June 29, 2009

been tweeting far more than blogging this past week, and even that has been spare given my utter speechlessness at Michael Jackson's death. When my coworker came into the room on Thursday and asked if I'd heard, I sat in denial for a few hours until CNN picked up the TMZ report, and then still maintained a hopeful optimism that everybody was wrong and somebody would get fired for lying on national television.

I'm still tryna incorporate his death into my new reality. Remember singing "Heal the World" at my sixth grade talent show, the mic dead and having to belt it out; listening to "Scream" on repeat (it was my anthem in eleventh grade) and watching the video over and over again; and seeing fans on TV fainting clear away at his concerts in Europe. When "Black or White" and "Remember the Time" came on network TV I sat about six inches away from the screen awestruck, the images of Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy and Iman dressed like gods and goddesses were seared into my mind. They were some of the only music videos I ever saw growing up since we didn't have cable.

I can't really put my finger on how Michael Jackson's music affected me apart from saying it was somewhat ubiquitous; I never lived in a world without him and it made me so hopeful. Allowed me to dream about the possibilities. We are the World was one of those experiences that impressed upon me the power of using fame for social good. And I've always looked up to people who, despite their flaws, could win in the court of public opinion. It's a rare achievement that few can boast of, the pressure of which most, not unlike MJ, cave under.

at the moment, I'm still reeling and don't really know how to mourn this loss. i found myself, leaving work on Friday, looking up at the Madison Square Gardens marquee splashed with images of MJ and crying. the sky was weird that night, the clouds shaped like teardrops flecked with blue and orange light, the last rays of the sun. i like to think that heaven was having too big a party, God just couldn't cry, or the sky would have opened up and rained on all of us.

days like today, when a part of your story dies, ur left standing there picking up the pieces. thing is i wasn't quite ready for the chris brown, ne-yo, (even an usher) world. it's like i'm being pushed out the nest and told childhood is dead, it's time to grow up. i realize that i, and my peers, are supposed to be the ones carrying the torch for our generation. but i must apologize for feeling shitfaced, like i haven't got my shit together as an artist and am still waiting to see who really does. there are flashes of hope, but real creative genius is oh so hard to come by.

for all his issues, mj was truly great. and i'm choosing that he'll never die for me cause i'm just not ready yet.

June 20, 2009
After a terrible day yesterday (due to the crashed hard drive and my inability to function at work), saw the play GROUNDSWELL at Theater Row starring Larry Bryggman, David Lansbury (pictured top left), and Cote d'Ivoirean Souleymane Sy Savane (top right). I had unreasonably high expectations given Sy Savane's brilliant debut work in GOODBYE, SOLO (at the Angelica, not sure how widespread its release was), in which he plays a Senegalese cab driver who befriends a lonely man looking to kill himself.

Watching him onscreen was like witnessing the birth of a star -- holding my breath and refusing to blink, wondering if acting could really be as easy as he made it seem, as though someone simply picked up a camera and captured real life unfolding. (Not to mention the guy I was dating at the time was Senegalese and it sort of felt like coming home.)

I had some issues with the film, namely I'm getting tired of seeing blacks, real or magical, portrayed as rescuing the humanity of white people. For goodness sake. Driving Miss Daisy, Reign on Me, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Green Mile...I could go on, but suffice it to say writer/director Ramin Bahrani wasn't telling a new story. The extent to which critics embraced it could certainly have more to do with their subconscious minds than the film itself. Critics aside, though, the performances were solid. And I need to get back to the play.

GROUNDSWELL is set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fact which makes it singularly interesting as a piece of art. It weaves the stories of Themi (Sy Savane), a housekeeper whose family lives in a tin-roofed shack and father disappeared in a diamond mine; Johan (Lansbury), formerly of the secret police, who did three years jail time for mistakenly shooting a black man who pointed his finger at him in the dark; and Mr. Smith (Bryggman), a robber baron who made his fortune investing in diamond stocks, but was later pushed out of his job by a black "affirmative action" hire.

By the end of the play the stakes were raised so high that Johan jammed a knife in Mr. Smith's face demanding he pay "compensation" to Themi for his father's death and the sins of all white South Africans. The ride up until then started slow, but picked up quickly and held a 60mph pace right up until the end. We were forced to confront a lot of shit along the way, and I'm glad playwright Ian Bruce didn't try to tie up the loose ends.

Souleymane threw me at first -- his Xhosa a valiant effort, but the S. African accent nonexistent -- though I was able to suspend my disbelief and get lost in the story. I had mixed feelings about his performance, but I still see a bright future for him and, naively so, a unified South Africa.

My girls and I stood around chatting at the end of the show until he came out, and we had to tell him what a great job he did. He was the absolute sweetest guy ever, asking each of us our names and shaking our hands, asking if I was Nigerian, saying he was from the Ivory Coast. (I held his hand a little too long!) I gazed in his eyes and gushed about what a huge huge huge fan I am of his work, how I'm a filmmaker too, and how we should get married someday (the last part isn't true ;).

But I totally slept on my biz card game, would have whipped it out if I had had one to give and urged him to call, email, send a carrier pigeon. I am so stalking him online until I can find his info. He is FINE. I absolutely melted into a puddle of girliness when he walked away and floated all the way home. Smitten!

Check out my review on The AFRican.

