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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Maverick Sabre

When Your Music Turns 30

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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1980s music, Anita Baker, Beyonce, Bruce Hornsby and The Range, Chaka Khan, Chicago, Fountain of Middle Age, Kendrick Lamar, Maverick Sabre, Nneka, Pet Shop Boys, Run-D.M.C., Starship, Steve Winwood


Well, some of my music, anyway. About a third of all the music I own, like, or have access to was produced at least thirty years ago, as of this month. I guess I shouldn’t be bothered with the fact that everything from Johann Sebastian Bach, Blind Willie Johnson, and John Coltrane to Anita Baker, Steve Winwood, and Pet Shop Boys are all ancient in the mind of my teenage son. In a way, though, I am. Not so much that my music collection is an indication that I am no longer physically young. That happens to all of us. But whether this is a sign that my mind is no longer plastic enough to absorb new music, new styles, new ways of delivering a form of entertainment and escapism.

The fact that I’m still catching up with music released between 2011 and 2014 is troubling. I mean, it’s only been a year and a half since I picked up Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, MAAD City (2012). I have Nneka and Maverick Sabre on my playlists only because my wife keeps up with music through YouTube, Spotify, and Pandora. I still haven’t heard or seen the video for Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” have yet to hear a Nicki Minaj or Rihanna song that I truly like, and think that Drake and Meek Mill are pretty weak. Am I getting so old that I don’t understand what is or isn’t good music anymore? Or, did I ever have a handle on what was and is good music when I was sixteen, and am more discerning or snobbish now? Or, am I just a goofball who wouldn’t know good music if it bit me in the ass?

Maybe it’s all of the above. Below is a sample of my list of song that I described as theme music for Boy @ The Window. This is all music that came out in ’86.

Screen Shot 2016-08-10 at 12.17.21 PM

There are some amazing songs on this list. Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love.” Simply Red’s “Holding Back The Years.” Sade’s “Never As Good As The First Time.” Who could argue with these? If anyone does, they just hate the whole genre of ’80 pop and R&B, and refuse to appreciate the music on any level.

Now there are other where I will concede the quality is questionable, but I like anyway. Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls,” Michael McDonald’s “Sweet Freedom,” and Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” all fit into all kinds of questionable tastes here. But compare “Sweet Freedom” to Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” and its syrupy goofiness. Or, really, Michael McDonald’s super-popular duet with Patti LaBelle in “On My Own.” I hated that song as much as I could hate any music, but I was apparently in a small minority three decades ago. Baby Boomers – gotta love ’em!

There’s also Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” with Chaka Khan doing background vocals. You take Chaka Khan out of this song, and it’s an ’80s display of synthesizer prowess with pretty decent lyrics. Bruce Hornsby and The Range’s “The Way It Is” was and remains a simplistic “hearts and minds” analysis of American racism, but it was at least a self-consciously effort to address a social issue. Even when folks fall short, I can appreciate their music.

There are plenty of songs from thirty years ago that I either thought were silly, didn’t represent my mood from that time, or were a reflection of my need to escape my life. Anything by Chicago or Starship from ’86 would fit. I heard Starship’s “Nothing’s Going To Stop Us” at the local Trader Joe’s, a few days ago, and my stomach started cramping up. I actually got nauseous over a song! Grace Slick’s voice remains scary, I guess.

The thread between the music I listened to three decades ago and the music I have on my iPod, iPhone, and computers is clear, to me, if no one else. With the exception of country music as Whiteness affirming, I generally don’t care what genre it’s from. The lyrics are more important than the quality of vocals, and the vocals and music are way more important than any video made with the song. That probably makes me a bit old-fashioned. But it’s also why I still have music in my collection that predates my birth.

