Gettin' Queer for Dope: Learning How to Learn about LGBT Identity by Morgan Parker



When I met Sarah on August 28th, 2015, I saw a very shy and sheltered Mormon-raised girl. When I met Josh two weeks later, I saw a very bright and bubbling boundary-breaking guy. I’d never imagine that these two distinct identities and two distinct personalities came from one single person. My roommate is transgender, and while he was in the process of translating his entire identity, I was adjusting my mind to the prospect of not only meeting, but living with, a person entirely new. Despite any initial apprehension, I know that I am among the luckiest freshmen for having been blessed with this life-changing experience. I have been enlightened and I owe it all to a little club on campus and a new friend named Josh. This club, known as the Pride Network, epitomizes a true community that offers the unique opportunity for diversifying, involving, and inspiring our minds within a safe and supportive environment. Hofstra Universitywould surely be a different place if it did not exist.

In her September 11, 2015 Taking Giant Steps blogpost, “Leaping out of the Cave and into the Light,” Deanna Weber discusses her yearning for the diversity and experience that Hofstra University provides. She writes, “Not only did I long for students who did not look so much like me, but I also wanted to encounter people with more experience about different places and points of view” (Weber). However, just because so much diversity surrounds us at a place like Hofstra, that doesn’t mean that we are taking advantage of it. As college freshmen, we are especially in the dark when it comes to challenging and diversifying our minds. However, my roommate Josh Green and his friend Matt Sullivan are one step into the light ahead of everyone else. My interviewees were brave enough to be involved with something outside of their comfort zone and, in return, were met with great reward. This is because The Pride Network embodies a form of diversity that is entirely attainable. Matt says, “It’s all about learning, and it’s very comfortable. The purpose is that everyone is welcome” (Sullivan). This is a deliberate characteristic of the club whose main goal is to better the community through awareness. These are people who invariably know that the more differences you have from the person sitting next to you, the more opportunities you have to learn something new. These are people who know how to make every person they meet into an asset.

Moreover, the Pride Network concerns itself with learning outside of Hofstra University by organizing trips and other opportunities for students to attend. Recently Matt, along with other members of the club, ventured to Vermont to attend a “Translating Identity” conference that explored a number of topics regarding gender and transgender identities, expressions, and communities. The conference featured a keynote speaker prominent in the LGBTQ community and aimed not just to reach students and members of this community, but the entirety of the nation (“Translating Identity Conference”). Enlightening experiences, such as this conference, are available and accessible to all interested club members, and are widely encouraged! The goal is for students to see more and learn more outside of what they are comfortable with by breaking free of any means of restriction. Becoming a member of this club provides the first step in our own “leap out of the cave,” and gives us that first glimpse of light. The Pride Network’s overwhelming desire to educate and interact is what makes it crucial to the infrastructure of our “diversity university.”

Beyond the idea of education as a means of opening ourselves up to diversity, the Pride Network provides an experience for those seeking to “learn how to learn” through involvement. As products of the traditional learning pedagogy, we have been programmed to believe that true learning only exists by the guidance of a teacher within the four walls of a classroom. However, the Pride Network proves that belief is far from true. Opportunities for involvement in club meetings and social interactions offer a greater, more valuable kind of learning. Paulo Freire, author of “The Banking Concept of Education,” provides an explanation of this ideal form of learning in what he calls “problem-posing education.” He writes, “Education as the practice of freedom as opposed to education as the practice of domination denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world” (Freire 8). In other words, knowledge comes mostly from experience and from learning about the people in your world rather than learning about the world apart from them.

Furthering this idea, at a typical Pride Network meeting, members begin by sitting around a table and introducing themselves to everyone before beginning the discussion of that week. When Matt and Josh sat down at their first meeting, their minds were still forced shut by fear and anxiety. However, within the first five minutes, those feelings subsided and their minds were engaged. Matt noted, “When we got into a circle and introduced ourselves, everyone seemed more relatable” (Sullivan). Dissolving formality and opening up to discussion is one of many ways the Pride Network runs parallel with Freire’s ideal learning pedagogy. The club holds weekly discussions of current and pressing social issues that are “fun to talk about” (Sullivan). For instance, they recently ran a meeting for people who were interested in discussing the Democratic Party debate that had aired just a few days prior. Additionally, at most meetings they will break up into smaller discussion groups to consider more specific or personal issues. As Paulo Freire put it, “Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ‘owned’ by the teacher” (Freire 7). Seldom does one find the opportunity to involve oneself in something that, by nature, gives more than it takes. Simply being there is the greatest thing you can offer the Pride Network, but in return it gives you back something much greater.

One of the most intriguing things Josh ever said to me was that somehow Hofstra felt like a home to him before his own body did. As difficult as it was for me to comprehend such a statement, it was also oddly empowering. I didn’t really understand the true impact it had on me until I attended a meeting of the Pride Network for myself: If ever I could be a real fly on the wall, I certainly would have been at that meeting. My goal was to be an objective observer, so I could focus more on the big picture than on my own involvement. However, there is certainly something to be said about being the only person in the room who is somehow different from everyone else. I didn’t feel anxious or nervous, but I certainly felt out of place. After a few minutes of feeling that way I remembered Josh’s comment, and I started to understand what it really meant to me, as well as everyone else in the club. For those fifteen minutes of feeling outside of my comfort zone, any other person in the room could have spent fifteen years feeling the same way. For one reason or another, not everyone has a comfort zone they can depend on returning to and I realized I had been taking mine for granted. This was a place made for people to belong; a comfort zone for those who may not have their own.

