DISTRACTIONS
-At the dentist the hygenist asked me what I would do if I wasn’t a writer & I said maybe work at a plant store? She was like, “What about a Flight Attendant?”
-The last few weeks have been particularly distracting because as a double-vaxxed individual I can now be social without worrying about killing myself or others.
-So I went to the woods with friends and strangers. We stayed in a giant barn that would put Haunting of Hill House to shame. We thought for sure it would be haunted but it turned out it was just actually just gigantic. There was no ghosts, just 16 people telling a lot of jokes & not paying any attention to the news. I felt like Vanessa Carlton did in the song “White Houses” except without the whole thing about her losing her virginity.
-My friend Dani said she voted me the “best laugh,” which is the highest compliment a lady can ever get.
-I read poems for Dianne Morales at a potluck & realized that my poems are all together too horny & too creepy for the public where children are around.
-I made this playlist that is good for being in the kitchen at a dance party
-Arti & I went to see the Cherry Blossom Trees at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I cried looking up at them because I was thinking about how there are so many people who can’t see them this year because they are dead.
-In Chinatown I realized I was very close to Vanessa’s Dumplings. I ordered a sesame pancake sandwich with white chicken. There’s no indoor seating so I stood outside under the awning, wolfing it down with a mask wrapped under my chin. It started to rain hard & I was safe & dry, happily eating my sandwich. I looked up in between two buildings and noticed that there was vine all along the side of one, and not the other.
- I’m sorry but have you ever seen spring in New York after the worst of the pandemic? I feel like I’ve never seen flowers before or people’s ankles before, their hands. Fuck!
BLACK DIAMOND QUEENS by Maureen Mahon
I spent this entire month finishing this book. THIS ENTIRE MONTH. Okay, overall, I think most non-fiction serves better as a podcast because there were so many times when I was like damn this would really hit harder if I was also chopping up garlic or cleaning my room but maybe I suck. Anywayyyy this book is fantastic & it took me a long long time because I approached it like a student (kind of procrastinating…) Mahon chronicles the Black women of rock & roll from Big Mama Thorton to Betty Davis to Brittany Howard. I really think this book should be required reading for every young musician and should be taught in Freshman-year courses at music schools because the way so many young white funky musicians have come out with cute new hits that are just a little hiccup of what Black women have been doing for for ever is … fuck! Get it together, everybody. It’s no news that white people stole rock & roll from Black folks but the specific way so many stole from Black WOMEN is something that makes you want to throw the book across the room. There’s almost too much to name?? We could start with the way Elvis covered Big Mama Thorton’s “Hound Dog” and never credited her. Or how in 2012, the Broadway Musical about the Shirelle’s, the trio who brought us hits like, “Mama Said,” ended up being all about their white women manager who had affairs in Paris. Or EVEN how Laverne Baker’s “Tweedle-Dee” was covered by some white lady (Laverne hilariously called this the Suzy Cream-Cheese version) and then Laverne Baker went into obscurity, though she remained booked & busy, forever performing at a military base in the Phillipines. She didn’t want to be famous; all she wanted to do was perform. I was moved by that! But also depressed !!!
One of the most compelling parts of the book is this chapter “Negotiating Brown Sugar,” about the women orbiting Mick Jagger (but really, Mick Jagger was orbiting them) around the time he wrote the song. Marsha Hunt! Devon Wilson! Claudia Lennear! Reading about these women & the way they carried themselves, the way they directly influenced & had a hand in creating the rock scene, & thus, ROCK MUSIC, their unabashed SEXUALITY and charisma, the way they LOVED !! It makes you fall in love with them. Give me the biopics !!! Give me the compilation albums !!! The rock operas!!!
Her chapter on Tina Turner was also really interesting because she talks about how Tina didn’t necessarily transcend race or gender, she instead did what she had to do BECAUSE of her race & gender. She also got into rock music by covering songs by white dudes who had been APPROPRIATING SONGS from Black folks. So she re-appropriated the songs & turned them into hits. Isn’t that insane?!!!!
Anyway, this book was a blast but I am looking forward to reading some feeling-feeling fiction. But like literally now I am pumped full of information that I want to yell at everybody about.
FINALLY A POEM
This week’s poem was illustrated by my good friend Sami Martasian. Thanks for reading everybody!