Aside

Leaving Mount Vernon

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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"Emotion (Ain't Nobody)" Remix (2014), "Swimming Pools (Drank)" (2012), Child Abuse, College, Domestic Violence, Emotions, Family, Kendrick Lamar, Leaving, Loneliness, Maverick Sabre, Moving, Pitt, Politics of Respectability, Poverty, Respectability Politics, Self-Awareness, Self-Discovery


I left for Pittsburgh and for the University of Pittsburgh on this day/date twenty-eight years ago, my first trip on my own. It was my first trip out-of-state since my Mom took me and my brother Darren on a bus trip to Pennsylvania Amish country in June ’78, nine years earlier. At 5:51 am on the last Wednesday in August ’87, with my older brother Darren’s help — and with my Mom and three of four younger siblings watching us from the living room window — I packed my luggage, Army sack, and two boxes of bedding and materials into a Reliable Taxi. We headed for East 241st to meet up with my dad. From there, we took the 2 Subway all the way to Penn Station, with enough time to board and get all of my stuff on the 7:50 am Pennsylvanian train to the ‘Burgh. For the second time in a row, my dad was sober, and gave me a glassy-eyed hug and shoulder squeeze. Darren was both sad and happy to see me go.

Amtrak's Pennsylvanian train pulling out of Altoona, PA station, heading east for Philly, NYC, uploaded February 2013. (Dustin F.; http://www.northeastrailfans.com/).

Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian train pulling out of Altoona, PA station, heading east for Philly, NYC, uploaded February 2013. (Dustin F.; http://www.northeastrailfans.com/).

I’ve gone over the trip to Pittsburgh and my transformation from a seventeen-year-old with the pent-up emotions of someone who hadn’t left May 31, 1982 behind throughout my eight years of blogging and through my memoir. I’ve written about moving on to Pittsburgh before. What I haven’t really written about fully is how I thought and felt in leaving Mount Vernon, New York behind. The short answer is, I was somewhere between terrified, joyous, embittered, and sad to go, and all at once.

I was terrified. It was my first trip on my own, to a city I’d never been to before, to a university I never visited prior to saying yes. I could meet people who might catch on that I was someone who had spent the previous six years with few acquaintances, much less friends. I was hopeful, but had zero idea what to expect.

But I really was happy to leave. Between my decade living at 616, the abuse, the poverty, the Hebrew-Israelite years, the constant ridicule, the years in Humanities, the constant work of watching after Mom, my dad, my siblings, I was through. Throw in a summer of obsession with and emasculation by Phyllis, and five years of realizing that I needed to get out, and going to Pittsburgh was a no-brainer. Heck, if I’d been a bit smarter about my application process, I could’ve just as easily applied to the University of Washington, Stanford, Northwestern, Georgetown, Michigan, University of Toronto and UPenn and almost certainly gotten in. It didn’t matter where I was going, really. I just needed to go and find my myself, and my education with that.

That last year or so in Mount Vernon had let me know that even with an academic scholarship (after a private investigation) from Columbia, staying would’ve been a huge mistake. Between the silent disdain and snickering of Black teachers at Mount Vernon High School around my sullen presence and the whole Estelle Abel episode at the end of four years of torment. Add to that the years of Black middle class folk talking at me about how my life was so much better because they marched or protested somewhere before I was conceived, or because they prayed for me. Add to that this insistence that I “give back to the community.” As if Black Mount Vernon had given me anything but a hard way to go since I was knee-high to a boil weevil.

Viewing and wake service for Heavy D, Grace Baptist Church, Mount Vernon, NY, November 17, 2011. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images; https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/).

Viewing and wake service for Heavy D, Grace Baptist Church, Mount Vernon, NY, November 17, 2011. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images; https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/).

As I saw it, the only difference between the vapid, seething facade of White liberalism among paternalistic White Mount Vernonites and the false smiles and frequent excoriations of Mount Vernon’s Black middle class was skin color. They drank deep from swimming pools full of what we now call respectability politics, born out of a need to be good examples to the world, like Kendrick Lamar described in “Swimming Pools” (2012). (Pour up [drank], head shot [drank]…faded [drank]). This isn’t the same as doing the right thing at the right time or speaking truth to power. You make money, wear nice clothes, drive a nice car, stand up straight, look a White man in the eye while firmly grasping his hand. And apologize for not being as assimilable as you pretend. It was 100%, USDA-approved bullshit, and it smelled like it a lot of days, too.

