Garifuna Griot

“It starts as a slow warming. Pink and orange blush in the pit of the belly spreading like a quiet murmur rising from questioning eyes. It was in her shoulders, traveling toward her forearms in swift, unhalting motion, turning the deep hue of daybreak at its reddest. She was trembling…”

And so begins one of the unfinished stories yellowing in a bin of composition notebooks, journals and spiral notebooks that have moved with me through out the years. The main character is about to smash the windows of her boyfriend’s car. Yeah, this is before Jazmine Sullivan’s hit made smashing car windows melodic. I made it poetic first. 

My first stories captured the teen dramas that preoccupied kids growing up in 1980′s New York complete with cameos by favorite artists like LL Cool J, New Edition and my favorite Rakim. The characters wore gazelles and bubble gooses, dyed their flat tops and severe angular cuts with kool-aid and peroxide and a hip-hop swagger that was missing from the Harlequin romance novels that sparked my imagination.

I could not have known then that churning out two novels in a single summer was an incredible feat –and in an adulthood–an impossible one. Back then I ate, slept and breathed words, driven to obsession when I cracked the spine of a composition notebook. Even if a few pages were filled with science notes or blue-inked cursive, I cut those pages out and before me blank pages morphed into a world. A world that I would pen in my neat, tiny print.

I have always loved writing.

On the eve of a new year, I am close to completing a project I have been working on for years. I can trace the beginnings of the idea back to a conference I attended in Arizona in 2005 — a young girl grappling with family traditions that shaped her, but didn’t necessarily fit a new world sensibility. A scene flashed across my mind—an unexpected loss, but I didn’t have the luxury of lazy summer months to follow the images to a complete story. There were bills to pay, obligations to meet and life to navigate.

I hadn’t grown up to be a professional author. I was a teacher and I had work to do. It had been years since I attempted writing stories. My freshman year of college found me focused on writing poetry–a shorter medium that allowed me to express myself in an allotted amount of time and then get back to whatever obligation was scribbled in my planner.

But the idea insisted on being written: In drips and drabs, essays and poems the idea began to take shape.

I couldn’t believe the amount of time it was taking to tell a story. Wasn’t I same the girl who sat at the dinner table with pen and page ride beside her, taking quick bites so I could get back to the conflict unfolding? Why was this taking so long? Years?

Impatient, I flirted with the idea of polishing one of the works finished in the 80′s. Sister Souljah, E. Lynn Harris and Zane write in the style and cover some of the subject matter that my seventeen-year-old-self tackled. Maybe I could just edit…But one look at the grammatical errors and the juvenile responses to real life issues and I knew that that would never do as a debut — my debut. I had written those stories with no idea that Real housewives and Hip-hop wives would make my 1980′s world of ghetto glitz and uncouth antics socially acceptable. Despite this fact, I couldn’t revert to a teenage perspective and knew that I had to tell a story that stirred my soul.

I came across Sandra Cisneros and her account of the Chicana experience in Chicago. I discovered Edwidge Danticat and admired the tales of Haitian history and Haitian promise she spun from her passion for her people and then came Junot Diaz. Junot Diaz spat the Dominican experience onto city streets in rough, deliberate Spanglish and I heard my own love for street vernacular, Latin flavor and African rhythm. These writers confirmed that my story had to be added to the cannon of cultural writing that captures the human experience in a color and rhythm that would be distinct to my Garifuna-American experience.

And so 2013 is but hours away and I am thrilled about the next leg of this journey with a story that made its first appearance in Sedona, Arizona and just last year gathered to punta drums during my grandfather’s memorial service in a muddy yard in Tulian, Honduras.

I thank both my heavenly and earthly father for the gift of word and the story of the Garinagu unfolding this very moment.

2013, here we come!

A way with words…

It has been a while since the luxury of devouring music from first note to liner notes to needle hitting label.

It started with copping the 12″ Slick Rick and Dougie Fresh hit “The Show” and ended with New Edition’s album Heartbreak with a Menudo and Anita Baker obsession in between: sessions in my parents’ wood paneled basement to examine, ingest and become the music.

