My Obama moment

For me the Obama moment happened November 5th, the day after the day. I came across a black man from Ghana in a mostly white upscale restaurant in Boston. He was giddy like so many of us, but what sticks with me is his constant refrains that fine day: “what a country, what a country!" His tone was not what a country you have, it was what a country – we have. All at once I realized (and I said as much to him) that the United States belongs not to me as an “American” but to the world as a beacon. This gentleman reminded me that America is in truth an idea…an idea that copyright lawyers cannot co-opt and minuteman militiamen cannot put borders around. And its this idea (not the man) that engenders hope in this “moment” for Ghanaians and the rest, the expression of which is not new…it only shines anew.

What a country, what a country.

bloggers are writers too

I wrote this on the ROS site:

My own little quibble for the sake of quibbling is with Moody’s defense of novels vs. blogging. For the most part bloggers are not would-be novelists, although a would-be novelist may very be a blogger. Blogging is value-added to expression. Blogging is more about the writer than the reader. It’s about standing tall on the hill and howling. Novels are about leaning your back on the soft part of the bark, with only a sliver of shade and the brim of your hat coming between you and that horizon…or with time.
Cuz – time - is the dividing line between the two.
Blogging is about running along side the train, trying to keep in step (even as the trains become faster) and yelling random urgent earnest thoughts to the occupants inside - just in case you never see them again. Novels are about Thoreau hearing the train rumble from afar – through the rustling of old chestnuts and the plopping of hungry fish – and longing for some connection with those departing passengers.

http://www.radioopensource.org/in-the-obama-moment-rick-moody-2/

MLK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8


This is only a minute long and you MUST watch this. He knows he is a dead man walking and he is gunned down the next day. But follow his eyes and you will see that these are not words coming from the flesh...you are witnessing a spirit incarnate. And the next day that spirit spreads out from Memphis and permeates our collective consciousness. Tell me you didn't feel it on Tuesday.

3. Barack Obama: “He will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black.” “He will change race relations.”

I find this view very narrow. Barack Obama’s transformative effect is because he’s black - and it doesn’t matter. The whole of Mr. Obama’s movement is the idea that we are transcending categories…that is the change. To say that youth are enthused with this candidate because they want to eradicate the race problem – severely sells the youth short. By and large the youth have already moved on…pass the race problem. They are enthused with Barack because Barack is enthused, and in the words of my man Emerson:

“Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson -Man the Reformer

IN RESPONSE:
# thomas Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

brother nother from another mother,

I was just passing through, I happened to glance at your post, especially the last point. you wrote,

““He will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black.” I find this view very narrow. Barack Obama’s transformative effect is because he’s black - and it doesn’t matter. The whole of Mr. Obama’s movement is the idea that we are transcending categories…that is the change.”

I certainly share your general view that the transformation that Obama represents transcends the issue of race but nevertheless, brother O will have a transformative effect simply because he’s black. This sentiment comes from a young person (25 yrs) from my narrow perch in Fairburn, GA outside the perimeter of Atlanta.

With all due respect there is no issue as deeply painful for black folk and wounding for white folk (see Wendell Berry’s The Hidden Wound) as race. It more than simply a ‘problem’ that can simply be ‘passed’ by the young or any other people by a transcendence of categories.

Obama does transcend categories out of both expediency and idealism but I would imagine he is also well aware of the transformative effect he, as a black man, would have simply as the resident-n-chief in the White House.

The larger question for me in this issue of race in the national narrative as a southern white pastor in a largely black middle class suburban area is how does this race present an opportunity, if obama is elected, to not merely see it as a transcendence of categories on the way to just all getting along, but an opportunity to be truthful in our discourse about the brokenness in the narrative which must be acknowledged, confronted, and reconciled if the common good which looms radiantly on our horizon towards which we all yearn is to have any integrity at all. To do less than this would be to dawdle in illusion when the reality could be so much more beautiful.

IN RESPONSE TO THOMAS:

Ahh brother Thomas, I’m more than pleased to get your view from that sunny perch in GA. Yes you’ve set me straight to an extent. Obama will have a transformative effect on race. My reactionary reaction was a fear that the acknowledging this point could take away from the content of his credentials – in the same way that affirmative action is disparaged (even when the person was not a product of affirmative action).

The example I hold up is Jackie Robinson. He had a transformative effect on the game but would anyone say he wasn’t qualified? In fact, he was the best player on the field. And that’s what it took to finally break the color line…the best player by far. It could never have been an average black baseball player breaking that barrier. And it’s the same with brother O, he is sooo good that even the prejudiced in our society are forced to stand back…stand back in the way the white Civil War troops stood back as the 54th marched first into Fort Wagner.

