EWF, A Reminder That I Did Have a Childhood

06 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon New York, music, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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EWF, Funk, Hebrew-Israelite, Humanities, Imagination, Jazz, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Maurice White, Pop, R&B, Self-Awareness, Self-Discovery

Earth, Wind & Fire’s All ‘N All (1977) album cover, February 6, 2016. (http://www.allmusic.com).

I’m still reeling over Maurice White. Yeah, I still have my Earth, Wind & Fire on my CDs, my iPod, my iPhone, on three laptops and a desktop. Phillip Bailey and White’s brothers-in-arts are still here. Their music will always be with me and with us. But it feels like a little piece of my relative (if not contrived) innocence from my pre-Humanities, pre-Hebrew-Israelite days died with White Wednesday night.

Here’s what I wrote about those days of deliberately-induced blissful naiveté, Earth, Wind & Fire included, in my memoir:

“For me, this boy, this tweener, an active imagination and an even more animated dream life was critical. Living in between the hustle and bustle of “The City,” — Manhattan and the other four boroughs of New York — and the relative quiet of the ritzy suburbs immediately north of it was everything and everyone I knew before the age of twelve. Just three blocks after the elevated 2 Subway line ended at East 241st Street in the Bronx was where “Mount Vernon, New York” began. From the hard concrete sidewalks and green street signs of New York to the crumbling light blue slate and dark blue signs were my only indications that I had truly left the city. This despite the claims of so many I knew that upstate New York began somewhere above 125th or 207th Street in Manhattan. I knew by the time I was twelve that, sleepy bedroom suburb or not, Mount Vernon had more features in common with the Bronx and upper Manhattan than most city folk were willing to recognize.

“My only links to the great metropolis to the south were WNBC-TV (Channel 4), Warner Wolf — with his famous “Let’s go to the video tape line — doing sports on WCBS-TV (Channel 2), and WABC-AM 77 and WBLS-FM 107.5 on the radio. I found the AM station more fun to listen to, but I also liked listening to the sign-off song WBLS played at the end of the evening, Moody’s Mood for Love, with that, ‘There I go, There I go, The-ere I go…’ start. Music had been an important part of my imagination in ’79, with acts like Earth, Wind & Fire, Christopher Cross, Billy Joel and The Commodores. Not to mention Frank Sinatra, Queen, Donna Summer and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall album. The music also made me feel like I was as much a part of New York as I was a part of Mount Vernon. It left me thinking of the ozone and burnt rubber smell that I noticed as soon as I would walk down into the Subway system in Manhattan. But aside from my occasional slip of the tongue — ‘warda’ for ‘water’ and ‘bawwgt’ for ‘bought’ — I didn’t sound or act much like a New Yawker. Still, I discovered something about New York from afar. I could sneak up to the rooftop of my apartment building, 616 East Lincoln, a five-story complex of three connected brick buildings with Tudor-style facades and a concrete-stone foundation. I’d find the exit to the roof unlocked and see the tops of the Twin Towers floating over some low-lying clouds on an otherwise sunny day. The symbols of the greatest city on Earth seemed to float toward the heavens on those days, and me with them.

“Besides the occasional reminder of life outside of my world, of Mount Vernon, I was the center of my own universe. Mount Vernon was but a stage on which my life played out, a place I hoped would stay this way forever. I was an eleven-year-old who thought that my world was the world. I lived my life like Philip Bailey and Maurice White would’ve wanted me to. I came to see ‘victory in a life [sic] called fantasy’ as my own life, living as if my imagination and dreams could be made into reality. All I had to do was wish it so.”

Because of what I went through during the Boy @ The Window years, I had to learn to get over my idiot ex-stepfather’s abuse to continue listening to Earth, Wind & Fire between ’82 and ’89. The late Maurice Eugene Washington was a fan as well, and I didn’t want us to both like the same music. Who the heck knew what was going on in his head when he heard “Fantasy” or “After The Love Is Gone,” anyway?

All I know is, there won’t be another group like the one Maurice White founded in ’69, the year I was born. All I can do is hold on to my precious Earth, Wind & Fire music, and the imagination that it helped spark. All I can do now is hope that someone can even begin to approach the kind of ethereal and powerfully Black-and-proud mix of music that White, Bailey, et al. were able to construct for nearly a decade. One can fantasize, right?