I would slice that album cover open, slide out the sleeve, handle the vinyl gingerly and relish how the needle filled the room with the very soul of the artist we were spinning. The story, the voice, the rhythm, the music was on heavy rotation because I had to understand every nuance, figure out how they could tap into the place where I would swoon in affinity.

As a writer, a poet, a singer it is the goal to find just the right arrangement of words to confirm for the listener a reader seeking confirmation that they are just human. that this is part of life and love and beauty.

The other night I couldn’t get words to come.

The ideas were there just within reach, but I couldn’t get the lines to make images, tap into emotion—so I went in search of inspiration. My sister had mentioned the name of a new singer who had impressed her. She does a far better job of following new artists and listening to new music, so I went in search of the email where she had written the name — Gregory Porter.

Lightning flashed to announce rain, so I took the hint and decided it wasn’t a night for writing.

Surfing the web wasn’t as tactile as unwrapping an album, but I found him on youtube and clicked on a recording session. The black and white image, the head phones and the bare bones feel of it intrigued me — but then he began to sing and I was instantly enamored. I couldn’t decide what was most striking — the sophisticated smooth, the poetic phrasing, the brooding tenor, the boyish innocence—all of it was jazz: eclectic and human.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since the purity of jazz — my rummaging through Ella and Sarah and Billie and Ellington and Davis and Coltrane to master the sensuality of being human.

But on this rainy night, a new voice, reminiscent of Nat King Cole, paid homage to jazz traditions with soul all his own.  I nestled close to his sweet tenor and gave myself over, discovering beautiful gems just beneath the  melody:

The heart-wrenching metaphor for taming man in “Be Good/The Lion Song;”

The crowds abandoning Harlem when they  learned that “Langston doesn’t live [there] anymore” but Porter’s  insistence that “You can’t keep him from the place where he was born…” in “On My Way to Harlem;”

Recounting the admonishment to get over it  with the striking image of  “…water under bridges that have already been burned” to emphasize how futile his longing is in the song, “Water;”

And his “checking for the weather and the time” to get his bearings when she leaves and he finds himself floundering in “wind that blows from hurricanes that come just after gray clouds fill [his] eyes” in the melancholy farewell, “Illusion.”

The masters of horn, string, skin and keys that take the stage with him complete the seduction, drawing you through each storyline with steady hand and enviable expertise and before you know it, you are on the other side of a stormy night renewed; inspired and not quite sure how you got there…

Except for the snatches of a timeless voice blessed with a supernatural way with words.

Stay Tuned

Photo by J. Amezqua

It has been said of me, “Why is she hiding in there?”

Not within earshot, but in the lobby of the building where I give every inkling of my being to inspiring students to love words and share innovative lessons with colleagues from around the world.

And that, I suppose, is the problem.

Every waking moment during the school year is dedicated to planning and teaching and grading and pushing and nurturing and watching and then summer arrives and time is my own.

It is then when I take stock and get frustrated trying to locate the paintbrushes I packed away or realize I never sent in the logo I had started copyrighting last summer or that this is year three of writing the manuscript for my first novel. I chastise myself for giving no attention to my own passions and toss and turn each night until morning forces me to choose at least one place to begin piecing back the artistry that is my driving force.

And this is the dance I have done most of my life. The dance I am learning is just seen as hiding.

In actuality I am of two minds and it is that duality that apparently leaves people shaking their heads…

In the third grade, Ms. Green, who lived in my same Bronx projects, invited me skating. I had never been skating, much less with a teacher, and was so excited that I strapped on those insufferable metal, adjustable skates and practiced up and down the projects’ parks and paths a whole week before our outing just to make sure I wouldn’t spend the whole time on the skating rink floor.

In the seventh grade I remember leaning in as Mr. Turk bent down beside my desk in social studies class hoping to convince me that I was more brilliant than my silence suggested. That I needed to speak up more and show off my spark. I only nodded in response. He was confirming what I felt about myself, but was afraid to reveal.  I didn’t say it then, but I was grateful for the acknowledgment.

