Soul Reasonings:.. Autobots, rollout, BITCHES!!!

*There is a very minor spoiler in this post. If you are one of the few anally-rententive people who read this post, please skip this one. Now, on to our show...*

So I had the fortune/pleasure of taking in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen on Wednesday night. It was an enjoyable flick (definitely no Star Trek), easy to follow along, nice action, funny dialogue, the works. It isn’t the best movie of the summer, but I recommend seeing it. It was $45 well spent. That being said, I have one issue with the movie. It isn’t a major issue, but it is symbolic of how some Hollywood and social stereotypes live on to this day. Quite simply, what is the real purpose of The Twins???

The Twins, in this movie, are meant to portray the original Autobot characters Skids and Mudflap (see the links for personality breakdowns). However, this is where the similarities end. The Twins are basically clownish caricatures. They are fairly animalistic in appearance (facially, looking monkey-ish), and speak with a hybrid Brooklyn/Dirty South twang and vernacular. They make heavy use of the term “bitch-ass”. One has a gold tooth! I think by now you can catch where I’m going with this. Now these facts, by themselves, don’t necessarily affect me. It’s sad that Hollywood has to resort to such obvious stereotypical moulds when it comes to character creation, and it does annoy me mildly, but I have come to expect as such. What I did not expect, was what played off ¾ of the way through the movie. A situation popped up where Skids was asked to translate some Cybertronian text. His response: “Sorry, I ain’t much into reading, but it is Decepticon…” Hold on a sec, wha??????????? You “ain’t much into” what???????? N*gga WHAT??????

I have grown sadly accustomed to Hollywood painting minority characters with broad strokes from a generalized brush. It is the nature of the beast, especially those of the “summer blockbuster” variety. It is virtually impossible to properly develop multiple characters, push the plot and choreograph the action plus keep it all within a reasonable time frame. So we get the hero/anti-hero, the damsel in distress, the comic-relief, the token minority person. Further complicating this matter in Transformers, is the fact that half of the characters, the protagonists, are largely colour-free and unencumbered from personality types. There are few ways to say “ok, this is the funny guy”, or “ok, this is the black guy” without putting some blatant race/character types in there. Therefore, I was willing to live with the vernacular, the accent, the over-the-top behaviour, even the gold tooth (ok, maybe not the gold tooth). But the “I ain’t much into reading” is pushing it way over the boundary.

The belief that black people don’t read is steeped in one of worst, and most stupid, misconceptions that continues to exist in the world today. It basically implies that all black people are ignorant, and wouldn’t know what the marked thingies on the inside of a bound volume are if they came up and bitch-slapped them. It also caters to the belief that black people have no interest in improving themselves, and raising their level of knowledge. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. And what is the best source of knowledge? Books. Well, second best after the internet (according to some people), but that is another topic for another day. So, by having one of the only two black characters (who are already shady in their make-up), assert that he “ain’t much into reading” (Lord, even the grammar of the statement is deplorable), Michael Bay is maintaining that young black people are not interested in bettering themselves. He is perpetuating and even promoting the stereotype. And for those persons who would counter that this is typical of the modern hip-hop generation, I say bullshit. I know many ambitious young black persons who, while displaying many of the preconceived characteristics of The Twins, are part of the hip-hop generation, and who also go out of their way to gain as much knowledge as they possibly can. Nope, this is a purely racist stereotype.

But the real problem lies in the fact that this isn’t the first time that Michael Bay has slipped in this kind of nuanced bias. We all know the standing joke about black people in action/horror movies. If you are a black actor in a movie, pay your respects, and get a good friend to write your eulogy from the get-go. Because, chances are, you are not seeing past the half-hour mark. Hollywood has done a pretty ok job of combating this particular problem in recent years (after much bawling and complaining from minority groups). Michael Bay seems hell-bent on making sure it doesn’t die an easy death. In the movie adaptation of Miami Vice, Tubbs goes from being a best friend and true partner to Crocket in the series, to pretty much being his lackey in the movie. In the first Transformers movie, anyone remember what happened to Jazz, ostensibly, the only black Transformer in the movie? Yep, he’s the only Autobot who died. And fairly quickly in the final battle, too. And now, this. Anyone else see a pattern emerging?

Listen, I’m not expecting perfection from Hollywood. This isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t think we’re going to see ridiculous misconceptions about minorities disappear anytime soon. At the same time, I would hate to have to skip Transformers 3, just because Skids’ dumb ass still hasn’t figured out that it’s time to pick up a friggin’ book.