The Cold Light of Grades

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Ann Jannetta, Challenge Scholarship, Continental Airlines, Crush #2, Dean's List, Disillusionment, East Asian History, Financial Aid, General Foods, Grades, Grinding, Homesickness, Humanities, Internalized Racism, Masculinity, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, MVHS, Newark International Airport, Phyllis, Pitt, Racism, Self-Discovery, Sexism, Stereotype Threat, Travel

University of Pittsburgh after a snow storm, Cathedral of Learning, downloaded January 5, 2016. (http://www.everystockphoto.com).

Dateline, Tuesday, January 5, 2016. Exactly twenty-eight years ago on this day and date, I left Mount Vernon and New York for my second semester at the University of Pittsburgh. I sensed, but did not know, that this was a make-or-break time for me as a student and as a person. At least when that day began. I had a 5 pm Continental Airlines flight out of Newark (my last time flying out of there, thank God!), and had plenty of time to kill before catching a cab to East 241st at 2 pm to catch the 2 Subway to 42nd, the Shuttle to Grand Central, and then the Carey Bus to New Jersey.

Then the mailman arrived a bit earlier than I expected, around 12:30 pm. I’d been anticipating and dreading this moment for seventeen days, since Saturday, December 19, the morning of my last final in Pascal.

The day I was scheduled to go back to Pittsburgh was also the day I finally received my grades. I earned an easy A in Astronomy, a B- in Pascal, and a C in Honors Calc. All three of those grades I expected. The C in East Asian History was completely unexpected. My grade point average for the semester gave me a 2.63 to start my postsecondary career. That might’ve been good enough for most folks. But of course not for me. My Challenge Scholarship absolutely depended on me maintaining a minimum 3.0 average at the end of every school year in order for me to stay eligible. That was my wake up call to what I’d allowed Phyllis, and my thoughts of her and me — and of her with me — to do to me. I didn’t even give Mom the chance to see my grades.

Because I was seventeen when my first semester began, my Mom was still the responsible adult and my Mom’s address the primary address for my academic records. This was the first and last time I received my Pitt grades this way.

I was so mad. But I was more disillusioned than angry, especially with myself and my view of the world. I knew I had no margin for error this Winter/Spring semester at Pitt. I needed to raise my overall GPA to a 3.0 or higher in order to keep my academic scholarship for my sophomore year. I could barely afford Pitt as it was, between room and board and books. It wasn’t as if I could depend on Mom and my father to keep sending me money. They had sent a total of $480 my way that first semester. I was still $1,200 behind on my Pitt bill, even with student loans and me working sixteen hours a week.

The days after I got back to my dorm I spent assessing my situation and what to do about it. The first decision I made was to consolidate the funds I managed to secure at the end of December. I had General Foods cover my remaining room and board payments for the school year, increased my Stafford Loan amount for the semester, and marched down to Thackeray Hall. I waited all day to take care of my bills, get my few hundred dollars of leftover cash from all of my aid — all of which I needed for books — and registered for classes. The last part took the most time, and was the hardest to do. The low the second morning of the semester was two below zero, and the high that day was eight above. Fahrenheit, not Celsius. I stood in line outside for over an hour in that weather surrounded by two feet of snow with the occasional winds and snow drifts before getting inside at nine that morning.

But in the moments I had that week, between some quiet time for myself and in discussing my performance with two of my professors (I just couldn’t believe I earned a C in East Asian History!), I realized two or three things. One was that I over-performed, given how depressed I was the last seven weeks of the semester. I missed nearly three out of every four classes in November, and nearly forty percent of my East Asian History class during the entire semester. I went without a textbook for Honors Calc I after someone stole it from my job in the computer labs in the Cathedral of Learning at the end of October. I managed a solid C in the course anyway. It could’ve been much worse.

Two was that my East Asian History professor Ann Jannetta was right. I really was “lucky” to have managed a C in an upper-level history course my first semester of college. I still acted as if I was in Humanities at A.B. Davis Middle School or MVHS, that a C was some indication of low IQ or confirmation that Whites had bigger brains or something. Jannetta was very encouraging. It was the first time any of my professors had made me feel like I belonged in college.

