good shit

i feel a bit bipolar lately, up and down about just about everything. but today it is 80 degrees! and so, a quickie-post, in honor of the gorgeous weather. as the title suggests here is a list of some good shit that i've seen/ heard recently:

"the business of being born"- a film about the birthing industry in the US with some incredible footage of home-births. it made me disgusted with US hospital birthing policies, and more than that it made me want to deliver and/ or have babies immediately!

i have been reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. just wanted to say that i cannot put it down. the novel takes place in London and follows 3 generations of families from different backgrounds (white, Bangladeshi, and Jamaican.) this was Smith's debut novel in 2000 and the writing is incredible. she moves seamlessly from skillful plot that weaves between characters and years, hilarious and poignant character development, and spot-on critical study of identity politics (often without being clear which is which.) i am impressed and enamored!

check out this organization: Young Women's Empowerment Project (YWEP) based in Chicago. i heard a woman from YWEP speak and i was blown away by the depth and breadth of what they do and the fearlessly radical way that they do it. the woman who spoke actually said that her job is being phased out because the organization is in the process of becoming entirely youth run and operated! it's overwhelmingly exciting to hear of a group that seems so grassroots, sustainable, and solution-oriented.

i heard Irene Aebi sing, in person! if you don't know, Irene was Steve Lacy's wife and muse. her energy and presence were unbelievable. i'm not always into all that woo-woo stuff but you know sometimes you're in someone's presence and you can just feel the beauty of their spirit? being near Irene was like that. the group "ideal bread" performed some Lacy tunes, and then Irene sang some of Lacy's art songs with a soprano saxophonist and pianist. gorgeous. Steve Lacy's writing is humorous and painful, composed and messy. i was so happy to hear a few tunes i knew and a lot of new ones. one thing i love about Lacy's work is that his pieces are about something. always. he puts thought into his titles, dedications, text-settings. a true artist. sometimes i think jazz musicians are afraid of language. we should all take a tip from Lacy and partner with words, worship the world of letters while simultaneously using music- those sounds that get at what we could never speak or write. okay, enough. watch this:

satisfy this hungriness

after listening repeatedly to both nina simone and cat power take on this song, i decided to see what would happen if i tried.  it's rough around the edges but honestly, so was i in this moment.  posting this video in an effort to spill my creative juices a little more indeterminately these days.

staggering

blood hardened inside me.

here it is-- a clump, staggering

to the depths of toilet bowl.

almost went in after it, to know

how it clings to flesh between fingers,

slides off palms, but let it disappear.

enough.  this is what my body gives.

you can hear the sadness and wanting

in my voice but i am not afraid

or embarrassed.  this is how i came into the world.

a bloody mass.  so listen!

some songs just come out this way,

lapping at your heels and disposing of their own mess.

feed my body so much good food but

not exactly what it wants.  you cannot

hold anything in rubber between flesh

forever.  and when i let it all go, each drop

doesn't matter-- slithers and staggers

and stops, somewhere beyond my vision.

where's the fight?! complacency versus realism

it is cold now. we are already longing for summer. we are holed up in our apartments with so much of our own thoughts and potential for productivity. and i am never quite productive enough for my own desires. i have nothing coherent to write and yet i am desperate for some form of creative output. the winter is shriveling my creative fertility. or something like that.

tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. tuesday is Obama's inauguration. i am on the couch reading children's books about MLK, deciding what to read to my students. and i am reading a magazine that sketchily says little about who put it out, but contains moving pictures and articles related to Obama. flipping through it yesterday i had something like a body memory of election night. and flipping through it today i started crying again. 

and i cannot bring myself to watch the video of Oscar Grant being murdered. (sign this petition.)  and i cannot bring myself to look at any more pictures of Palestine.  and i am reading eulogies written for a girl i sort of knew, a girl who went to my summer camp, was a year older than me, had the same name as me, and who recently took her own life.  she was a photographer, a writer, a feminist.

it is a new year and i feel heavy.  i want to re-educate myself on how to be fearless.  when i was 13 i argued with everyone and i think it was because i was invested in everyone, was an incredibly idealistic person.  i've tried, as i've grown, to hone my confrontational nature into something a little more tactful.  but now i'm afraid i don't know the line between complacency and realism.  

here's what i mean- i did not go to a single march against the Israeli attacks on Gaza.  i was too busy.  i did not make any phone calls about it.  i did sign a few online petitions.  but i sat at home reading the news and feeling angry and ashamed to be an American Jew, to live in a country where we cannot call a massacre a massacre.  

i did not campaign for Obama.  i was too busy.  i tried to keep my cool through the whole election.  i think deep down, i was afraid he would lose and i didn't want to invest too much.  and then when he won, i lost it- could not stop sobbing.  and i thanked the couple of friends i was with who had done a lot of work for the campaign.  i truly felt grateful to them and to so many others who proved my cynicism wrong.  