Ultimately, it is the atmosphere at the Pride Network that breathes inspiration and positivity. Everywhere I looked I could see someone inhaling the Pride Network and exhaling with relief and confidence. This is a place where the only thing you might have in common with the person sitting next to you is that you are different. This is a place where everyone feels entirely content to be wholly and unapologetically themselves. Finally, this is a place where everyone can feel a part of something greater. Beyond everything I have written, to say that this club has changed people’s lives would still be an understatement. My roommate, Josh, may never have been confident enough to become himself had the Pride Network not been ready to catch him when his old life came crashing down. As Deanna Weber wrote, “I am big on self-love and self-happiness, and diversity is something that can contribute to both of these things” (Weber).

The Pride Network offered me the kind of enlightenment Deanna Weber spoke so much about. Although I may not yet have made my leap into the light, I feel confident that this experience has equipped me with the means by which to do so. I learned that I have the responsibility to not only observe, but immerse myself in, the diversity that surrounds me. I learned what it means to really learn. Most crucially, I learned that everything around me has something to offer me if I am willing to look hard enough.

Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. "The "Banking" Concept of Education." Plato (2007): n. pag. Web.

Green, Josh. Personal Interview. 14 Oct. 2015.

Sullivan, Matthew. Personal Interview. 14 Oct. 2015.

"The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato." The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato . N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

"University of Vermont." Translating Identity Conference. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

Weber, Deanna. “Leaping out of the Cave and into the Light,” Taking Giant Steps. N.p., 11 Sept. 2015. Web.

Forging a Whitmanic, Post-Traditional, Bisexual Identity by Kelsey Picciano

What does it mean to be? The term human “being” implies that within every person is an inherent feeling of presence or existence. Perhaps this is not the case for some; perhaps some feel their physical existence, but not their own unique existence, as an individual. They may lack a sense of identity. A body made up of complex bonds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen contains a consciousness molded, not by its own whim, but by its environment and the other carbon-, hydrogen- and oxygen-bodied individuals around it. The constant pressure imposed by the many other conscious minds around it has left the body with an empty and superficial feeling of being to wander around the Earth unsure of the world or its standing within it. Indeed, this is what I experienced upon being thrown, head-first, into the vast and confusing world on my own. I found myself “being” who I thought others wanted me to be, fitting a predetermined mold that shifted as my environment did. It was in the realization of the emptiness of my being that I found the need to nourish my soul and develop a sense of identity. Readings of Plato, Alan Watts, Walt Whitman and Gloria Anzaldua gave me the medicine I needed to not only challenge and enlarge but also to resolve my conflicts with identity, allowing me to mold a true and unique idea of self. 

Kelsey Joann Picciano: my idea of self started with this name. Born into an Italian, Christian family, my collision with identity originated here. Christianity was never an aspect of my life that I was allowed to choose; rather I was forced into these beliefs. As an evolving and transcending individual I soon found a larger and larger separation between my developing ideologies and those of Christianity. This separation was shamed by my family leaving me to wonder where this opposing view on religion originated from. Upon my reading of The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, I found an explanation for this burning question. Watts states, “Christianity has become incredibly difficult to explain to a modern person,” and this singular statement gave way to a series of revelations within me (Watts, 10). Throughout time there is such an immense and growing disconnect between archaic religions and the ever evolving views of modern society that I find it difficult to connect with a religion that preaches ideologies so far removed from my modern moral standards. It is impossible for me to identify with a religion that still contains justification for the buying and selling of slaves in its holy scripture (Leviticus 25:44-46). On a more personal level, how can an openly bisexual female sit through the service of a religion that proclaims her sexuality to be an abomination (Leviticus 18:22)? Being born into a far more accepting and tolerant generation than that of my parents, many of my views do not align with theirs or those of the religion I was born into, but this does not make my views wrong. Watts helped me understand the origin of my lack of religious identity. I’ve become acutely aware of the fact that my ideologies may never align with those of my family, but I am of a modern generation that they may fail to understand, and I am at peace with that.

With such tight reigns bound by my heavily Christian mother, I led a very sheltered childhood. I lived in a small town resembling the ideal white suburbia; I went to public school; I attended church every Sunday. It is said that within the time spent in high school, an idea of self shall form; but how can one form an identity as part of a society she knows very little about? In this way I identify very closely with the prisoners in Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave.” Just as the prisoners knew little of the world around them with the exception of the shadows cast on the cave wall in front of them, I knew little of the world around me with the exception of the information presented before me in my average American schooling (Plato). I learned only that of the history the school chose for me to learn; I read only the literature of which the school wished for me to read; I knew only of the environment that the school wished for me to be in. Fast forward four years to graduation and the beginning of college: I moved from a small, mainly white town to Hofstra, a school often referred to as “the diversity university.” Coming to Hofstra, the equivalent of breaking free from the cave, led me to the same realization as the newly liberated prisoner. The previous “realities” which I had been presented were not real at all; the previous schooling which I participated in painted a picture of the world for me; my previous life was a picture of a place lacking diversity, lacking discrimination and lacking anything more meaningful than the superficial ideals of my small “utopian” town. 


