even when asking for legit clarity about the ( half-assed, half-baked ) workflow that they created.  Others, who had years of institutional knowledge and integrity, were being treated like trash. I don't doubt these mean women may be good at the numbers, but they were bad to other people. I'm not good at shitty people. Keep pushing me and I'm gonna blow like Kurtis. 

Who are these ill mannered hacks? I wondered. I couldn't find any online reviews about their service. I think the elder Hagatron is trying to help the protegee Blue Meanie get her business off the ground. Yeah, you gotta wake up real early with the rooster with me, ladies. One of my favorite words in the English language is discernment. 

Eventually I spoke up. Their whole schematic was not well thought out or scaled to learn what the arts organization did or how it was structured. They were so trifling that I could tell in one thread, with another colleague, that they didn't know a backend process she did. She got the snap back with '....that is not your responsibility. ' That's arrogance and the arrogant, like the insecure, can be dangerous. 

Case in point, their own errors get the laissez-faire response. If anyone on staff makes an error well, see above for the abrasive touche. Worse case scenario, you get the bitch slap in several paragraphs.

I tried twice to do payroll without much guidance or context. I emailed the younger Blue Meanie several times with questions. No response. They both kept odd schedules, Zooms by day and email by night like capitalist villains. That's not a sustainable practice for anyone. The next morning, I got the bitch-slap in a rude, long form email ( sent after hours ), that read as though the Blue Meanie needed therapy or a vacation. Hitting someone else with your own shit is quite lowdown.

At the baseline, that was unprofessional and bullying. I don't report to the Blue Meanie, but the colored chick is an easy target. That email was meant to engage me in a subservient response, to apologise and acquiesce. For what? Trying to do her goddamn job? 

I responded with silence. That trick leaves the person's bullshit dangling into a void of the ridiculous. Reading that email, I fell into a state of rage and despair that this country is hopeless; that even the most mediocre among us will come at us to assert dominance.

When the new Sheriff came to town, I spoke up. We don't have to pull up to that bullshit anymore! Their work was getting delegated to me and I wasn't hired for that. I wasn't even asked directly if I was interested or if I had the skill set for it. I found this out in a staff meeting. Then in another email, ' All HR goes to Lisa.'

HR who? HR Puff n Stuff? Could ya clue a sister in as to what your deadbeat plans are? Who exactly is running this clown circus? 

This is America
Don't catch you slippin' now
Don't catch you slippin' now
Look what I'm whippin' now
This is America (woo)

Childish Gambino, This is America, 2018

There are things I enjoy about my job particularly working in the arts with a small group of other art nerds. I enjoy exploring the theater district and watch humanity pass by. When we have surplus of a thing, I bring donations to a Glide outreach center - Cheerios, energy bars, leftover lunches. Most people on this side of town, living in the streets, are black. Everyone I work with is white. They are a solid group of good people; a mix of artists and intellectuals devoted to the arts. A few even deferred their salary during the pandemic and worked for free, so staff and artists could get paid. Granted they were older and could afford it, but that's class act character right there. To exhibit such grace and support is rare. I was touched when I heard about that.

The accountants however were bullies and I don't respond to bully ass shit. I default to thinking of who I come from through history and they had no choice. The crap, accusatory email will exist forever. Silence is a kind of self-regulation. I shared that email with the Sheriff. I will not suffer treatment like that at work while my life as a black person in America is being compromised. Look at how our protections under the law are being chipped away.  A close friend in Europe and I had a text chat recently: 

" It's like there is a fracture in society.' He wrote. That fracture is neo-fascism. Conspiracy theories are so awful from The Great Replacement to something about the world's elite planning a global Jewish takeover.  If I were to even try and investigate such hyperbole, I would succumb to despair.  I imagine myself and others, like the Children of Ham, being rounded up for extermination such as in A Handmaid's Tale. I'm aware, but I'm not going to do submit to that. I focus on art, music, and beauty instead. 

' But you're not going anywhere? ' the Sheriff asked. 

'No. I enjoy what I do. I just won't be treated in that manner.' 

