Our Michael

Come Together From “Moonwalker”

To my dear 13 readers,

Yesterday I listened to the original Beatles version of this song as sped along the freeway through LA in a rental car. This strange city, that I’m starting to love after just a two week trip to see friends and loved ones, has me wondering about what happens to people when they get caught up in what my driving companion called “the fame contract.” Sure, there’s the way that you belong to your record label or publisher or manager. But somehow the more important set of people that you belong to is your audience, you fans.

Michael belonged to all of us, even when we were mad at him for being too strange. He belonged to black people even when his skin got too white. He belonged to us, but we were mad at him for changing his body and living in ways that confused us, because his body belonged to us and his life was ours to judge. We need black superheroes who can survive abuse and pain more than we need anything else in the whole world, so how dare our Michael betray us by belonging to his own internal strangeness?

Let me be plain my dear readers. I’m not sure that I forgive him. I’m no better than anyone else. I need black superheroes to love themselves in the ways that I imagine blackness should be loved. I need queer bodies to be unquestionably above board in their desires. At least the ones that the rest of the world sees.

I think that’s why I love this video so much. Our Michael is unflinching in his beauty and voracity and talent and blackness and queerness and sexiness here. I’ve seen this video a million times. As a kid I’d watch it over and over in my living room, recognizing how he took something back from those white boys from England and made it his. He’s giving me exactly what I need, and I will always love him for it.

Yours Truly,

Naima

 

Dear 13 Readers,

You should know that I was never one of those fainting, crying crazed girls with the big buttons and the t-shirts. My sister was a teenager when they came out, and she kept a watchful eye on my fashion choices. I wasn’t allowed to peg my jeans either. It didn’t bother me really. I had been reared on Motown, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson… Not to mention all of the live music I got to hear played by my father in university concert halls in Connecticut and late nights at jazz clubs in New York. I knew they were silly, but it was nice to have something in common with the gaggle of blond girls who only just barely started to tolerate my presence in the 4th grade after a two years of ceaseless teasing. Those girls had the buttons, bought the albums, knew the words to all the songs, got their parents to take them to concerts. I would roll my eyes on the inside whenever the songs would come on the radio, but I’d sing along anyway. I knew they were silly, but the part of me that liked a good outsider story thought it was sort of cool that they were white boys who’d got their big break at the Apollo Theater.

You should also know that The New Kids on The Block were from a town that wasn’t too far from me. They were Boston kids, and the kind who reminded me of the sweet chubby Sicilian boys next door with the dark hair and blue eyes that I had a crush on. Those boys next door would wash their grandfather’s Cadillac every weekend and invite me over to swim in their above ground pool that had a grape arbor hanging over it.  Sometimes my dad would disappear into their basement with their dad and emerge hours later triumphant with a jar of marinara. Those nice chubby boys would sometimes walk me to the bus stop or around the corner to the store for the candies that we all had to hide from the well trained eyes of our mothers.

You should also know that one time those blond girls came over to my house, and I remember them giggling about the boys next door. Look at their greasy hair, they said. I think one of them got held back, at public school, they said. And they giggled some more before we went inside to listen to the New Kids some more.

Yours Truly,

Naima

 

Rock and Roll Nigger, Live 1979 in Berlin

Dear 11 Readers,

I want you to know that there is something really perfect about this song. I play it loud in my car on the way to work, and I sing along at the top of my longs. I roll the windows down and I breathe in damp cold air and warm up my voice for a day of shouting out against everything and nothing. The song is almost perfect with its insistent chords and pissed off lyrics and hopelessly romantic bridge. It is tough and delicate all at the same time.

I want you to know, dear readers, that I really adore this song. See, that’s the thing about it.

Yours Truly,

Naima

 

PS

Read the comments on the video at your peril. You have been warned.

 

I want to like Patti Smith. Really I do.

My Dearest 10 Readers,

I have forsaken you. It has been over a year since my last post. This blog has gone the way of many that have come before it. Big dreams about the radical potential and ease of online presence crash and burn when faced with the realities of having a full time job or just being too unmotivated to write. Also there’s this whole Tumblr thing that seems to be all the rage these days. I’m behind the curve apparently.

I’m not going to make any grand promises to myself or anyone else about my new-found commitment to the craft of pithy web presence. I will, however, attempt, in earnest, to share some of what’s been running through my head over the last 14 months or so.

