things fall apart...from scratch

there have been in these many months, revelations, and tribulations come to my heart and mind. the realization that black folks undo black folks. it's a psychic scar we bare on some cellular level; that we accept and act out the ethos of divide and conquer; much as was enacted during slavery. if you control the mind, you control the person and a person without a mind lacks the ability to build. it's a tragic lack of consciousness - of the self, that is inherently connected to one's own people and by default the self is a component which constitutes the whole. but if one component tramples another, through mis-deed, ill-word, or divisive criticism without solution then any and all things become static.

then things fall apart.

black americans are a uniquely undone people. we have an inate and indestructible ability to adapt and survive, but a tragic inability to collaborate within our own communities. it always comes down to self-preservation, ego, and counting the other cat's chickens before they're even brought let alone roost. if we keep haggling and struggling with one another then nothing will change.

we've come up with negative and competitive idioms: hater (jealous), flossin, ballin. we spend the most money in pursuit of empty vanities; conspicuous consumption for the sake of appearances; that space of adornment we've always inhabited (from africa adorned to the jazz age and hip hop). but behind the decoration and beauty are souls lost in the american wilderness; a displaced people who mimic an oppressive culture, yet still demand acceptance from that culture.

an elder once said to me, 'we got the singing and dancing down. so now what?' no one wants to give up anything, share what they do have, or do the work. we create black institutions grooming children for access to white institutions, which have the best resources, since our free and public ones have zero and are a mess of corruption and institutional inequality.

so we compete against ourselves and the establishment. all the paper in the world can not shield the children from being black in america. that is something they must always be aware of in any situation throughout their lives. that is the first thing a white person sees of them. second is how that child speaks. if they are articulate, that makes them more accessible. if they speak street, they are utterly inaccessible. david chappelle made the most on-point remark during an actor's studio interview, that '...black folks speak two languages: street and job interview.' (i laughed out loud with that one).

these young people can stay confined within the community and know nothing of the world. you have to experience hate and marginalization in order to clearly identify it. we can talk endlessly about the movement and what our grandparents and parents went through; they experienced it. this generation knows nothing of the overt, in your face, exclusionary tactics other generations had to live with and fight against.

even my generation, the 80s, had it so very cool. we were the first wave of cosby show and different world, black kids in college en masse, whose parents were educated or professional. the playing field had changed. we dominated popular culture and were fast becoming movers and shakers. jay-z, russell, sean, dre, lisa b., lisa lisa and the cult jam - all 80s generation, yet all were from the space of entertainment.

i'm both fascinated with and perplexed by the tweens, teens, and twans of the modern age. where are they at, really? they've appropriated 80s fashion (in often strange and baffling ways) but they're on a whole other level of being super advanced technologically. who the hell doodles in illustrator vector graphics for fun? they have to teach me how to use the newest generation of smart phones. they can text faster than i breathe. though their technical savvy is impressive, i wonder what lies underlies beneath? they can wii, but can they think?

perhaps they're wired more than not; faces to a monitor rather than inside a book; navigating narratives and character within their own imaginations. the pace of this new age has them hard-pressed to be ever be still. always doing, moving, clicking, and logging in. i'm amazed at how to them speed is more crucial than process. in my teaching, i try to drop a bit of buddhist teaching (or tao?) i learned from the dalai lama (or more precisely, bruce lee's kung fu philosophy) - that mastering the process is key to the path of perfection.

this may sound corny, but the solution lies in love. love begets love and it is the greatest weapon against hate and derision. we have to love one another better, even in the face of conflict, work with love's sister - acceptance and her brother, respect.

maybe then we can stop singing and start swinging.

mslisa

vampires + davey d.

                                                                               

that's right, people. davy d. the acerbic activist, radio and online journalist is a twish. i'll say that since he was a bit shy to admit it. i ain't! twilight: eclipse was probably the best in the series so far. it had (for twilight) good, cheeky dialogue 'i'm hotter than you,' jacob quips to edward as they hassle over how to keep bella from going into hypothermia (edward of course can not since vampires are cold-blooded). some excellent action scenes and yes the hotness that is jacob, his character is more prominent in eclipse.

you'd be surprised how many of us gen-xery people (over 35) are fans of either the books or the movies. i myself have noticed interesting trends with folks. black girls and women in general are team jacob. white girls and women in general, team edward. we all equally dish passionately about the plot arch or have some degree of disdain for bella's whining.

i also geeked out on the soundtrack. there were several songs that caught my attention. so i did some digging and it listed really cool musicians who actually make good music - florence and the machine, cee lo, sia, bat for lashes and beck. nice! i played this out for days.