( Hood translation: Got me fucked up! ) 

One thing that workplace goons bet on is the effectiveness of intimidation because we need our jobs to survive. Overseers employed the same tactic to keep slaves in check, laboring to their death. One black body down, replaced by another. One black mind lost, replaced by another. I will defend myself against all forms of American tyranny.

With intimidation, people will get anxious and break their neck to whatever bidding is handed down. I refuse. My priorities are my own well-being and that of the greater good; to support those who have to endure hours long meetings listening to knuckleheads natter on like they got their 15 minutes on Hollywood Squares. I can natter on, but at least I try to be interesting. 

The Hagatron sent a last-minute inventory request of recordings. This is for an accounting thing called a ' profit and loss statement '. She forgot to mention this while running other people around in circles. The CDs were in a densely packed storage room - a low key archaeological dig.  I thought about the GM, a good and gracious man between a rock and a hard place with these two.  Every request and directive he gives to me is done with respect and consideration - every single time. Professionally we think in the same way: plan, create, and execute. He once said I had visual acumen, which I thought was cool. 

I shifted my thinking. Focus on the good, not the bad. I could be defiant and do nothing, but that's my ego. I hauled gear in and out of Burning Man for years, bitches. I can also work out my issues in a positive way! 

But back to Renita, and this email. She at the computer, y’all. She’s stressed. She wanna say… “Why you not readin’ my shit?” But she can’t say that. So you know what she has to say? Delete, delete, delete, delete. “Per my previous email…”

But there’s a behavior that white women and women who happen to be white are doing. It’s an infraction that you’re committing on a regular basis that all of us in here would love for you to stop doing. It’s plaguing offices everywhere. Please. We beg of you. Stop cc’ing all these unnecessary people on these goddamned emails! Stop! Stop! Why you sharin’ on this goddamned email? She ain’t got shit to do with what we’re doing over here! What you tryin’ to do, Becky? What you tryin’ to do? ‘Cause I got the receipts! I got the receipts! Ah! You ain’t think I had that shit. Well, n i g g a s got me fucked up. Ooh! Exactly. Shit. Heh. She ain’t know I stay ready. When you a black person in any office, you stay ready. ‘Cause you’re always wondering, “How black am I gon’ have to get?”

- Amanda Seales, I Be Knowin, 2019

Yeah, the antics we are subjected to are black universal.  Listening to such stand up with recognition and irony, we laugh, get up from our seats, and cheer. Collectively, we rejoice in the acknowledgement that we have to be on guard at all times in this country. The greatest defenses are our wit and awareness; to know who we are. We all know that tired ass email game. It's a passive-aggressive strategy to deflect from one's mediocrity and throw us under the bus; to cast aspersion and doubt upon our competency. 

It is white supremacy.

Then something miraculous happened. I came in one morning and the  bullies were silent. They left me alone all fucking day. I was archiving emails and came across one. ' Please communicate the importance of this process to Lisa.'  Even in a third-person conversation, it's assumed I don't have the capacity for executive functioning. Really? 

The new Sheriff had put the smack down that I report to the GM, not to the dreadful dynamic duo. I support the GM and staff, not them. In the realm of professional discretion, I'm certain that's what went down. I've been in the game so long, I know when a good hand has been played. When the wack-a-doo suddenly stops - someone drew a line in the sand. 

Check it out! Treat black women with care and respect at all times. Period. Even if we're learning new processes and workflow. Our circumstances are not like those of the vanilla majority. We suffered the lash the same as the men. We work and toil and work and care for others, often neglecting ourselves in the process. Black women are the most non-lazy humans in history. We have generational trauma in our blood and bones and still get to work early. How about I bring up what my father and grandmother went through during Jim Crow? That could be a compelling workplace chat. 

( Hood translation: Fuck all yall! ) 

We are not strong black women. That tired ass trope is for the birds. We are people worthy of the same respect and consideration given to white women. If a person is not of good character or competent, that will reveal itself. 

I am not having abuse of any kind and I will walk away to protect myself. All these mean ass white women in the workplace better take a seat. Such treatment only exacerbates our collective vulnerability and rage at this moment in time. 

Are you crazy? The last thing you want to do is make a scene? Well, I'm gonna make a movie if you don't show me some respect.


