Holding Hands
It’s easy to sit here,
Clasped hands
Staring eyes,
Inclement weather,
Winds rustling our jackets every which way
In front of a fluorescent building sometime closer to midnight than mid-day
That three letter phrase tauted so heavily
By romantics and lunatics alike
That swelling in my chest and the screaming of the conscience to make things right
With thoughts that she,
Whose tales range from broken hearts and wounded soldiers
To escapades of the inebriated and carnal nature
Whose seen a million specimen and women whisk to and from her grasp
Mostly of her choosing
Her largesses and grandiose measurements about her life before me
Fascinate me and bore me at once
Because while the journey is certainly of note
The destination is much more critical
With all the hapless souls
Hopping from Earth vessel to Earth vessel
Probing shapes and contours of every type
In all shades and lighting and fixtures and props
All for that connection we call love
Presently, with hands now around her waist
Close to her bottom
Her hands around my shoulder
We’re less concerned with these foregone tales
More so with the meeting of our torsos
I know who’s setting up her rendezvous now
I know who will assert their person for and within her
She will look only as far as we take this
And she will be loved …
The Soloist
When your voice finds you, it doesn’t matter how you express it: your signature’s all over it.
I write this because, after seeing The Soloist, a movie about a Los Angeles-based writer who finds a homeless cellist / prodigy and a must-watch for any writer I know, I’ve given tons of thought about where to take the writing “thing.” Not to spoil the movie (as it is a biopic of sorts), we have the contemplative Steve Lopez, a man committed to a beautiful but dispassionate view of the world and a raw and soulful writing style that garners him success, fans, and everything except a positive relationship. On the other hand, we have Nathaniel Ayers, who also has an excellent talent with his violin (and later on, we find out, he started with the cello).
Superficially different from the writer, but distinctly similar in that they’re both looking to get out a message carried deep within them, and trying to battle themselves just for the chance to reach that higher ground. After the movie ended, I found myself inspired and in the throws of the same feeling that seems to connect all writers / poets / musicians / artists as a whole. We draw upon some force within us and draw out the very best of us to express some message or say something truly inspiring. We go to great lengths within our person to make some of our greatest pieces happen.
Personally, I know some of my best pieces came after 2-3-4-5 hours of reading around and looking at research, and reaching into the bottomless pit of my mind to clean thoughts out. Yeah, it got that deep at times. I look back at the revelatory nature of them, and wonder whether others can understand the madness it takes to be that kind of writer, but people’s loyalty to the work indicates a more positive reaction. If I can even elicit a fraction of the care I put into my most prized work, I’ve done my job.
And that’s where the musician and the writer really find their common ground. We can concern ourselves less with the works that garner our mainstream / commercial successes and focus on the works that influence the conversations we have, then we’re truly artists in that respect. Whereas conversation is the bridge from one to one or even one to some, art is the bridge between the one and the many.
Whether you’re writing or you’re playing, your voice carries.
Jose, who wonders how you express your voice …
Mr. Sun
A few notes:
- Those of you not familiar with Seth Godin’s work can still appreciate the reason why he doesn’t use Twitter. Especially those of us who consider ourselves leaders in our niche. I use Twitter, but this definitely gave me food for thought. [Posterous]
- Just because you’re intelligent doesn’t mean you can’t die in really dumb ways. Here’s ten. [I Heart Chaos]
- The. Best. Video. I’ve. Seen. All. Year. Here’s how animation can transcend reality. [Vimeo]
- This is how education and qualifications are all about keeping people out of the middle class professions. [Donald Clark Plan B]
- As if you needed this reaffirmation, look at where charter schools are popping up. Fascinating considering Blacks and Latinos also live in those very neighborhoods. [JD2718]
- From the Huffington Post, a story about a female soldier who refused to torture … and then killed herself a few days later. You come up with your own conclusions. [HuffPo]
- As usual, NYC Educator and Reality-Based Educator go hard. This time, educrats are the target. Please take a good read at this one. [NYC Educator]
- And last but not least, here’s a little controversy: a new book by a Mexican-American historian explains how Nazi Germany was inspired by America’s treatment of Mexican immigrants in a new book. Read more here. [The First Post]
Have a beautiful Sunday and … hopefully you weren’t all inside today. Wrong day to do so.
Jose, who’s getting the hang of this blogging thing … whatever that may be.