what surprised me is that after the first two twilight films i talked a whole bunch of shit. first, the whole sexual abstinence trip edward is on, which is conveniently explained as the moral code of 'his age' (turn of the 19th century or whatever). in fact, stephanie meyer is a mormon, a religious group that has been that toots the chaste until marriage horn. still what makes her a good writer i suppose is making all this non-getting-it-on vampire and human action hot. second, it was mind-numbing to sit through trite teen dialogue obviously written by grown folks. the two first films were also seriously mediocre in direction and editing, new moon being the worst.

i also got over the hysteria real quick. i'm many years older and several generations ahead of today's teen. they could be my own kids! when i was a teen i was way too cool to lose my shit over anyone (nicholas cage, daniel day lewis, luke skywalker, etc). meh. i would work out my fantasies and write horribly earnest short stories of young love set against the backdrop of apartheid south africa or sci-fi wanna-be adventures where i save luke or luke saves me or at least i got to play with a light saber and fight off a stormtrooper. good jedi-type chick.

in my day it was interview with the vampire. i was 20 when a friend gave me the second book, the vampire lestat. i lost my shit. i made drawings of lestat, wrote my own fan fiction, was full of ire when tom cruise was cast as lestat for the film (i have come to humble resignation and acceptnace since). any fan of the vampire chronicles knows that that role should have gone to julian sands, an english actor. sting would have been cool perhaps if he had been younger at the time. daniel day lewis was my first choice for louis. but did hollywood receive my telepathic genius? no!

i've always loved the vampire genre and gothic romanticism. i think this stems from being a romantic nerd. the moody aesthetic of ambient rooms, dark shadows, deep sensuous purples, reds, and black. i've seen countless vampire films from bela lugosi, to nosferatu (a fave is the slient version), the hunger, the 1978 dracula with frank langella, and bram stoker's dracula with gary oldman. one of my favorite vampire films of all time has to be near dark, an obsure early indie directed by kathryn bigelow. after near dark, it would be the swedish film let the right one in. both are absolutely awesome in their originality.

since having seen eclipse i'm more how can i say? down with the whole twilight thing. i'm certainly not writing my own fan fiction or surfing websites, or devouring every bit of trending goss about the cast. i'm more a laid back fan; purely for the fun and fantasy of it. so maybe davey d is a bit reticent to admit it, but he agreed eclipse is the coolest thing yet in the series.

vampire kitty

black hair is....

in recent months the need to switch it up, and razzle my locks with color has been in the back of my mind. i've had locks for 8 years and although i love them, i'm a bit bored. i don't have the desire to cut them (yet) and start a clean headscape. they've grown quite long and i like the feeling of these lovely natty ropes falling around my face, cascading over my shoulder.

i locked in 2002 after thinking about it for ages. i always thought they were beautiful, regal, and exquisite. they convey an embrace of one's natural black hair without pretense or fashion. it says i'm natural and i'm proud. happy and nappy!

i've had a long, fascinating journey with my hair. it's always the first thing i notice when i look at old photos. it was soft, curly, and chaotic as a little kid. by middle school in the early 80s it became more kinky and at one time i had a boyish natural. then i became fascinated with the punk and mod scenes going into 10th grade and my hair, as it was, was not going to cut what i wanted to express in my own personal style.

i used sun-in spray to bleach the top giving me a two-tone (brown and orange really before i learned the magical chemistry of toners). i used a hot iron daily to smooth it out for the day, by the end of which it was a frizz bomb. the process was tedious and damaging. then i discovered the perm. my hair although soft has a zig-zag texture; not kinky, not straight, but somewhere in between. perming tamed it, smoothed it out so that i could spike it.

this went on for years experiementing with various brands: dark & lovely, tcb, until finding african pride, which wasn't as damaging and had ingredients in it that sounded natural (not so much). eventually, in the mid-90s after having survived a few scalp burns and disastrous damaged hair that had to be cut off, i decided to go cold turkey and lay off the perm.

i went in other directions experimenting with weaves, braids, and for a good while modeling for stylists using salon-grade bleach and toner to go high lemon blonde or platinum. that looked very cool, even as my hair got longer, but the touch-up maintenance is serious and without a friend in a salon to hook me up, would have cost a fortune.

platinum out, semi permanent in. i went back to my college days experimenting with my favorite vegetable based semi-permanent dye: tish & snookie's manic panic nyc. the colors are pigment rich and super cool weather you lay them over natural color or bleached hair. one of my favorites is called nightshade, a deep red-purple. even when manic panic color fades it lifts to a more translucent version of its former self.

