You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

I Am Sam Soundtrac...

Your Soul to Keep

I’ve been hearing my biological clock tick since I was a small child. Not so much the negative pressure to have children before it’s too late that most associate with the clock, but more the positive yearning to have a baby in my life, a little wriggly thing for which I could care and watch grow into a little being.

I am an only child and this explains some of the yearning. I was an intensely lonely child and it seemed to me that only a baby brother or sister could pierce that loneliness. It was not that I was unloved by my parents, it’s just that I was alternately bathed in 125 percent of their gaze, concern, and attention and then lost them completely to the social-cultural work that they did nearly every weekend for a good part of my childhood. In my grand plan, I would win an ally, someone to divert parental attention while I did what I did on my own – read, listen to songs on the radio, watch TV – and who would give me someone to play with and talk to on the afternoons after school when my mom was not at home or at the church halls where my parents organized meetings and events for the Indian community. I think in my early vision of this eventuality, I pictured a boy who was like me in physical description and mental disposition but different too, perhaps a little more mischievous and garrulous.

At a young age (I seem to tie all significant occurrences in my childhood to when my dad was 42 and I was 8, for no apparent reason other than the understanding of age that I gained at that point in time) I used to ask my parents why I could not have a little brother. My mother – starting a mode of relation that would repeat itself over and over until the time that coincided with the start of my first adult relationship in college – revealed too much in response. In 1972 there had been another baby, a little boy, he had died in a miscarriage, caused by the stress on my mom imposed by her sister-in-law in New Jersey, and while my mom was in the hospital my father had gone to a family gathering celebrating his brother’s birthday (items 1 and 2 on my mother’s bill of particulars against my father). The lost fetus had no sex but I pictured a miniaturized boy like myself, lost in a puddle of human matter and blood. We had been so close and then things had gone terribly awry. I came to understand that my parents had been unable to conceive since then (again, too much goddamned information).

When we went to India in 1980, we decided to adopt a child. My mother’s sister in Bombay had adopted a little boy whom we all loved and she connected us with an agency. We met a social worker at her office in the central city and she interviewed each of us in succession. She was beautiful, modern, English-speaking, and she seemed to care and want the best for us and the little children that were in her charge. She asked me why I wanted a sibling, and I said I wanted a little brother, “someone to play with and stuff.” She gently explained to me that when a family already had a boy it was their policy to make a girl available for adoption. That was a new thought for me. I thought: What do girls do? Would she play with me? Yes, she too would relieve me of my loneliness. I would be a big brother and protect her and she would think I was the greatest big brother in the whole world. That would be pretty cool. (I would have read The Bridge to Terabithia by this point and may have thought of the sweet relationship that developed between the boy and his little sister in the novel.) I was on-board with having a sister and let the beautiful social worker know it.

The social worker came to visit my grandfather’s flat – where we stayed on visits with another of my dad’s brothers and his big, bossy wife – as a proxy for the home visit that she was required to make prior to adoption. My kaka and kaki had no children and had cared for my father’s mother while she was bedridden with arthritis for nine years until she died in 1976. Now they took care of my grandfather, who was quiet, authoritative, and quick to anger. But he was sweet to me and we had become very close when he had visited the U.S. for most of 1977. I remember leaning into the folds of his soft dhoti cloth, listening to his stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and taking in the not-unpleasant smell of snuff, which he carried in a little tin box with a flip-top. The flat was a somewhat dingy three rooms and a great blue veranda, sink in the entrance hallway, the toilet a hole in the floor with a wooden chair placed on top. My grandfather would bathe me every day using buckets of hot water that my uncle collected in the morning. The putative purpose of the social worker’s visit was that she was a college friend of my mom and wanted to spend some time with her. (My parents had decided not to reveal their plan to anyone until things were closer to final.) She sat in our living room and was friendly and observant. Then she left and we hopefully anticipated her approval of our application.

The little baby was tiny and my mother held her in the backseat with the social worker and my masi while I sat in the front and strained to look at her. She was wearing an old-fashioned pink bonnet and was swathed in a blanket. I think she was born small and fragile. We took her to a doctor for a check-up and then returned her to the social worker until all was final and we could take her back with us to the U.S. Later, my parents would discuss whether she was especially pretty or not: my mom would say yes, my dad would say no, not especially.

She never made the trip and we came back to our house in suburban New York sadder and a little more broken then before we had left. My grandfather had said that he would fast to death if we brought the child to his home and the immigration rules dictated that my mom would have to remain in India with the child for up to six months, which of course was long enough for my grandfather to bring his threat and curse to pass. My grandfather said that he was opposed because the child’s status was unknown and it was likely that she was born of a prostitute, thus lowering our family’s status in society (as if our extended family did not have enough degrading scandals under his leadership) and that he feared that the girl and I would have illegitimate relations at some point (again, highly ironic and ugly in light of certain family history in the generation before my father’s). My parents gave in then. It’s only recently that I have understood how they betrayed themselves and their marriage in that moment. You face a situation and make a decision, and it permanently alters and colors your life, until the moment you die. (When my grandfather died in 1994 when I was in law school, I chose to interview with corporate firms for a summer job rather than make the trip to India for the funeral.)