The most important thing I realized, though, was that I couldn’t let anyone or anything get in the way of me bringing my A-game (or A- game, maybe) every semester and in every course. Phyllis didn’t matter. My internalized sexism or what others though of me because of their racism didn’t matter. My idiot classmates or parents didn’t matter. Heck, being hungry, cold, and short on money didn’t matter. All that mattered was my ability to do what I did best back then. Get A’s in bunches when I needed to.

Of course, all these things really did matter. I merely decided to play the game of college that semester with a combination of fear and anger, arrogance and obliviousness. To the tune of a 3.33 and the Dean’s List! Yay me!

But when that semester ended on Saturday, April 30, those demons and distractions resurfaced. Oh, the days before I spent five days homeless and weeks eating tuna fish and pork neck bones!

Copying, Lifting, and Cultural Appropriation

19 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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"And The Beat Goes On" (1979), "Blurred Lines" (2012), "Boadicea" (1987), "Got To Give It Up (1977), "Holiday" (1983), "Ready or Not" (1996), Al Jolson, Authenticity, Copying, Copyright Infringement, Cultural Appropriation, Dance, Disco, Elvis Presley, Enya, Lifting, Madonna, Marvin Gaye, Multiculturalism, Pharrell Williams, Plagiarism, Pop Music, R&B, Robin Thicke, Stealing, The Fugees, The Whispers

Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke at the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards, Beverly Hills, CA, January 25, 2014.
(Larry Busacca/Getty Images, via http://images.musictimes.com/). Qualifies as fair use under copyright laws, via Getty Images agreement with CC-SA-3.0.

I’m sure all of you have heard about the recent court decision that gave Marvin Gaye’s estate a $7.3 million award, finding that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke committed copyright infringement stemming from their 2012 hit single “Blurred Lines.” They lifted the melody and rhythm for their song from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 single “Got To Give It Up.” The two songs do sound similar enough, and interviews with Williams do show that he was heavily influenced by Gaye’s work. I find myself agreeing with the jury on this because of Williams’ Whiteness rhetoric about being the “new Black” last year, as well as Thicke’s constant cultural appropriation in his videos and music.

The decision, though, made me think about how much copying has gone on in music over the years. It made me think about the first time I heard Madonna, off her first self-titled album, on the airwaves in the fall of ’83. It was her first Billboard Top 40 single “Holiday.” Except that the first dozen or so times I heard it, I thought at first it was “And The Beat Goes On,” a late ’79/early ’80 disco hit from the group The Whispers.

It was the first time I realized that music artists could copy each other, or at least, have similar sounds, rhythms, tones and other musical arrangements in their songs. The lyrics were obviously different, but both “And The Beat Goes On” and “Holiday” were “forget-the-cares-of-this-world” dance-pop songs with heavy R&B influences.

I’d wondered for years whether Madonna ever gave The Whispers any formal credit for sampling their music for one of her very first tracks. I did find an answer in the Madonna (1983) album’s liner notes. Nope, not a single mention, not a word of acknowledgement. But John “Jellybean” Benitez was mentioned as producer. There’s no way in this world that he and the other folks who worked on “Holiday” didn’t know who The Whispers were or hadn’t heard their song “And The Beat Goes On.” It’s possible that Madonna herself didn’t know, but given her constant credits to the disco era, I seriously doubt that, too. Take a gander below, folks, and tell me how similar the two songs were/are:

Keep in mind, though, this was before Madonna had become “Like A Virgin” Madonna, “Material Girl” Madonna, and “Vogue” Madonna. And copying, sampling, and lifting was more acceptable in the early 1980s than it is today. Especially since at the time, neither The Whispers nor Madonna were music icons. Of course, lifting from relatively obscure Black artists to mainstream a song or music genre is nothing new. Just ask Al Jolson and Elvis Presley!

Thirteen years later, The Fugees released their big hit, “Ready Or Not” (1996). As soon as I heard it, I knew they had sampled Enya’s “Boadicea” (1987), because I’m that kind of eclectic music enthusiast. They didn’t give Enya credit in their initial liner notes, either, and hadn’t obtained permission to use her music in their song. Enya threatened to sue over this rather obvious copyright infringement, and The Fugees and Enya settled the issue out of court.