College did not paint any pictures for me; instead, it handed me a reality that I was then allowed to internalize. This permitted me to make an insurmountable amount of discoveries about myself. The reality I now knew was an expanded and fuller understanding of how I, as a single individual, fit into this whole big world. It is following this aspect of my experience in parallel to that of the prisoner that I found conflict. In terms of identifying as this newly freed prisoner, overwhelmed by new ideas and currently in the process of discovering how to know who I am, I do not find part of my identity to be as a teacher or leader in the transcendence of others. I find it difficult to believe that within my experience of intellectual growth and expansion into a new developed identity, I gained the purpose and responsibility to bring my new found ideologies to others. I identify now as more of an enlightened thinker due to my time spent “outside the cave,” but I do not identify as a guide for the unenlightened.

Miraculously while still “in the cave,” I was able to establish a large part of my identity as a bisexual female. Although Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” speaks of her identification as a Chicana in America, I found within it the ability to enlarge my sense of identity. Anzaldua discusses how the people around her shamed her for expressing who she was, a young girl who spoke Spanish and English or perhaps a dialect stuck somewhere in between. She writes about her struggle to find a true identity due to the constant shaming of how she spoke, how she acted, and who she was. At the end of this writing she comes to the realization and proclaims, “I am my language” (Anzaldua). When taken at face value, this essay is viewed as identity in terms of language and culture, but it is much more than that. Gloria enlarges my sense of identity through her acceptance of who she is despite being shamed for her self-expression. Revealing to my family that I am not the perfect daughter they had hoped for, being deeply Christian as previously mentioned, was not a feat so easily accomplished. I lived knowing the most important and influential people in my life were ashamed of a characteristic of my being that is beyond my control. Months of my life were spent internalizing the passive-aggressive, homophobic comments shared at the dinner table; months of my life were spent being unable to bring home the person I chose to be with in fear that she would also have to suffer the venomous hatred that spewed from the mouths of my family. Gloria’s unfaltering sense of pride in which she owns and displays her identity without the fear of judgment served as an inspiration to my sexual identity. Bisexuality used to be a part of my identity I tucked away from the eyes of the world with an inherent fear of judgement and disdain from those who opposed who I am. Bisexuality is now an aspect of my identity that will not be concealed but instead displayed proudly as a badge of merit. 

My sexual identity, religious identity and my intellectual identity are all parts that compose my individual identity as a whole. Preceding my readings of Whitman, that was the only self that I knew. Whitman presents an idea that both challenges and enlarges my identity as an individual all together. He suggests that there is in fact no self. The idea of existing as entities completely independent of one another is not the way of existence, “for every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you” (Whitman, 1). The idea of a universal self has both enlightening and challenging aspects. It is difficult to believe or understand that the individual I am growing into and identity that I am developing is found in all those around me. There are aspects of myself others do not comprehend, let alone possess. Every human cannot relate to what it feels like to be bisexual in a family of strict Christians; every human cannot reach the level of consciousness achieved through the intellectual growth I have spent this time achieving. However, this idea that we are all of a universal consciousness and there is no separation between me and the person next to me also enlarges my identity. A white, college-aged female may not be capable of understanding the plight of a middle-aged African-American man, but there are aspects of the struggles we face that are universal. All humans originated from the same human condition. All humans are composed of the same biological and chemical components. All humans are formed from the same Earth-given nourishment. All humans are a part of the same genome. All humans are brought into this world bound to die at some point. Humans are almost all biologically identical, formed from the same Earth, living in the same universe. Aspects of the lives of diverse communities of humans will never be identical but there is an overlying connection that unites us all. The ability to look at the human beings neighboring us through a light that is not so focused around “me vs. them” opens the door to many aspects of a newly forming identity in which a small portion of all of humanity can be found.

A full eighteen years of my life I had spent wandering around the Earth lacking a true idea of who Kelsey Joann Picciano really was. Finally having enough of constantly molding to the social standards and views set by those around me, I turned to these various works as medicine to a damaged self-image. My readings of Watts, Plato and Anzaldua allowed me to solidify my newly forming identity as both an individual and also in accordance with the world around me. I no longer find myself with a void sitting inside of me; I no longer solely feel my physical being; I feel my existence as my own unique individual. Now returning to my previous statement, what does it mean to be? In my search for answers pertaining to my identity as a human being, I stumbled upon a quote that speaks volumes about the limitless nature of individuality and identity. "To be human? What is anything without a definition? To define is to measure. To measure is to limit” (Oliech).

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." (n.d.): n. pag. Http://isites.harvard.edu/. Web.