As I have aged into my thirties, a few of my girlfriends have questioned my desire, burning just under the surface, to have children. In my two most recent serious relationships, that desire has been perceived as undermining my feelings for them. Am I with them so that I could have children? Did I really love them? My unrequited yearning has collided with their feelings of anxiety about childbirth and their contemplated loss of self. It doesn’t help that I used a picture of myself with the infant daughter of a friend for my internet dating profile or that my gaze is drawn to every baby and child that we cross on sidewalks and in restaurants.

Many of my friends have had children (most are on their second now) but only one has given me an official role in his daughter’s life, as a godfather. Unfortunately, now three years old, she is across the country but I keep up with her (with a tender heart) through my friend’s blog. (Most recently, she got up from her big girl bed in the middle of the night and fell asleep on a pile of laundry in the hallway.) The couple above me just had a little girl and I hear her plaintive little cries when I am putting myself down at 3 in the morning, after a night of internet surfing or work or drinking with friends. It makes me happy to know that she’s there, above me.

Who am I? Lost and Not Found.

I want to write a definitive statement of who I am. I don't like myself. That is not entirely true; I like my spirit and what that represents. But how that spirit manifests into my personality, crystallizes into human form, I don't like.

In realizing how I feel, I am apt to blame others - my wife, for presenting a difficult and challenging presence in my life, although I would face those difficulties and challenges nonetheless; - my parents, for not guiding me to understand my personality, my depression, and the fact that my happiness should be paramount. It is easy to blame, of course. But ultimately, I assume the final responsibility of how I feel.

And since I assume the final responsibility, only I can change and transform how I feel and myself. The problem is that the paths towards those changes and transformations are paths I don't know or don't see, and the ones that I do see are ones in which I stand paralyzed from taking steps.

That is why I feel like a failure; I don't seem to be able to get out of this paralysis. I think this is why people contemplate suicide, because they live with pain, and they can't bear it anymore, and don't see how the pain will ever end.

I have a daughter, and I know to her, I am no failure. But how do I live for myself.

I was really moved to start writing here after hearing a NPR piece about depression by someone my age, 35, who deals with it. He even analogizes the Matrix, which led my wife to question whether I actually was the author.

My wife, she is a good person. A rough personality, particularly for me, but a good heart and soul. S he deserves so much better, a loving, affectionate, enthusiastic husband, who is a good provider, all the things that I can't seem to be.

I probably deserve better too, the chance to feel better about myself. But how? How do you make that happen?

Writing is a release, a means, not necessarily the panacea. I am lost and not found.

The real question is who am I? Who is lostandfound? Attorney, intellectual, family man, political, community person, who am I? How will I remember my life and how will I be remembered?

As someone who suffered and in the process, helped a few folks along the way?

If I am not meant to do anything great, whatever that means, than should I not at least find my inner happiness? Isn't that the ultimate measure of greatness or success, even if you achieve worldly greatness.

That is why I feel as if I failed or am failing. I can't seem to find happiness.

So then what? I am lost and not found.

Why Three Burials - Redux

I'm happy to be writing now on this new site with my buddies. I may not be able to transfer my previous posts here, but I'll provide this link: Three Burials, and repost my first post plus the comments, including the fabulous rap by ganesh, as I continue my explorations here.

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Originally Posted December 14, 2006

I chose Three Burials because I decided I would try to keep a blog around the time I saw the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, the movie by Tommy Lee Jones. This blog is not a tribute to that film but I found the title to be an apt metaphor on which to choose a title.

That being said, I did find the movie to be well done. Some friends had good but not glowing reviews. I admired it as a testament to one man's devotion to a promise made to a friend and his own sense of justice.

For me, Three Burials represent the three times in my life in which I have faced major or near major depressive episodes. At least these were the three most identifiable times. Before the first time, which was a couple of years out of school, it is possible I had some minor shocks or episodes but I did not recognize it as such. The second time was two years into my marriage, and the third was earlier this year.

In this metaphor, each episode is akin to a death. Hence the Three Burials. But from those deaths, there is creation. And that is what I hope this blog will serve as - a forum for creative expression and thought, and observations about politcs, society, and life. That is being very broad, I know. But that's how I see it now.

So a burial need not be an endpoint, but a doorway to another realm. Some call it reincarnation, others see it as a resurrection, but in either form, it is creation. This blog is not meant to glorify or romanticize death by any means, particularly the notion of death as taking one's life. Rather, I am trying to look at how depressive times can be like one being in a cocoon, and as the time passes, something beautiful emerges.

Well, anyway, I may just go ahead and change the title if this whole thing gets too morbid.

Since this is my first post, I thank Ganesh at Brooklyn Masala and PJAddict for encouraging me to write, even if it is a few sentences. I hope I will continue to keep posting and not be one of those blogs (who have taken all the cool names) where the posts have stopped a few years ago, but the damn cool names are still taken.

See ya later.