Soul Sound: Common - Be

The lyrics to this week's Soul Sound, says more than I ever could:

Common - Be

I want to be as free as the spirits of those who left
I'm talking Malcom, Coltrane, my man Yusef
Through death grew conception
New breath and resurrection
For moms, new steps in her direction
In the right way
Told inside is where the fight lay
And everything a nigga do may not be what he might say
Chicago nights stay, stay on the mind
But I write many lives they lay on these lines
Wave the signs of the times
Many say the grind's on the mind
Shorties blunted-eyed and everyone wanna rhyme
Bush pushing lies, killers immortalized
We got arms but won't reach for the skies
Waiting for the Lord to rise
I looked into my daughter's eyes
And realize that I'ma learn through her
The Messiah, might even return through her
If I'ma do it, I gotta change the world through her
Furs and a Benz, gramps wantin 'em
Demons and old friends, pops they hauntin' him
The chosen one from the land of the frozen sun
When drunk nights get remembered more than sober ones
Walk like warriors, we were never told to run
Explored the world to return to where my soul begun
Never looking back or too far in front of me
The present is a gift
and I just wanna BE

Soul Reasonings: ...On Writing Pt. 2

Ok, so here is the long awaited part 2 to the "On Writing" post. This one is a little disjointed, cuz I've been busy the past days, and unable to maintain a consistent flow. I'll try to clarify and edit it in future. Sorry folk...

Pt. 2

Time passed. I finished secondary school and worked for 2 years at a certain fallen financial giant. I went to college in the Atl (shawty). I made new friends, lived thru new experiences, and basically took life for what it was. I never wrote anything, and I never ventured more about myself than I was asked. I kept my love for reading though, and picked up a profound appreciation for poetry, especially spoken word. Sometime during my sophomore, I realized though that I had either lost my aptitude for writing, or I was so turned off and (for lack of a better word) traumatized by my experience that I simply was unable to write. Anything. I mean it. Simple short stories, simple verses, hell, even essays for class. I would start to write, and somewhere after in the middle of the second paragraph, the flow of words would simply dry up. The ideas and concepts would still be there, but they never seemed to be able to make it to the paper. My professors all kept telling me the same thing every time I handed in an assignment: "We can see your ideas, but the essay isn’t flowing. It’s jumbled.” I gave them fits. In their opinion, I was extremely intelligent, but could not transfer that intelligence to a piece of paper for shit. And they couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know why (at the time) for that matter. And then, it started coming back. Not immediately, I still would not write even a note to myself for another 3 years, but the flow started coming back. I started back making up little rhymes in my head. I started doodling random sentences in the back of my notebooks. The funny thing is that as much as a traumatic experience took away my ability to create; an equally, if not, more traumatic experience brought it right back. In short, I met her.

Now, I’m not going to get into details about her. Trust me when I say that is an entire blog post on its own (actually, maybe 3… and a half). I will offer this much, in this space right now, just to give a general idea of the impact she had. We lived together for a year. I would say that 8 out of those 12 months constituted the hardest 8 months of my life, except for the fact that when we broke up; I went thru a 2 year depression that really wasn’t a depression. I was bitter. Hell, I was angry. I developed a razor-sharp tongue. I would lash out at friends and enemies alike. My mother pretty much left me alone, and when I finally did summon up the strength to open up about what happened, she (my mother) wanted to whup her ass (and my mother is/was the most non-violent person I know). I carried issues from my relationship with her, over to my next 2 relationships. This is 7 years later, and I’m still carrying some issues. I would refuse to discuss things that were visibly affecting me, passing them off as “nothing”. I only moved from arguably spitting on her if I ever saw her again, to just acting like I don’t know her, last year. They say there is a thin line between love and hate. I didn’t cross it, I long-jumped. And I never really spoke about it. Don’t get me wrong, I have my inner circle who I confide in, but even that didn’t seem to help. There was this rage that was just there, with nowhere to go. I would breakdown crying at night, not cuz I was sad and missed her. I was just that mad at her. Think of it as being brought over to the dark side. You can never really go back. In the space of 2 years, she had introduced me to feeling of true anger, jealousy, and obsession. And though, it may not be in your nature, once those emotions touch you, you never truly remove their presence or influence. But one good thing came out of that relationship. About a month afterward, I found a little blue notebook lying around the house. And I kept. And late one night, I wrote a single line in the middle of it: “I hate you.” I breathed a little, turned and went to sleep. And I slept a little better that night. Not much, but just enough to actually sleep soundly.

