Fear of a Black Brother Part I

The hat was kind of big and blocky to begin with. It didn’t quite fit the way I wanted it to. One of life’s many sad truths: nothing ever really fits the way you want it to. Freshly dyed black with a strange rope-like thing across the top of the rim just at the base of where the rim and the head part meet. If memory serves it was fastened in the back with the typical plastic hole-and-peg fastening system. That satisfying snap that would occur after just the right amount of resistance was fought with. Over the years I would find myself repeating that little action to no lesser or greater gratification. No fitted cap was this. In fact I’m almost certain I’ve never owned a fitted baseball cap at any time in my life. A silhouette of a person, arms folded, with what appears to be a hat on their head, and two intersecting lines crossing the silhouette was emblazoned upon the front of this particular hat. Underneath this design were the words Public Enemy.

I knew even then how important Public Enemy was to African-American culture. I felt I was in on the ground floor of something huge that white America couldn’t understand yet. I understood it. I “got” it. I was certain that in ten years time I would have moved to some big urban center and be right in the midst of “it.” This music not only spoke to me it prophesied my future. It saw right inside of me and tapped into something I didn’t know was there. I “got it” even if I didn’t fully know what I “got.” I could walk with a swagger befitting someone much more confident than I and I could shrug off the naysayers with a simple head-nod.

My very own brother was one of those naysayers. Four years older than my-self and not a little embarrassed that his baby brother was pretending to “be black,” he was visibly bothered about my wearing this hat in public. If only my twelve year-old mind could’ve summoned the right combination of words to explain to him how wrong he was to be concerned. This thing I was doing was so much more important than getting good grades or going to church or, finally, looking like a fucking surfer! I was to stand in defiance to all of that. I’d walk around that multi-million dollar mall in stark contrast to the un-cool, racist, rich white assholes who have no fucking clue which way is up! I was going to wear my Public Enemy hat and that was that.

“YO! TAKE OFF THAT HAT!” The words came echoing across that obscenely bright and clean shopping mall and were sharp in my head yet muffled and distant to my ears. My immediate instinct was to do what that ever so demanding voice told me to, but I had to stand my ground. My brother was both pleased and further embarrassed for obvious reasons. I shot a glance in the direction of the voice; not in an attempt to defend my-self with a defiant look but more to confirm my suspicions that I really didn’t want confirmed. I recognized the familiar “yo” and the deep tone and the rhythmic cadence. I was right. The voice belonged to an African-American. “Fuck. What now? Experiment over? I can’t support black music in public anymore? And worse – does this mean my appreciation of said music is itself not only unappreciated but rather unwanted?” I asked myself.

I pushed the question out of my mind no sooner than it took shape. I was confident that the event was an anomaly and borne of ignorance. “If only they knew I had not just Fear of a Black Planet but both It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Yo! Bum Rush the Show.” I realized I needed to prove myself through at least one of the five elements of hip-hop in order to be taken seriously. I started with Graffiti Art.

Swirling, interlocking, and bulbous letters that cast a painted shadow behind them. Filled in with abstract shapes and bright colors. Names like PHASE and ZEPHYR and SKEME burned into my retina. It was all I could see everywhere. I would have to come up with a cool name and a style all my own. RANX 1 is what I came up with.

While you’re laughing let me explain the etymology of that name. Around 1990 or so, already falling deep into the cult of hip-hop, I was exposed one Sunday afternoon to “dancehall” reggae. I was well aware of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and even Steel Pulse but I had no idea what was about to fall on my impressionable ears. A local radio station was apparently, unbeknownst to me, airing nearly three hours worth of modern and vintage reggae every Sunday afternoon. This particular Sunday I happen to not be at church. Instead of shifting in uncomfortable brown and green pews with my head swathed in the droning prose of a familiar pastor whose voice I had learned to tune out lest I be riddled with guilt I was shifting in the uncomfortable white and off-white pew of a friend’s father’s boat. Speeding along the Newport coast somewhere this large and imposing man’s oldest son tuned the radio to 103.1 FM. The alien sounds of Eek-A-Mouse came warbling over the air waves. This was followed by a steady stream of unfamiliar yet immediately recognizable music. Recognizable as the thing I had been waiting all my life to hear. The next few years I would become slightly obsessed with “dancehall” reggae. I would find that among some of the most famous dancehall “toasters” of that time was an artist who went by the name Shabba Ranks. I would find later that this was a popular surname of dancehall reggae artists. There was a Nardo Ranks, a Mackie Ranks, a Junior Ranks (I think), a Louie Rankin, a Cutty Ranks, and so on. I took it upon myself to be the hopefully first stateside graffiti artist to ply his trade under the nom de plume Ranx One.