You write: “but an opportunity to be truthful in our discourse about the brokenness in the narrative which must be acknowledged, confronted, and reconciled if the common good which looms radiantly on our horizon towards which we all yearn is to have any integrity at all.”

Thank you for the beautiful sentiment, Thomas. With every individual water cooler conversation struck up about brother O, we get closer to that elusive summit where your horizon of common good will stretch out and envelope us – even the most disillusioned of us.

“To do less than this would be to dawdle in illusion when the reality could be so much more beautiful.”
-thomas

“the unities of Truth and of Right are not broken by the disguise. There need never be any confusion in these. In a crowded life of many parts and performers, on a stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute Nature.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson from “Illusions.”
http://www.emersoncentral.com/illusions.htm

It warmer in the inside.

Chris says at the end: “Talk back about your own style of looking at art.”

I spontaneously attended the Madonna concert the other night. A friend offered an extra free ticket an hour before the show. My calculation was: Straight guys don’t attend Madonna concerts (at least they don’t brag about it) vs. Madonna is an iconic figure, she was my first crush, and she kicks ass.

So the show got going and so did my body. I couldn’t have stopped dancing and moving my body for anything – and we were way up in the balcony. I bring this episode up because at one point during the show I looked around and gasped at how many motionless bodies surrounded me, staring awe like at Madonna. I was sad for them, they were missing out on her true art – bring’n the dance…the party…the swing.

I was reminded of this when John Maeda spoke of the passive nature of looking at things.

People can be so reluctant to engage. But art is a two-way street.

The greatest architecture is not great because it’s pretty, it’s great when you walk, work, live, or pray IN it. The way the sun is directed in like a vital piece of furniture, or the way the stairs fantastically wiggle up, or the way that the hallways force people to run into each other.

Yet, the architecture tours still pass by with camera-toting people, outside looking in – outside looking in.

That famous Obama poster

When I experience the Obama poster the first thing I see is a smile. It’s very subtle, but it’s a self-assured smile – can you picture a Stalin smile? I also see cool – because if Obams is anything, he is cool - did you catch the cool way he sat on the stool during the town hall debate? This poster could be a close up of that.

Of course he’s looking up and to his left.

But what I find most interesting is the color scheme. Half red and half blue – I get it, red and blue states. The red is not satire though, it’s sincere, and it’s meant to convey that he has some Ronald Reagan in him – see the stark red tie.

The blue though is the most interesting. The blue on his face is nuanced, it’s in different shades – just like Obama himself.

Empire

Unfortunately Christopher Lydon was right. He has explored the theme of empire – and it’s demise – for some time now, to the chagrin of many – “why you try’n to rock the boat, man.”

Turns out he wasn’t trying to rock it, he was just duly reporting on the gaping hole of gushing water he witnessed with his keen eye.

Our country will now pick a new captain, and the question is, will it be one who pushes on full-steam ahead, with the notion that our ship wields the brightest beacon and fiercest vessel…to the very end bye God? Or will it be the captain that acknowledges our leak, who changes course, even (dare I say) asks for help.

Listening to Mr. Bogle decry the speculators, I’m reminded again how much Wall Street has come to resemble Vegas minus the etiquette and the hair gel. The fact is any investor in Wall Street is a speculator/gambler and just like in Vegas some of these guys don’t know their limits (especially when they are playing with house money).

I’m serious here, my contention is that Vegas has come to terms with it’s excess and does not pretend to be something it’s not. I’ve recently been doing some video work at Putnam Investments (I needs the money too, man) and every time I walk into that huge building in the financial district I’m in awe at the monstrosity of bullshit.

We set up the camera as these fund managers in expensive suits spew high-falutin’ financial lingo at the camera. The more complicated they can make it sound the more likely the naïve investor will fork over their money to the “expert.”

One of my many jobs was taking bets for an offshore gambling operation in Jamaica. One of the first things I learned was that the more complicated the bet (i.e. teases, parlays, action reverse/bird cage) the better the odds were for the bookie.

So that’s why Mr. Bogle’s take on the ownership society hit home with me. In the words of that natural investor Thoreau, “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.”

(Although his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson replied: “one ‘Simplify’ would have been sufficient.”)

Anna rocks

“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”
-Frederick Douglass

Anna Deavere Smith is obviously an astute listener, and in my book that automatically makes her worth listening to.

What a wonderful thing, to contemplate grace. The first thing that pops in my head about grace is a lack of a “woe is me” quotient. It’s about starting from the idea that we all suffer…and moving from there, as opposed to having all roads lead to a rational for lamentation.

