And here's a great solo tune of TW's from looks like late 2011:
15 March 2013
Friday songs
TW Walsh, a man who shares my family name and one of my brothers' first names, is currently mastering the debut album of a band I'm singing and drumming in called The Most Americans. Check out this Pedro the Lion song (TW, I believe, did the drumming and probably lots of other stuff for that band, since he's a real life Wizard), and try to picture my then-20-year-old jaw dropping at the line "But I trust T. William Walsh, and I'm not afraid to die."
And here's a great solo tune of TW's from looks like late 2011:
And here's a great solo tune of TW's from looks like late 2011:
12 March 2013
"Laughing in the dark..."
Ta-Nehisi Coates' recent guest column in the New York Times made me feel things. It's an honest, emotional piece about his reaction to Forest Whitaker's incredibly upsetting frisking incident at the Milano Market in NYC.
Of course it's also about so much more. I see it as written by a person who isn't mad anymore (maybe he is, but if so he has beautifully tamed it in his writing), but rather is deeply, passionately disappointed. It's written by a person with life stories that I won't ever be able experience in the same way.
I tried, though. Still trying quite hard, actually, to relate to exactly what Coates must be feeling. I've found that I have an intense need to do this, to try to experience things in the exact way that others must have experienced them so I can feel their emotions. This is generally a losing battle, but it's worth the effort. His post made me desperately realize that I can't ever get to that exact place, that so many things are out of my control, and that so much history is prescribed into the way we all think and act, at least on some level.
His post did what all good writing should do, it provoked deep thought into the weird, murky areas of my life, past and present.
I've been called homophobic slurs by however many Allston, MA bros just like most other Boston musicians who dress a certain way. In fact, in high school lots of folks assumed I was gay because my voice is higher and I can tend to be effeminate. People would just say this out loud like it was nothing, and use Gay as if it were a bad word. I thought about how I've never really let it bother me, using the defense that I'm not actually gay, so whatever. But I think there's something much worse at work here: I'm conditioned to people being that offensive toward homosexuals. That actually really frightens me now that I've written it down.
I do partly understand the Louis C.K. theory that words are words, and that you have the power to choose not to be affected by what ignorant, offensive people sling your way. But in his 2008 special Chewed Up, Louis himself jokingly/seriously notes, "I'm a white man, you can't even hurt my feelings! What can you call a white man that really digs deep? Hey, uh, Cracker?" God, does he hit the nail on the head of our little societal blueprint. (I don't want to go off on a total tangent here, but it really is amazing to watch Louis C.K. rip the power away from certain words, at least for a moment, by overly insulting everyone, himself included. That's an incredibly rare feat, and people like him do not come around very often.)
But think about it: We laugh when a white guy is called a cracker. I cannot even begin to imagine what the slurs must feel like for someone who's race or sexual orientation has been slighted their whole life (in visible or invisible ways). I will never be able to put myself in those shoes. Because of history, words are more than just a combination of letters. They can be compassionately powerful, and they can be poison. Because of history, the reality we live in today is that so much is etched into our subconscious, all these emotions the words carry along with them.
The flip side to all of this, of course, is that Coates can't ever realistically put himself in my shoes either. But I think his point goes deeper than that. Of course he doesn't know what it's like being a white kid growing up in the suburbs in the 80s/90s.
I thought about another point in high school when I was the only white kid on a basketball team in Northern Virginia. Racial paranoia consumed my every thought for the first few practices; I distinctly remember feeling shame over that. I had grown up being vaguely taught that "we're all the same! yay!" But here, clearly, I came from a completely different neighborhood. Sure, we shared so many similarities like lots of teenagers, but there was absolutely no getting around the fact that we were not at all "the same" like I'd been taught. I never once wondered if my education had failed me.
There were so many other elements at work here, though. I was also the new guy, and I basically became their little brother in the way that all sports-team newcomers are initiated. The other guys used to jokingly call me Whitey, or even sometimes LWB (Little White Bitch). I'm sure some folks would call that racism, and I guess I wouldn't call them wrong. I just never thought about it like that. I don't know how to clearly explain that this was done in a loving way, the kind of camaraderie that happens in tight knit groups of boys like that. Just like how my older brothers back home would pick on me, it told me that I'd been accepted into the team. It also kind of helped that I could play. My teammate J used to do a totally side-splitting, fake play-by-play: "Whitey passes it to Darkie; Darkie dribbles, passes to other Darkie; other Darkie tries alley-oop back to Whitey but, folks, Whitey cannot jump! He cannot jump! His feet are nailed to the floor!"
I don't mean to make it out as even a thing, like it happened every day or something. We were just all able to see how strikingly odd and hilarious the reality was, how I literally stuck out on the team. (When we took the team pictures, J pointed at me in the photo saying, "Whoa where'd that ghost come from?! You guys see that ghost?!" and we all just about died laughing.) We would have done anything for each other, just like brothers, and that included making fun of each other. We knew we were similar in many ways, but also quite different, and I think we tried to embrace it all. The key here is that, in the moment, we never really thought about it. After those first few days, racial paranoia ceased living in my own brain, at least.
