and when i open up my heart...pull up my sleeves and show the imaginary tattooed heart inked into my skin i want you to see that i am truthful and honestly wearing my heart on my sleeve.
this is a "poetic essay" of sorts, a grown-up high school essay written by me at 32. my writing prompt is one of my beautiful customers...who has taught me and drawn out words...i knew i needed to write but was refusing to a few days ago.
this is response to an essay she wrote, which was prompted by this that i wrote.
she is honest, and beautiful. colorful and provoking...the way i love for people around me to be.
i am my most honest below. and if you read carefully you'll understand in some part why i create.
after reading it to e, he said it was beautiful and almost angry.
it is: i'm not angry in the traditional way...angry to be dealing with the pain of loosing a father 27 years ago...again.
it is a pain that is so scratchingly raw it bares resemblance to animal claws when i feel it scratch deep into the center of my chest. that is what i was feeling last week when mj passed away. that was what i was feeling when i wrote this, while skipping e's famous "egg breakfast."
anger is a facade for hurt.
before you read it...to understand me best..you must understand a bit of jazz...and a bit of cubist paintings...most importantly...you should know the definition of these two words:
syncopate, verb. 1. to displace the beats or accents in (music or a rhythm) so that strong beats become weak and vice versa. 2. shorten (a word) by dropping sounds or letters in the middle.
dissonant, adjective. 1. lacking harmony: irregular, dissonant chords. unsuitable or unusual in combination; clashing.
you should also know that i am a lover of many cultures and people, walks of life...my father's mother was half white and black, my father's father puerto rican and black. my husband is a mexican with spanish moor and native {mexican} american backgrounds, and i believe that we are healing as a dissonant nation...
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2 michaels, cubism, jazz and the syncopation of the american dream
i have a michael in my life too.
a few.
the first michael is my father.
i was 5. and a half. he was 26 and stuck somewhere between living life and feeling dead. it didn’t matter that he was so fine…even some of his cousins had crushes on him…as i was told 26 years later at his mother’s funeral. nor was it of any importance that he was intellectually gifted.
he was somewhere lost. somewhere paralyzed and collaged into a life that was not his intended painting. he was taken with perhaps matte or gloss medium…cut out and placed into a chaotic panel of syncopation. he was syncopating his life…out of the rhythm intended. i imagine the early cubist collages of picasso…and there he was atop the chair cane…placed unintended.
as if echoing the stop of music in the middle of a boogie-woogie club at 3 am, someone snatched his saxophone…his breath…his broken canvas…and paralyzed the dancers.
he was sawed out of the wooden panel. taken from the chaotic, cubist collage he was erroneously placed in.
dead at 26.
it is the irony behind the music…the art that he didn’t belong to. that he, like many black males are the living embodiment of this off rhythm, cut and pieced…fucked up collection of american dreams we paint.
there is a rhythm and beat to the american dream created
eleven scores and 13 years ago…that didn’t hear the music behind the bass of
the negro’s hymns.
that negro don’t belong.
my michael was born on august 25, 1955; the other, august 29, 1958. 3 years 4 days apart in life. 27 years, 13 days apart in death.
too soon? perhaps we can stop there.
but the art of my heart forces me to hear the music behind this off melody. the negro male has been a syncopation to the american dream since lincoln calculated his thoughts in pennsylvania. as lincoln wanted to unify a nation at arms within…i too speak in this accord.
the michaels weren’t born in post-obama america, they wore born in a pre- and present-king america. when our collective nation’s leaders weren’t elected and elevated on the context of their character, or the strength of their intelligence but were murdered for the truth in their words and the urgency of their plea.
the two michaels lived a life still feeling the oppressive smog of racism clouding their dreams. dreaming not in living color, but in the dull, dark graphite and stark white paper of a different nation.
a sketch and a painting paint a different picture. the reassuring meter of the waltz demands a different movement from the dissonance or syncopation of jazz.
the life of a negro male child born today dreams in a different genre than that of one born mid-century.
and this brings us to the present moment.
i am 32. and a half. he was 50 and stuck somewhere between living life and feeling dead. it didn’t matter that he was so fine…other nations fainted and lost breath in his presence. nor was it of any importance that he was intellectually, musically and humanely gifted to a level that incapacitates every living vocal artist, dancer and humanitarian alive today…collectively.
he was somewhere lost. somewhere paralyzed and collaged into a life that was not his intended painting. he was taken with perhaps matte or gloss medium…cut out and placed into a chaotic panel of cubism. he was syncopating his life…out of the rhythm intended. i imagine the early cubist paintings of picasso…and there he is…akin to girl in front mirror…pieced and rearranged as only a cubist could portray.
as if echoing the stop of music in the middle of a
boogie-woogie club at 3 am. someone snatched his voice…his breath…his broken canvas…pop-locked
legs and torso…and paralyzed his dancers.
he was sawed out of the wooden panel, cut out of the canvas...taken from the chaotic, cubist collage he was erroneously placed in.
dead at 50.
to them he is a broken cubist man…painted in real life of dissonant colors of white and non-black flesh. eyes and nose placed on picasso’s never realized canvas. his humanitarianism is collaged together and placed on top broken stacks of green paper and graffiti words of accusation. healing the world is strategically painted and gessoed over with torn pictures and words ripped from the ugliest portrait of american media gossip and broken children’s words marked from their greedy parents mouths.
a song and gossip makes a different sound.
in my negro household his name was michael.
in my negro household i am again mourning a family member named michael.
in my negro household i am listening to the sounds of his
voice and it is painted and gessoed over every white and black news anchor
sketching a graphite sketch on buff arches watercolor paper.
in my negro household i am painting a cubist picture of a portrait of a man so brilliant even my interference and duochrome acrylic paints from daniel smith can’t capture the underlining, multi-dimensional, rich colors that make up michael.
the two michaels.
both michaels.
because in my negro household we know that the american dream sometimes contains smog. we know that sometimes the new american dream can still contain flecks of old acrylic skins dried up on one painting and carried over to another.
we know that life is sometimes metered off beat. the reassuring beat to come next we don’t depend on…instead we make music in the off. our ears have been tuned to this rhythm of life.
we know that life is sometimes a collage of old paint, graphite and new colors and pigments ready to be cut, paste and painted over what we intended to paint. we know that we must blend the pigments, cut out what we need from the picture and place things where they ‘ot to go in our minds not where they go in the media’s hands.
i dream in different colors.
i dream in broken shapes and mis-matched colors.
i dream because my father was lost.
i call him michael because like my michael he was lost and trying to figure himself in what i figure is this panel in front me called life.
i dream with the smog and mediums…matte and gloss…dulling and magnifying the mistakes in my life painting.
i dream for my michael.
i paint in my negro/mexican household for the fucked up shapes and dissonant colors of the american dream…
….because i can use the old acrylic skins and new dichromatic and interference colors on my palette.
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end essay.
if she allows me, i'd love to share the essay this was in response too.
i think, like she...this is a wonderful opportunity to dialogue about our collective american dreams. because though we like it or not...we are a collective nation.
this is for all of us who dream the american dream...
thanks for sharing this moment with me.
peace...kiandra