and the other week i saw an inspiring photography show by Catherine Opie that left me swimming in thoughts about identity, art, architecture, place, queerness (self portrait nursing pictured above)...  i left the museum eager to talk about the exhibit.  my friend's friend spoke immediately, writing off the entirety of the show as "banal" (though he complemented the "composition" of only one photograph) in a self-confident and absolutely dismissive way that only well-schooled white men can speak.  i simply tried to let it slide off and not ruin my own art-induced high.  but later i thought, who am i?  i would never have let someone get away with such a comment without an argument in the past!  

when i was an adolescent i argued with everyone- sometimes i came out thrilled at changing someone's mind or at least holding my own in debate, sometimes i was stubborn, loud, and self-righteous and simply got myself in trouble (as was the case with too many teachers in middle and high school.)  when i was an adolescent i marched in protests- some of them were uplifting and sustaining gatherings, some felt like unfocused, unproductive, left-wing masturbation.  (to be honest!)  i went to meetings of social action groups but quickly became disillusioned by all the talk and concern with self-image that can go with young activists.

yes, i am cynical now.  but i am trying to be a grown-up living in the complicated real world.  it is a world where biracial former-community-organizers can become president.  but it is also a world where Sean Bell and Oscar Grant no longer live.  i get so caught up in my own inane shit-- it is cold out and i have too many jobs and i should be grateful for all my jobs but i am tired and being a musician is so hard and i'm so busy...!  

i know i could never be complacent.  i am far too emotional.  i want to live in the real-world but i also want space for some of my younger-self's idealism.  as the inauguration approaches i want to grasp onto some of the Obama "hope" rhetoric.  i want to read this beautiful book called Martin's Big Words (illustration pictured above) to my 4th and 5th graders in the Bronx on the day that we get a president who looks like he could be related to my students.  i want to help them believe that they too can make significant change happen.  because lord knows, we need it.  i want to enjoy my snowy weekend inside for what it is; use this time to gather up some of my former fire!

another new yorker's rant on the g-word

GENTRIFICATION

an out-of-town friend who was visiting me in brooklyn recently noted that i use the g-word too many times a day. and, meeting with 2 friends from high school, i noticed that they do this too. but don't we new yorkers have good reason to be obsessed? leave your neighborhood for a few months and upon return, you may not recognize it.

when my mom moved to park slope in the '70s, she moved there because it was affordable and she was a poor artist, putting herself through brooklyn college on the small funds from her dad's child-support checks. like me, she was a brooklyn girl born and raised (i am 3rd generation), but unlike me, she had no idea of what gentrification can do. it was just beginning and she was unknowingly part of the process. the yuppie haven that is now park slope, and that my mother and i now complain wildly about, was partially her own creation. it's the now typical story-- when she moved in, it was a working-class neighborhood and folks like her were moving in- college students and artists (she was both.)  we now know that those folks make an area more desirable and trendy, increasing the rents so that soon the families who lived there are forced to leave and the young folks can't afford to live there anymore either.  this is the very simplified narrative anyway.  but what responsibility do i have as a recent college grad, artist, and whitey?  i cannot claim the ignorance that my mother has a right to.

i started this post many months ago.  i've been ranting about this for years.  but now, for the first time, i am looking for my own brooklyn apartment.  i am not looking in park slope (couldn't afford to even if i wanted.)  i am not looking in williamsburg.  or bushwick.  or bedstuy.  i do not want to join the hoards of recent graduates from my college who are moving there-- the many hipsters who are trying on brooklyn for size along with their tight pants.  at an event for graduating seniors at my college, a dean made a comment about students moving to san francisco, portland, chicago, and brooklyn.  as if brooklyn was a city too, and certainly a major destination.

there are many articles about gentrification dotting new york papers these days.  but most focus on older yuppies, the white families with fancy strollers who block off park slope's street corners.  but what about us 20-somethings?  park slope is long gone to this great gentrifying process.  what about the renters on the outskirts of these neighborhoods, moving into neighborhoods where their young, single, whiteness is even more visually obvious?

what terrifies me is that we know what we're doing.  last summer i met a woman who had just graduated from brandeis and was doing teach for america in a tough brooklyn school.  she had grown up on the upper west side, gone to private schools her whole life.  and now she was living in what used to be called sunset park and is now "south slope".  she said the block she was living on was "violently gentrifying" with tangible anger from long-time hispanic residents.  she knew her presence there wasn't helping.  she seemed to feel bad about it.  but, "what can i do?" she said.  and i have heard this so many times.  us recent college grads, we've studied gentrification in classes.  we know how to talk about, problematize, identify oppression.  and we can sometimes even recognize our part in it.  we know the language but we know no action.  we feel powerless to stop the systems we criticize, to extricate ourselves from them.  we nestle into academicized white guilt.  or maybe we just don't care?  call me corny, or un-hip, but i do care.  and i grew up in brooklyn.  but does that matter?  maybe i'm just as confused, just as helpless, white, just as much of a gentrifier as the next kid.  