Prepare to sacrifice 3/4ths of your day and your life to the world’s oldest profession
Where the other fourth you’re wondering where the other 3/4ths went
In a permanent classroom where your first name no longer means much
In the hallway where everyone’s business becomes yours
In the staircase where you can be yourself but not really
In the home wondering where the bottom of the pile of papers lies
In the street where you become your own personal public relations rep
In the professional development meeting where acronyms and synonyms get flung with an understanding that no one really understands
Political demands and children’s actual needs meet in a crossroad
Push pressure points to both sides of that fork
Enough pressure to crush rocks,
But instead of building jewels, it creates jade
While outsiders perceive this profession as a game of spades
Takes a true master of cards to keep a full deck
When a tad bit of respect is paramount, tantamount
To success in this job
Prepare yourself for the drama, the broken hearts in class,
The bottomless pit of socio-emotio-academical deficiencies
Wave goodbye to sleep, to sleep, to sleep
To subjectivity and absolute autonomy
But most importantly, prepare yourself for the inevitability
Of a transformation process in which you learn more than your students do
Regardless of whether your suck or not
Develop standards higher than you’ve ever stretched your arms to
Measure your self-worth in less customary terms
In 90s instead of degrees
In hands raised instead of feet
In steps up instead of salary steps
In percentage of students finding positive success rather than the range of scores accumulated from a state test everyone’s pressured to take
The same pressure jades are made from
And the same pressure real diamonds pop from too
The type whose teacher qualifications can’t be put in a rubric
Whose students were right about from the moment they sat down in that classroom
And said, “I really need your help. And I’m ready to learn.”
Jose Vilson
Hi Hater
After my 8th grade year, I went back to the summer camp I usually attended as a student, only this time in the role of a counselor-in-training, for whatever that’s worth. It was nice money, and really, I had little else to do in the summer. Plus, I enjoyed my 8th grade experience there, so why not? As a counselor-in-training, they still considered me too young to be a real counselor, so in turn, I had to take classes under another counselor. This “class” was a poetry class, and, most of you by now would rightly assume that I aced that class and breezed through verses in a breeze.
Not so.
Despite, to that point, always maintaining star student status, working hard at everything I did, and having an excellent 8th grade year, I found myself utterly bored in the class, wondering if I’d ever be challenged to stretch myself beyond the mundane okey-doke this “teacher” tried to force upon us. My deepest criticism of this teacher wasn’t even that he tried to give me “another side” of poetry (at that point, the free verse we know as slam hadn’t reached its deafening popularity we saw in the later part of the decade). It was that he found it appropriate to say, “You know, Jose, you may be smart, but it was like, you were born lazy.”
Bang.
As if I needed any more incentive to prove another person wrong. I took the “criticism” on the chin, but best believe when I got back on that high horse, I remembered that invective, and when I finally found my voice, I wrote my goddamn heart out. And I’d love thank him for that, but I dare not. I don’t consider myself on top of the game, but as a poet, I believe I’ve proven myself to be a good writer in my own right. Not that I have to prove myself, but there’s a sharp difference between constructive criticism and belittling language.
As a teacher myself now, I have a hard time looking at a kid in the face and implying that they’re not worth the skin they live in. You give them all you can, and chastise them when necessary, but giving them an impression that they’re worthless only adds to the culture of low expectations we’ve laid out for the students. The students can feel when they’re getting criticized because you want better for them and because you really hate them.
Many of the teachers around me get mad when my students sing songs like “Hi Hater” by Maino, and wear their extra-large, extra-long black t-shirts with the white handprint on it, inscripted with a “Hi hater” in the palm. They wonder how someone so young can have haters. They should also ask themselves if their names have a place inside that inscription.
Jose, who’s having a hard time getting that “first book” off the ground … struggles of a writer …
Writer
I woke up in sudden shock today on the A train on the way back from work. A blonde lady in her mid-30s woke me up as she sat next to me on the 59th Street stop. I was alarmed at first, but I turned back into sleep mode when I saw this Black man in a cool busboy cap pedaling his books. He had his three types right on him, all self-published, and all with glossy paperback covers. 2 of them were poetry books and the third another “ghetto story.”
I almost wanted to tune him out like I tend to tune out all the product-pushers around me. The tons of people with their latest product, blog, mixtape, MySpace / Facebook / Twitter page, dance, special recipe as they upgrade their efforts to annoy the hell out of me with their subpar work yet oversold hype. They’re the reason why so many of us stick with only a handful of people to provide us with our whole entertainment and download the rest: no one’s going to pay for a whole product worth only a tenth of its price. I’ve also become better at muting commercials and sniping spam from my various channels in the hopes that I could get focused.