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Ganesh said...
right on, buddy! this is great, and you express yourself really well!
December 14, 2006 5:55 PM

lbc said...
you're the man. i've bookmarked your site and am now going to check it 20 times a day, like i do with brooklynmasala. it's nice to have talented brothers. . . .
December 14, 2006 8:29 PM

Ganesh said...
ok, i'll admit that i live on this site now. i've stopped eating and spend my days in prayer for more blog posts. keep 'em coming, big guy! ok, i'm ordering take-out now.
December 15, 2006 9:41 AM

Ganesh said...
take-out was tasty but not as tasty as more posts. yummm....D-lish, baby!
December 15, 2006 9:58 AM

Ganesh said...
This is what I wrote on the way to work this morning:

Yo, yo! One, two, one two.
Yeah, I'm a blogger.
I'm hip to that fact.
I can't paint worth shit,
and don't ask me to act.

I just write words
to make the ladies swoon,
profound thoughts
to make your mind go BOOM!

Now there're two fly gents
I'd be happy to see
Enter the Blogosphere
WITH ME!

Yo, yo! One, two, one two.
Yo, yo! One, two, one two.

Hold it, man! What's that sound?
It's the new beat rhythms
of lostandfound!

My boy's tearing up
the blogosphere
Shoutin' out in Queens
I'M HERE! I'M HERE!

But what the fuck's up
with that motherfuckin' name?
He ain't lost for shit!
My boy's in his game

with eloquent words
to express his day.
Instead of mere black and white,
he shows us the gray!

Respect the gray...Respect the gray...

Yo, man, spit out the ground
you just fuckin' licked'
cause sauntering over
is smooth PJAddict!

He gets his name from a Seattle band
that he followed 'cross the States,
singing notes in every land.

When my boy starts his blog,
he'll school us soon on songs.
Fuck that art and law shit, man...
Let's go right us some wrongs!

So these are my boys
in the GetFreshFunBunch.
We always meet for dinner
'cause we ain't got time for lunch!

Yo, i said we always meet for dinner
'cause we ain't got time for lunch!

December 15, 2006 11:50 AM

lostandfound said...
ganesh,that was awesome. i didn't know you wrote such amazing rap, but of course, rap is nothing but poetry put to beats, and poetry flows out of ganesh like honey out of a bee.

rap on! rock on!

lostandfound, maybe i'll switch to lnf
December 15, 2006 4:20 PM

Ganesh said...
post today, bro, even if it's just a few sentences.
December 18, 2006 9:27 AM

tamasha said...
OK, I just almost died laughing reading these comments.

The elephant-man is right - keep them coming!
January 1, 2007 10:03 PM

lostandfound said...
thanks tamasha, the elephant man (i like that name) has mad skills, an inspiration to us all.
January 2, 2007 12:50 PM

So Here We Are

Neon Bible

Been listening to Neon Bible on my way to and from work in my new (used) trusty Honda Civic. It's a pretty astounding record:

* Though (2) Keep the Car Running is rousing and urgent, the record really starts with the quiet and dark (3) title track
* Everyone has heard (4) Intervention and it is even better clean (and without the annoying DJ at the end!), the pattern of a build-up to an almost-orchestral close reoccurs on this record over and over and never gets monotonous
* (6) Ocean of Noise is the first great timeless song on the record, stunning musically and lyrically, even better than the excellent Crown of Love on Funeral, it sounds like the accompaniment to one of Ganesh's outstanding personal posts on Brooklyn Masala, ending with wailing, mournful horns and strings
* I hear the influence of Joy Division and New Order in (7) The Well and the Lighthouse, but maybe it's in the ear of the beholder, as the breakdown is more doo-wop than British postpunk
* Critics keep saying (8) (Antichrist Television Blues) is Springsteenesque, maybe it's the first person "Dear God I'm a good Christian man," the despair and desperation of a man losing his faith in the face of the conditions of his life
* (9) Windowsill is the second great timeless song on this record, anchored by the refrain "I don't want to live in my father's house no more," maybe the best song in circulation about life in the Bush years ("I don't want to fight in a holy war"), it's about leaving Texas and taking refuge in Montreal, the paradoxical power of modern music ("MTV, what have you done to me?"), with a simple metronomic guitar chime as its foundation, the lyrics rise and fall majestically, like seeing the valleys and mountains of the Canadian Rockies from the air

* Like Keep the Car Running, (10) No Cars Go is hopeful in the midst of the dark observations of the other songs, it is also rousing and compelling, reminiscent of Rebellion(Lies) on the last album, the multiple musical parts (including a fluttery flutist at the breakdown) are wonderful and create an aural soundscape for the escape ("Women and children, let's go!/orphans, let's go!"), closing with the patented chorus of AF voices and a lifting orchestral arrangement
* (11) My Body is a Cage is the third great timeless song on the record, fusing the personal and political themes of the record, despondent ("I'm living in an age/that calls darkness light") but hopeful ("My mind holds the key"), listen for the full power of the pipe organ at 2:10 and a final upward, swooping turn at 3:35 with a moving organ part that is a fitting end to this record

I want to compare Neon Bible to Joshua Tree, but it wouldn't be entirely correct. The great songs on NB are greater than on JT, though JT is a total masterpiece from first song to last and this record picks up steam as it progresses. Maybe it's more the lyrical content, the feeling beneath the songs, and the creative musicality (it would be a treat to have AF produced by Eno/Lanois at some point). I hope that when you get the record, you enjoy it as much as I do.