June 19, 2009
This morning I tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate my 250GB external hard drive that crashed after my sister turned off the surge protector it was plugged into. It contains all the video I shot, logged, and edited in film school; my entire iTunes library; a couple applications; not to mention all of the digital photos I've ever taken. She told me to calm down, be optimistic, that I'll give myself high blood pressure from being so worried. I ask you. If all the research she's done over the past five years as a post doc got wiped out at the push of a button, I'm not sure she'd be any calmer.

Needless to say. I spent most of the morning sobbing (my 1-year-old nephew had to give me a hug) and I've been pretty useless at work all day. Running Disk Warrior right now seeing if I can fix it. I feel like a complete and utter zombie -- undone and anxious without my files. Emotionally exhausted. I live on relatively little technology, but I have to have some things -- and my music is one of them. Crazy how losing files or your laptop feels like losing a part of yourself.

If my book were on it I would not be writing right now; I would have smashed my computer into a million little pieces.

June 16, 2009

Having lived through a rigged election in the USofA, virtually no political scandal sounds far-fetched to me anymore -- especially Iran's highly disputed democratic election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir Hossein Mousavi. As they say: no justice, no peace.

More pictures @ The Boston Globe

June 15, 2009

We've come a long way from Deep Impact, with Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck; or, worse yet, Head of State starring Chris Rock. I'm certainly on the edge of my chair for this one. (And he looks so dayum good on camera. ;)

Barack Obama's reality-show presidency - Ari Melber - POLITICO.com

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June 12, 2009
I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, mostly in frustration. Then it was posed to me on The Bookaholic Blog and for some reason I felt compelled to answer. Riffing on Descartes, I said: I write, therefore I am.

True story. When I was a little girl I felt overlooked and misunderstood most of the time. I found comfort in books, my inner world, and writing more than anything else. I suspect that's why I'm a writer -- because I always imagined myself and my life differently in my head and was somewhat fixated on creating this alternate reality in which I felt understood, welcomed, important.

At present, I'm still not living in that new reality and yet, somehow, I never stopped writing. I certainly don't know any better. But I think even if it's your last breath you should say something, even if no one is listening. (In fact, writing this damn blog and all the blogs I've written for various outlets over the years has by and large felt like shouting in an empty room. And I certainly don't understand why I persist in doing it.) But I suppose that, whether or not anybody is listening, you stand to gain your own soul by finding your voice and using it.

You might even discover that you have something to say that nobody's ever said before.

June 10, 2009
This oped by Thomas Sowell, a black conservative from the Hoover Institution, really pissed me off, almost as much as news of the ascendancy of modern niggers in Esquire did. Sowell believes that struggle and empathy should have no bearing on SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor's suitability for the bench. "But the cold fact is that [empathy] is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court," he says. "That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees 'equal protection of the laws' to all Americans."

I cannot, for the life of me, understand black/brown people who live in the denial and/or self hate of judicial conservatism. I think of Dred Scott, I think of the separate but equal doctrine, and I would no sooner rest on the merits of American justice than lose my head by it. And to use the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection to black/brown people, as an argument against an empathetic Latina Supreme Court justice seems hopelessly absurd.

I don't know what these Sowell-type folks are really after -- maybe a pat on the back for having beaten the system against all odds, by their own merits? As if the rest of us choose to remain mired in the murky waters of inequity, injustice, and Katrina. Truth is, I think injustice is so real you can reach out and touch it with your hand, but that certainly doesn't make it any easier to fix. And I really hope with Sotomayor we get a little closer to an understanding of what that fix could look like. She may not change the world, but she'll be a hell of a sight better on the bench than that damn Clarence Thomas.

June 7, 2009
I will not spend the entire summer @ a festival, cookout, or party. Have killed many a NYC summer that way and besides, I'm a serious woman. Disclaimers aside though, went to a phat cookout at Prospect Park yesterday (I heart veggie burgers on spelt bread) followed by a Fela v. James Brown spinoff @ Club Love with Rich Medina and DJ Spinna. Party c/o Keistar Productions, producers of the annual Wonder-FULL party, who incidentally brought the Inauguration edition, Volume IX, and Volume X (next month) this year alone, making me think it's less an annual celebration of Stevie than a monthly expansion of their income.

Haven't been to Love in a minute, forgot about the black lights that made my white top, teeth, and eyeballs glow in the dark. The crowd was off the chain, and me and my girls brought a nice Brooklyn vibe to warm up the city. I heard there were a bunch of cats in from Austin, too. Afrobeat and funk make the world go 'round.

There was a guy walking around with a camera with one of those really bright and annoying spotlights. Hated it. No idea what he captured in that crowded ass room apart from a couple of sweaty heads and elbows. I was a lightweight, though, legs already tired from dance class, so I split after a couple of hours. On my way out, ran into a photographer friend I'm crushing on and almost followed him back inside. LOL.

June 5, 2009
Oh. My. God. I almost died laughing.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Imaginary Black on White Crime
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Economic Crisis

June 3, 2009
Once I did a not-so-glowing review of a film festival and had to take issue with a sista, who had said some off the record stuff and thought I blew up her spot, about whether or not I'm a journalist. My take: I'm not. But I certainly love to write, and am not half bad at it. Disclaimer aside, I do write the occasional article to keep up my chops. And I think Lee Isaac Chung's debut feature -- MUNYURANGABO, playing in the African Film Festival -- is dope. Check out my interview with Chung on The AFRican.