Sadly, real life just isn't like that for everybody. I will always truly and strongly believe that the quiet, compassionate people in this world outnumber the small-minded racists, homophobes, etc. But, again, I'm not sure that's Coates' point. His point, I think, is that our world has this blueprint that can makes some people feel uncomfortable in certain situations with people of color (and/or makes people of color feel uncomfortable with all these unspoken, subliminal things going around), and these same people tend to use the defense of still being a "good" person when what they're actually doing is racist. It's just a cold, hard truth, and ignoring that only makes it worse. It doesn't mean that white people don't suffer from reverse discrimination, too, but that's not an argument worth having or winning. Any type of discrimination like that is awful. But what you cannot avoid is this: It happens more to people of color than it does to white people. Sure, this is a generalization, but try to tell yourself it's not true. It just doesn't work. Ignoring the history of our country is a very scary thing to do.
Seriously. Think about Coates' statements: "...it haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence that is given tell only when the victim happens to be an Oscar winner." Or, "I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark."
I saw this video a while back and it was terrifying:
I'm not even entirely sure what the point of my post is. I know there are also myriad examples of Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews, and so many other folks being discriminated against; Hell, even lots of Southerners get lumped into one big "racist South," which just isn't true, down to the person, either. Thinking there's an easy answer (or even just one answer) is naive. But I'm certainly not trying to make this a competition. All I know is I was moved to write all this down because of Coates' piece, and I think what's so moving about it is that he's still trying so hard to be compassionate and forgiving, even with the burden of history all around him. I cannot imagine how hard this must be. You can feel his utter desperation in those last sentences, "And right then, I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I can take."
I cannot blame him for feeling that way, and his honesty is so powerful. Even me sitting here writing all this down feels somehow self-indulgent. But I think it's important. Please don't give up. There are some truly Righteous people out there from all walks of life and, to paraphrase my man J.R.R. Tolkien, they are eternally worth fighting for.
Of course it's also about so much more. I see it as written by a person who isn't mad anymore (maybe he is, but if so he has beautifully tamed it in his writing), but rather is deeply, passionately disappointed. It's written by a person with life stories that I won't ever be able experience in the same way.
I tried, though. Still trying quite hard, actually, to relate to exactly what Coates must be feeling. I've found that I have an intense need to do this, to try to experience things in the exact way that others must have experienced them so I can feel their emotions. This is generally a losing battle, but it's worth the effort. His post made me desperately realize that I can't ever get to that exact place, that so many things are out of my control, and that so much history is prescribed into the way we all think and act, at least on some level.
His post did what all good writing should do, it provoked deep thought into the weird, murky areas of my life, past and present.
I've been called homophobic slurs by however many Allston, MA bros just like most other Boston musicians who dress a certain way. In fact, in high school lots of folks assumed I was gay because my voice is higher and I can tend to be effeminate. People would just say this out loud like it was nothing, and use Gay as if it were a bad word. I thought about how I've never really let it bother me, using the defense that I'm not actually gay, so whatever. But I think there's something much worse at work here: I'm conditioned to people being that offensive toward homosexuals. That actually really frightens me now that I've written it down.
I do partly understand the Louis C.K. theory that words are words, and that you have the power to choose not to be affected by what ignorant, offensive people sling your way. But in his 2008 special Chewed Up, Louis himself jokingly/seriously notes, "I'm a white man, you can't even hurt my feelings! What can you call a white man that really digs deep? Hey, uh, Cracker?" God, does he hit the nail on the head of our little societal blueprint. (I don't want to go off on a total tangent here, but it really is amazing to watch Louis C.K. rip the power away from certain words, at least for a moment, by overly insulting everyone, himself included. That's an incredibly rare feat, and people like him do not come around very often.)
But think about it: We laugh when a white guy is called a cracker. I cannot even begin to imagine what the slurs must feel like for someone who's race or sexual orientation has been slighted their whole life (in visible or invisible ways). I will never be able to put myself in those shoes. Because of history, words are more than just a combination of letters. They can be compassionately powerful, and they can be poison. Because of history, the reality we live in today is that so much is etched into our subconscious, all these emotions the words carry along with them.
The flip side to all of this, of course, is that Coates can't ever realistically put himself in my shoes either. But I think his point goes deeper than that. Of course he doesn't know what it's like being a white kid growing up in the suburbs in the 80s/90s.