Oliech, Daniel. "What It Means to Be Truly Human." Https://www.linkedin.com. N.p.,

Socrates. Plato THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE (n.d.): n. pag. Https://web.stanford.edu. Web.

Watts, Allan. "The Book: The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are." Http://terebess.hu/. N.p.,

Whitman, Walt. "Section 1." Song of Myself. N.p.: n.p., n.d.

George Wallace's Swimming through Water, poetry book & CD with David Amram: A Conversation

George Wallace

Swimming through Water, George Wallace, poetry, La Finestra, Trento, Italy, 406 pages, 2002; spoken word CD with musician David Amram in back cover sleeve

 

 

JONATHAN PENTON: I love the variety on this CD. It's one of those discs with a consistent, unifying set of themes, but huge deviances from track to track. There's a wide variety of instrumentation, and the flute on "When I Am Old," a track featuring George Wallace reading the poem of David Ignatow, is particularly haunting, striking the right balance between kind and creepy that's essential for such a theme. This track is in contrast, stylistically, to the jazziness of "Contest of the Electric Flowercars," but there's still a steady stream of sensibility and aesthetics that gives the disc a clear focus.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: One reason for the range is George Wallace's command of his craft. It's all there in his warm baritone voice, his musician's sense of time, his surrealist leaps and his emphatic understatements. Like Willie Nelson, you can hear the nicks and crannies of his whole life in his phrasing: he's not hiding anything. He's also quite adept at employing an opening phrase or line that repeats throughout the poem. Sure, that's a trope that many in the Whitman lineage use, but he "makes it new" and with startling results.

 

The other big reason it's steady and clear yet varied in instrumentation is David Amram on piano, tabla and various flutes. He's been around a few blocks as a player, conductor and composer, investigating and synthesizing musical traditions long before the term World Beat came into coinage. I've seen him play flutes from North Africa to Japan and there's no mood he can't evoke. Like so many jazz folks of his generation, he knows how not to get in the way of the words, whether sung or spoken. That's de rigueur for those old cats who came up in big bands that accommodated vocalists for part of the set. Amram started his career on French horn---a majestic, warm and round sound---so you know he knows when to hold and when to fold 'em. He's got that haunting Navajo-like flute in the poem you mentioned for David Ignatow: spooky, arresting, long-toned. Wallace’s last line---"I will ask for red roses, in remembrance of the first loss"---locates the balance you’re talking about between fear of aging and joy of celebrating. Once again, the poem really finds its home in the melody. It's much more moving than when simply read to oneself. Along this line, check out the sixth track, "The Wave," because Amram really plays inside this haunted beauty of a poem. It's only a minute and a half long, but it's magical proof of how music and lyric are one fabric, just like ol' Ez told us. Moreover, it's up to the task of revealing how "great wardrobes of light drape the ancients, dark mending waters after all."

 

David Amram

JONATHAN PENTON: It's real clear that Amram gets what Wallace is trying to do with the poetry. The poems and instrumentation are deeply integrated and highly complimentary; the themes and issues are congruent throughout. And what themes and issues! These are extremely original poems, tackling the quotidian from the most remarkable directions. Consider the opening lines of the second track: "God makes a note to himself / things to permit to occur without interruption." Or that track you mentioned, "The Wave," with its brilliant and moody imagery. What we've got here is a true affection for life in all its parameters, revealed by an absolutely expert pen, delighting in its own words and what those words signify. This is an extremely sophisticated and beautiful book, and Amram gives it additional power in a way that only someone who really "gets it" can.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: You've nailed it and this is the toughest thing of all, that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. No question, that second track is a gem and truly written in heaven. Here are some typical lines and notice how smartly he spaces his syllables while Amram plays a thoughtful, spacious chord progression on piano underneath: "a bird in flight a child in prayer oceanspray windsong/ the progress of the sun through day" or "old men shaking hands with each other / death cheated vengeance denied / hope luck second chances / good advice freely offered / headlights on an empty road / the reappearance of fireflies in july" and that killer last line that would make a James Wright fan smile: "any soldier who desires to lay down his weapon / and turn his face in the direction of home." By the way, did you know that Wallace, a former reporter for The Long Islander, a newspaper founded by Walt Whitman in 1839, is also a former poet laureate of Suffolk County? So that last line really packs a political punch which, to my ear is as inseparable as the music of Amram to the poetry.

 

For a favorite track, I vote for the title piece, the first track on the CD, "Swimming Through Water," which, by the way, is also the title of Wallace's poetry collection, published by La Finestra Press of Italy, in English and with Italian translations by Anny Ballardini who also interviews Wallace at the back of the book. Amram has great reach on the piano and in this song he reminds me of Edgar Meyer-Yo Yo Ma-Mark O'Connor's collaborative evocation of Appalachia. Amram blends these pianistic kernels of Kentucky and the Mississippi River a la the Gershwin of "Porgy and Bess" and mixes in a quiet, Impressionist reach of "Rhapsody in Blue." He sprinkles these clusters to great effect in and around Wallace's well timed and repeating phrase, "some folks." The piano water-dances through rain pools, and if you check the track against the printed version you will see how much improvising with the text Wallace is doing as well. It hangs so smartly together and it's got lyrical wings!