But this was different.
All of a sudden, as he’s promoting one of his books, he caught my ear with a hot line, and another one, and another one, samples of some of his best work in his book. I was intrigued, not because this man had the nerve to interrupt my almost daily iPod listening / napping sessions on the train, but because he had this earnest and proud face as he looked at the books he was promoting.
While it’s easy to don masks of sincerity, I felt a weird connection to his moment of gravitas that I rarely feel with an artist. It’s the same feeling I caught during StaceyAnn Chin’s book reading last week at Barnes N’ Noble, the same feeling I caught when Bassey Ikpi told the world she had a contract for a book on Twitter, and the same feeling I got when the Loisaidas promoted their latest video “No Me Dejes” to their fellow Nativity Mission School alumni. People who actually care about their work get this euphoric and reflective look on their face as if, while they may not have accomplished all they wanted to, they can rest peacefully knowing they’ve made their footprint in the sand, and dug deep into it, too.
For every comment about how great my work is, I always feel humbled by them all, but I’m still waiting for that moment when, after all the writing, the speaking, the promotion, the guest-writing, and the bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome, I can finally hold onto a book with only my name on it, look at it like I can’t believe I wrote it, and frame it. I want to look at that piece of work and never want to read it again, only if people ask for comment about a certain section, and even then, want to be like, “You read it. What do YOU think?” I want to run into a bookstore like Busboys and Poets’ spot in Washington, DC or The Schomberg’s bookstore, see someone pick it up, stare them in the face and say, “Thank you. I mean it.”
I wish I had the money to get a copy of dude’s book, and my book queue is long enough. I can’t imagine how much he loves his book to sell it to people with a wide range of interest … and a low threshhold of tolerance.
Jose, who’s releasing a project in the next month …
Domestic Violence
Pitch black shadows mixed with spots of artificial light
The damp cement makes rubber tires woosh past us
Umbrella clutched between me and my significant other
A blink and a rush
A small blonde child shaken
Parents turned around
A young, dark woman with dark clothes leaned against the wall
Looks of bewilderment riddle her face
As an intimidating darker man screams at the top of his lungs
“THAT WAS THE WRONG STOP!”
Accusations fly
His actions muffle the words to a complete mute
He stands over her
Hands clasped around her neck
More pressure applied as his actions become more unpredictable
We look around, wondering where her protection comes from
Wondering whether the parents of the blonde baby would do anything about the shoving
Confronted with our own past experiences with abuse
We summon the police almost instantly
Not curious to see another statistic
Inconsiderate of whatever pretentious feelings this abuser might have
We hustle forward
Past the YMCAs, Salvation Armys, and other centers of respite closed to her
He’s moving now,
Past us, who sought to protect her indirectly
Still furious for the same reasons which was no reason
I grow ever more unnerved by this environment
She’s now went from chasing him to chasing cars
In moving traffic
Either finding a car to transport her to her next destination
Or to a final one
And ironically
He grabs her, pushes her to the car, and asks her,
“What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
With no visible marks on her neck
No rings around her eyes
Clothes not-so-neatly wrapping her complete exterior
No tattered garments
And a voice indiscernible from the din of a Tuesday night in NYC,
I replied in an inaudible whisper,
“You.”
Staceyann Chin, B&W
Seven years ago, she spouts, “Jose, who has hoes?”
This firebrand of a woman
Who, when she walks, you can hear the susurrus of her
Wavy, wild, copperhead colored hair
Her patented tank top
Strings barely holding on to the bra of the boobs she’s so proud of
This wise woman makes me roll my eyes as she chants her newfound homonyms
She’s a verbal ventriloquist with a groove
Where at once she shakes shit up and puts shit in its place
She manages to leave me with an unnerving impression
Was it because she’s a fucking awesome performance or because she mangled my name
To the whole conference’s delight but
She’s invited to my campus now
She’s met me but twice
Tells me more about my life than I knew
I prepare to open up for her
She’s already opened me up surgically
With insights and incisions
Challenging that which I thought was potent writing
“Am I a womanist or a feminist?”