The biggest “project” that I’ve taken on has been my move to a small town in the pacific northwest called Olympia, WA. This town is the home of The Evergreen State College, where I am a member of the faculty. It is also the state capitol, the entry-way to the Olympic National Forest, the owner of a fantastic food co-op… And so very much rain. Rain, rain rain. Ugh. I think someone told me that Kurt Cobain wrote that last album up the street from where I live. And then there was all those pissed off white girls screeching…

Ok, that’s not especially earnest. Dammit! On the one hand, this place leaves me more earnest than ever, with its slowed down pace, its plethora of small farmers grinning me down at the market on the weekends, and its total willingness to embrace all sorts of unapologetically weird people into its fold. On the other hand, I am damp for 9 months out of the year and the lack of black people is almost as alarming as the volume of shapeless fleece outerwear. I am often at a loss for nice things to say, even when I’m feeling perfectly happy. Ambivalence is turning out to be a major theme in my interactions.

This was the culmination of one particularly difficult week last spring.

Naima, bashful, with Flyer

It is actually a whole lot more earnest than it seems. I even made a potential set list of my favorite songs by the artists’ pictured, and printed 50 flyers to post around town. They are all sitting in my little office though. I never got up the nerve to put them up. I suppose the rain just kept me from wanting to do much more than make soup and be cranky.

That, my dear 10 Readers, is the start of an honest assessment of my life in Olympia. There’s more to come, I hope.

Yours Truly,

Naima

A Long Overdue Love Letter

Dear Philadelphia,

I have been trying to come up with a way to write you this letter for a long time, and it has been hard. We were together for 6 years, and I loved you. But towards the end, Philadelphia, things got rough, and I had to leave. But I didn’t want to write you this letter while I was still angry with you. I didn’t want to bad mouth you in public, and I wanted you to know that I don’t blame you for it. You’ve had a hard lot in life, but I respect you because you are resilient, strong, warm and loving to many. I am so lucky to have known you. There is a lot about you to love, and there is a lot that I miss.

So this a love letter from me, written to you from the kitchen table of my very new and different life in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.

Thank you Philadelphia.

You gave me a beautiful, huge cheap apartment to live in.

You gave me film.

You gave me many crazed and debaucherous nights with some of the funnest, silliest, queerest, wildest people I know.

You gave me confidence in my body, my brown skin, my big hair and my big mouth.

You gave me loud, tough women.

You gave me sweet, tender men.

You gave me more brown and yellow and black people than I’ve ever seen altogether on this side of the Atlantic.

You gave me music in the streets all the time everywhere.

You gave me rolling hills running through the middle of a big city.

You gave me black cowboys riding through North Philly.

You gave me water ice, custard, greasy pizza, Dominican take-out, Amish baked goods, funnel cake, Stewart’s Root Beer and Fink’s Hoagies.

You gave me the Atlantic Ocean warm enough to fall asleep in.

You gave me my first love.

You gave me some of the best friends I’ve ever had.

You radicalized me.

You taught me how to stand up for myself.

You showed me how to stick to my guns.

You made me fight for my health.

You forced me to understand what I need and want out of the world.

I am so grateful to you Philadelphia, and I’m so glad that you’re there taking care of so many of the world’s toughest, strongest, fiercest people.

Yours very truly,

Naima

Organizational Strategies of a Chronic Book Collector

Dear 10 readers,

I’m writing this entry from the sanctity of my very own little 8×8 home office in Olympia, WA. We arrived at our house last Tuesday but the majority of our stuff didn’t get here until the following Monday morning. We’ve spent the last week acquiring some much-needed new things while waiting (frustrated) for the rest of our things. I must admit that while I complained about having such a small fraction of my wardrobe to choose from, there was something sort of nice about having so little stuff around the house. Now that the house is full of unopened boxes, I’m sort of wishing that I’d been more diligent about abandoning some of my things.

Have I really carried my high school yearbooks around with me this long? But wait, there’s only Sophmore and Senior years. Huh? What happened to the other two?

Which brings me to the central subject of this post.

Books.

I’ve started to slowly unpack my books, and as I do so I am struck with the age-old question of “how do I organize them?” I’ve seen many techniques in action. Alphabetical by author and/or title is a popular choice, and certainly practical if you’re a real collector. But I’ve always given up about half way through that ardous process. Organization by color is certainly aesthetically pleasing, but I’m not sure that I’d have any more patience for that endeavor than I would for the alphabetical route. I sometimes end up with loose schemes that are a combination of genre, size, and theme, but somehow anthologies always mess things up: Most of my favorite ones are invested in consciously confounding genre, and the themes and subjects end up going all over the place.