Geroge Wallace at the Huntington Barn

 

This conversation originally appeared in a slightly different form in Unlikely Stories.

Mikhail Horowitz's The Blues of the Birth reviewed by Kirpal Gordon

The Blues of the Birth, Mikhail Horowitz with special guests, 9 tracks, Euphoria Jazz at www.SundazedMusic.com, produced by Artie Traum & Bob Irwin;
The Opus of Everything in Nothing Flat, Mikhail Horowitz, Red Hill/CVS Outloud Books, ISBN 10: 1879969025 / ISBN 13: 9781879969025

 

Mikhail Horowitz celebrates many traditions musical, literary & theatrical to give voice to a new synthesis on the CD The Blues of the Birth. Right out of the gate, he’s blowing badass madcap internally rhymed bebop lines a capella accompanied by the chomp chomp sounds he utters in “Swingin’ Cicadas.” It’s nutball madhouse & hysterical histrionics, a Lord Buckley tribute of the hip-trippiest order, & through the filter of a Brooklyn-voiced story teller with uncanny skills at dialect, it becomes a Taoist parable about knowing when “it’s time to climb.” Performed live, the audience’s various outbursts of laughter become part of the tale, even more so on the title track.

Opening with a quote of “Round Midnight,” Joe Giardullo’s tenor sax wails bluesy & Horowitz jumps in & establishes a pliant lyrical form: “This is the gorgeous primordial moan of T-Bone Sphinx, a daddy who thinks he’s older than the ringed enigma of the universal magilla,” & we’re off on a ten minute ride way wilder than what came before. After six choruses, Giardullo comes back in wobbling & screeching, & Horowitz flips into a repeating blues form measure that Giardullo punctuates with riffs & squawks. Here are the first two of his thirty-six He-blew choruses: “He blew the yin-yang wormhole whole shebang Big Bang scatter this matter elsewhere blues. He blew the bored head Lord said Let there be light & get outta my sight before I smite thee a boo-boo blues.”

This is the all out/blues-of-the-birth shout, the wild bore/cry-for-more, full tilt/can’t wilt, certifiable Bug City boogie woogie of a Borscht Belt Papa Legba: flingin’ down the ludicrous with stingin’ motherwit, slingin’ Yiddishlekeit parody spoof with mouthful spews of hilarious hoo-doo, wingin’ double masked truth with double meaning mimicry goof & kingin’ a buffoon & an oracle wisdom in one. Peter Schickele writes, “He does with language what Jim Carrey does with his face. His stuff is not only funny, it’s bracingly pungent, surprising, ear-opening & is guaranteed to cleanse your mind of cobwebs.”

 

Mikhail Horowitz & Gilles Malkine

However, in the third track, “Litany of the Dead,” Horowitz takes us beyond the laughter. With his longtime partner-in-musical-time (check their two CDs: Live, Jive, & Over 45; Poor, On Tour, & Over 54) Gilles Malkine playing quarter notes on the bass, Horowitz opens, his voice pitched between song & spoken lament: “There ain’t no squeeze for Vito Genovese; ain’t no luscious number for Patrice Lumbumba.” For all his elegaic roll call on woe, the mood never goes morbid; rather, like his far-flung, outrageous but inevitable rhymes, he hits the note of death's certainty with flair & savoir-faire.

Sandwiched between two sweet one-minute solo shots (“Art” & “Death”) is “Bird Lives.” It opens like an Impressionist rapture of Spring with Horowitz on sopranino recorder dueting with Jim Finn on flute. As in track three, he turns & returns to the metaphor of jazz as multi-specied & pre-historic: “Yeah, this was back in the Mesozoic, the Mezz Mezzrow-zoic, to be specific. In those days the cats were not cats; they were dinosaurs: black, brown, beige and albino dino.” Comparing their chops with the abundant volcanos (“all of those dinos could blow & what they blew was antique bebop on a spikey array of archaic cornets, ancient basses, antideluvian tubas, proto-trombones and pre-lapsarian saxophones”), Horowitz narrates, interspersed with Finn’s gorgeous flute solos, the allegory of Archie “Bird” Archaeopteryx, a dying dino whose music lives on in all the twittering birds around us.

“Subway” features Joe Giardullo on talking drum dueting with Horowitz; together they create the eerie sensation of riding an uptown express. Although it’s a relatively short track at three and half minutes, it is one of the strongest; beat for syllable, drum & word really do wed into a unity. “CIA,” on the other hand, suggests yet another of his literary roots: the sunnier side of dada & surrealism. “Constantly incognito, almost certainly igniting a covert ion-activating cancer….”

The last track, “Apocalypse Wow,” the most musical & the longest at fifteen minutes, has the whole band blowing: David Arner on piano, Giardullo on bass clarinet & Finn on tenor. “It was 3 a.m. at the Café Afterlife,” Horowitz begins & weaves a theory about time's simultaneity before revealing that “this is the final send-off of T-Bone Sphinx.” Sax & bass clarinet begin to “answer back” & soon he & the horns are trading eights. A funeral parade ensues, Horowitz narrates over the horns, the piano comps, then the band suddenly lays out as he announces Mocha Java Man & a line-up of players that go all the way back to ancient Egypt & forward to Einstein with the band’s inspired interludes of Sun Ra & New Orleans second line before “the universe blipped & turned itself inside out & bopside down & old solitary T-Bone with meditative delicacy began to improvise once more from a blank score.”