I was sad to leave, too. There was a part of me that still wanted to fit in, out of loneliness, if nothing else. I still liked Clover Donuts and some of the breakfast places on the South Side. I longed for some sort of acceptance, an acknowledgment that I was a real person, even though that would’ve required being around real people at 616, and in Humanities, and in the rest of Mount Vernon. I knew that I’d miss the close proximity to The City. I’d put my hopes and dreams in a place in which I knew I couldn’t afford to stay, literally and figuratively. That longing would come to haunt me in the coming year, but I’d eventually learn, I could always visit New York.

Aside

Running Away, 30 Years Later

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"Emotion (Ain't Nobody)" (2014), "Runnin'" (1995), 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Dreams, Envy, Family Responsibilities, Fleetwood, Lliy-White, Loneliness, Making Plans, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Maverick Sabre, MVHS, Pharcyde, Single-Minded, Spin Moves, Visions, Whiteness


Today’s date marks three decades since I took on my idiot stepfather Maurice Washington, and actually won, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve written about the incident and my twenty-three-hour trek through Mount Vernon, my dreams, prayers, and wishes, and my confrontation before, here and in Boy @ The Window. (Even now, the baseline to Pharcyde’s “Runnin'” (1995) is running in my head, temporarily replacing my writing theme song for the past week, Maverick Sabre’s “Emotion (Ain’t Nobody)” (2011), but that’s how my mind works). So I won’t go over all of the details again. Still, there are a few important takeaways that puts Sunday, August 25, 1985 in my lifetime victory column.

Michigan WR Jeremy Gallon's spin move gif on way to a 61-yd TD against Notre Dame, Ann Arbor, MI, September 7, 2013. (http://thebiglead.com/).

Michigan WR Jeremy Gallon’s spin move gif on way to a 61-yd TD against Notre Dame, Ann Arbor, MI, September 7, 2013. (http://thebiglead.com/).

1. Physical advantages. It never occurred to me until Maurice tried to blindside me in the apartment hallway with a punch that I had much faster reflexes than the idiot. It also never occurred to me that I had a better sense of balance. I managed to avoid the punch and spin around him by using his 350-400 pounds of bulk against him (I really hated having to touch the unwashed, greasy fat frog of a man), and in only a foot of space between the two of us. That’s how I escaped Maurice’s punch and grasp, and got out of the apartment to begin my trek. Knowing what I know now, I should’ve tried out for basketball instead of baseball in eleventh grade.

2. Not finding my father. I kind of wished I had, just to have a few hours that day not to think about my present and future. But my alcoholic dad was a significant part of my present, and his absence gave me real time to think about how jacked up my family life was. I knew, if nothing else, that Maurice, Mom, and Jimme couldn’t pin that on me.

3. Walking up Gramatan Avenue and into Fleetwood. It was partly a walk that reminded me about how the other half of Mount Vernon — affluent and predominantly White — lived. I knew that I’d never be a part of that Mount Vernon, and not just because most of them would run me over with a car sooner than say “Hello.” It was the sense of exclusively, the ability to check in and out of progressive issues, like Humanities and magnet programs, that made me see. These folks I could never befriend.

St. Ursulas Roman Catholic Church, 213 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, August 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

St. Ursulas Roman Catholic Church, 213 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, August 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

4. MVHS overnight dreams and Catholic church prayers. Both reminded me that if I played my cards right, I could be on my way to college in two years, twenty-four months, 730 days. I could cope with 616, Maurice, my older brother Darren and my younger siblings and high school and Humanities for that much longer, I thought. But I also knew I needed to make a conscious, almost single-minded effort to do so. Even then, I was tired of burying my thoughts and emotions and playing the role of enigmatic weirdo, though. I realized this was going to be a battle with myself.

Yet what I didn’t learn from my ordeal would also be two more reasons to leave Mount Vernon. I wouldn’t learn those reasons and lessons until the spring and summer of ’87, when the respectability police, the good middle class folk of Black Mount Vernon, would give me just the push I needed…

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