Goodbye Motown. . . .
It's been another crazy week here.
As you have doubtless guessed, I really don't write, per se -I just use this to communicate with the three of you at once. My attitude towards writing has soured a little further . . . .it presupposes certain vanities. . . particularly vanities of breath that it's been driven home to me, in many ways, are not to be taken for granted.
Everyone is talking about the future -the 8 bit quantum computer the austrians have out, the new lsa class airplanes you can fly with only 20 hours, a new war to make us forget the current two. . . .
I was emailing Dave, and I realized - It's easy to like your town or city. It's harder to like your country,
and the world just dares you -just fucking dares you to. I don't worry about it too much - I know there will always be people like Tuxedo Ed who will always defiantly love it all, beyond reason. But this last weekend has made me deeply ashamed of the city of my birth, and I don't think it will ever be right again.
I don't mind an unjust war -they come along for every generation. Our current crop has nothing on the Philipines war they so resemble, with the Islamic fanatics, secret detention camps, big money changing hands, under-armed service men. . . been there, done that. . . . probably we'll look back on Iraq as the Spanish Civil war of our times
it's only the very dumb or very innocent who can still be shocked by the 'America does bad things? And then says it's the good guy? ? ?' -maybe this next war with Iran will show us something new. . .
But here in the D - a place so poor, grumpy, and until this weekend honest. . .
On super Saturday, Kyle Smith and her pal Jeff Peterson were shot up outside the Maverick's Good Life lounge. Smith took five in the chest, Peterson one in the leg, during a 'bumping incident'. In and of itself, this happens more than everyday. Just one of about 320 homicides [and another 20o or so killings pleabargained to various manslaughters, which since the Archer era don't have to be added to the murder rate, presenting us a rosier statistical picture. ] Certainly, this deserved to be a public relations nightmare -two white girls shot in the street, just lining up to get into a bar. . . . in order to squelch any racial overtones, the police description of the shooter was not released to the press, [indicating. . . . what, exactly? ]
The story was buried. Banished to the back page. Since the NFL left town, it's like it never happened. (like those three helicopters that went down in one day last week in Iraq.)
That the story was supressed, that ironically this white girl was a native Detroiter, taken for a tourist, that the description wasn't released - never have I seen such a craven hand out for 'white money'. -Not since Coleman 'bought' all those krugerands and had the people mover built out of South African steel. There is a message -that it's not okay for detroit to appear as a place where people can get blown away in the midst of the superbowl festivities - even though it is, the PROBLEM is that it might LOOK that way.
If there is some post-superbowl boom for the city, in a way, this girl is the blood sacrifice. The situation was 'handled'.
And that's not okay.
It's cost this city my love, which, in truth was it's only asset. I was always sort of proud of Detroit being the murder capitol.
Now it's a capitol of lip service and mendacity. It's playing Race games that aren't even tenable this milenium.
Do you want to see the true face of the relationship between black and white america? Here it is.
Her name is Marion Harris, and she was our first 'Queen of the Blues' -She was already a star blues singer 7 years before Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, a good 4 years before Mamie Smith. In many ways a more intriuging character than even Emmett Miller. While it's cliche to say that white singers were looting black music for economic reasons, she was no diletante. Harris actually gave up her recording contract with Victor, who objected to her version of 'St Louis Blues' . . . The subject of the myth of there being such a thing as 'black' or 'white' music is lengthy, better treated elsewhere by our man Tosches, in his brilliant 'Where Dead Voices Gather' -after nearly 300 brilliant pages that span 3 centuries of american music, he comes to the point:
"No one alive in america today knows what slavery was. The black who professes to be the heir to it's suffering, the white who professes to be the heir of it's shame: these are the stock characters of a minstrel show gone berserk, and they are made for one another, loving slaves to a delusion that protects them from looking beneath their own skin, slaves to a fear that keeps them from loving except through hate. And that makes for damn good business, a culture where the consumer and the product are one in the great mall of mass produced individualism. As it is writ; all consumers look alike to me.
We percieve the coon show of yesterday as gross folly, regard the coon show of today with purblind innocence. Luis Armstrong singing 'Shine' is one thing -but what is to be made, in this supposedly more enlightened age, of a whitened Michael Jackson dewclaiming in rythm, ascowl with dramatic sincerity, that he is 'Bad' ? They are, these theatrical posings, -of our culture, and of our psyche, - like a mirror held at different angles to ourself, that self that is both white and black. The reflection changes, but that which is reflected remains the same. And that which is reflected, no matter how radically it's reflection changes, remains as deeply enigmatic today as it was in the days of minstrelsy. It goes on. Beneath the singer, beneath the song, it goes on.
The real relationship between black and white in america is like that of a couple on the brink of divorce - one accusesthe other of stealing something
-lets push things forward, let's answer Cecil Taylor right now- "what is it you want now
that you didn't want before? "
'Don't you know? I love you.'
"But you said all those things about me, and then you hurt me so bad. . . "
'Yes, that's true -but can't you see,
I've always tried to BE you . . .'
Either 'Race' could call the other is it's hero. Not in word, but in deed. We've all been provably black and white at least since Marion Harris, [whose recordings date to 1916] and probably alot longer than that. [check out the archive.org for some of her downloads. ]
There is no end to this post. Fuck this town.