By ’96, the rules for sampling other music artists’ work had become tightened, and Enya herself was a well-known, if not iconic, new age music artist. The up-and-coming Fugees picked the wrong Irish singer to copy without permission or acknowledgement.

What does all of this mean? For starters, you should never plagiarise someone whose work is well-known. Vanilla Ice, meet Queen and David Bowie. The Verve and “Bittersweet Symphony” from ’97? Let me introduce you to The Rolling Stones!

But the “Blurred Lines” decision means much more than the message that one should steal from an unknown without a major music contract instead of stealing from Marvin Gaye. The legal decision blurs the distinction between illegal sampling and inappropriate cultural appropriation. Really, Madonna’s use of The Whisper’s “And The Beat Goes On” is just as blatant, and so was her appropriation of disco, R&B and other Black and Latino dance rhythms between ’82 and ’93. Unlike Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, though, Madonna’s appropriation wasn’t seen as such, at least during her first years of fame. Heck, I knew more than a few Black folk who though Madonna was either Black or biracial prior to the Like A Virgin (1984) album, likely because like me, they didn’t have cable to watch MTV ad nauseam.

I guess that Pharrell’s and Robin Thicke’s act has worn thin with the fickle public. This may well point to the larger fact that mainstream popular music and the artists that are creating today’s music are about as creatively collaborative and eclectic as a dunker in basketball with no jumpshot and no defensive skills. This isn’t your father’s White Soul, aka, Michael McDonald, Darryl Hall & John Oates, or even Kenny Loggins, working with Earth, Wind & Fire or Kool & The Gang. Today’s music artists can only do their music one way, and need “inspiration” to “create” a “new sound.” One that is too often lifted from the past, yet never placed in context, and sampled with and without permission.

A Diarrhea Football Sunday

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pop Culture, Sports, Work, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Come-From-Behind Victory, Coping Strategies, Diarrhea, East Rutherford New Jersey, Football, G/I Tract, Gastrointestinal Illness, Giants, Giants Stadium, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Giants, NFL, Phil Simms, Pizza Shop, Pressures, Sicilian Pizza Pie, Stress, Stressors, Zeke Mowatt

Porthcawl, Wales takes a battering from a fierce Atlantic storm, February 5, 2014. (Getty Images, via http://www.express.co.uk).

I’m probably going to disgust a few of you who read this post. I promise I won’t go into a slurry of detail about this particular experience. It’s just that after years of gastrointestinal issues, I’ve learned a thing or two about triggers and coping strategies that may be helpful to folks.

Haagen-Dazs specialty milkshakes (my son had the $7 cookies and cream yesterday), November 23, 2014 (posted June 10, 2011). (http://www.qsrmagazine.com/).

This weekend thirty years ago, I learned for the first time that my body handled stress in a unique and painful way. I should’ve been aware of this much sooner than a month before my fifteenth birthday, and should’ve figured out how to counteract this long before my mid-thirties. I’d seen signs of it. The mugging I suffered from when I was nine in ’79. The recent broken toilet incident at 616. My inability to drink a chocolate milkshake from Carvel’s without the need to find a bathroom within forty-five minutes of my first sip.

But it wasn’t until the Sunday after Thanksgiving ’84, November 25th, that I recognized the link between the constant stress I felt and my G/I tract issues. It was a brisk late November day, like so many that time of year. The Giants were playing a big game in East Rutherford, against the Kansas City Chiefs. With a 7-5 record at the time, the Giants were fighting with both the Cowboys and Redskins for playoff position. They’d been on a roll of late, having won three of their previous four, including one on the road against Danny White’s Cowboys.

That’s what I thought about as the 1 pm game time approached. It wasn’t the only thing on my mind, though. It had been a long and stressful couple of months prior to this semi-break of a Thanksgiving weekend. This stretch included arguments with my Mom, including one in which I almost moved out. It included incidents with my teachers, especially Ms. Zini. It also included too many weekends of tracking down my father for money — including money that he owed us for working down in the city with him since the end of September. And washing clothes, and grocery shopping, and watching after Maurice, Yiscoc, Sarai and Eri, and cleaning the apartment.