Should I resort to the dewey decimal system? I don’t think my collection warrents that level of detail, and lets not forget that I am too impatient for such things. So what then? Well, as I start negotiating my shelf real estate, I start to notice some trends that have followed me from house to house over the past 10 years. All of my Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler books tend to find themselves together in the box, and thus on the shelf. Kathy Acker tends to be nearby. Ok, those all make some sense. I could make them quasi alphabetical (Acker, Butler, Delaney), but when I put randomly threw Pussy King of the Pirates on the shelf just now I happened to put it next to Blubber by Judy Blume. There was a strange resonance, and I wondered if there could be more esoteric approaches to my schema.

Acker + Blume = Books by and/or about anxious white women. Or perhaps books that made me anxious about white women after reading them.

————

I could organize them by the time period in my life that they represent for me, or by their read/not read status:

Books I haven’t read since high school.

Books I’ve read over and over every year since high school.

Books I bought in high school but never read.

————–

I did once think about organizing my entire book collection into two large sections. READ and NOT READ. But for some reason that depresses me. I think that’s because my speed and intensity as a reader has diminished significantly over the past several years, even though I collect books at the same rate as I did as a voraciously book hungry child and teenager. I’m not sure what happened. I occasionally blame the internet or cable tv or going to film school. All of these contemporary media driven realities have enabled a short attention span in me (as in many of us), but I’ve been a consummate multi-tasker for as long as I can remember. I used to read books during commercial breaks while eating dinner.

Books have always been a huge part of my life, and as I build this little shrine to my literacy, I’m happy to at least have them here to remind me of my strange habits and particularities as a reader and thinker. Did you know that as a kid I used to make my Dad invent research projects for me so that I could create bibliographies? For fun. This is what I did for fun. I still find bibliography making fun, which is why I teach college for a living. But somehow the intense desire to just read read read has slipped a bit beyond my grasp, and I’m not sure why.

Perhaps I can focus this round of book organization on becoming reacquainted with the patience required to organize them in a way that is pleasing, exciting, and reminds me why they are so special to me.

What else, dear readers, is a chronic book collector to do?

Yours Truly,

Naima

And then there were Pasties

World's Biggest Ball of Twine, Darwin, MN

Dear 10 readers,

I have neglected this blog for many months as the complex and exhausting process of moving my entire life from one coast to another has rendered my almost completely without creative faculties. However, all is not lost.

As most of you know, (since 1/2 of you are members of my immediate family) I somehow managed to convinced my long term love, Kristina, to move with my from Philadelphia, PA to Olympia, WA. While we know that Olympia has many amazing things to offer (including gainful employment!), there are a variety of things that make us nervous about smallish town life. As lifelong East Coast girls, and great lovers of city life, this move will be something of a culture shock. But we’re doing it. Earnestly.

Our moving/storage containers were labeled appropriately. Philadelphia, PA

And in the spirit of ritual and transition, we decided to mark our passage across the great United States of America by commemorating some of its natural and cultural wonders in the best way that utilizes our creative gifts and highlights our love for random factoids and kitsch.

Presenting “Pasties Across the Statsies!”

The idea came to me in a flash when I was trying to figure out a way to convince Kristina to drive across country instead of flying. I knew that if we had a project and task to make the hours in the car more bearable, she might go for it. I also knew that she would enjoy an opportunity to show off her crafting and pasty making skills. Oh yeah, and her tits.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, IN

We’ve chosen a series of locations along our route, but we’re also leaving ourselves time and space to make changes and additions to our plan.

————-

We’ve learned a whole lot on this trip so far. For one thing, we’ve learned that it is really easy to get partially naked in public places without people noticing. We’ve also learned that when you go on a road trip in the middle of the summer and during a recession, there is lots and lots of road work and detours. And most importantly we learned that fiber-filled road snacks are the secret to road trip success.

The World's Biggest Ball of Twine, Darwin, MN

I Win! (And So Can You?)

To my very dear 7 readers,

I have some amazing news.

I have scored my dream job at the Evergreen State College in Olympia WA. I’ll be teaching experimental and non-fiction film and video at a fantastic little public liberal arts college. It’s an interdisciplinary college so that means that I get to teach across methodologies and with faculty in a variety of fields. The people are great, the campus is beautiful, and the opportunities for growth are fantastic. Like I said, my dream job. So dreamy in fact that I still periodically check the job boards because I haven’t totally convinced myself that it’s real.