She asked the audience in a thick Jamaican accent
They all sit agape,
Stunned that she’d actually pose a question
she may want a response to
Or because the words pussy, bitch, and dick fly so fluidly from her lips
In such a proper education institution
“Get over yourselves,” she’s gotta ask,
She lets me and the other 500 people observing watch her own trial and jury
Extended her limbs in the shape of our abstracted version of a star
Simultaneously excavating into my soul as it related to my writing
Modeling for me what it means to put a pen to paper and leave it out there
Hmm
A calm sage eating a veggie wrap on our college street after another riveting show
A passerby in conversation with me a few years later
Not quite as popular but just as recognizable
A feature in a Ivy League college chapel a year later
Denouncing religions and revisits the idea of her independence
A bullet of a woman screeching so loud a year later
Her yells travel light years across our universe
A image flashing in my glass-covered boxes a few months after
Fluidity visible from my seat
A little girl staring back at me with crayon inscription two years later
Binded to a set of thoughts she’s elaborated on
From the lucid brave and packaged poems she’s recited for millions now
A presence every eyeball in the room has its gaze transfixed on a few months later
Every bit the torch every moth worth its wingspan floats
Remembers me still after seven years total
And even with the 10 or so words she’s said to me while leaving her personal prints
On her work,
She has the power to read twice
Read her work and read me, still
Reminding me why I write
And this time,
Left me with more than an impression
More than a few more dollars in debt from her books
Now she’s left me with a currency I’ll survive on
Until she leaves another impression on me again …
Jose, who considers the poetress one of his top 5 favorite writers of all time …
Starburst Cluster
Be still, the living and breathing of the night
Dark as the other side of one’s eyelid
And reflective as when I close them
Imagination is at once a flick of water off my hands into a large puddle
And a spark of friction stinging my fingers
At once, these ideas motivate my body to reach with rubbed palms
But too soon leave my foremost thoughts as if they no longer belonged
Let my next idea, then, move the mountains previous men chose to hike over
Part waves previous sojourners only waded in
Push margins past limits set by previous storytellers and experts in lyrical legerdemain
I maintain a tip-tap-toe and a nod
Keep the genius awake, I whisper
Water in one hand, keyboard in the other
Ego on one shoulder, audience in the other
The moon reflects its light on several apartments’ windows
In hopes it creates positive and equal reaction to what I transmit
Right now while I write now
Quietly disintegrate the hate I’ve absorbed
Detoxify the spirit
Cleanse first
Build next
Soft, click, clack, click, clack
I find new words, extract them from the sky
Hoping to inspire change every time I hit space …
Jose Vilson
I had a few thoughts about my Genesis of a Nemesis series that I jotted down on my iPod Touch on the way back from Washington, DC, as the Smithsonian Institute gets ready to unveil plans for a new African American History and Culture Museum.
- Some of you may ask yourselves: “How does he know what it’s like to live that life?” One could make the argument that, because I never got into any major trouble or never actually experienced it, that my writing of these dire straits is a bit deficient. To that I argue that I’ve actually lived in the hood pretty much all my life. And not part-time, but full-time. From all the things I’ve witnessed and continue to witness plus all the reading and studies I’ve done, I’m sure I speak from an experienced point of view, despite my lack of actual participation in the culture.
- I wonder why, despite these discussions constantly coming up with educated circles, do we not have and / or share good and solid solutions. Could it because, even if everything else did work, the system itself was made for certain groups to fail or is it something else?
- Some might also argue that there’s a personal choice about things. One could choose to not do / sell drugs, to not shoot / kill people in their neighborhood, to not join a gang, or even to not live in such impoverished conditions. My rejoinder to these myopic statements is that this capitalist system is meant to build a group of winners and losers, so the “everyone getting wealthy” theorem is debunked there. Secondly, when one feels disempowered, whether it’s through their government, their economy, or their living situation, they become hopeless. Thus, they find power in things that may even imperil their own lives, as long as they have “ownership” of something or can survive, even at the hands of people just like them.
- Despite the picture I painted, it’s not all bad. We have pockets of strong and impoverished communities. This also means that we don’t have enough of these communities being reported. Communities with underrepresented people don’t always have to have strife and disillusionment attached to them.
- Lastly, I also think we need to develop a bigger base of change agents and resources for our disposal. Too often, people who care about these situations don’t feel like they have anyone backing them up, either. Some of us are fortunate to work in social services and those are our agencies for change.
Feel free to drop a comment on any or all of these topics below.
Jose, who enjoys a little R&R …
