1999
30 August 1999
listening to the beautiful new Meshell Ndegéocello cd, Bitter
There is no art so penetrating, so painful and joyous and healing, so all-encompassing as music. My cousin's wife, a songwriter and singer, once broke it down truthfully. She said, "There is no other art form or popular media, not television, not movies, not visual art--nothing-- that is so personal, so deeply felt by so many people. To have that latest album, or to go to that concert, folks will spend their last dime-- before the rent gets paid, before other basic responsibilities get taken care of--that need for it dominates all else." Well, she said it much more eloquently and passionately, but you get the picture.
She's absolutely right, I think. Although I make photographs and write, and I believe that the written word is the most powerful medium of art, music reaches a deeper, less cerebral place within that is primal, almost visceral. Music has always been my most profound artistic inspiration (of course, words being so strong for me also, I'm big on lyrics). Clearly I spend a lot of time sitting at a keyboard, and sitting and typing, especially when I'm writing something I'm pleased with, reminds me of playing the piano (I took lessons for years as a child but now I can't even read the notes). I imagine that I am composing, when I'm on a writing roll I'm creating an art equivalent to the sounds that inspire me. Although I can remember buying my first album (can't remember the title but it was by L.T.D.) for $4.98 plus tax at Tempo Records on Crenshaw Boulevard and attending my first concert (the Isley Brothers at the Forum with Bohannon opening), the turning point for me was in high school when I went to the Century Plaza Theatre in Century City (back when it was only one screen) to see the movie One From the Heart. It was there, nestled in the plush red reclining seats, that I first heard Tom Waits.
I'll never forget that overwhelming excitement as the credits rolled and his sound filled the theatre. I vividly recall thinking, this is the music I have wanted to hear all my life. Although it took me a couple of years to even acquire my first album, he had become--as he remains--my favorite artist, hands down. I also clearly remember blasting other students out of the darkroom in college with my endless loop of Tom Waits tapes, but he was my lifeline to pure feeling, honest observation and perception; in short, real art, and I couldn't, honestly, create without him. I will be forever indebted to him for sharing his talent with me. I'm not overstating it to say that his work changed my life.
I have subsequently found that communion with other artists--musicians Cassandra Wilson, Ani DiFranco, and Indigo Girls; the writers Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, and Dorothy Allison, especially--but nothing compares with the incredibly personal experience of music and its message, its reference to everything you know and everything you think you want to know. There is little else comparable to that power. There's definitely a physical component, too, aside from making you want to move your body--it makes me nervous and excited just to know I'm about to hear something that moves me.
This weekend I took a brief holiday with my family. It made me realize how, at times, my self-designated role as memory keeper for my family often supercedes my desire to interact with the living, breathing members of that group--often I'm much more comfortable recording and archiving the so-called facts of their lives rather than being an active part of those lives. I wonder if that is usual, that the family historian must stand a bit on the outside in order to observe it.
16 August 1999
various times in the a.m.
It's been a while since I've written here. First, I almost wrote a few weeks ago about my grandmother, Thelma Lear. She's 91 and has long been in failing health; a few weeks ago she was admitted to the hospital with stroke symptoms, and I think my whole family thought that that was it. I went to visit every day for a week, and I had to admit it didn't look good. Her left side was partially paralyzed, her speech nearly incoherent, and there was nothing the doctors could do. I think we all thought that her body would just keep cruelly attacking her until it was finally through with her. It was incredibly sad to think that a life that had lasted for so long (and outlasted so many others) would have to endure this extraordinary pain at the end. My godmother said she thought my grandmother was staying around because there was something she had left to say, so it seemed doubly cruel that she was literally unable to communicate.
Then, just as suddenly, she recovered. The doctors concluded it wasn't a stroke after all. The feeling in her left side returned; her speech became clear. Miraculous, indeed. My grandmother is living proof that you simply aren't going to go if you're not ready. She still wants to be alive, no matter what level of discomfort she has to endure, and that's what's keeping her here.
On a certain level her unwilling to pass bothers me (not that I want her gone by any means). My grandmother is a very religious woman, has been her whole life, and it seems to me that if she is unwilling to go just yet to meet the Maker with whom she's had such a close communion, that doesn't bode well for us doubters. I guess I always thought that people of great faith would not fear death, but that is clearly not the case.
Then, last week I was going to write about The Blair Witch Project, which was so awful, so utterly without a single redemptive quality, I'm not even going to link to their Web site. Oh, alright, see for yourself.
So instead I'm going to talk about what's been preoccupying a bit of my time. I've started another Web site, this one devoted to my family tree. There isn't a tremendous amount up yet, but it's coming along. My sisters Shawna and Adrienne have been conducting genealogical research on and off for years and collected a lot of names, dates, some images, and other information. Our earliest traced ancestor was born in 1813! I, by default, have become the keeper of the family photographs, and I am the unofficial Web person, it seems, so I have charged myself with putting it together in a format that family members all around the world can access. This process has made me think a lot about families, and our roles within them, and how we preserve and perpetuate images, stories, myths, fantasies, and truths about who we are, who we come from, and what we leave behind.
First, let me say that it still absolutely amazes me that my grandmother, Thelma, can remember relatives who were slaves. For anyone who wants to believe that slavery existed in the distant past, that's a frighteningly real connection, and an astoundingly short amount of time between me in the present and that institution. I'm thirty-three, and to be able to have a conversation with my grandmother in 1999 about an ex-slave that she knew personally just astonishes me.