then i collaborated with a friend who was a stylist swirling in highlights of blonde, caramel, and gold with my natural color. i called this the different world period because cree summer's hair looked like mine. that was a nice phase and i wore it like this for several years.

all this came to an end when i made the commitment to dread. it's always an interesting point of conversation among women. some think i'm an assata-type conscious radical. others marvel at my before dread-, stay so gold-fro hair. i spent a fortune on leave in conditioners, anti-frizz, and pomades to maintain it.

dreads are not easy to maintain either. you have to wash regularly or they can smell like the armpit of a damp cat. i use only natural products, which also cost a bit more. i rinse with vinegar and sometimes lime, which deodorize them. i do hot oil treatments with olive, hemp, or coconut oils. my kitchen has at times turned into a sort of dread lab.

getting new growth tightened up is an on-going process. i'm always on the look-out for a loctician through friends and acquaintances that won't cost a gang of money. these days a student of mine will touch me up for very cheap. she has an amazing hand and twists them super tight. this lasts about a week if i'm diligent about wrapping my locks up at night or sleeping with a cap. those in-between periods i wear a snood or knitted cap when i feel they look a bit ratty and unkempt (diva meter). since my natural texture is soft, new growth hair pops and squiggles out like a cartoon. i can only take so much of that. i like my locks to look smooth and sophisticated, effortless. this is at least part of the illusion and allure of black beauty.

for now though i just think about color - tints and tones, light or dark. decisions, decisions.

star kitty

taxi zum kloh

grind, grind, grind. that's what this past year felt like. intense, energy-driven work, utterly new landscape to navigate, and on a deep level confronting my own blackness. as a people we have issues. it's no longer the age of whitey keepin us down, it is simply ourselves. i've had to reach down into the spirit to do the work, which i treat like a commitment. black teachers need black students. i put that out into the ether a year ago and here i is.

but whoo....so tired some days. i wildly procrastinate; just so i have time chill out and not have a list of things to do. i'm realizing the modern age at my age is some mad business. i'm amazed at the speed kids can text or others can multi-task. i am so missing the neurons required to do that effectively. i'm still well-rooted in my one-thing-at-a-time vibe.

and so art camp begins this week. totally different scene. for one thing, i have one group and more class time. nice! but this one group is a majority of boys. great! no access to a working printer at the moment, lunch program delivery was delayed, so folks went into plan B with frozen spaghetti mama rose made, then the original lunch was relegated to snack time.  

i had to completely wing it. using colored paper and got into contrast and complimentary colors. name a thing in nature with two contrasting colors? that went over cool. kemetic symbols on the yard....very nice. and it was hot, 80+ hot, zaki was super emotional, seynabou kept playing with my keys. finally...at 3pm i bounce. i had errands as usual to run to get prepared for the next day. 

i'm leaving friday for maui and even with a certain of reticence; a super modest budget, no set plans other than connecting with this local cat....i'm getting the eff outta here. i need the move medicine that travel provides my spirit. 

winter : the return V1N2

hey hey. well much to share since *may* of the last post. summer 2009 i went back to beloved guatemala to work on a mural for the los patojos youth center. hard work under blazing hot mornings and heavy rains by mid-afternoon. made some new wonderful friends and found an ex-dear one in a sad state; stumbling drunk in the streets, sallow, and heartbroken by life.

if life has taught me anything it is you can't save a dude from his own wreckage. of course you can support him, but ultimately the work comes from his own force of will and determination. any dude does otherwise will drag a woman down to rumination. there is love and then there is exploitation.

the return to cali and friends visit from new york, switzerland, and sydney. good times and good wine. another girlfriend refers me to an independent school in east oakland and by late august i'm offered a contract position teaching spanish and art for the 2009 - 10 school year.

challenging, inspiring and magical place; the school was built on the kemetic principles of ma'at. i had come to the realization recently, teaching with various programs in the EB that i was a bit undone by the reactionary liberal one-love politics a lot of folks were spinning. my belief is how important it is for black kids to be taught by their own people like myself or younger folks in their 20s and 30s; was often met with derision or the 'people of color' tag.

let me just be clear: black people are not in the same boat as 'people of color'. we were not native to the states and were enslaved. this idiom sounds very cool and colorful and inclusive, but we're still largely marginalized, regulated and defined by white society in america. we have so many issues within ourselves and with one another as a people that i came to a personal catharsis; that the work be done by ourselves with a certain degree of autonomy. we don't have it together like most latino, vietnamese , or arab communities. we are essentially isolated from one another and more inclined to fend for ourselves and talk shit about those who're fucking up or downtrodden; even in our own families. this includes myself. i have family issues that make me run the other way or in the least lay very very low.