I still didn’t really write much after that night. The emotion conveyed in those 3 words scared the shit out of me. I had never dealt with the emotion “hate” before. But I couldn’t deny the fact that I had derived a very small amount of relief from just putting the words down on paper. A small weight had been shifted. But the mere fact that the emotion was out there, in the world, in a space that was something other than the confines of my mind was frightening. So I stopped. Again. Before I even really re-started. And I just continued to hold stuff in, not letting any of the pain, the hurt or the anger go. Until it cost me something I really valued, and it all came pouring out. I ranted and raved. I drank to excess. I smoked to excess. I leaned heavily on my friends for support. And none of it really helped. Then one day, I sat in front of my pc, I logged onto fb (Facebook, for the uninitiated), started a new note, and I wrote. And I wrote. I wrote without any real rhyme or reason. I just let it flow out, through me, and onto the screen. When I was done, I had about 1200 words of pure emotion and mostly random thoughts. You can still read it. It’s the very first posting on this blog. And you know what? I felt free when I was done. For however long that brief period of respite lasted, my mind was at ease. I had fought my demons, and won the battle. I lived to tell another day. It was a sweet release that I had never truly felt in all the late nights I had spent on friends’ porches, in all the bottles of JWB that I had downed, in all the packs of DuMaurier I had inhaled. I love my inner circle. They are my family. I only wish I could do as good a job of being there for them, as they are there for me. But that night, I truly had found the elixir to my wounds.

Since then, I have very slowly gotten back into the flow of writing regularly. I am glossing over a lot of moments, both major and minor, that contributed to my reaching this point. But this post, combined, is already over 2000 words long (I love word count), and I think some of the things that I would write about could be food for another rant or reminisce on another day. But, that day will come, and I hope that I will still derive the same joy, piece of mind and tranquility from staining parchment, with dye, and setting words (and my emotions with them) free

Soul Reasonings: On Writing...

Ok, so I'm splitting this one into 2 posts, cuz it's that long. I'll have the second part up tomorrow...

What makes someone pick up a pen and paper and begin lay their thoughts out in ink? What makes it so imperative that we get those thoughts out of our heads, and out into the open where anyone may see? What the hell is the inspiration behind these thoughts anyway, and what madness causes us to put them out there for anyone to see and critique? I can’t speak for anyone else, but the answer to the question is very simple for me. It is too complicated for me to simply say that writing allows me to vent in a way that nothing else does. It goes beyond that. It’s difficult to explain, but I will try.

When I was young I had an affinity for reading. While regular 4 and 5-year olds were running around raising all kinds of hell, I was the one always down in a book. Or at least that is what I was told. I do remember having a ridiculous collection of books on my bookshelf by the time I turned 7, and I remember having read the vast majority of them. And I’m not talking books of bedtime stories either. I had a children’s encyclopedia, “Tell Me Why”, “More Tell Me Why”, a children’s atlas, and a book of African folk tales, amongst the usual fare of the Enid Blyton, Famous Five, and the rest. In short, my imagination was never in danger of being starved. From primary school, I hated math, but I always showed a natural affiliation for creative writing. My essays were always near the top of the class, and I took a lot of pride in those accomplishments. This continued all the way through secondary school, until I hit form 5. And then I had the rug pulled out from under me.

When I hit form 5, I got assigned to a beast of a English teacher. For these purposes (cuz I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, and yes I heard he died some years ago), he shall be referred to as Mr. R. Anyway, Mr. R. was a very “by the book” English teacher. And I mean by the book. Your essay should have a clearly defined introduction; leading up to the body, and the conclusion should tie everything up neatly. Call it “writing by the numbers”. Anyway, needless to say, your stubborn and very naïve blogger decided that “writing by the numbers”, wasn’t for me. What the hell, I could write by the numbers in my sleep. So I went out and did my own thing, still based on the framework he gave us, but with my own structure. I wrote a complex story that started at the end, and then jumped back and showed how the protagonist ended up at that point. In retrospect, even though it was my best work up to that point (even other teachers I showed it to afterwards commended me on my creativity), I don’t know what the ass I thought was gonna happen. Well, he completely destroyed it. And I do mean completely. Actually, let me be specific, he destroyed my work, AND my confidence in my work with it.