I’m moving far away from everything I’ve ever known here on the dirty old East Coast, which is such an adventure for me in so many ways. I am happy, scared, thrilled, nervous, amazed and generally impressed with myself and the universe for this amazing opportunity.

I’m inspired to write a little something about this whole issue of getting ones foot in the academia door based on an interesting post written by this illustrious Julie Levin Russo last year when she landed her first academic job. She muses brilliantly on the strange culture industry that is academia and the challenges faced by young/new scholars. Her conclusions are astutely based in an analysis of how class privilege dictates ones relative ability to “make it” in academia. I couldn’t agree more with her conclusions, and I recommend you read her thoughts on this and more over at her blog.

I am, of course, in a slightly different category as an artist navigating academia. In some ways us artists have an advantage, at least in terms of our mindset. As an artist, I’ve long since given up on the idea that what I produce is anything but a commodity to be traded in one of various cultural marketplaces. We all do it, one way or another. We go on tour, we get commissions, we audition for commercials, we get design gigs on the side, we teach, we beg, we borrow, we steal. Depending on our educations, privileges, and inclinations, some of us end up in Academia. I am one such person.

Some background: I grew up around educators and academics and artists, so my inclination towards this field was somewhat predisposed. There was a moment in college when I thought I’d rebel and become a corporate lawyer or get an MBA, but I figured I’d rather not actually be able to pay off my student loans, so I stuck with art. My father is an artist and scholar working in academia, so its really kind of the family business.

There is a somewhat long and convoluted story that accounts for how I ended up getting an MFA in Film in 2008, which I won’t bother to tell right now. But I did it, and then I needed to become employed. Before and during graduate school, I had a variety of jobs, in fields savory and unsavory that paid my bills and kept me in good stories to make art about. After graduate school I decided to really “go for it” and focused all of my energy on doing that wonderfully absurd hustle known as: Being an Adjunct.

And all of the stories you’ve heard about it are true. I’ve worked at 4 different colleges and high school media programs in the last 2 years, often all at the same time, and still made less than I did with one job as an Administrative Assistant before graduate school. I had no job security, no health benefits, almost no formal career development or supervisory support, and little to no collegiality. More than anything, I had a general sense that I was a disposable commodity in the minds of the administration(s) of the school(s) I worked for. As in, if I walked away angrily, I could be easily replaced. And now that I’m leaving this life behind, I will be, by people who are just as (and often more so) qualified and hard working.

Also, I loved it. I happen to love teaching. I happen to think it is fulfilling, exciting, and fun. It’s a creative job with lots of flexibility and autonomy. It’s a job that connects you to people while they are exploring ideas and dreams, which is dreamy. I came to appreciate the fact that my life changed all the time. With a total lack of job security came new people, new places, and new challenges all the time. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Now, my ability to find joy in this crazy lifestyle was facilitated largely by the stability provided by living with my consistently employed partner of five years in a house with a tiny mortgage. She works for a company that provides domestic partner benefits, and she had faith (thanks love!) in my ability to eventually come out with a better job. (Class privileges come in many many forms, yes they do.) So, I built my CV, both in teaching and in my art practice. I worked on projects new and old, updated my website, kept up my contacts with other artists, did activist work with organizations that I cared about, got to spend time with my family, and managed to live a pretty good life. I had time to go on the academic job market 2 years in a row, applying to around 40 jobs that resulted in 7 phone interviews and 5 campus interviews. There were close calls, near misses, bad fits, and tragic outcomes. My anxiety was in constant overdrive, and my therapist worked hard for her sliding scale fee. And then about 3 weeks ago I got a phone call over dinner with a fellow hard working artist. We were actually in the midst of talking about how badly I wanted this job at Evergreen. And then I got it. And now everything changes.