I thought about another point in high school when I was the only white kid on a basketball team in Northern Virginia. Racial paranoia consumed my every thought for the first few practices; I distinctly remember feeling shame over that. I had grown up being vaguely taught that "we're all the same! yay!" But here, clearly, I came from a completely different neighborhood. Sure, we shared so many similarities like lots of teenagers, but there was absolutely no getting around the fact that we were not at all "the same" like I'd been taught. I never once wondered if my education had failed me.
There were so many other elements at work here, though. I was also the new guy, and I basically became their little brother in the way that all sports-team newcomers are initiated. The other guys used to jokingly call me Whitey, or even sometimes LWB (Little White Bitch). I'm sure some folks would call that racism, and I guess I wouldn't call them wrong. I just never thought about it like that. I don't know how to clearly explain that this was done in a loving way, the kind of camaraderie that happens in tight knit groups of boys like that. Just like how my older brothers back home would pick on me, it told me that I'd been accepted into the team. It also kind of helped that I could play. My teammate J used to do a totally side-splitting, fake play-by-play: "Whitey passes it to Darkie; Darkie dribbles, passes to other Darkie; other Darkie tries alley-oop back to Whitey but, folks, Whitey cannot jump! He cannot jump! His feet are nailed to the floor!"
I don't mean to make it out as even a thing, like it happened every day or something. We were just all able to see how strikingly odd and hilarious the reality was, how I literally stuck out on the team. (When we took the team pictures, J pointed at me in the photo saying, "Whoa where'd that ghost come from?! You guys see that ghost?!" and we all just about died laughing.) We would have done anything for each other, just like brothers, and that included making fun of each other. We knew we were similar in many ways, but also quite different, and I think we tried to embrace it all. The key here is that, in the moment, we never really thought about it. After those first few days, racial paranoia ceased living in my own brain, at least.
Sadly, real life just isn't like that for everybody. I will always truly and strongly believe that the quiet, compassionate people in this world outnumber the small-minded racists, homophobes, etc. But, again, I'm not sure that's Coates' point. His point, I think, is that our world has this blueprint that can makes some people feel uncomfortable in certain situations with people of color (and/or makes people of color feel uncomfortable with all these unspoken, subliminal things going around), and these same people tend to use the defense of still being a "good" person when what they're actually doing is racist. It's just a cold, hard truth, and ignoring that only makes it worse. It doesn't mean that white people don't suffer from reverse discrimination, too, but that's not an argument worth having or winning. Any type of discrimination like that is awful. But what you cannot avoid is this: It happens more to people of color than it does to white people. Sure, this is a generalization, but try to tell yourself it's not true. It just doesn't work. Ignoring the history of our country is a very scary thing to do.
Seriously. Think about Coates' statements: "...it haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence that is given tell only when the victim happens to be an Oscar winner." Or, "I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark."
I saw this video a while back and it was terrifying:
I'm not even entirely sure what the point of my post is. I know there are also myriad examples of Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews, and so many other folks being discriminated against; Hell, even lots of Southerners get lumped into one big "racist South," which just isn't true, down to the person, either. Thinking there's an easy answer (or even just one answer) is naive. But I'm certainly not trying to make this a competition. All I know is I was moved to write all this down because of Coates' piece, and I think what's so moving about it is that he's still trying so hard to be compassionate and forgiving, even with the burden of history all around him. I cannot imagine how hard this must be. You can feel his utter desperation in those last sentences, "And right then, I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I can take."
I cannot blame him for feeling that way, and his honesty is so powerful. Even me sitting here writing all this down feels somehow self-indulgent. But I think it's important. Please don't give up. There are some truly Righteous people out there from all walks of life and, to paraphrase my man J.R.R. Tolkien, they are eternally worth fighting for.
04 March 2013
One very sexy anecdote
I recently wrote a little piece for a cool series called Living, Breathing History that a good friend of mine moderates on his blog, From An Unknown Indian American. It's called Any Single Impact and is just begging for your eyes to look it up and down.
Also here's another song:
Also here's another song:
01 March 2013
Rhytidectomy
Felt like it was time to give the blog a good scrubbing and face lift. Time for something warmer. Except the cool fonts I picked in blogspot's create-a-blog-o-page thing are showing up as very uncool fonts for a split second before reverting to the right ones. It kind of looks like it's making the post titles Comic Sans, which...jesus. No idea why it's doing that, or if I care enough to try to sort it out. But, Comic Sans...oof.
So, let's forget about it and listen to a song:
[update!]: the quick wrong font doesn't look like comic sans on all web browsers, apparently just on my dumb work PC. Haven't figured out what the deal is, but I have discovered that I don't care, for now. This has been Melvin Ralsh with a worthless UPDATE. But here's another great song:
So, let's forget about it and listen to a song:
[update!]: the quick wrong font doesn't look like comic sans on all web browsers, apparently just on my dumb work PC. Haven't figured out what the deal is, but I have discovered that I don't care, for now. This has been Melvin Ralsh with a worthless UPDATE. But here's another great song:
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