- Sister Souljah, The Coldest Winter Ever, 2006

wham bam i am the man!

  

In my 9th grade year I was briefly into Wham! They took a backseat to my more serious Joan Jett and The Police fixations. I had every Police album plus a bootleg they recorded at CBGBs in 1978. 

Wham! were cute and had a few catchy songs. My favorite to this day is Everything She Wants which I had on 12". The more I got into punk the more Wham! became too mainstream. By the time Careless Whisper came out, I couldn't stand that song. It sounds like a love interlude with Michael Bolton on sax - a 1980s TV movie theme with steam and backlighting. I'm a romantic and Careless Whisper is trash. The lyrics are excruciating.

I'm never gonna dance again. 

Guilty feet have got no rhythm. 

Feet can feel guilt? Feet can have rhythm?

Somehow that was a big hit. I was selective with Wham! I never owned an album or cassette, just that 12" because Everything She Wants is dope ass pop.

I always had a sense that George was gay. In the early 1980s, a boy in jeans, a leather jacket, and espadrilles, was quite Euro gay. The butch version was a rocker or a break dancer. George just didn't signal butchy butch. This became more apparent in his 1990s video collaborations with designers, models, and house-infused pop. I think that was his creative peak. George's world didn't signal sexy straight, but sexually fluid. By 1998 he came out and more into himself. He donned a Caesar haircut and, in his best MTV unplugged set, a sharp eggplant, tailored suit.

George had become grown and sophisticated.  

He was a chic pop star, expanding his soulful voice and range. I'm a sucker for the soulful voice. He kept knocking it out of the park with dance jams and live duets. Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me with Elton, Somebody to Love with Queen in tribute to Freddy and As with Mary J.  As a performer, George was impressive live. My favorite album of his in Listen Without Prejudice. It's conceptual pop with songs about love, leaving home, self-transformation, of cowboys and angels, and a cover of Stevie's They Won't Go When I Go, which George sang beautifully. It is very difficult to cover a Stevie song and mean it.  As I and George got older, it was hard to imagine what a teenybop star he was in the early 1980s. That I was myself, long ago, a teenybopper.

I saw Wham! for the first time on American Bandstand where he and Andrew performed Young Guns, a pop cliché tune where a dude is talking to his best friend about the joys of being single bros on the run because love is for losers. 

Young guns having some fun
Crazy ladies keep 'em on the run
Wise guys realize there's danger in emotional ties
See me, single and free
No fears, no tears, what I want to be
One, two, take a look at you -
Death by matrimony

Poetry, really. 

George also raps ( badly ) and they did a ridiculous dance as though they were shooting pistols. This appealed to teenage girls like myself. Pop itself is all fantasy, not reality and we ate it up. As long as anyone is cute and dancing, everything was cool. Who cares about the inevitability of death? 

Most Wham! songs were horrible, but a few were jams. They lost me by the time Wake Me Up Before You Go Go came out. I couldn't take the Wham! hair or the Wham! clothes. I was too aesthetically dark to appreciate Wham! optimism anymore. If one was listening to Alien Sex Fiend or Nina Hagen it was unlikely they were listening to Wham! The Wake Me Up Before You Go Go video looked like an Esprit de Corps ad and I didn't like Esprit de Corps' shiny, happy vanilla image. 

Wham! was charming to watch; like going back in time. I was joking with a friend recently reminiscing about 1980s pastels. Fortunately that color palette passed me right on by. I was usually in the darkness. At the time, Ma was a fan of Georgia O'Keefe paintings, which was an entirely pastel palette. My friend referred to one O'Keefe series as the ' vagina flowers'. I laughed, remembering them as exactly that. 

I never saw the Southwest as pastel, but Georgia certainly did. I accepted Ma's feminine taste for a long time. My weirdness and dark androgyny baffled her to no end. My favorite commentary of hers, which was part parenting, part pandering to the patriarchy, ' You'd be such a knockout if you didn't dress like a bum!'

In other words, dress more like a girl. 

Our mothers, even the hippy ones, were of a different time; neat, feminine, and ladylike. Punk was the antithesis of such refinement. 