we can't really be a part of the world until we get it together as a people of this world.

one morning recently i arrived for my tues AM kinder spanish class. they were talking about
each other's complexions. how mind blowing to me that at the age of 5 they are already separating themselves from one another based on the lightness or darkness of their own skin. this is occurring to them before they even see themselves as black children as a whole.

what the fuck. exclamation.

there are many kids in the school of mixed race like myself; more than of my own generation. i personally think this is beautiful and positive for the parents of those kids to have placed them in a black school so that they can cultivate a strong identity and foundation. i was talking with a few of the middle school boys the other day and my opinion that we can't be racist. 'racism was a construct created by the oppressor against the oppressed,' i said. 'we've never been the oppressor in this country, so that reverse racism thing is nonsense. it simply came about to allay white guilt over our history.'

i watch and listen to the kids cut each other to shreds. they're more apt to compete than cooperate. more inclined to hate on their peers than be positive and supportive. everything is a competition. anything of value (love, life, solidarity) is disregarded. cute shoes, cute hair, being cool, winning, being envied - all these surface things have higher value. black americanism.

i'm mentoring a middle school girls' group, sistas of the earth (SOTE). we had a discussion about chris brown and rhiannon. their opinions came down to this; he shouldn't have done it, but she probably provoked him. they even went so far as to say that she had her bruises made-up to look more severe. despite the heinousness of his actions, chris brown is still the ideal black boyfriend. they forgive him.

what this tells me is that even some insane transgression as violence can be forgiven if he's cute and driving a lamborghini before he's 20. the content of his character, his lack of respect for women is essentially irrelevant.

we did some visualization exercises: beyonce on vacation, reading a book, eating lunch. without consulting one another, all the girls had her in some posh resort in the caribbean kickin it with a tropical drink and coconut shrimp. not a cabin in some croatioan village or hiking the woods. another exercise, jennifer hudson at her family's funeral. 3 out of 5 had her in a blue dress, high heel shoes, and her hair nicely done. all images of hudson that are common in the media (i often see her in blue).

innerestin.

and as well the leadership of the school is a trip. one big beautiful chaotic work in progress. information is hoarded, scripts flipped on the regular, conversations of considerable importance discussed quickly in passing. 16 kids getting dumped on me while i'm in class with 20 other kids.
hey man this schedule was in that memo i got at the last minute that i've had to read a thousand times to figure out what the hell. aren't you on the same page?

my most brilliant strategy of perception. the director, sweet a cancer dude as he is, i'm essentially dealing with the blue print of a 12 year old competitive nerd. a dude's character doesn't change with maturity, he just grows pubic hair.

even in the face of challenge humor is my greatest weapon. it gives me the strength to move on or least crack myself up. and laughter is the best medicine when a pomegranate martini is not accessible.

much love
mslisa

dread + the city

got word today that a friend in nyc is being evicted from her place. the building has been condemned by the city and tenants have to clear out. this morning i saw a frantic post from her on fB to friends in brooklyn. the girls of course came to the rescue! she had convalesced at their place after getting her wisdom teeth pulled.

what saddens me is that this is yet another stroke of grave misfortune for a woman i met randomly waiting tables at a cafe restaurant in east harlem. i was trailing and unlike most people in the restaurant biz training you, it's sink or swim, baby. keep up or die tryin. she actually took the time to decipher the broke-down POS system for me, stayed after closing to share a glass of wine and we swapped our dreams of being groovy get-down artists in the big apple. our second chance as we were into our mid-30s at the time. she had come back from arizona, myself from cali, having left new york years before when i finished art school. but the difference between us is that i knew when the tough get going and can't find a job, while the bills keep piling up, and the sublet fell through with friend-turned-psycho, and having my cats in tow and stuff in storage on varik street and the money running out.. the tough go back home and re-group.

she stayed; eeking out a hustle here, a hustle there (rarely involving her photography) and an endless string of men somewhat good, but mostly bad to keep her afloat. she drank heavily and she partied incessantly. she got insanely thin even for her already petite frame. she bounced from one 'boyfriend's' place to another and residential hotels in between.

i knew bits and pieces of her past, but over time threaded together a woman from an affluent background. (she once mentioned having to pay for her parents' extensive art collection in storage back home. art collection?) i guess the parents were gone, but there was a brother who she had some on-going static with over the very costly lease (or payments?) for a high-end truck.