i told you some of the neighborhoods i'm not moving to.  so where can i move?  today i looked at an apartment in flatbush, not far from where i grew up and where my father still lives.  a chasidic man named joe showed me the place.  walking to the apartment building, he sang the praises of the neighborhood, the building.  he told me about the dunkin' donuts as if it was a draw to live there.  i remember when that opened and how pissed i was.  "i don't like dunkin donuts," i said.  he bragged about how safe the apartment building is, pointed out the security cameras multiple times.  "the building is changing," he said. "we're getting rid of all the irresponsible people.  people like you are moving in. i just sold a 3 bedroom to a woman just like you."  (now who is people like me?  how does he know what i'm like?)  and when we got in the elevator, a black man got in with us.  i said hi to him, and he said goodbye when he got off on the 3rd floor.  as soon as the elevator door closed, joe repeated that his management company was really cleaning up the building.  they want tenants like me.  "so you're evicting people?"  i asked.  "yes," he said proudly.  and when i told him i'm starting a new job, i don't have the 3 pay stubs i supposedly need for the place- "no problem," he said.  so accommodating for people like me.  and it was a nice apartment too.

there's so much more that can be said.  for now, a small selection of some articles i've collected:

• gag-inducing article on brooklyn's changing real estate 
  
• fascinating article about the chasids and williamsburg
• article from the viewpoint of a park slope parent
• article about youth-led anti-gentrification movements
• guitarist Mark Ribot's article on the lack of financial support for new music (an expansion of how gentrification effects nyc)

sonnet

androgynous child with gorgeous hands

man-child with no regard for dirt,

snuggles with the 9 PM downtown 2 express.

his hands, things that could makes sense

inside you.  today you are wanted deeply,

a dark yellow earnestness, a possibility

of opening wide enough for all five fingers.

your history of wanting-- over breakfast, between

songs, in the middle of the block, looking

in the mirror, the river, waiting for a ride.

wanting too much and then

getting what you want.

her light all about, her thighs on your mother's couch,

her raw scent, scaly on the skin of your hands.

this young boy is your woman so she is here

in every part of your skin as before--

a loving so complete in leaves you woozy,

begging for stillness as you remember to inhale.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

so it's been a minute. i've written many a blog entry in my head but haven't had a moment to do the typing. if anybody was checking, i apologize for the absence and yes, i have missed you.

what i really want to write about here is a documentary i saw, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. (review here.) I went to see it with two camp friends. (i've written about growing up at a communist jewish summer camp, right?) we sat in the back and sang along. i hadn't realized how many pete seeger songs i knew. when i list my musical influences, the folk music kind of gets slighted. because "goodnight irene" and "this little light of mine" are songs i sang, but never listened to on my own time. (though i did listen to some phil ochs in high school, and always join mitchell, though she delves into mutiple genres.) and let's be real, they're not the hippest of tunes. i mean, folk music has got a reputation for hokiness; an outdated, nostalgic, overly-earnest music of my parents' generation...

but i want to testify! i want to remember. there was a time when music was part of a movement, and everyone sang along. (perhaps this is the main difference between seeger's generation of folk/protest music and hip hop, my generation's take on populous music-- it's as much about people singing together.)

Pete Seeger, is a moralistic, hard-working figure. he quit the music group The Weavers when they wanted to sing in a tv commercial; he was black-listed off of tv for years; he and his wife built their own home in the woods; he was largely responsible for the cleaning up of the hudson river, he was largely responsible for popularizing "we shall overcome" during the civil rights movement; he still stands by the side of the road with his fingers in a peace sign and a banner urging the u.s. to get out of iraq; he still performs for kids in classrooms... this is not just about Pete Seeger, this is about musician as activist and community member. i feel a constant tension to let these things coexist in my own life. how inspiring to see folks who do this.

though Seeger is portrayed largely in the movie as almost inhumanly moralistic, it also points out (and i take great note of) the complications of having a white, male leader-- let's not turn him into an unerring hero. the film shows how his wife, Toshi, has had to make numerous sacrifices to raise their family and to support her husband's vision of their life. (and by the way, they have a huge, beautiful, multi-racial family, filled with new young musicians! this movie strangely makes me want to settle down in the hudson valley and start a family. yikes!) and to this end, i was also appreciative to see images of other important musical activists, especially Paul Robeson and Bernice Johnson-Reagon. (check out this amazing footage of Johnson-Reagon on Seeger's show.) Seeger is an amazing living figure, but he is also part of a tradition and a community that we musicians must study, honor, and learn from.