And the old adage is not true because everyone cannot teach. And I don’t mean lecture, assign page numbers and load their car up before the last kid is even dismissed. I mean creating indelible moments that inspire young people to their calling.

I haven’t figured out how to do that between 7a.m. – 3p.m.: hence my problem with time management.

But the teacher who literally drove me to understand that I had a gift inspires my passion for teaching and my love of the arts — Mr. Barkan.

Tenth grade creative writing class was my breakthrough, my a-ha moment and Mr. Barkan went as far as driving me to poetry contests and stood in the back of rooms cupping his ears to remind me of what he had said before I got to the mic. “…the pockets of their ears, Miss Arauz.”

My tireless effort to introduce young people to their calling is a thank you to Mr. Barkan for scrawling in red ink across my first assignment: …to the next Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks…

But it would appear that I have not honored his prediction if my efforts have been reduced to my simply hiding.

I am the product of one of the most dynamic and talented families on the planet! Whether up in the Bronx; Tulian, Honduras or Far Rockaway, Queens, my family members spin tales, tell jokes, sing songs and break into impromptu dance numbers to an orchestra of ordinary living room furniture -– all at the drop of a hat. I am the daughter of artists who worked day jobs diligently with snatches of their genius charming co-workers and bosses alike, but you could only catch the full brilliance on weekends when they were truly free.

I have celebrated this legacy in my own way: my mother traditionally reads my sixth grade students a vignette from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros in Spanish. She then makes her signature arroz con pollo and ends the visit with merengue and soca music driving her to the dance floor where my students laugh over spontaneous dance lessons and experience first-hand one of my greatest joys — growing up with a mom who loves to dance!

This past school year, I shared a note my father had written me with parents in order to demonstrate how important their own turn of phrase is in coloring how their children interact with words. My sister and I used to stare at my dad when he used big words in response to one of our six-year/three-year-old questions. We stood there blinking until he said, “Go look it up.” I hadn’t realized just how his love of words; his mastery of syntax influenced me as a writer and reader and was excited to share this revelation with the families I partner with to teach language as art. As part of the tenth year anniversary of 9/11 my dad even skyped with my students to share what he had experienced that day as he made his way from apocalyptic-Manhattan back home to Queens.

My cousin Freddy judged a “Cielito Lindo” singing contest for kids who had never studied Spanish, but were challenged to learn the Mexican folk song; my niece Delilah practiced presenting to students by sharing her aspirations to teach and this past spring my sister joined me on stage to open up the Writers’ Block Party I organized with renowned local poets and the team from VerbalEyze.

But the moment that garnered the most reaction was my farewell to my beloved Class of 2012 at this year’s graduation.

I was a nervous wreck knowing that this was my final moment to impart whatever wisdom; inspiration I could and I had to get this right. They were the class that reminded me most of myself. How I stood out for weird things like constantly —No, really. Constantly —writing in a mead composition notebook, hiding my drawings in blue graffitied binders and never singing above a whisper – all so I could be left alone. I didn’t know how else to protect my artist’s spirit from the scrutiny and deliberate cruelty of middle school.

My teachers had spoken to me, but if they had come across these words, this sentiment, it would have changed everything:

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

The significance of these words by Marianne Williamson speaks to the survival tactic I adopted way back when, a tactic that impedes my progress as artist. I did hide: my talents, my dreams, my aspirations because laid bare they threatened the disillusioned and I could not afford to join them in the urban-cynicism that sometimes robs inner-city kids of dreaming.  I didn’t have these words then, but marveled at how I needed to hear them now and if I needed them then they  had to passed down. I gifted Class 2012 these words, then sang my heart out — a re-mix of Jill Scott’s, “So Blessed” because the final lesson to impart is one that I am learning myself:  My peccadilloes and experiences are part of my artistry. I am blessed.