MLK, Obama

I had hoped to write something about MLK day yesterday but did not get around to it. But today's news of Barack Obama announcing his decision to run for President is historic and honors the legacy of MLK.

There have been other African Americans who ran for President: 1972 - Shirley Chisholm (first African American woman elected to Congress), Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, and (I am sorry to have to mention this) Alan Keyes sometime in the 1990s. There may have been others.

Obama brings something different than those candidates. He has a transcendent quality which allows non-Blacks to view him as not just a Black candidate while at the same time he is not viewed by those in the Black community as abandoning his roots or heritage or the politics of the Black community. It is an intangible element, an element that Bobby Kennedy certainly had. That different constituents and communities are able to view him as representing the best of their particular values, and by embodying a spirit which is broad enough to attract disparate communities, he is seen as a uniter, and thereby, in him, they see hope.

I would say Jesse Jackson had a transcendent quality in his oratory; he could inspire and galvanize you right out of your seat. And if you listened to him, he preached a philosophy that sought to unite the poor and the middle class to fight against common enemies of greed, poverty, and economic hardship. That was the Rainbow Coalition. But he was never viewed seriously outside the Black community; he was viewed as too radical, too outside the mainstream. I don't think it was his involvement in the civil rights movement, but certain anti-Semitic comments which were alluded to him. In any event, I supported him.

I was too young to know much about Chisholm's campaign, and I am not even going to mention Mr. Keyes, and will refrain from using the moniker given to him by Borat out of respect for MLK.

But Obama is the real deal: community organizer, attorney, state senator, and Senator. He also carries the imprimatur of elite status which for better or for worse soundly establishes his mainstream acceptablity: graduate of Columbia Unversity and Harvard Law.

Some say that he is too inexperienced to serve as President. Of course, it was another Illinoisian who ran for President after two years in the Senate and a stretch in the state senate: Abraham Lincoln. Those are high standards to meet and it is not fair to raise such comparisons.

But what Obama brings is the ability to inspire people beyond the ordinary politics, beyond partisanship, and most importantly for me, still bring a progressive vision to people. I have always believed that a progressive politics is not just a liberal or conservative one but one that demonstrates that social justice, and economic opportunity, among other progressive values benefit the majority of poor and middle class people.

Another parallel characterstic is that while MLK and RFK both opposed the Vietnam War during their times, Obama is also steadfastly against our current war in Iraq. The progressive vision is that misplaced militarism is not consistent with a just and conscientious society. Such militarism deprives resources that can ease the suffering of many people, whether it is economic hardship and poverty, lack of health care, lack of housing, inadequate education, and the list goes on.

MLK said it best in his historic 1967 antiwar speech at Riverside Church:

"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. S o I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

I dare not say that Obama is akin to MLK, and only time will tell if he can inspire the populace like RFK, but I am encouraged that his candidacy may push the country's politics in a new direction.

When MLK was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was in Indiana giving a speech to a Black audience when the news came in. He delivered the news to the crowd and in his eloquence captured the outrage and anger of the people and offered a way to channel that into a transformative politics.

In honor of MLK, in the words of RFK, and in the hopes of a Obama candidacy that can inspire people the way those two leaders did before both were assassinated within two months of each other in 1968:

Indianapolis, Indiana - April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...

I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with

bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

(Interrupted by applause)

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

(Interrupted by applause)

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Darryl Hunt Free!

Tonight I had the opportunity to see an excellent film which tells a tragic but ultimately triumphant tale: The Trials of Darryl Hunt. It is the true story of a man wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced for the murder and rape of a woman in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The woman was white, Darryl Hunt is black.

The incident took place in 1984, and it wasn't until 2003 that Darryl Hunt was finally released from prison, after numerous trials, appeals, and hearings.

In 2004, even the U.S. Supreme Court denied Darryl Hunt a last chance to have a new trial. But where the legal system failed, faith and science working together brought Darryl's freedom. Faith, of course, because of the firm and unwavering belief of Darryl and his supporters that he was innocent and he was right, and that the truth would prevail. Science because it was the emergence of DNA testing technology which was able to finally exonerate Darryl.

Darryl's faith and commitment was so strong that after serving five years, in 1989, he was offered a plea deal before the start of his second trial that he would be released on time served if he pled to a lesser murder charge. Despite the fact that Darryl could walk out free, the fact that he would have to admit commiting a crime which he did not do was against his conscience and self-integrity.

There are so many stories of wrongfully convicted or imprisoned persons finding and gaining their freedom: Ruben Carter, Nelson Mandela, and so many others that we hear about. There are fictional tales too such as Shawshank Redemption or The Count of Monte Cristo.