Somewhere in all of this, I must’ve picked up a stomach bug, from either my younger siblings or from something I ate. At least that’s what I thought at the time. The toilet became my constant companion throughout that afternoon, as a stepfather-free Sunday gave me and my older brother Darren the opportunity to watch the Giants game without interruption. That was, except from my stomach.

Flour water in a jar, November 23, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

I really didn’t know why I’d been on the toilet five times in two hours, but between that and Phil Simms’ lousy play in the first three quarters of the game (three interceptions, no touchdown passes), I felt really ill. My Mom suggested that I should drink flour water to settle my stomach. “Yuck” was the only thing I thought of her idea. The flour water thought had crossed my own mind, too though.

After Kansas City scored to take a 27-14 lead with a bit more than ten minutes left, I finally had an idea much more pleasant than flour water. I hadn’t eaten all day, and barely anything the night before. So I took five dollars of my Jimme money and went down the street to the local pizza shop. I order a slice of Sicilian with extra cheese. As thick as this shop made their Sicilians, I figured that would plug up my intestines.

While I waited for them to warm up my slice, I listened to the Giants game, which they had on their TV in the back of the shop. Simms had rallied the team and driven them down the field for a touchdown by the time I paid for my Sicilian slice. That actually lifted my spirits a bit.

I was hurting, so I didn’t wait. After I walked out of the shop, I took two big bites of my slice to see if it would help. By the time I made it to the front of 616, I let out a gigantic belch, and then my stomach, which had felt like a nor’easter in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for hours, had finally calmed.

A good-looking Sicilian slice (my shop would’ve wrapped it in aluminum, though), November 23, 2014. (http://slice.seriouseats.com).

After I made it back upstairs to our place, the Giants had the ball again with less than three minutes in the game. They were driving on the Chiefs’ side of the field, in a two-minute drill. As I sat, ate and belched, Simms actually drove all the way down field for game-winning touchdown, a short pass to Zeke Mowatt. They won the game 28-27! I was stunned!

I learned a lot on that diarrhea football Sunday. For me, even watching a football game was stress-inducing. That sleeplessness and running myself down, the pressures of 616 and school, the pressure I put on myself, all manifested physiologically in my G/I tract. Sometimes escaping into comfort food, being pleasantly surprised by success, even someone’s else success, could calm my stomach. Sometimes not. Becoming fully aware of how my body responded to stress, though, would turn out to be a blessing, saving me from many moments of embarrassment over the years.

Visiting My Uncle Paul in Georgia

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Sports, Work, Youth

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40th Anniversity of Brown v. Board of Education, Allergies, Atlanta, Basketball, Conference, Delta Airlines, Family, Georgia Dome, Gill Family, Gwinnett County, Hartsfield International Airport, ITT Technical Institute, Joe Trotter, Laser Light Shows, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection, Stone Mountain, The Gill Family, UGA, Uncle George, Uncle Paul, Uncle Robert, Uncle Sam, University of Georgia

Stone Mountain Park, lake side view/photo (was within visual range on the road side view of Confederate-ana back in ’94), Stone Mtn, GA, May 31, 2014. (http://new.gwinnetteconomicdevelopment.com/).

The second leg of what would eventually be five visits with my extended Gill and Collins families as an adult occurred the month after meeting much of my extended Gill family in Houston in April ’94. This second visit was very different from the first. It was part of a three-city trip, between research for my dissertation in DC (and a visit with my friend Laurell in the process) and going up to Mount Vernon to visit my Mom and siblings. Plus, like the Houston-New Orleans trip, I’d come to the Atlanta area to present at a conference, one at the University of Georgia on the 40th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

I’d been invited to talk about multiculturalism as it related to desegregation in terms of curriculum by Layli Phillips, then an Assistant Professor in African American Studies and Psychology at the Athens campus, about sixty miles from my uncle’s place in Gwinnett County. It was an invite and acceptance my advisor Joe Trotter wasn’t happy about, as it was “too soon” for me to discuss my topic “in front of strangers.” But Phillips had already bought the round-trip tickets for me to fly from DC to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to LaGuardia, per my request. Oh well!

I came to Hartsfield all tired and stuffed up from hay-fever-heavy DC that Saturday afternoon in mid-May, a couple of days before my UGA presentation. There, I met my Uncle Paul right at the gate, along with his seventeen-year-old son. Like my Uncles Sam and Robert, Uncle Paul was taller than me, a still wiry six-five at thirty-eight, still fit enough to stop, pop and hit a J despite his swollen knees. His son was built just like him, and a star basketball player at his high school in Gwinnett County.