I am going to be one of those women who doesn't have children. No one to carry on my name, in my image. I never wanted them. As an artist, I've always been concerned about my legacy, though, and I knew that I would leave something slightly more tangible through my photographs and now through my writings. I'm also leaving behind, I think, a legacy of remembering, of recording, of validating one's existence through proof, essentially. It's very important that people, especially black people, document themselves and validate their lives. As one avenue, the Web is an amazing resource that is accessible to anyone who wants to be out there. You can even do it all for free--free web sites through places like Geocities, free e-mail from places like Yahoo are at anyone's disposal. On the Web all the traditional avenues of exclusion simply don't exist--if you're searchable, you're accessible to anyone who's interested.
It's incredibly enriching to put together your family's memories with their likenesses, to recall for future generations what it was like to grow up with your sisters, to document how people grew up over the years, to make connections you'd never even imagined were there. Technology allows for us to share moving pictures, sounds, words, and still images within a single venue, with the click of a button. I don't think my grandfathers could have imagined that their entire families could be linked in this fashion. Maybe my uncle who made so many of the photographs I have but who is estranged from the family will be able to see himself and the legacy he created every time he trotted out the camera. I wish my mother were as cooperative now to pose as she seemingly was back then!
So, I may or may not be present much in this journal while I try to get more information up and running. I want to be able to bring a laptop over to my grandmother's house so that I can share with her her family, her life, via the computer, and get her stories while she is still with us to share them.
Now watch--none of my family members will visit the site!
25 July 1999
6:45 p.m.
Sea-Tac Airport
(for Shawna)
Why are we always leaving coming going
starting stopping making ourselves miss each other?
and always wishing things were different
that we could change them if we only
could
why is she here and I'm
there
why aren't we
in the same place to share
the same time
Why are the people we loathe
or don't know
the ones we spend our waking passing time with
why aren't our best friends our bosses
our sisters our coworkers our lovers
our constant companions
and I hate saying goodbye from the passenger
seat
and I hate saying hello just a few days
before I say goodbye
and I hate the way
life goes on without
us
18 July 1999
8:40 p.m.
This weekend I saw two movies, Eyes Wide Shut directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; and Summer of Sam by Spike Lee, and I was so struck by the vast qualitative difference between these two films, as well as by the vastly different press that each has received, that I felt compelled to put it in writing.
I love movies; I used to see 3 - 4 per week, but now I'm lucky to see one per month. (sigh) Life. Anyway, as you know, Eyes Wide Shut has been thoroughly hyped for some time now because the so-called world's biggest movie star, Cruise, and his wife Kidman spent nearly two years filming it with the reclusive Kubrick, who died days after he screened the final product for them. Basically, folks were all atwitter to see if the believed-to-be-gay Cruise and his wife-of-appearances were going to get it on on-screen. To fuel the Hollywood hype machine, Cruise and Kidman have recently been on the cover of Time magazine, and at the last minute a controversial orgy scene in the film was digitally altered to strategically obscure for American audiences shots of folks fucking. The censoring was dutifully attended by a loud outcry from critics in support of Kubrick's original "artistic" vision. The film has garnered rhapsodic praise from many critics who, my partner believes, are trying to intellectually separate themselves from the movie-going hoi-polloi by hailing Kubrick's final movie as a masterpiece. Well, I thought it sucked. It was perhaps one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and that's saying something, because I've seen some doozies. Sex scene? Please--if a 5-second, from-the-waist-up tit-grope qualifies as a sex scene, then this was high-porn. I wasn't the only one; although the 3:40 p.m. Friday afternoon screening was full, the entire row in front of us had vacated by the time the credits rolled. I got home and a friend had called to say that he had gone to see it and walked out. All in all, I was sorry that I had paid even matinee price. And that should have been that.
In contrast, today I went to see Summer of Sam with my sister. I understand that it has gotten some press because a reporter remarked to Lee that it was his best film and suggested that it was because his cast was predominantly white, and Lee fired back. Now, I've always been a fan of Lee's movies, even though I haven't necessarily been a fan of him. (I distinctly remember a high-school friend having a date with him, and apparently all he did throughout was go on about how he couldn't believe how light-skinned she was. Whatever.) He is a compelling filmmaker, and say what you will, he is far and away the most innovative black filmmaker to ever achieve commercial success. I thought Summer of Sam was fascinating to watch; sure, the main characters were caricatures; everyone and everything in the film was, including Lee himself, playing a reporter who sounded distinctly like a Soul Train-era Don Cornelius. Like EWS, SOS contained an orgy scene, yet it barely registered in the media, although it was far more sweaty, viscerally charged, and morally debauched than Kubrick's Vanessa Beecroft-esque, skinny-women posturings could ever hope to be. (Watching Kubrick's orgy was like watching a movie that was considered racy back in 1960 but that now you can't fathom what all the fuss was about.)
While Lee's movie was not fantastic (Like Do The Right Thing was), it was good (it was certainly not something I'd ever seen before, particular borrowed elements aside), and it made me wonder about the blatant discrimination that takes place in the media and how it works to diminish interesting careers (and truly, I have nothing against Stanley Kubrick's oeuvre). Yes, maybe no one wanted to see a movie about a serial killer who preyed some twenty years ago (my sister was surprised by the number of people her age who had never even heard of the Son of Sam.) But seeing these two movies within 48 hours of each other highlighted for me the way in which the churning media machine creates and destroys, and how increasingly audiences are losing original visions to slick, vapid drivel. I also cannot help but wonder at the insidious, pervasive racism of our society that, I think, conspires to punish people of color who do not conform, who do not "behave." I strongly believe that is what's happened to Lee's career, and this reality truly gives me pause as I study the work of other artists of color and try to forge a creative career for myself.
Go, Spike. I'll be watching.