It may appear that after a while, you may feel that you have heard this story many times, and the tale of the wrongfully imprisoned would not affect you.

But I can tell you that this story, as I am sure all of these similar stories, will leave you heartbroken and thrilled no matter how many times you have heard a story such as this.

The combination of racism, corruption, negligence, and criminal conduct by the police and District Attorney's office created a personal hell for Darryl which through his faith he was able to survive.

There seems to be something about someone who is wrongfully imprisoned and seeks his freedom which seems to talk to me, and many folks I would think. Maybe because such a person evokes sympathy and is an example of injustice clearly defined. Maybe it is because we see an innocent person suffer unnecessarily, and we identify with him especially if he is also good and decent. Or maybe it is because we ourselves find ourselves in circumstances that we cannot necessarily control or change, circumstances that we think may be limiting, restricting, or even imprisoning, and we don't see how we will emerge from it. And we see the story of someone like Darryl Hunt, and how he maintained his faith while acting to win his freedom, and we are inspired and humbled that we too should persevere and have faith.

In the film, Darryl's strongest advocate, Larry Little, who had organized the Black Panther Party in North Carolina in his earlier days, says the struggle is akin to man trying to move a mountain with a shovel. It is an impossible task, but to not make the effort in light of the circumstances would drive you crazy. So you fight, not knowing if you will win, but so you can have your sanity, your dignity, your sense of meaning in this world. That is all.

I remember reading the Alice Walker book, Possessing the Secret of Joy, many years ago after I got out of college. It is a book dealing with genital mutilation in Africa, and at the end of the book, when the protagonist faces the firing squad, the message is laid out before her in a banner unfurled which reads, RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY!.

Well, I think I have spoiled enough plots and endings for one post. I want to encourage people to learn about different organizations fighting for wrongfully convicted persons. Some of them are listed at the film's website. These include:

North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence
The Innocence Project
Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama
Truth in Justice
The Center on Wrongful Convictions
The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice
Southern Center for Human Rights

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Another dimension to the issues surrounding prisons deal with how certain counties and districts use prison populations in their census to qualify for funding, social services, political representation via redistricting, and many other resources while the prisoners themselves see no fruits from this practice. In fact, prisoners cannot even vote. One cannot think of the Constitution's original sin of acceding to slavery in exchange of counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person for census enumeration, thus allowing slaveholding states to benefit from the slave population both in their labor and their physical presence, while providing them no rights or liberties.

An excellent website and group addressing this is Prisoners of the Census.

Godfather's Revolution

Just some addtional reflections on James Brown and his legacy. I was listening to the Underground Railroad, an exceptional hip hop show on WBAI - 99.5 FM on Saturday nights from midnight to 2 A.M with Jay Smooth.

He was comenting on the significance of JB. An interesting point that he made was that yes, many recognize him for the innovative sound and music he introduced, and some recognize him as a pioneer of hip-hop by providing so many of the foundational beats which were sampled and the basis of many a hip hop track.

But, according to Jay Smooth, his influence went a dimenstion further. Prior to his sound, the focus of American music was the melody with the rhythm or percussion being the background. What JB did was place the rhythm or percussion in the foreground and made that the focus relegating the melody to the background. As a result came the explosive and electric sound that we identify JB with, and which so many afterwards adopted.

This departure went one step further: in making the rhythm or percussion the foreground, he did not limit the rhythmic sound to just that of the drum. Instead, every instrument from horn, guitar, organ, piano, and even the voice became a percussive instrument. The beat was elemental in every expression of sound. Thus, we hear the horns and other instruments in the now familiar herky-jerky, stop-and-go sound.

The fact that the voice could be used as a percussive instrument was revolutionary in American popular music. Of course, that tradition existed for ages in the African and African American music and oral tradition.

However, its use by JB laid the foundation of rap itself, which became a musical genre completely centered on the fact that the voice is a percussive instrment, the rhythm, the beat itself.

Understanding that dimension of JB's influence allows one to see that it is no wonder that so many hip-hop and rap artists looked to JB's music for their elemental beats. Hip-hop and rap was a part of an innovation that JB had himself introduced in American popular music, and which embodied age-old African and African American practice: the power and prominence of the beat, the rhythm.

This was the revolution which the Godfather wrought.

Little Moon

One of the joys of my life is my 19 month old daughter. Let's call her Little Moon. Why? Well, she has a list of favorite words: cat (the first English word she spoke - my parents have a cat), plane (we live on the route to JFK airport so whenever a plane flies by overhead, she rushes to the back door to see it fly into the distance, and proceeds to say bye-bye), and of course, moon.

One of her favorite books is naturally, Goodnight Moon. That is where she learned the word while reading the book with her mother who diligently taught her this and many other words she now knows.

She is very sharp in identifying images of the moon. It could be the actual moon in the sky - full or crescent. A picture in a book. Or funny enough, any image that resembles it. One day we were walking down the steps to our basement. The stairs are wood and have random carvings on it that came about naturally and over the years. As she is walking down the steps holding my hand, she sees a little curve line creating a lighter shade in the dark wood. The line can't be more than half an inch. But sure enough she points to it and says, "Moon!"