They didn’t give me any time to rest. I was immediately taken to their two-bedroom apartment in some off-the-main route beaten path, a gated community with stucco walls and plastic pink flamingos to boot. There, I’d also meet one of my uncle’s girlfriends, an older woman who apparently understood that my Uncle Paul wasn’t exactly ready to settle down.

My Uncle Paul’s playing days in Houston (college and NBA) and overseas had ended long before I’d learn how to shoot a J myself. He’d gone back to school — specifically ITT Technical Institute — in the mid-1980s and become an A/V expert who specialized in special effects, including laser lights, smoke and other technologies meant to enhance the concert-going experience. He’d worked before on tours, with Earth, Wind + Fire (when Maurice White was still healthy enough to tour) and New Edition. That’s how our family learned that Johnny Gill was a distant cousin, as his great-grandmother and my great-grandmother were sisters, one staying in the Texas-Arkansas area, the other moving to Seattle for some reason or other.

Panoramic pic of the Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA (where was on the left of the field back in ’94), August 30, 2008. (Latics via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

There was a jazz and blues extravaganza going on at the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta that evening, and so within hours of landing, we were back in the heart of the city, setting up equipment on what normally was the playing field for the Atlanta Falcons. I was so mesmerized thinking about losing a football in the lights of the Georgia Dome that my uncle yelled at me to “get my ass in gear,” because he needed help unloading some heavy equipment. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the quality of music, but having a backstage view of the whole thing, and to see what my uncle Paul did for a living, I was truly, truly impressed.

That Sunday I spent in my uncle’s home, hearing about his playing days, his knee issues, his knowledge of basketball as a game, his travels to play in Europe, and indirectly, his sexual conquests. That last part I could’ve done without — I’d spent two days hearing the same thing from my other uncles the month before. Then he grilled me with questions about Mount Vernon, about New York, about why I didn’t play sports, about “the chicks in college.” My Uncle Paul assumed, incorrectly, that living in New York was heaven compared to being tenant farmers in southwestern Arkansas, and that I was in grad school for the sex. “I wouldn’t have made it to where I am if that was what it was all about,” I said in shocked response.

Waffle House, off UGA’s main campus (and across street from seedy motel I stay in night before conference), Athens, GA, June 1, 2011. (http://www.123rf.com).

He made a jambalaya dinner for us and his lady friend, all the while talking about each other’s work. My uncle’s son was bored to tears. Then, after dinner, and after his girlfriend had left and his son had gone to hang out with friends, my uncle took me out in his vintage Porsche 911 (it had been covered in the parking lot up to that point) to some high-class, late-night, members-only club somewhere in Gwinnett. Between him doing somewhere around eighty in a fifty-five and taking me to this place to “meet a girl,” I was in more shock. “I like looking for women on my own, thank you very much,” I yelled through the Mary J. Blige at one point.

I went off that Monday morning to Athens for the Brown Decision conference, and was gone for thirty hours. I did get a ride back from a presenter, and then a ride back my uncle’s place. That’s when I walked into the place to see my cousin on the black-leather living room couch, stripped down and on top of a young woman. He only stopped when I yelled for a second time, “I’m back!” Then, the proverbial scattering of two youngins’ caught up in lust occurred. They left, presumably to finish what they had started.

I left for New York that Wednesday morning, having enjoyed my time with my Uncle Paul, but also seeing some downside to a lifestyle that left him busy and his son without supervision. That some dumb thug killed my cousin four years later was still very much a surprise, as he wasn’t a violent person, at least the person I met in ’94. I felt so horrible for him and for my Uncle Paul, as I couldn’t imagine the totality of the pain of such a tragedy.

But good, bad or otherwise, it felt good to get to know my people, my family. I’d grown up with a family that was one in name only. Poverty, religion, abuse had all rendered the meaning of family useless for me growing up, and seeing more examples of the same thing in my time in Mount Vernon didn’t help. I knew that my Uncle Paul wasn’t perfect. Nor were my uncles in Houston. But I knew they loved each other, had dreams and plans for their lives, and had acted on many of these things in living their lives. I knew that I needed to keep doing the same.

