Step Step Side to Side
I talked to Lauren day before yesterday about dancing at the inauguration. Ta-Nehisi Coates and his readers think it might happen.
Step in the Name of Love (Remix) is track 13 on Chocolate Factory.
(in case the other blogs need a friend)
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Outta My Hookup
I don't truly love the NBA until the playoffs start, but I love the players I love year round.
Chauncey Billups, Steve Nash, and Ray Allen have been favorites for a while. Shaq has always made me laugh, but he'll soon retire and graduate to my Hall of Fame Team.* Kevin Garnett won me over last year. And LeBron James just impressed me once again...
Don't pump fake me now.
Thanks to TNC for the recommendation.
*Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman, John Starks, Danny Ainge, Hakeem Olajuwon, Vlade Divac, Muggsy Bogues, John Salley, and probably a few more that I can't remember right now. Unusual group, I realize. Funny the athletes that attract you as a little kid.
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Blues, Poetry, Temperature, and Guilt
Every Friday, Ta-Nehisi Coates posts a poem and asks his readers for their thoughts.
Today's is Middle Passage by Robert Hayden. A white man writing about slave ships. From white perspectives. Sympathetic, it seems, to everyone involved.
"10 April 1800--
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."
It made me think of Benito Cereno, of course. But it also made me think of Taj Mahal's blues version of Langston Hughes's Crossing.
Strange the contrast between the fever in the Hayden poem and the chill in Hughes.
It yanks me back into Melville:
Whether this haggardness had aught to do with criminality could not be determined; since, as intense heat and cold, though unlike, produce like sensations, so innocence and guilt, when, through causal association with mental pain, stamping any visible impress, use one seal - a hacked one.
Crossing is track 6 on An Evening of Acoustic Music.
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The Cowboys
A bit of a silly conversation started on Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog the other day when he mentioned the fact that he's a Dallas Cowboys fan.
I commented, asking for an explanation, and, today, he responded, sparking a beauty of a comment thread.
After trying to imagine growing up without lovable home teams and reading TNC's explanation, I respect his love for the Cowboys. I don't like it. But I'm ok with it. I think it's real, and I think real love for a team is something to celebrate.
Which reminds me of something one of my cousins said as we wandered around the ballpark before going in for Game 4 of the World Series.
Everyone was wearing red and chanting and singing for the Phils, and one of us noted the fact that it couldn't possibly be like it was in Philly in Tampa Bay. Fans were probably way into it, but some of those fans were Phils fans, and that makes for a totally different dynamic. There's tension there. Home vs. Away. Red vs. Blue.
In Philly there wasn't tension. We were all Home, all Red, all Good Guys. No Bad Guys would have come close to that pregame party.
And then came the observation.
We shouldn't be celebrating our exclusivity. We should love the fact that there's no anger in the pregame crowd, but we should welcome Tampa Bay fans. We should be excited to have rival fans in the house. We should party together before the game. We should make fun of each other during the game. And we should party together again after the game.
We should be able to celebrate our losses as wins for other fans.
And that's a pretty powerful thought. Mature. Idealistic. Symbolic of way more than professional sports. And powerful.
Not an easy one to put into practice, however. Certainly not in Philadelphia. And certainly not when it pertains to the Dallas Cowboys. But worth keeping in mind regardless.
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Ta-Nehisi on Will Smith, Sort Of
Posts like this one remind me why I love this medium.
The drift of it. The quickness. The glimpse of real live thought. Unexpected ideas pouring from forgotten or undiscovered connections. I need to keep that in mind on A More Perfect Market. I try too hard over there.Comments [0]
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