I never saw a Wham! show - it wasn't that serious. I was serious about The Police who I saw several times until the Synchronicity tour which destroyed my love forever.  It was such a corny spectacle that they even entered (vis a vis landed ) in a helicopter at the Coliseum.

You know art is dead when a rockstar arrives in a helicopter. That was a Mötley Crüe move, not a band that came out of England's punk scene. 

I was at that age; fickle and frivolous, always curious and experimenting. In love with and quickly out with different bands. I was at my whims, wide awake in a wonderland of punk, ska, and New Wave. What melancholy to remember how young and possible we all were then. I enjoyed my adolescence, even if it was often wrought with confusion. I had awesome friends; now reconciled to a middle aged future that was abstract then. Sadly, some lovely people never made it to the future. Before we dove into the deep end of adulthood and experience, for a short time we were young and sweet like Wham!

the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.

             

                                                     The blazing mane around 1998. 

I had an experience recently with a Boomer feminist during a Zoom meeting. After I fiddled with the audio and got the camera online, I came into view.

'There you are!' she said. '"You were hiding behind your hair. " 

Wait. Did she just....? Wasn't she a feminist when I was a kid? Did she not get the memo that things have changed and such comments are the illest and insensitive form of communication referred to as micro-aggressions?

 'I'm not hiding.' I said. ' My hair is going to get bigger.' 

She went on to explain she had something like mine, which she didn't.

' I may not look like it now,' she said. "But, when I was younger my hair was very curly. I could even put a pencil in it! ' 

She was referring to a racist practice in Apartheid South Africa to determine a person's Afro-textured hair. The pencil test was also done to American mixed race children between the 19th and mid-20th centuries. There were other racist and colorist practices - the brown paper bag test and Eugenics theory among them. 

' Yeah.... ' I said. ' I see similarities in the hair of the Ashkenazi people. I am as creation made me. Anyway, let's get started! ' 

I kept my cool and moved on, internalizing the same shit I've been subjected to since childhood. I'll save my bitterness of the oppressed for therapy. 

The most amusing part of that Zoom was my supervisor, the GM. A millennial intellectual in his 30s, he went to an Ivy League school and was a serious nerd for the arts. He is exceedingly polite and professional, and has a keen awareness of the injustices within American society.

' Will you shut the fuck up about her hair! ' was all over his face.

 Looking at him on the monitor he was going to stroke out, but he was unable to intercede. She was hired by the board, was a reflection of it. In American arts and letters, or any non profit arts institution, the board functions like the Wizard of Oz. They are world and culture creators to their class. 

Power dynamics. We all have to navigate them in our working and social lives. I was never good at that or recognizing the nuances of it. I'm so egalitarian I could offend the elite and not even know it.  I believe in humanity, not capitalism or social hierarchies even though I'm aware both exist. 

There is always a person somewhere who can flex their position in relation to another.  America has always been less a democracy and more like a caste system - people separated by race, class, and culture. We all default to our biases - in destructive and assumptive ways. The Boomer feminist is from Contra Costa, a notoriously un-California straight and suburban county I call Bob Dole Country. It is clean, orderly, predominately white, Libertarian and Republican. 

 In contentious interactions, I learned a cool trick when I was a kid, watching Brady Bunch reruns. 

“When you stand up in front of people, imagine them in their underwear.”

 I flipped that to imagining the adversary in middle school. That's a good baseline because middle school was hell for everyone across generations. I went back in time to the Boomer in 6th grade, sometime in the early to mid 1960s. I know that was a rough ride for her. For women of her generation attractiveness, not intelligence, was their social currency and she didn't have it.  She had to find another pathway to respectability and security which came through her intelligence and an MBA. She had to prove herself because beauty had forsaken her and creation gave her a not inherently likeable disposition. Her first reaction is to bark, not engage. 

I heard that little girl in her tone when I had edited her convoluted title that read more efficiently in three words instead of six. 

" I write my title like that all the time!' 

Whoa. My bad, Ms. Parker. 

Another co-worker, the same generation, had been with the arts org for 10 years. The Finn was a 6 ft. tall Viking doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley. After years working in research she started from scratch and went into the arts sector.  As a person, she had an awesome Scandinavian openness and sense of humor, whereas the American Boomer was completely humor-less. I enjoyed reading the Finn's emails; a stream of consciousness context to all things and people. 