When Nightmares Go Nuclear

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, music, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Youth

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"99 Luftballons" (1983), Dreams, Ebony Pictorial History of Black America (1974), Lerone Bennett, Mrs. O'Daniel, Nena, Nightmares, Nuclear Annihilation, Nuclear War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Subliminal Messages, Terminator 2 (1991), Textbooks, The Day After (1983), Whiteness

Color version of mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. (http://www.mphpa.org via US Army Air Force). In public domain.

I find myself seeing bright orange, yellow and white lights filling the sky and obscuring everything around me. It doesn’t matter whether I’m above ground, at home, at school or work, or on a Subway platform underground in New York. Once these lights hit, it’s over. I find myself no longer in my body, for it no longer exists. Yet I still have eyes with which to witness. Through a purple haze, the intense heat, literally searing, melting and vaporizing flesh and bone. A shock wave, crushing and churning the world all at once. Spirits once safely in bodies are now on the same plane of this new existence with me, all watching as the light, the heat and the supersonic shock wave tear into our former world. Where do we go from here, as the world is no more?

That’s a milder version of a nightmare that has been with me now off and on for thirty-four years. I’m sure that I was among the hundreds of millions of folks in the West whom dreamt often of a nuclear nightmare. It was during the final phase of the Cold War, with Soviet and American aggressions, Reagan’s presidency, and a renewed arms race. All made the prospect of “99 Luftballons” (1983) and the launch of 1,000 nuclear tipped ICBMs and SLBMs and one billion or more dead a dreadful, gnawing fact that I couldn’t do a damn thing about.

Screen shot from The Day After (November 1983) ABC movie, presumably suburban Kansas City, MO/KS, October 21, 2007. (Stout/NY Times).

The very first time I fully understood the dangerous and fatal that defined this world was toward the end of fifth grade, in May ’80. It was an early May Thursday in Mrs. O’Daniel’s classroom at William H. Holmes Elementary in Mount Vernon, New York, a bright, sunny spring day. We were in independent reading mode, and Mrs. O’Daniel had given me permission to read ahead in our social studies textbook, which focused on American history.

We had left off with the Great Depression and all of the suffering that came with it. Of course, this was a collective history, one which didn’t even have the special sufferings of people of color or women in blue boxes — yet. So Whites represented all Americans. This wasn’t something I picked up on in ’80, at least consciously. But luckily, between Lerone Bennett’s edited three-volume Ebony Pictorial History of Black America (1974) at home and Mrs. O’Daniel constantly supplementing our knowledge at school, I was more aware of the deficiencies of textbooks long before I could articulate them.

As I turned the pages and read about the great battles of World War II, the horrors of Pearl Harbor and the gathering of the righteous power of the US to win the war, I suddenly saw something that shook me to my core. It was the picture of the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud hovering over Nagasaki like death itself. It was in full color, bright and yellow and white, and obviously hot and broiling. The camera shot had managed to capture some of the landscape below, the area surrounding Nagasaki an August summer green. As I read about the 70,000 killed instantly at Hiroshima, an area the size of Mount Vernon completely flattened by a bomb that at its core had only a few pounds of weapons-grade uranium, I was frightened. I could be dead at a moment’s notice, or worse, suffer from radiation burns and sickness, in which case I’d truly be among the walking dead.

But this was only one phase of my nightmare. As things at 616 went from stable to completely out of control, my nuclear nightmares became more frequent. It seemed like there was a nuke for every day of the week during my last year as a Hebrew-Israelite. Watching The Day After on ABC in November ’83 didn’t help matters, but I also couldn’t help myself. I was both repulsed by and attracted to the idea of nuclear annihilation and survival. Maybe because I was already living through one hell of a disaster at 616.

Cropped screen shot of Los Angeles at beginning of nuclear strike, from Terminator 2 (1991), May 3, 2014. (http://youtube.com).

My nuclear nightmares continued at nearly daily pace until after I saw Terminator 2 in June ’91. At that point, I realized that my nightmares weren’t so much about the plausibility of surviving a nuclear holocaust as they were about surviving my own preteen and teenage years. It occurred to me there are worse things in life than dying, and like surviving nuclear war, surviving a violent and unstable childhood like mine has significant side effects. I could be occasionally be up, I was much more frequently down, I could occasionally fly into a rage. And I could have recurring nightmares of me murdering my now dead ex-stepfather. All signs of PTSD.