That was very sweet.

We have a routine where after I come home, we will go to our bedroom and I will turn on the cd player and we'll dance to songs. I started this after I bought the Best of R.E.M. cd, so when we dance it's to R.E.M. The first track on the cd is of course, Man on the Moon. So as we are dancing and looking at ourselves in the mirror in our bedroom, as soon as she hears the refrain, "Do you believe, they put a man on the moon, man on the moon," she will join in and say "Moon!"

Another game we have is playing ball. Our basement is such that the stairs come down in the middle of the basement so that you can walk around the stairs in a circle. We have one of those big bouncy balls, the kind that you see in supermarkets in those receptacles stacked up high, about the size of a soccer ball but light as air. So we would kick the ball to her and she learned to kick it. I'm pretty sure we started this during the World Cup or around then. She kicks funny. It's not a kick where you bend your knees and let your calf portion generate the momentum. She does a straight leg kick, scissor style and it's so cute because you know she's trying.

So in the basement, I try to get her to play soccer with me and kick the ball. Except whenever we start doing that, she, for some reason, wants to just run and run around the stairs in the circle fashion. That's her enjoyment and excitement. So what I try to do is to kick the ball to her as she's running, and at times she will kick it if it comes in her path. But the game for her has become to avoid being caught by the ball as I kick it to her. So she runs and runs, and I try to catch her by kicking the ball in her direction so the ball reaches her and so she can kick the ball.

My enduring image is of her zooming across the basement tile floor around the bend of the stairs while I am just at the previous bend, as I try to kick the ball in vain to reach her as she, her back to me, disappears from my view.

She has become so fast that I can't kick the ball at each end and catch up to her, so I cheat and wait til she comes around and laps me basically and kick the ball to her then.

These are the joys of Little Moon.

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Comments:

Ganesh said...
dude, this was a wonderful post! i especially love the paragraph describing dancing to REM when you get home from work.you should make a post about how LittleMoon calls every animal a cat.
December 29, 2006 12:53 PM

lostandfound said...
you're right. but she's graduated to calling a dog, a dog. except now she calls other four legged animals she can't recognize, like rabbits and squirrels, dogs!
December 29, 2006 1:22 PM

lbc said...
great post. hurray for little moon!
December 30, 2006 3:59 AM

tamasha said...
You should set up a video camera (or whatever they're called these days) to record one of your dance sessions. It will make her roll her eyes when she's 15, but it will be really special to her later.She's got quite the sparkle in her eyes.
January 1, 2007 9:59 PM

lostandfound said...
hi tamasha, that's a great idea. it's so easy to let moments slip by without saving them for later.thanks for the compliment. do you have kids?
January 2, 2007 12:48 PM

Sujata said...
I think she looks like me, don't you think? When I was like 2 with the crazy curly hair? And I cried all the time? And you would be like uhhh, why are you crying? Haha, yup, she is SO like her pishi!
January 2, 2007 4:19 PM

lostandfound said...
sujata, yes, you're right
January 2, 2007 5:17 PM

James Brown is Forever Alive - lnf

James Brown is dead. No, not the 1992 L.A. Style track which tried to negate the need for soul in dance tracks. The real living legend, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" is really gone, having passed on Christmas Day.

JB was a special figure in my own exploration into music, soul, race, and expression. I don't know when was the first time I saw a video of JB, but I knew it was electric. I think it was on Video Music Box, the afterschool rap music show on Channel 21 that showed all the cool videos.

Seeing JB do his moves just made me want to be like him. And so when I was alone in my own room, dorm room, or apartment, I would get the hair brush out like it was my mike, put on the JB tape, and let it rip. For me, he represented a certain fearlessness about himself. Not afraid to let his soul come out, let it all hang out. And I admired that, primarily because my own personality was not like that. But certain situations or songs would bring that out in me, and I liked that new me, as fleeting as it was.

So JB was a reminder of what can be, of what I can be.

He was also a pioneer of sound and beat and dance, influencing the whole of hip-hop and rap. He contributed many great tracks which have a life of their own: I Got You (I Feel Good), Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud, Sex Machine, just to name a few.

Watching him and listening to him was a liberating experience. It is like how they say, when one person is liberated, it cannot help but have a liberating effect on those around him.

Sex Machine affirmed my machismo. I'm Black and I'm Proud was the basis of one of the placards we used during an anti-racist march after the beating of a young Indo-Caribbean in Richmond Hill. Our placard read "I'm Brown and I'm Proud." Newsday ran a picture of two little girls, twins actually - maybe 6 or 7, each holding signs saying "I'm Brown and I'm Proud."

So I was not such a follower of JB where I went to any of his concerts or had a big collection of his albums - I had some. But his influence on me and the world extended far beyond his music.

And so, even as his own personal history was uneven and, at times, troubled, JB was a legend, a true American original representing agony and exultation, pride and pain. Most importantly, he did it with soul, his soul, which he was never afraid to express, and which in turn liberated so many others to express their own soul, even if it was for a brief moment with the hair brush while alone in one's world.