I never ever have to do the adjunct hustle again. If I’m savvy and committed in this job, I have the opportunity to stay there for a long time which means continual fulfilling work in a place that will support my creativity and teaching ability. I get to take summers off to work on my own art practice (and personal well being.) I get to be one of the “chosen few.” There are lots of artists who have no desire to be in academia, and even more who will never have access to its comforts regardless of their personal inclinations. I’m not going to attempt any deep contemplation on the deeply complex class issues that impact artists more broadly in this little missive.  I feel more equipped to consider the fact that even for those of us who have the privilege and desire to commit ourselves to the false meritocracy that is academia, eyes wide open and willing to do it just for the sake of creativity, inquiry and exploration… Even for us, this system is fundamentally flawed. I’m not saying that I didn’t work hard or that I don’t deserve to be where I am. I didn’t lie, cheat, or steal to get this job. But this isn’t a simple equation of smarts + experience + dedication + education + talent = job. Like every other person trying to survive capitalism I had to find the right way to sell the commodity that is ME, and enter into an industry that is barely willing to acknowledge the fact that it is, in fact, an industry!

As cultural producers and service providers in colleges and universities, academics are workers (of a peculiar  and highly privileged sort, no doubt, but workers nonetheless.), and it behooves us to continually evaluate our labor, evaluate our relationships to management, strengthen our relationships to other workers within our industry and in all industries, and work hard to remind ourselves and everyone around us of the structural inequities that impact our ability to work with dignity and fairness. I’m writing this as a reminder to myself that I have “moved up in the world,” but that I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking “well, that’s just how it’s done.” In addition to the lie of meritocracy, academics of all stripes, and perhaps artists in particular, participate in the lie that it’s ok to let junior scholars and artists put up with this mess because we had to put up with it! Graduate school, post-graduate school, and junior scholar status is like a 10 year long hazing ritual for the overly educated. What are the implications for academia if it continues on in this way? What does it mean for undergraduates, future scholars, and the production of new knowledge and art in academia if only the strongest (and most class privileged) can survive? Does it have to be this way?

So my dear 7 readers, what are the alternatives? I am here as an artist in academia because I actually do believe in art and education for its own sake. I believe that it is important and worthwhile, and I believe that it is worth investing my time, energy and smarts in, despite all its flaws. Maybe the 8 of us can come up some ideas on how to make it better, for everyone.

Yours Truly,

Naima

What happened to all the food?

My dear 6 readers (I just found out today that there’s another one, and in Olympia Washington of all places! Awesome!),

I’ve gotten a bit behind with my food posting, and while I’d like to blame my camera (sorta true) I actually just have to blame my total lack of discipline (more true) I fully intend on getting back on the bandwagon, especially since I’ve been totally inspired by some interesting fat positive media out there. One thing that everyone in the world, and especially the 6 of you, should know about, is Fat Dinosty. Erin Remick is a complete and total genius living in Portland, OR. She makes various kinds of media, but I’m especially in love with this amazingly cute and funny project about cute fat animals trying to live and love outside of ridiculous body fascism.

I also recently received the first issue of Eat Me: Queer Food Porn. It is really funny, smart and hot. While I have made occasionally cynical comments on the resurgence of ‘zines as a form (I recognize that they have contemporary relevance, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s some sort of strange early 90s nostalgia going on, which I’m generally suspicious of), they do suit my increasingly short attention span. Also, this one has recipes. Yum.

Ok, this has made me resolve to get back into it. I’ll fight the good fight! I will photograph my food!

Yours Most Truly

Naima

Light to Dark

This morning (ok afternoon) I made my favorite breakfast of poached eggs, toast and sliced pink grapefruit. This is a meal that always feels robust and nurturing. There are food groups. The day can be started correctly. So even though this was a somewhat lazy day, it still felt like a substantial day.

I felt so inspired by my breakfast in fact, that I decided to go for a swim. Now, my dear three readers, contrary to popular belief, writing a blog about ones art and being an adjunct at a state university doesn’t actually pay all that well. So instead of swimming in the indoor pool in my mansion, I downloaded a free 2 week pass to a place called Aquahab and Aquatic Fitness Center. While there I swam some laps in the Olympic sized pool (heated to 85 thanks very much), and then soaked in the gigantic whirlpool for a while. I showered and dried myself off in the sauna listening to middle aged ladies discuss their compulsions for chocolate, gambling and booze. I felt right at home.

When I got back to my house, I decided to bake my world famous rosemary-olive oil-balsamic-salt-pepper chicken legs. However, about 5 minutes after I put the chicken in the oven, all the lights on my block went out. My stove is gas, but the pilots are electric. I couldn’t figure a way to light my stove, so instead of baked chicken, I had non-battered fried chicken. It was difficult to figure out when the chicken was done since I had all of 5 candles to light the entire dining room and kitchen. But it made for a nice picture.

Yours Truly

Naima