It’s tough to grasp as a 15-year old what constructive criticism is, but you generally know it if you see/hear it. You may not like it, but at least you can live with it. I have yet to hear one piece of constructive criticism from that day. I remember being called a “fantasy writer” whose work was fit for a “bullshit Mills-and-Boon novel”. And that is an exact quote. (There was a romantic element in the story, but I really didn’t develop it. Come on. It was a 500-word essay for class). I was in shock. This wasn’t getting a boof in class, for doing an assignment wrong. This was pure vitriol being spewed. A liming pardner even asked if I did the man something. I poured over that story for days afterwards. And then, quite simply, I shut down. And by shutting down, I mean I stopped writing. Completely. You could quicker get me to write an expositive essay on the shittings, rather than write another story. (I think I also may have set a new school record for detentions received due to skipped homework assignments afterwards, but I don’t have the empirical evidence to back that up). But something else also happened. I stopped expressing myself.

Now, let it be known that I have never been the most talkative person about what’s going on in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind. No-one is really, I think. But I raised it to an art form. You would quicker get a 10-minute diatribe on the merits and values of the “N” word, than hear me say one peep about how my day went. That’s just how I was. I simply did not like to talk about myself very much. The one place I could just let myself go was through my writing. It was my release. Though, I was ok-to-good in a lot of things, my writing was the one thing I believed I truly excelled at. So I used it as my voice. And then one day, I was told quite brutally, that the one thing I thought I was really, really good at, I really wasn’t shit at it. Actually, I was bullshit. If someone tells you the voice you use to let yourself be heard is no good, you tend to take that seriously. Especially, if it's someone in a position of authority. More so, if your pee has only been frothing for like the past 2-3 years...

Soul Reasonings: Weary Words from A Weary Soul

I haven’t written in a minute, for a number of reasons. I have been studying, I have been working on an article for a friend for the longest period of time imaginable (I will post that here too, assuming it gets done this lifetime), but mainly because some things shook me to my core this week. This one isn’t going to be elegant treatise on the myriad interpretations and meanings given to language, largely held to be taboo. No, this is pure emotion, needing a release point, and possibly finding in this space. This is my venting ground.

I was put into a strange and uncomfortable situation some days ago. It wasn’t strange, in the sense that it was unfamiliar. It was strange, in the sense of “how the fuck did I end up back here.” And then it just moved from being strange, to just being downright painful. Let’s paint a very vague caricature of the scene. You go out with a group of friends. One of them holds more significance to the rest due to the fact that you were involved once. Some time has passed since then, and you believe you are fine, though secretly, you know you still hold very strong feelings for this person. Yet, out of respect for them, you have stopped trying to pursue what you once had, and have tried to move on. You have even succeeded to a certain point. It’s just going to be a fun night with good friends. Then it all goes awry. Everyone gets drunk to varying degrees. From “I’m nice, but I have to drive folk home, so let me start chugging club soda from now”, to flat out wasted. Your “special friend” is in your car, so you’re trying to be responsible. Now in all my years of drinking (to excess a lot of time), I have stumbled upon a very funny fact. Alcohol is quite an effective truth serum. If you have had sufficient quantities, in the right mix too, you will most probably act an ass, and you won’t remember the vast majority of it the next day, but I guarantee that anything that exits your mouth will be a pretty close approximation of the truth. You may get some hyperbole in there, but basically, you’re incapable of lying. And with that setting, came my pain.

My special friend was one of those sliding towards the “I’m wasted” side of the scale. On the ride home, I was subjected to a line of questioning and statements that moved from amusing, to strangely reminiscent, to downright painful. It is a truly exquisite (and not the “good” exquisite either) form of pain to have someone tell you things you want to hear, no, pined to hear, but you cannot take any of to heart. Why? Because they’re DRUNK. Remember that part about alcohol and hyperbole? In essence, you cannot hold them to anything they said. Because I’m almost certain you were never supposed to know in the first place. Let’s examine that for a second. The one thing you probably aren’t supposed to know, is the same thing that you really want to know, but you know now, yet you can’t really acknowledge that you know, because you aren’t supposed to know. And so life moves on in its own little circle. Except for me, who now has deal with old wounds that have been opened anew, and fresh pain from old sources.

I’m not blaming my friend for my issues. She is entitled to live her life without having to worry about how it affects anyone else. I’ve done a semi-ok job this week of hiding my hurt behind false smiles and excuses of being tired. I haven’t drunk like this since carnival weekend, and my smoking has hit an all time high. I have gone to sleep early and awoken the next morning feeling more tired than I was the night before. I have thrown myself into my studies, and my work, so that my mind won’t have any opportunity to wander. And in all of this, I just keep trying to push those old emotions back to where they came from. Cuz this is what I do best. I don’t deal with my shit, I rise above it, right? Right????