'Tis Not Too Late to Seek a Newer World - lnf

Since this is the first blog that I've ever started, I am uncertain of really what to write. I look at my friend's blog, brooklynmasala.blogspot.com, and I think, man, that is how a blog should be or at least that's the way I would like to create a blog - part storytelling, part reflection/journal, part history, part art and poetry, and part political news and exhortation.

But I'm not there yet, nor do I have ideas of how to get there. So I'm focusing on just getting my thoughts down on the screen, and see what flows.

I'll start with some major influences, though they will date me.

But before I do, I revisited my friend's blog and saw that his first entries were very much like journal entries - a series of thoughts, reflections, and experiences. No graphics and very simple. So that makes it a little bit more manageable for me.

Among my influences growing up were reading about figures such as Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Gandhi - very common figures I would say for anyone influenced by progressive politics and social justice issues.


With Kennedy, I was fascinated by his transformation or evolution toward the end of his life and political career, how his politics seemed to have depth. That there was a underlying philosophical and poetic influence to his politics, thus giving him a passion that a regular politico just doesn't have.

I remember reading Arthur Schlesinger's book and Jack Newfield's book on Kennedy and was inspired by references to poetry, Greek and otherwise.

One such poem that I really liked was this poem by Tennyson. The title is Ulysses, and it refers to the great epic, the Odyssey. But I knew it from the line "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."


IT little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


What drew me to this poem, aside from Kennedy's own liking of it, was the sense that life is arduous, full of struggle, but nevertheless there is and can always be new beginnings. There is also this sense of a kindred spirit between Ulyssess and his fellow journeymen. It reminds me of the bond I have with my close friends who I have known for such a long time, and while we go through different stages, relationships, phases, jobs, locations, and struggles, we, together, push forward to inspire each other to reach the new frontier.

--------------------------

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

---------------

Comments:

Ganesh said...
hey bro, i love the poem, and i love tennyson. i especially like the lines:I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.i love that you're blogging, bro! i never knew that you were influenced by RFK. have you read Parting the Waters yet? both PJAddict and i really like it. definitely read it.
December 21, 2006 11:13 AM

lostandfound said...
yeah, i've been influenced by rfk's life since high school when i did a report on him. i was affected how his brother's death made him melancholy and how that transformed his politics and worldview.
December 21, 2006 4:55 PM

lbc said...
One of my first memories of lostandfound was driving around Delaware County trying (not very successfully) to investigate bad conditions in public housing. He exclaimed, "This is just like Bobby Kennedy and his men doing an investigation!" That's when I knew I had a long-term friend in the car.Good post.
December 21, 2006 10:08 PM

Ganesh said...
This post has been removed by the author.
December 22, 2006 9:05 AM

Ganesh said...
when was that? when we were in college?(sorry, typo before)
December 22, 2006 9:06 AM

lostandfound said...
yeah, i remember that well. that was when i realized lbc was a cool dude and we would be friends.maybe like my freshman or sophomore year.
December 26, 2006 2:27 PM

"the way people talk about loving things, which things, and why"

This is exciting architecture and urban development:

Seeing the Seediness, and Celebrating It

Blockages

From a note to a friend:

i go through periods when i shut people out for no good reason. i gravitate toward easy marks in close quarters, so as to avoid the hard work of excavation and explanation that occurs when i speak with an old and knowing friend. this is particularly the case when my good work is shadowed by writer's block. i have to lie to people and make them think that everything is alright, when i am fucking up a good job and remain frustrated with my inability to express my thoughts and ideas to the wider world. it's a funny thing, this writer's block which seems to cause speaking blockages as well.

Lost in the Plot

Though the Montreal band the Dears have a new and well-regarded album called Gang of Losers, I love the band for a single song from their last album. Whatever it truly is about, "Lost in the Plot," twinned with the following video, continues last week's theme of secondary school alienation, in this case of a young Black child in a northern white world.

Reasons why I love the video and song:

• The combination of still and video photography;
• The kid;
• His valiant effort to dance to Motown-inflected indie rock;
• The "Our love/don't mess with our love/our love is so much stronger" refrain;
  
• Lead singer Murray Lightbourne's bright yellow maracas, which he throws to the ground at the moment when the song accelerates to its end;
  
• The quick sequence of still photographs at the end of the video as Lightbourne wails "I promise not to cry any more";
• The child's sad eyes;
  
• Ending with a photograph of him on a snow-laden landscape.

I can't speak with any knowledge about the videography, such as the bright glare used to obscure the band through most of the video, though those techniques seem to make it visually textured and interesting. Regardless, it is the picture of the lonely child on a snowscape that hits me hardest.

Speaking as a Child of the Seventies

Before going through successive periods listening to WFAN in early October (baseball) and Air America in late October (politics), I would tune in a few different rock stations on my way to and from work. One morning as I came to stop for coffee, the old Bon Jovi song "Runaway" came on Jack FM or Q104 or some such station. It struck me that programmers at rock radio in New York have engaged in a conspiracy to rob me of my post-twenties identity, still vulnerable to deftly aimed stabs of aural memory, back to a time when I was very much an outsider, because of my skin color, fondness for books and politics, and lack of athletic ability.