she had lived in europe for several years in the 1980s being arty and fabulous. she was well-educated and culturally sophisticated. she had been working professionally on photo shoots in california and the southwest. she knew people, but it seemed they had forgotten about her . several years ago, she got a job in the rothschilds household in the city. yeah, that family of insanely old school (18th century!), old world european wealth in international banking and finance. she said their art collection was amazing. a driver would pick her up and take her to the 'residence'. i was enthralled and fascinated with her anecdotes. she had hoped one day, to get some of her art into someone's face. a rothschilds as benefecator is certainly big time.

then health problems began to plauge her; abnormal pap smears, possible HPV, pre-cancerous cells on the cervix. all of this she would play off with her usual ironic and acerbic wit. on the occassion we've stayed in touch, she became more and more disconnected, nonsenical and angry. i've deleted her 'sounding like a crazy lady' replies on fB a few times...what ...? little asides about my ethnicity i found offensive; well yeah, but you're not full black. say what? underlined i felt with some displaced disappointment that she isn't any bit black. i stopped talking about race with her after that; keeping things in the safe zone of art and intellectual bantering. waiting for godot! going to the goog! etc.

eventually i stopped talking to her directly because i sensed a cool person caught up in a deep black hole (i have enough of that with immediate family, thanks!). i keep tabs on her through a mutual friend, who is herself a generous and sweet soul. i spoke to her today about the situation and she was on her way to long island, but seemed a bit distressed at her staying long-term given the highly negative space she's in.

still despite all her ups and downs and hard times, she's never simply gone home. it's as though misery loved being miserable in gotham; a harsh place to be falling apart. but she's in my thoughts and i pray for her.

leave her to heaven

one of my favorite movies from hollywood's golden age is leave her to heaven with gene tierney (one of the most gorgeous women of the era) and cornel wilde. it was the fatal attraction melodrama of its time, but much more quaint and subtle. no obsessed knife-wielding woman here; it's all in the crazed, desperate eyes of gene's character, ellen; her hands in knots as her desperate love for her husband gradually becomes more self-destructive.

there's some issues with the characterizations, taken into the context of the social mores of the time. women of a certain class in america spoke with a discernible north-atlantic accent, were impeccably groomed and dressed and only worked in the home or supervised work in the home. they were refined and educated solely for the purpose of marrying well. hollywood dished up this image of perfection for generations; much like the bad people pay for their bad ways and good people prevail or make saintly sacrifices narrative. there were no gray areas in the american experience (the production code adhered to this strictly through moral fascism and censorship). it was a simpler time; long before audiences became more sophisticated and the cultural landscape of america began to change.

what i love about this movie primarily is gene t. she's a scene stealer in her expressions and the subtle hits of mania hidden underneath her cool and appropriate exterior. she can say nothing and still drop a bomb on everyone in the room with her energy. by comparison, other actors do their parts effectively, but not quite so captivating. gene simply had the most interesting and complex role. her suffocating sense of love is explained through dialogue that she was fixated and obssesive over her father who has passed away. how she, her mother, and sister survived this creepy reverse-oedipal daddy issue drama is never really explored. her mother states, in some form of denial maybe, that 'there's nothing wrong with ellen, she just loves too much.'

in old hollywood lingo, love was the code word for everything good, salacious, evil, noble, sexual and destructive that motivated a human being to do anything. 'do you love her?'
'why yes, yes i do. quite desperately really.' translates into i want to fuck her so bad i can taste it.

the production design by art director Lyle R. Wheeler is stunning; the interiors are painstakingly detailed in the couple's lakeside house, back of the moon and the family's colonial beachfront cottage. one of the earlier color films (cinematographer Leon Shamroy won an Academy Award for his work), everything is in deeply saturated tones of blues, reds, browns, teals and yellows. fascinating to look at even though i doubt gene's lipstick palette actually existed in the real world; it beautifully contrasted or complimented her costume changes.

at the heart of the story is ellen's obsessive love for richard and lack of self. when richard's younger brother danny is given doctor's approval to live with them at back of the moon, ellen tries to no avail to talk his doctor out of it; feeling danny's presence an intrusion. her mother and sister come to visit, she becomes sullen and rude and then sees the friendly disposition between richard and her sister, ruth, as a threat.

ellen although beautiful and impeccable on the surface, is a train wreck of a human being. through a series of events she opportunistically either eliminates people richard also cares about or alienates them from their lives. she deliberately injures herself and miscarries their baby, seeing the baby as competition for richards's affection.

finally, the truth revealed of her twisted love for richard and her obsessive, destructive actions, he leaves her, but not without ellen taking one final bizarre act of revenge.

classic melodrama!
draq queen kitty