And after this tribute, people came up to me and marveled at the gifts that I displayed. People who know me have seen glimpses along the years and simply sat back and enjoyed, while others questioned, “What is she doing here?” Actually, those who know me just don’t say it out loud anymore, but have long had the same thought.

I think I have answered that: I am here to inspire young people as I was once inspired, but I get it. I have been called out. And we all know what excuses are… I have only done part of the job thus far. The other part of teaching is leading by example, so consider this an artist’s coming out.

Stay tuned.

An artist is coming to a page, a stage and a spotlight near you.

Move when the man say move…

Yesterday the man with smooth humor, congenial sex appeal and exuberant warmth

passed.

Heavy D died at 44.

And please don’t let the moniker fool you.

He was light on his feet as he rode cool percussion and thumping bass with back up dancers who punctuated his poetry and matched his energy.

His movement was almost as deft as the tongue that carried Caribbean rhythm into nineties hip-hop with his signature diddle-diddle-dee  which I can’t even do justice on a keyboard.

He represented the reggae roots that grew hip-hop and glided seamlessly between both music genres to create music that lifted the spirit and got you moving immediately.

He put unadulterated, no holds-barred joy into hip-hop.

And I will certainly miss him.

It is a shock to lose a brother  that I watched proudly as he moved from the music world into the world of acting with the swagger that was just him. I watched him as a regular on Boston Public and smiled proudly any time he crossed the silver screen. Growing up in the nineties hip-hop era I took it as a sign that I could do anything when I saw my stars stretching into new arenas to prove that their talent, work ethic and appeal was not reserved for colored kids glued to their boom box. They were stars.

And Dwight Arrington Myers was a star!

This morning I listened to the speculation about the cause of death. I was seething when the radio host  on a station, who would know Heavy D only in passing, eluded to the cause of death being linked to his being “Heavy.” I answered back, “He lost weight. What are you talking about?” I felt like my brother was being talked about by someone who didn’t even know him. Now I will say the host came back a few minutes later and corrected himself, informing his listeners that Heavy D had lost over one hundred pounds years ago, so I settled down. Continued on my commute and down memory lane.

But it was that deep. That’s my boy and I mourn him alongside true fans of hip-hop who bounced in over-sized nineties wear or wound their hips to that reggae-tinged tongue and moved when the man said move.

So Blessed

Still blessed

Woke up this morning listening to this song

You’re so blessed yes, yes

Gonna rock this joint all night long

It’s so blessed yes

—Jill Scott

Each time I listen to Jill Scott’s “So Blessed,” I imagine an impromptu spitting at the mic with blessings pulled from the corner of the mind, almost forgotten, but brought to the surface by peace, music and art.

So a couple of mornings ago as I prepared for my 8 am class of eighth graders, I found myself needing to play the song and share with them that they are indeed blessed.

Believe it or not I intentionally chose to teach middle school. Most people bristle at the thought of the hormones and attitude and the schizophrenia associated with the junior high school student, but I still remember how confusing and daunting this transition was and when it came time to select an area in Education to focus on — I chose middle school with my eye toward teaching eighth grade because it was the last year before entering high school.

High school is where the stakes get higher, lines are drawn or colored outside of and college looms.

I wanted to help my students see their possibilities and try different gifts on for size as Mr. Turk did for me in the seventh grade and Mr. Barkan did for me in the tenth. I could not see what they saw. I was too caught up trying to figure out who I was or the best way to express me; which societal rules could be bent and which broken rules hurt most. I was too busy –at times just too overwhelmed– to see just what distinguished me from the classmate sitting beside me. And that this difference was not a problem to be solved. It was an asset.

These teachers were my blessing, watching intently and setting out to guide me, advise me, the best they could. It is their effort and influence that I took with me into my first eighth grade classroom in East New York, Brooklyn and it is their example that I call on as I work with my current eighth graders.

My eighth graders—whom I refer to as my babies— are currently applying to high school and I was moved to share Jill’s words with them after reading the first draft of their essays where they omitted the magic that I see in them: the rare experiences afforded to them the past three years and the accomplishments that I have personally watched them work to attain. I needed them to know, remember; understand that they are so much more than the words they managed to get on the page.