Realizing this, I took control over my dream world, and managed to push my plutonium-tipped dreams into a box, along with so many things from my decade of evangelistically twisted fire and brimstone from two religions. I still watch end-of-the-world movies, though without the extreme fervor of dream-based certainty of suffering a lingering death. Though I do often find it funny how White fears permeate these movies.

Head Over Heels

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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"Head Over Heels" (1985), Authenticity, Black Masculinity, Blackness, Crush, Crush #2, December, December to Remember, Phyllis, Self-Discovery, Snow, Snow Showers, Tears for Fears, Walking

http://vimeo.com/29807866

December is both my most and least favorite month of the year. I was born at the end of this month, but only two days after Christmas. I’ve run away from home and been mugged, suicidal and inspired this month. Not to mention burned out and homesick and heartbroken. But I’ve found myself and experienced renewal on this least sunlit of months as well.

Twenty-eight years ago today was the day my crush on Phyllis, a.k.a. “Crush #2” began. It wasn’t a crush of epic love, but it would affect how I viewed myself and the young women in my life for the next two and a half years. As I wrote in Boy @ The Window:

It was the third of December, a cold and frosty Tuesday that would make someone think twice about going outside. It was after school, and I happened to be on my way to the library. I stopped home first to grab a bite to eat, to see if Mom wanted anything from the store after my time at the library, and to listen to some music. The last song I heard before walking out the door was Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” their third major hit in the US in ’85. The hard tones of their synthesized piano were hypnotic for me. “Head Over Heels” reminded me of my own failed attempts to get past myself when it came to saying more than “Hi” to any woman or girl whom I thought interesting. Besides having a family that I saw as an embarrassment, I simply didn’t have the tools of “cool” necessary to break through with any female. My voice usually cracked under the stress of not knowing what to say, and when it didn’t crack, the slow catch in my voice made everything I said sound like it was deliberately at half-speed. My ineptitude also included my automatically taking anything a girl did say about liking me as if it were a sick and twisted joke.

Snow covers trees in Central Park after a storm, New York City, December 28, 2013. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images via http://www.nydailynews.com).

That’s what “Head Over Heels” had conjured up in my mind as I walked down East Lincoln toward Lorraine. For whatever reason my thoughts turned to Phyllis. I thought about her smile, her always-wearing-a-skirt style, her standing as a popular student at MVHS. She was always nice to me, always friendly, to the point of being coy about it. The brief flash of Phyllis’ face and smile put a smile on my own as I started singing to “Head Over Heels” out loud. “I wanted to be with you alone, and talk about the weather . . .” was coming out of my mouth in high falsetto as snow started to fall. My thoughts had turned to the cold, the snow flakes and the stark bareness of the wintry landscape as I reached the corner of East Lincoln and Darwood. I was singing “something happens and I’m head over heels . . . don’t break my heart, don’t take my heart, don’t, don’t, don’t throw it away.” Just as was I was about to cross the street, a black two-door Mercury Topaz, circa ’84 or ’85, pulled up, with Phyllis’ mother driving and Phyllis in the front passenger seat. Phyllis’ sister Claudia was in the back. Phyllis mouthed a “Hi” and waved at the same time as the light turned green for their car. What I remember as they pulled away was the smile that she flashed me. It didn’t seem fake. It looked like an I-really-like-you kind of smile to me. I was caught completely off guard!

I spent the rest of the walk to the library debating whether the smile was genuine or a nicety, what the smile meant for her, and how I felt about it. By the time I got to the library, I could only reach one conclusion. I liked Phyllis, and not in an “I like her but only as a friend way.” I liked the girl, simple as that. Those lips and that smile were worth at least a thousand kisses a day!

As I’ve noted in the book and here in the blog, my instincts about Phyllis’ smile turned about to be correct on both counts. Too bad I wasn’t listening to Alexander O’Neal’s “Fake” or Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” when I walked out the door to our 616 apartment at 4:30 that afternoon. Still, for that moment, at least, all seemed possible in my little world.