Three of the tracks---“Litany of the Dead,” “Blues of the Birth,” “Apocalypse Wow”---are poems taken from The Opus of Everything in Nothing Flat published by Red Hill/CVS Outloud Books. By comparing the text to the recorded performance, one can better understand the CD’s stunning achievement for Horowitz brings all his gifts of wit, nuance & double entendre as well as what Jud Cost calls “the Gatling-gun word association free fall of Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Ken Nordine, Bob Dylan, Jean Shepherd or Allen Ginsberg.”

Finally, there’s his delivery. His inflection wails wacko wonders a la the great vocalese singers & scatters: Eddie Jefferson, Jon Hendrix, Betty Carter, Mark Murphy, Babs Gonzalez, Ella Fitzgerald. He’s the unforgotten American radio sound in the background, sober as the voice of Carl Sagan but haunted with the ghost of vaudeville. He’s scary nutty like Jonathan Winters or George Carlin & psychedelic like the Firesign Theatre. He treats poetry as recitation, a schtick, a combination of what the jailhouse calls a toast (a rhyming, rolling yarn & tribute) with the multi-voiced impact of a Robin Williams routine. He’s the great-great-great grandson of Walt Whitman & he’s representing the hipster code as deeply dug in compassion & expressive of a sense of wonder, but most primarily, as Jack DeJohnette writes, “His poetry struts, swings, sings, laughs and cries the improvisational harmolodic multidimensional spirit we call jazz.” He brings us ancient to the future, backward-forward to a time most timeless when lyric & note aren’t separate & laughter & insight run together in one continuum of recognition.

 

 

Crawling Like a Snail by Yunfei Feng

 

In the TV series, “The Good Wife,” Alicia Florrick, the main actress, said she needed to deposit a large amount of money in her account, probably $750,000, because her two kids were going to college. A famous lawyer in that series, Alicia won the state’s attorney election in the latest episode and she said the salary of state’s attorney cannot cover her children’s college tuition. Although these words are just the actor’s lines, I believe they reflect the serious challenge that college students and their families are facing.

 

With the sky-rocketing increase in tuition and dormitory fees nowadays, college graduates routinely begin their working lives deep in debt. They are burdened by these overwhelming debts from the beginning of college life, having no time to take a rest. A survey shows that the total amount for a student without scholarship in college is $60,000 per year, even higher than the average salary of a male who has an undergraduate diploma in America. There is no denying that the tuition is a devastating debt for a middle class family. Furthermore, American families usually have more than one child. Despite more and more females choosing to work in order to enrich their lives and fulfill their dreams, there is a large portion of women who become housewives when they have a baby or get pregnant. If the whole family is only supported financially by the male parent, it is obviously not enough when their children go to college.

 

Here is a description in the article “The Price of Admission” written by Thomas Frank:

In March 2012, when the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, was taking questions at a town-hall meeting in Mahoning Valley, Ohio, a high school senior rose to explain that he was on his way to college, but that he worried about the cost. In response, Romney gave one of his patented lessons in managerial smugness. The solution was to “recognize that college is expensive” but that competition “works.” No “government money” would be forthcoming under his regime. And so it was up to the student-consumer himself to “shop around,” compare the goods offered up in the freewheeling marketplace of educational choice, and make the best decision he could.

 

When I read this paragraph, I felt angry. The government’s attitude should be changed. The aim of government is to provide benefits and services for its residents. Education should be the basic right for a child. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be educated and absorb various types of knowledge. If a government cannot provide these chances for its citizens, it is not a competent one. When a student is faced with the choice of which university he wants to apply for, he should not focus on money, at least not as the priority. He should choose a place where he can get help to achieve his dream and broaden his horizon. He should choose a place where he can grow up and become a better man. He should choose a place where he learns how to hold the world in his heart and pursue the truth instead of studying hard in order to repay loans.

 

University life is a period for transformation. Students learn professional knowledge and identify the direction they want their careers to run. They arm themselves with all the information they can get and experiment constantly with new ways to pursue their dreams. They are just like the sun at 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning, warm and lively. They gather strength and prepare everything they will need for future success in college. Being deeply in arrears is not a position which stimulates their will to fight. On the contrary, it is the snail’s shell which can drive students crazy. College students carry heavy debt in the exact same way that snails carry heavy shells and crawl slowly. They will be afraid of the amount of the capital which needs to be invested into their project and deny their original thoughts in order to save some money. They will be timid to dream something big because they cannot afford it. They may give up their favorite major and choose another one because they need to find a well-paid job to repay the debt after graduation. They struggle helplessly in a hard life.