I guess till then, I’ll drink my sorrows away. Just don’t ask me any fucking questions if you meet me while I’m drinking.

Soul Sounds: Lupe Fiasco "Hurt Me Soul"

It’s week 2 of the Soul Sounds segment, and the spotlight is once again on the words of Wasalu Mohammed Jaco, better known as Lupe Fiasco. The song this week, “Hurt Me Soul” comes from his first album “Food & Liquor”. (I forgot to mention that last week’s song came from his second album “The Cool”). The “Food & Liquor” album, in my humble opinion” should go down as one of the most important rap albums of all time. The young man immediately placed himself alongside such noted rap luminaries as Black Thought and Chuck D. The album presents social commentary, with out directly commenting the ills that plague our society. Instead, the artist allows the stories he weaves to make their own statements. “Hurt Me Soul” is a classic example of this phenomenon. It will be interesting to see where he proceeds from here, but the future is promising. And btw, it hurts me soul AND me head, when I hit up message boards and forums, and some young, dumb buck jumps in, outta timing, with the opening salvo: “Lupe (or whoeva else) ain’t got sh*t on Soulja Boy (or Lil Wayne).” God, I hate ignant people…(HA! Thought I was gonna use the N-word, didn’t ya…)

Lupe Fiasco - Hurts Me Soul lyrics

Now I ain't tryna be the greatest
I used to hate hip-hop... yup, because the women degraded
But Too $hort made me laugh, like a hypocrite I played it
A hypocrite I stated, though I only recited half
Omittin the word "bitch," cursin I wouldn't say it
Me and dog couldn't relate, til a bitch I dated
Forgive my favorite word for hers and hers alike
But I learnt it from a song I heard and sorta liked
Yeah, for the icin, glamorized drug dealin was appealin
But the block club kept it from in front of our buildin
Gangsta rap-based filmings became the buildin blocks
For children with leakin ceilings, catchin drippins with pots
Coupled with compositions from Pac, Nas's "It Was Written"
In the mix with my realities and feelings
Living conditions, religion, ignorant wisdom and artistic vision
I began to jot, tap the world and listen, it drop

My mom can't feed me, my boyfriend beats me
I have sex for money, the hood don't love me
The cops wanna kill me, this nonsense built me
And I got no place to go
They bomb my village, they call us killers
Took me off they welfare, can't afford they health care
My teacher won't teach me, my master beats me
And it hurts me soul

I had a ghetto boy bop, a Jay-Z boycott
'Cause he said that he never prayed to God, he prayed to Gotti
I'm thinkin golly, God guard me from the ungodly
But by my 30th watchin of "Streets is Watchin"
I was back to givin props again and that was botherin
About as uncomfortable as a untouchable touchin you
The theme songs that niggas hustle to seem wrong but these songs was comin true
And it was all becoming cool
I found a condom on the ground that Johns would cum into and thought
What constitutes a prostitute is the pursuit of profit then they drop it
The homie in a suit pat her on the butt, then rock it
It seems I was seein the same scene adopted
Prevalent in different things with the witnesses indifferent to stop it
They said don't knock it, mind ya business
His business isn't mine and that nigga pimpin got it

They took my daughter, we ain't got no water
I can't get hired, they cross on fire
We all got suspended, I just got sentenced
So I got no place to go
They threw down my gang sign, I ain't got no hang time
They talk about my sneakers, poisoned our leader
My father ain't seen me, turn off my TV
'Cause it hurts me soul

So through the Grim Reaper sickle sharpening
Macintosh marketing
Oil field augering
Brazilian adolescent disarmament
Israeli occupation
Islamic martyrdom, precise
Yeah, laser guided targeting
Oil for food, water, and terrorist organization harborin
Sand camouflage army men
CCF sponsorin, world conquerin, telephone monitorin
Louis Vuitton modelin, pornographic actress honorin
String theory ponderin, bullimic vomitin
Catholic priest fondlin, pre-emptive bombin and Osama and no bombin them
They breakin in my car again, deforestation and overloggin and
Hennessy and Hypnotic swallowin, hydroponic coffin and
All the world's ills, sittin on chrome 24-inch wheels, like that

They say I'm infected, this is why I injected
I had it aborted, we got deported
My laptop got spyware, they say that I can't lie here
But I got no place to go
I can't stop eatin, my best friend's leavin
My pastor touched me, I love this country
I lost my earpiece, I hope y'all hear me
'Cause it hurts me soul

I like the ambition... Go Real...