...to be continued

Meditation on This

Although this blog is normally dedicated to my own trifling rambles, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let my old friend, super producer and Hollywood big-shot, Harold Heschel Jr., write a guest editorial here when he asked. The two of us have been working on a couple of scripts of mine and he’s been gracious enough to impart some of his wisdom on me, mostly unsolicited but welcomed nonetheless. In his later years Harold has taken to reading many of the ancient philosophers for guidance and comfort. He was detailing his thoughts on some of these works recently when I told him maybe he should write some reviews and post them online somewhere. He asked about my blog. I of course had to accept. He’s a dear friend, a wise council, and he can have me killed if he wants. So, without further ado, here’s Wordsfromawordjockey’s first book review.

MEDITATIONS*

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. This guy was emperor of Rome for nearly twenty years. In a hotly contested manuscript, dated December 18th 180 A.D., Aurelius is quoted as saying, in reference to his tenure as Emperor, “It’s not bad work, if you can get it!” Although that manuscript is thought by most historians to be “merely the pathetic, incoherent, and possibly schizophrenic, ramblings of a fraudulent conman and shortsighted opportunist” (Hitchens), Aurelius’ more legitimate and most enduring work, Meditations, is - in this blogger’s humble opinion - not much better.

Take a little peak into the “mind” of this ancient stoic and you’ll find nothing more than the inane musings of a 2nd Century, New Age guru. This guy could give both Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle a chariot race for their shekels.

Aurelius begins his enigmatic tome in an impossibly backward fashion by thanking every damned Roman he’s ever come in contact with and the list sounds like a page out of the celebrity child name book. Thanks go out to Verus, Diognetus, Rusticus, Appollonius and even a guy named Fronto. I guess none of those cats taught him anything about literary decorum because, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re supposed to put those thanks in more concise, less wind-baggy, one or two (at the most) pages prior to the preface or the introduction. Whatever. When in Rome, eh?

The rest of this impossibly dreary book is full of such confusing, dime-store philosophical musings as:

“This you must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders you from always doing and saying the things that conform to the nature of which you are a part.”

What the fuck are you talking about, Marc? I think it would make some sense if you meant hole rather than whole.

And here’s some advice for anybody who doesn’t want to make it anywhere in this world:

“Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite…”

Easy for a guy to say after he’s already been emperor for a decade. Look, if I had taken that advice twenty years ago, sure, maybe some tears would have been saved and some careers would still be intact and, okay, in all honesty a couple of lives would have been saved but I’d be penniless and writing this review in a (shutter) public library while I wait for the soup kitchen lines to dwindle.

Now we all know that even a broken clock is right twice a day – so even this sun dial was right a few times.

“Return to your sober senses and call yourself back; and when you have roused yourself from sleep and perceived that they were only dreams that troubled you, now in your waking hours look at these (the things about you) as you did look at those (the dreams).”

This little passage has helped me immeasurably considering my affliction of chronic night terrors.

And then there’s this one, which I’ve found myself chanting, mantra-like, whenever I happen to be briefly imprisoned in the proletariat hell that is airports or gas stations. And it goes thusly,

“Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will anger do you? He has such a mouth, ha has armpits: it is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things – but the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. Well then, and you, too, have reason: by your rational faculty stir up his rational faculty; show him his error, admonish him. For if he listens, you will cure him, and there is no need of anger, the stuff of tragic actors and whores.”

Good stuff, although in my experience, tragic actors and whores are the same thing.

Like I said, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, although flawed beyond toleration, is not without its moments of wisdom, and I’d like to end this review with a quote from the end of Book IX that I hope those of you closest to me will take to heart,

“When you are offended with any man’s shameless conduct, immediately ask yourself. Is it possible then, that shameless men should not be in the world? It is not possible. Do not, then, require what is impossible. For this man also is one of those shameless men who must of necessity be in the world.”

- Harold Heschel Jr.


* This review is of the Dover Thrift Edition of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; the George Long translation. If you don't like it you can fuck off.