Money isn’t everything. However, it is indeed the key to all doors. Without money, you can do nothing. When all your savings are dispossessed by the “crazy” tuition, you have no wings for dreams. Although there are many favorable policies related to student loans, they cannot solve the basic problem. The tuition has grown too rapidly in recent years. Student loans only delay the problem from erupting for a while. It cannot solve the problem ultimately. If the tuition keeps growing, the problem will be fuelled and is going to be worse.

 

In my opinion, government should be responsible for the “horrible” tuition. Universities are not merchandise put on the shelves waiting to be bought in the market. Governors should not request students to choose their universities from the position of being consumers. I don’t agree with what Mr. Romney said in the meeting: “Consumers shop around, they compare and contrast, and they get the best deal they can, reassured all the while by their awareness that competition works. Just don’t come whining to the government for help” (Frank). Applying to universities is one of the most important decisions in a student’s life. It is just like the process of choosing a spouse. The “personality” and “ability” should be considered first, not the costs. That is the reason why we need a government---to protect its citizens and guarantee their basic human rights. Relevant policy should be legislated to control the growing cost of tuition according to the inflation and the economy. Combined with the GDP and the average income in each state, government should recommend corresponding tuition for each university and stipulate that the floating between the actual tuition and the recommend one cannot excess a certain range.

 

Besides, the Departments of Education and Treasury should cooperate and supervise the flow of funds in each university. Colleges should report their expenditure at the end of each year to these departments and make a detailed budget at the beginning of next year. If there is something unreasonable, government can take measures to rectify the situation. Schools should control expenditure and publish important decisions and donations regularly to the students and parents. If a college wants to make a pivotal assessment like building a stadium or other infrastructure which will cost a lot of money, they should convene the students’ representatives, analyze the advantages and disadvantages for them, ask for their opinions, let them be a part of the decision committee and vote for the proposal. Students should be informed where their money is going and become part of the decision-making process.

 

Frank also notes that twenty years ago, the Department of Justice charged the Ivy League universities and MIT with conspiring to restrict financial-aid awards, and thus to fix prices. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh even called the schools a “collegiate cartel.” The Ivies settled immediately after the suit was filed in 1991, signing a consent decree that forbade them to collude over tuition, salary, or financial-aid awards, but I should mention that the decree expired in 2001. Looking back from twenty years on, it’s clear that the Ivy League schools did little to keep their promise. Some believe it may have driven costs even higher. All these famous universities regard their prestige as a selling point based on the common sense that we live in a “knowledge economy” and the diploma from prestigious school is the credential towards a successful career and happy life. As rational people, we should realize that the college degree and the brand of world-famous universities is not the conclusive element of our lives. What really matter is who we are. The abilities and qualities we own are the genuine gems, not the degree. The diploma cannot represent anything and is only a souvenir of the most beautiful days in our lives. It isn’t a pledge which will win success. You need to win your success by yourself. From this point, there is no reason for us to pay so much for the prestige. The training system and the teachers in these famous schools may be one of the keys to cultivate the best students, leaders and millionaires, but the most critical factor is your intelligence, hard-working manner and creativity. If we can change our mind and pay more attention on the improvement of our own abilities instead of pursuing the prestige of school in order to satisfy our vanity, the tendency of tuition increasing may be slowed down even restrained.

 

The unreasonable tuition is a nightmare for many students and their families, and it should be controlled immediately. Only in this way, can more young people get the chance to be educated and allow the country to become better and wealthier.

 

Works Cited

Frank, Thomas. “The Price of Admission” Harper's Magazine. June 2012. Web.

 

Yunfei Feng is now a senior student in China. Upon receiving her bachelor's degree in July, 2016, she will work as a junior data analytics specialist in Shanghai for Opera Solutions Corporation. Two years later, she hopes to apply for a master’s program in the USA.

It's All Good: A John Sinclair Reader reviewed by Kirpal Gordon

 

It’s All Good: A John Sinclair Reader by John Sinclair, published by Headpress, www.headpress.com, 298 pages / ISBN: 9781900486682; with free music-spoken word CD download 

 

Don’t sweat the tautology in the title---It’s All Good: A John Sinclair Reader is a transcendent, philosophically tough-minded journey forged from one writer’s mating the New American Poetics with America’s blues-jazz tradition and its rock-soul-funk-punk permutations. Published by Headpress (their motto: the gospel according to unpopular culture) the collection celebrates Sinclair’s 44 years on the culture scene with 22 of his poems, 22 of his essays and the ultimate lagniappe: thirteen works in performance with a variety of bands and great musicians from a free CD download. 

 

For those disheartened by the plethora of Sixties-inspired memoirs that are but advertisements for oneself, It’s All Good is powerful medicine. Sinclair (born 1941) is a force of nature, a high-minded, principled Midwestern with the hipster code of a viper like Mezz Mezzrow in one brain’s hemisphere and the political agenda of a leftie like Saul Alinsky in the other. How’s this for chutzpah: while locked up for handing a couple of joints to a narc who infiltrated his poetry class, Sinclair does a lot of his time in the hole for his efforts in organizing black prisoners to advocate for better education programs. Such racial solidarity may seem inconceivable in the slammers of the twenty-first century, but check Sinclair’s roots in “I Wanna Testify”: “I came to Detroit in 1964 as a refugee from white American society attracted to this teeming center of African American culture … the birthplace of the Nation of Islam and the hotbed of bebop, the place where you could hear jazz all night long and cop weed or pills whenever you wanted to. The plight of black Americans was known to me from the street level, as I had the honor of spending a number of my formative years in Flint, Michigan, under the direct tutelage of some of the fastest young hipsters on the set, intense young men and women who held Malcolm X and Miles Davis in equal esteem and who introduced me to the wonders of daily marijuana use as a means for dealing more creatively with the terrors of white America” (p 42).