Sighs of remembrance and whispered ‘Ohhs’ filled the room as I listed experiences I have watched the past three years: their talents shared with our school community, the original songs and chants they created to keep the energy flowing during the school day, contests entered, teams they led to victories, team mates they coached and inspired, Japanese children they taught African-inspired stepping, gorgeous photos of South African landscapes they took on a trip last year, demonstrations of  innovative lessons half-way around the world; how they inspired educators as part of our school’s teacher training program and most importantly their work to further the dreams and values of their families.

A nice flow, a fresh page and a microphone soothe me into instinctively counting blessings, but we must all keep an eye out for the next generation.

Get them to a blank page, an instrumental riff, an emptied court or a sun-drenched park and let them listen intently for their blessings.

 

The Ashes

I don’t profess to know what it felt like for those in the shadows of iconic towers ablaze.

I watched the beginning of the impossible from a television set in Far Rockaway, Queens. I couldn’t have been further away from Manhattan, leaving a birthday voice mail for a friend while the first plane hit.

I remember sitting on the edge of my coffee table wondering how a pilot could have miscalculated their trajectory this way. Even the news reporter was speculating about the pilot when out of the corner of the screen came a second plane and then it was clear: This was no accident. The world would never be the same.

I don’t profess to know the devastation of losing loved ones in a grave of concrete and steel and speculation.

My mother and I called feverishly from the outer boroughs trying to reach my sister and my father who worked in lower Manhattan. My cousin worked the closest to the area where fire and panic flashed across my television screaming third-world unrest rather than metropolitan New York.  I remember the anguish on the faces of town-criers calling names while clutching hand-made posters asking, “Have you seen…” And these cries kept bare hands feverishly turning over rubble and bone, armies of volunteers razing through ashes of ground zero in hopes of finding life.

Because the towers fell.

Even watching the towers aflame,  I still sat on the edge of my coffee table wondering how New York’s Bravest would battle the blaze. Couldn’t be by ladder. How would they… and then the impossible unfolded before my very eyes, rocking everything I understood about home and longevity and stability. The World Trade Center had been targeted before, bomb threats and bombs in parking garages in the 90′s, but  no one could have imagined an emptied New York skyline — but it was happening.  The towers imploded against pristine blue sky, spilling debris and spirit and devastation down neighboring streets, coating every thing and every one in thick clay-like ash. I held my breath and the tears were immediate. I watched dumbfounded as New Yorkers held make-shift masks to their faces emerging from alley ways or building entrances that only partially shielded them from the onslaught. Caked in yellowed-clay they moved slowly, uncertain. I could only watch.

When my father, sister and cousin were found safe, we listened to the stories of where they were and how New Yorkers, who stay in their lane as a matter of survival, checked on each other, shared news, offered rides or a strong shoulder as they made their way through lower Manhattan to get back to homes that were forever changed.

I had to see it for myself.

I don’t remember how long it was before you could get into Manhattan and you certainly couldn’t get too close to ground zero in those first weeks, but my friend Conrad and I drove to Manhattan one night, two poets moved to collect the words and sights and sounds. We were in mourning with our fellow-New Yorkers and sought to pay our respects, but just could not find the opening line.

The air smelled of fire and smoke and we bought masks at a Duane Reade that looked like it was being guarded by the marine out front.  He sported heavy artillery and kept his eyes turned to the street where a military Humvee wobbled by.  We walked through Washington Square Park and bowed our heads to pray over the make-shift altar of hundreds of candles, messages and images. The silence seemed broken only by heads shaken in disbelief. We walked on. Away from television cameras and in the tradition of freedom synonymous with the Village, we encountered a crowd in heated debate about the U.S. relationship with Israel. The two men in the circle made their points to incredulous groans or shouts of support from on-lookers who seemed to wait their turn to broadcast their view of how and why this happened. It was a new chess game in the park for an inconceivable time and we watched impassioned word play with amazement before moving on. It quickly grew too cantankerous for mourning.