Until the Seventh Grade, I wore my hair in a side part plastered down by Jabakusum coconut oil. As I moved through high school, I found a home in the freaks and geeks world of debate and speech. In the school where I spent most of my time, I was a bespectacled oddity, not black or white, with wrists that you could encircle with an adult thumb and index finger. Though I had many stresses during those years, my central drama, all the way through college actually, was my yearning for girls. The songs I heard on the radio and listened to on cassettes described an alien world of relationship and romance, exultation and desolation.


During my senior year in a class called "Leadership" (for reasons that remain unclear), the smart, preppy-dressing kids (no real preps -- the school was too working class, Jewish, and Catholic) who played soccer and tennis and bridged various social gulfs in our public school loved Bon Jovi and knew all the words to Livin' On a Prayer. (My high school was united in purpose and deed only one time while I was there, for a contest to write a metal band's name on slips of paper that would win us a concert put on by the radio station K-ROCK. Everyone worked on those slips of paper: jocks, nerds, preps, and the vast, silent, unnamed majority.)

I don't miss those days. And though I now work in a converted junior high school very much like my old schools, I am a fully formed person, mostly unafraid to be, with co-workers and students who share my values and value my personhood. And the music of this self is Pearl Jam, Wilco, Bloc Party, Broken Social Scene, Ryan Adams: modern, with shades of "classic" from an earlier era. But that doesn't stop the radio programmers from trying to keep me down and I remain subject to these Bon Jovi memories.

How I Wish for You Today

After a visit to the exhibit on Sikhism at the Rubin Museum of Art and nearly missing a sighting of the Dalai Lama in the lobby of the museum, I went to see the film Old Joy at Film Forum. The emphasis on art related to Buddhism was an inadvertant though seemingly appropriate preparation for the film. Though my eyes closed during some of the early scenes of nature outside of Portland, Oregon, I was fully engaged by the time the two protagonists reach the hot springs at which there is a moment of connection in their friendship. I was excited to see the film because of the endorsement of my favorite film critic, who imbued a personal narrative with political meaning:

Yet if Mark and Kurt’s excursion resembles any number of classic adventures across time and space, the film is also insistently about this specific moment in time and space. Namely, an America in which progressive radio (actually, snippets from Air America) delivers the relentless grind of bad news that Mark can only listen to without comment and with a face locked in worry, a face on which Ms. Reichardt invites us to project the shell shock, despair and hopelessness of everyone else listening in across the country.

(Dargis does something quite similar in her review of Half Nelson, though the politics in that movie are much closer to the surface.)

I was not quite sure what to make of the film on Saturday night, but I found myself thinking about it this morning on my drive to work. The melancholy of lost affection is so strongly imparted by the characters; it is difficult to resist the impulse to contemplate one's own lost affections and the attenuated or diminished desire for connection to friends and family. In New York, 9/11 caused many of us to be jarred out of our complacency and diminishment, though the pull of work and the push of everyday life in the city quickly regained strength in our lives (at least for those of us who did not lose people at the towers or in the wars that have followed). This film quietly disturbs, perhaps only for one Monday morning drive to work. But it disturbs nonetheless.

Long Road, performed by Eddie Vedder and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan in 1998 at the Not In Our Name concert from The Sky I Scrape.com

As My Tail Lights Fade

I saw the film Good Will Hunting again a few days ago. I'm not sure why I return to it periodically (Manohla Dargischaracteristically slices and dices the plot in her recent feature on Matt Damon). I think the movie seduces me with the idea that we are all like Will Hunting and have infinite talent to contribute toward human progress and personal happpiness, but it is only our inner demons -- eradicable with a hug from a working class therapist -- that hold us back. As we attempt to prop up our flagging will and drive toward some goal, these kinds of stories raise hope.

But should they raise hope? What does a fictional genius character from South Boston who prefers to lay brick than work at McKinsey ("McNeil" in the movie) or the NSA say to me as I struggle with my more prosaic challenges and potential? Can repeated viewings bleach out the meaning and play instead to our over-stimulated emotional sensitivities? I don't know about the deeper question of the influence of fictional narratives on our lives, but the scene in the movie in which Affleck sets Damon straight and causes him to start living with courage rather than in fear always gets to me. I know it doesn't happen in a single conversation with a best friend, but it seems plausible as a turn that life could take.

A Wave Came Crashing

Listened to the waves today and felt deep peace from the eclipse of neighboring conversation by the sound and the connection to the sun. Last summer days in New York and I took one for myself. As I grow older, this ritual becomes more important to me, especially in the last days when Autumn is imminent. It means I don't do a hundred other more directly important things, but so be it. I paid little mind to the others there today, unlike during other visits, and felt the surroundings more deeply.

Kindler Gentler Policeman's Hand

Here's some video that's killing me presently:



It's kills me to watch a young band sing an explicitly political song with the immense audience moshing in the mist.