 

A tale of such enthusiasms needs historical context, and Headpress has wisely arranged the material chronologically which allows Sinclair’s various responses to unfold their own logic. The first essay opens with John Lennon’s 1971 lyrics---“It ain’t fair, John Sinclair / In the stir for breathing air” (p 12) and Sinclair’s release from prison after serving twenty-eight months on a ten year sentence, thanks to the Michigan state legislature re-classifying pot possession as a misdemeanor only days before Lennon’s sold-out concert brought attention to his cause. While keeping eye and ear on the Big(ger) Picture, Sinclair candidly reports, looks back, updates and muses upon his various tenures as a community organizer, arts advocate, cofounder of the White Panther (later Rainbow People’s) Party, manager of the rock band MC5, director of the Detroit Jazz Center, producer of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Fest, editor of altie newspapers, reviewer of music, well loved disc jockey at WWOZ in New Orleans and presently an ex-pat in Amsterdam. 

 

That’s a lot of hats to wear to a revolution, and Sinclair has equal but separate gifts in prose as well as in verse. So kudos to Headpress for wisely taking a triple-headed approach: the matching poems enrich the essays and vice versa, and the spoken-word-with-music selections are so real-deal-alive as oral expression that they add another meaning to the written verse. For example, these lines in “everything happens to me” may read maudlin on the page---“race traitor & renegade, / beatnik, / dope fiend, / poet provocateur, / living from hand to mouth / & euro to euro / sleeping on the couches / & extra beds of my friends, / a man without a country”(p 105)---but with Jeff Grand and the Motor City Blues Scholars hunkered into a groove underneath him, Sinclair’s gravel voice bends those vowels so ironically, one can’t tell if, like double-masked Papa Legba greeting you at the crossroads, he’s laughing or crying. That’s Sinclair’s true identity: he’s a signifyin’ bluesman, not a village explainer.    

 

Unmetered, mostly unrhymed (free) verse does not lend itself easily to the American songbook, but Sinclair, with his mind on Monk and Muddy---half in bop and its touch of Sunday, half in the Delta and its electric children---has timing to spare. On “Monk’s Dream,” he emits such joy, wit and wisdom in a manner all-of-a-piece with his accompanists Luis Resto, piano, and Paul Nowitzki, bass. On the upbeat blues, “Fattening Frogs for Snakes,” his variable American foot fits like an old brown shoe as he references Sonny Boy Williamson’s lyric to tell the story of the music coming up from out of the Mississippi fields and juke joints traveling north upriver from spooky acoustic to an even spookier electric sound.  With Rockin’ Jake’s encyclopedic harmonica work shading the same unfolding and Kirk Joseph’s sousaphone playing the bass line, the band underscores Sinclair’s lament: “nothing would be returned / to the people of the Delta / … this is what the blues is all about--- / ‘fattening frogs for snakes’ / & watching the mother fucking snakes / slither off with the very thing you have made.” 

 

He produces such oracular momentum and incantatory brilliance---he “sounds” like William Blake draws or the Book of Jeremiah reads---that on “brilliant corners,” with just a single repeating guitar phrase from Mark Ritsema, he held this listener in rapt attention through six pages of verse celebrating the bebop experiments in Harlem meeting the writers around Columbia, especially a “hip football player / & would-be sportswriter / from Lowell … so well known at minton’s / … that the musicians on the set / named a song after him, ‘keruoac.’”  Weaving in the lives and works of Ginsberg, Cassady and Burroughs, Sinclair concludes, “& a road out of the stasis / began to open up / & out / in front us--- / & we followed it,” repeating the last line in a haunting shout. Nothing against the cottage industry that has grown up around these writers, but their actual story is rooted in the music and no one swings that tale harder than Sinclair. Ditto “We Just Change the Beat.” Hearing the song as it changes tempo (genre) is worth a thousand pages of musical essay.

 

As for Sinclair’s essays on music, they are documents of respectful brevity, especially his eye to Iggy Pop, his “audience” with Irma Thomas, his love of the MC5 and his manifesto in “Getting out from Under.” Moreover, the range of the musical material the essays cover in It’s All Good, the quality of his poetry and his remarkable gifts as a performer reveal his immense value to us. This griot is a national treasure, a vital link in a literary-musical lineage from Walt Whitman, through the Harlem Renaissance, into Bebop and the Beat Generation, deep in the Black Arts movement and beyond as our jazz trad weds World Music. If this isn't America's greatest cultural export, then what is?  

 

 

 

An earlier version of this appreciation appeard in print at American Book Review.