But it was a needed change from the images and stories caught on the news broadcasts. The news anchors, who had been just as confused as the devastation unfolded, had now stopped showing shadows falling from windows and had decided that no one needed to see the towers implode over and over again. The news was now putting actual faces to our loss  and updating us on our resolve as a newly-galvanized nation. They could not delve too deeply into U.S. history and its political liaisons.

This was not the time for that. Or was it?

I can’t recall just how long after the events of 9-11 I attended the taping of HBO’s Def Poetry where Amiri Baraka was the featured poet. I studied under Baraka at Stonybrook University and even had the privilege of attending some readings in his New Jersey home, so I looked forward to hearing what the sage had to say. New York was trying to get back to some sense of normalcy and my soul craved the company of poets and intellectuals because I still couldn’t get the pen on the page. The air was thick with tension and sadness and disbelief and patriotism and religious-profiling and anger and resolve. I needed words for all of this so as Mos Def welcomed the audience with playful chiding and impromptu rhymes, I sat back and waited to hear what I might learn.

As soon as the title rolled off his lips I knew that this poem would not be aired.

Not with Americans donning red, white and blue to combat the pain, exact revenge and express resilience.

I didn’t even look to my left or right as if I was now in some backroom headquarters for the revolution. If I didn’t know who was in the room then I couldn’t tell. As the opening line rose into a finished verse, I waited for the gestapo to drop out of the ceiling to drag this revolutionary poet some place where he could do no harm. But no one came. Right then.

And we leaned in to listen as Baraka make jazz of the American policies both domestic and abroad that fueled our enemies and birthed new ones. Those who witnessed the poem live, couldn’t help but nod –ever so slightly– and admit to ourselves that poems of mourning paid tribute and honored those lost, but poems challenging the U.S. to do better , to be better, especially in our names, were of the utmost importance. Race, class or religious belief did not matter that September morning. We had been targeted as a nation and I understood then that patriotic hats and pins had to be accompanied with a desire to understand our nation and become active participants in its formation–going forward.

A promise, a tribute and a necessity marked with ashes.

Cleaning House

It is not quite an episode of Hoarders, but nevertheless I am terrified of…

my closet.

It looms, threatening to expose abandoned projects and bursts of inspiration that fizzled somewhere between buying all the accoutrements for a life imagined and unfolding the directions to find that something was missing.

In most cases it was  follow-through.

I am in a constant state of creation. With each step, each breath, I have a new idea that presents itself as word or art or sometimes a tune I keep humming all day, but the ideas can rarely take root in the shifting sands of my mind and let’s not even talk about tending to these ideas. Like the plant withering on my back porch, ideas go unwatered and unfed until their dramatic swooning calls my attention. Even then I just want to throw it out. Mostly so I don’t have to look at it.

So back to my closet.

I moved from New York to Atlanta and never even touched some of the boxes that are wedged between student essays [meant for my teaching portfolio] and a late 1990s video camera [next to VCR tapes of 80s videos] that has trapped some of my favorite memories with no cord to upload or download them to this era. It’s too heavy for the party bag I’ve been toting it around in for years, but there it is, a mass of useless wires and 8mm tapes ripping through the bag. And yet I hold on.

Dresses from another size hang under worn folders brimming with floor plans and contracts signed in wide-eyed ignorance while loads of family photos threaten to cascade over a floor littered with stiff paint brushes and a T-square from my art school aspirations. These objects stare back at me every time I open the closet and I can’t take the accusation: You don’t finish what you start.

I feel accused and convicted each time I venture into the closet for concrete evidence of some experience I meant to fulfill, but just haven’t gotten around to yet. I am guilty. My attention span is nil and since I live in my head that is ironic indeed. Ideas begin in the spirit and transform into vision, but they only have life when their creator takes the step of working tirelessly to share them with the world.

So here I am on the blog that almost went the way of my EPMD record albums, promising that I will face my shortcomings and breathe life into the dreams that insist on being realized, one item at a time, all the while cleaning out my closet.

I’m going in!