Her transliteration of American idioms would crack me up: ' He fell asleep on it.' or ' I'm off the line with this.' She was a like boisterous, living Brienne of Tarth with a fierce intellect. She shared fascinating articles with me about philosophy and cryosphere research of the Arctic glaciers. The Finn seemed disappointed when I talked shit about Monterey Market, Berkeley's most insufferable vegan mob blue meanie scene. Snobitronic for the beets crew. 

The Finn respected my intelligence, whereas the Boomer was dishing The Secret Life of Bees energy. 

In her mind, The Finn now reported to the Boomer. I was a bit frustrated one morning, after another, terse email that read like a mean girl - formatted in wonky AOL which was like reading Tetris. Had no one mentioned this to her? 

She's still emotionally attached to doing things manually and talking to people on the phone, both processes that are being phased out of human interaction in the modern age. Theoretically, I suppose one could try. 

' Women had to work very hard back then.' The Finn said, referring to the 1960s and 70s.  ' Sometimes even acting like the men.' 

' Mmm hmm. ' I said. ' Imagine being a black woman during that time.' 

I'll stop a phD in their tracks with the hold up. All I have to do is interject an alternate reality when they start with the Gloria Steinem-Mary Tyler Moore-Wonder Woman-Charlie's Angel who fucked around-with-revolutionary-poets-and-didn't-marry-Michael Brady-but could-have story. 

Lady, please. They all came up with Jazzercise and look at how well that stood the test of time. 

They came up with Ms. in defiance against marriage, which the American woman had been defined by for generations. Ms. was a kind of magical autonomy. It was so radical, the married surname became two without a hyphen. It reads like a middle name and informs society that she is in fact married, but also signals autonomy. My colleagues at elections, mostly Boomer women, were bodacious and sarcastic about their time. They conceded their flops and admitted their victories such as Our Bodies Ourselves, which I myself was raised on. They explained to me that women couldn't have credit in their own name until the 1970s. What?! 

In conversation with a young Gen Z colleague from the UK, I shared the Boomer's micro-aggression about my hair. The young taught me the word for commentary and tone I've experienced my entire life. 

Gen Z gasped. "Oh my god! Why did she say that?" 

 Gen Z are serious with the reasoning. They want to know why a person is fucked up. To them, boomers are the first wave elderly who failed because their feminism was the straight middle class in revolt. There are articles and memes all over the interwebs that read like a reckoning with the past:

Feminism Failed.

Gen Z brought me a handmade birthday card with a photo of Tina, You're Simply the Best written inside. I had cried when Tina passed, a soul and rock goddess from my childhood into adulthood. I was touched by the card - it had meaning beyond Gen Z's kindness. Her generation are not afraid and demand change. Boomers can't seem to bare being white women; aligned to a power structure they believed they were in opposition to when their movement indirectly reinforced it the same shit. Someone once told me that American feminism, as it is, best served the status quo. I thought about that and what CA non-profit leadership looks like in 2023. 

Oh snap.

The birthday card took the sting and hurt out of The Secret Life of Bees. That's what I call that shit. The other nickname is The Help.

There seems to be an underlying context of who we are in relation to one another through history - what one has and what one doesn't. Her comments are an attempt at control, an assumption that I will acquiesce in the face of positional power. It's ironic to me that I was hired for the same reason Boomer was flexing. Diversity be all like a fickle mistress. 

In the coming months I'm going full Lion King. Queen? Non-binary Lioness? Something naturally black like that, which is inofitself a revolutionary act. 

In 2021 CA passed the Crown Act, which at the time I was cynical about. We only need such laws enacted because of how pervasive racism and discrimination are in this country. Now I understand the need and see the value in it. 

In the 1980s, when I was in art school in New York, I had a gig working for an Italian playboy-pimp and his stripper girlfriend. Through his booze and cocaine saturated conversation, he told me something once that I have remembered for 30 years; profound as it was in its simplicity. It could be found in the abstract, in nature, in the smallest thing in existence, from death, or in the immortality of art. 

' La bellezza è la migliore vendetta.'  He said.

Beauty is the best revenge.