-Pirata
As you have doubtless guessed, I really don't write, per se -I just use this to communicate with the three of you at once. My attitude towards writing has soured a little further . . . .it presupposes certain vanities. . . particularly vanities of breath that it's been driven home to me, in many ways, are not to be taken for granted.
Everyone is talking about the future -the 8 bit quantum computer the austrians have out, the new lsa class airplanes you can fly with only 20 hours, a new war to make us forget the current two. . . .
I was emailing Dave, and I realized - It's easy to like your town or city. It's harder to like your country,
and the world just dares you -just fucking dares you to. I don't worry about it too much - I know there will always be people like Tuxedo Ed who will always defiantly love it all, beyond reason. But this last weekend has made me deeply ashamed of the city of my birth, and I don't think it will ever be right again.
I don't mind an unjust war -they come along for every generation. Our current crop has nothing on the Philipines war they so resemble, with the Islamic fanatics, secret detention camps, big money changing hands, under-armed service men. . . been there, done that. . . . probably we'll look back on Iraq as the Spanish Civil war of our times
it's only the very dumb or very innocent who can still be shocked by the 'America does bad things? And then says it's the good guy? ? ?' -maybe this next war with Iran will show us something new. . .
But here in the D - a place so poor, grumpy, and until this weekend honest. . .
On super Saturday, Kyle Smith and her pal Jeff Peterson were shot up outside the Maverick's Good Life lounge. Smith took five in the chest, Peterson one in the leg, during a 'bumping incident'. In and of itself, this happens more than everyday. Just one of about 320 homicides [and another 20o or so killings pleabargained to various manslaughters, which since the Archer era don't have to be added to the murder rate, presenting us a rosier statistical picture. ] Certainly, this deserved to be a public relations nightmare -two white girls shot in the street, just lining up to get into a bar. . . . in order to squelch any racial overtones, the police description of the shooter was not released to the press, [indicating. . . . what, exactly? ]
The story was buried. Banished to the back page. Since the NFL left town, it's like it never happened. (like those three helicopters that went down in one day last week in Iraq.)
That the story was supressed, that ironically this white girl was a native Detroiter, taken for a tourist, that the description wasn't released - never have I seen such a craven hand out for 'white money'. -Not since Coleman 'bought' all those krugerands and had the people mover built out of South African steel. There is a message -that it's not okay for detroit to appear as a place where people can get blown away in the midst of the superbowl festivities - even though it is, the PROBLEM is that it might LOOK that way.
If there is some post-superbowl boom for the city, in a way, this girl is the blood sacrifice. The situation was 'handled'.
And that's not okay.
It's cost this city my love, which, in truth was it's only asset. I was always sort of proud of Detroit being the murder capitol.
Now it's a capitol of lip service and mendacity. It's playing Race games that aren't even tenable this milenium.
Do you want to see the true face of the relationship between black and white america? Here it is.
Her name is Marion Harris, and she was our first 'Queen of the Blues' -She was already a star blues singer 7 years before Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, a good 4 years before Mamie Smith. In many ways a more intriuging character than even Emmett Miller. While it's cliche to say that white singers were looting black music for economic reasons, she was no diletante. Harris actually gave up her recording contract with Victor, who objected to her version of 'St Louis Blues' . . . The subject of the myth of there being such a thing as 'black' or 'white' music is lengthy, better treated elsewhere by our man Tosches, in his brilliant 'Where Dead Voices Gather' -after nearly 300 brilliant pages that span 3 centuries of american music, he comes to the point:
"No one alive in america today knows what slavery was. The black who professes to be the heir to it's suffering, the white who professes to be the heir of it's shame: these are the stock characters of a minstrel show gone berserk, and they are made for one another, loving slaves to a delusion that protects them from looking beneath their own skin, slaves to a fear that keeps them from loving except through hate. And that makes for damn good business, a culture where the consumer and the product are one in the great mall of mass produced individualism. As it is writ; all consumers look alike to me.
We percieve the coon show of yesterday as gross folly, regard the coon show of today with purblind innocence. Luis Armstrong singing 'Shine' is one thing -but what is to be made, in this supposedly more enlightened age, of a whitened Michael Jackson dewclaiming in rythm, ascowl with dramatic sincerity, that he is 'Bad' ? They are, these theatrical posings, -of our culture, and of our psyche, - like a mirror held at different angles to ourself, that self that is both white and black. The reflection changes, but that which is reflected remains the same. And that which is reflected, no matter how radically it's reflection changes, remains as deeply enigmatic today as it was in the days of minstrelsy. It goes on. Beneath the singer, beneath the song, it goes on.
The real relationship between black and white in america is like that of a couple on the brink of divorce - one accusesthe other of stealing something
-lets push things forward, let's answer Cecil Taylor right now- "what is it you want now
that you didn't want before? "
'Don't you know? I love you.'
"But you said all those things about me, and then you hurt me so bad. . . "
'Yes, that's true -but can't you see,
I've always tried to BE you . . .'
Either 'Race' could call the other is it's hero. Not in word, but in deed. We've all been provably black and white at least since Marion Harris, [whose recordings date to 1916] and probably alot longer than that. [check out the archive.org for some of her downloads. ]
There is no end to this post. Fuck this town.
-Pirata
posted by friars | Thursday, February 09, 2006
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