It’s the wide grin and sweet cackle of a Desmond Tutu; it’s the pink blush of my mom’s cheek when complimented on her new hairdo; it’s the do hoohoo woowoowoo wat…of a Lady Ella scat.

It’s difficult to define the word “grace,” when words have so little to do with it.

“When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
-Chief Aupumut, Mohican. 1725

Exceptionalism?

From Wikipedia:

American exceptionalism (cf. “exceptionalism”) refers to the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations.

I know one way we differ:

Is there another developed nation this close to having a black president? Mandela was president of South Africa but “my friends” the proof is in the pudding, American exceptionalism is real – when it’s not co-opted by the right (like patriotism and the flag has been in the past).

My playful prism is sports analogies. When I think of the great coaches and teams, I think of ones who excel at mid-game adjustments. Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots is renown for this.

So my hope lies in America’s capacity to make the adjustments. Sure we slide down the same slippery slopes as so many nations before us. But we make the necessary adjustments - so as to keep our eyes on the prize.

As they say, It’s not how you fall down, but how you get up, that matters. Mr. Obama makes me want to get the hell up and unite…with gusto!

Shame?

“The only shame is to have none”
-Blaise Pascal

American Exceptionalism, you ask. To me it means that this great nation has come closest to realizing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idea:

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

I apply his idea to jazz and I think of that solo tonal breath, at once oppressed and liberated, stepping out of hardened gut…into sparkling brass…and out to three four. One two three four.

I suspect that many people focus on attaining the last part of Emerson’s line, “the independence of solitude.” But keeping “in the midst of the crowd” is just as important, and it is my humble feeling that that is where we have lost our way. Sure the “crowd” can mean conformity, and that is what I believe the first Americans were liberating themselves from. But! The crowd = community as well. And when we belong to a community (as Bernard Lown so eloquently explained) we serve something bigger than ourselves. When we get too far away from that community it now strikes me that we lose our capacity for shame.

The fact is I know more than one person who has stopped paying their mortgage (while still collecting rent from tenets) comfortably resigned to the fact that they will have bad credit for around five years or so. They have no shame in this. They didn’t even know who they were paying that money to, it’s not a person, it’s a derivative of a derivative…it’s paper, it’s shit. If that 250 grand was from their local bank, from the banker they see at church and their kid’s school, I bet my friends would more reluctant to stop paying their mortgage.

Many of these houses were investments for these people, they were gonna flip them and get a big payday. Just like the Wall Street sleaze that were investing in stocks with money they had freak’n borrowed – BORROWED! From retirement funds of retirees they will never see.

Now the boat rocks.

“And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”
-Oscar Wilde

Where is the bottom, they cry with their pubescent countenance? I chide them from below - first come to terms with shame, and then we’ll take it from there.

http://www.poetry-online.org/wilde_the_ballad_of_reading_goal

Forgiving is liberating

Yesterday I told my mom I forgive her.

I discovered in the last month how vulnerable I can be. I spent a good part of my life judging my mother for the ramifications of her vulnerability (for both of us) in years past.

Not until I was brought to my knees by the manipulation of my own vulnerability (something that I seemed to invite) was I ever able to appreciate what her own trauma must have been.

When you are a willing party to your own destruction, you self-hate, and worst of all, you lose self-esteem.

But my mom's ultimate lesson was to be a survivor, and not just to survive, but to prosper with compassion.

As they say, "it's not how you fall down, but how you get up."

So yesterday I told my mom I understand, I finally have empathy for what she went through...what we went through.

One simple sentence over the phone, and it felt like our relationship changed forever.

Thank you

For all the retort. I use a formal word to represent the fundamental substance all your listening and feed-back provided to me recently. I've always prided myself as a good listener, and the last month I feel like I've been cashing in on some of that compassionate capital.

Sometimes your words ignited a rush of thoughts or emotion that released me from my former constricted attention, and often your tangible availability echoed to me like sounding board, a persistent refrain of calm. But always your words unfolded into an umbrella, one that emboldened me with the initiative to look forward...rolling and riding on a cushion of cheddar, a cheese that resists my hedonistic and clumsy chops, yet all the same, lines my back.

A hug is worth a thousand words.

My friend Allyson and I drove to N.H. to see Senator Obama make his victory/concession speech - I wanted to get a sense of the man outside of that box we call TV. I came away with the realization that this is not a Barack Obama candidacy this is a Barack/Michelle candidacy.

Both Allyson and I were awestruck by the grace and power of Michelle She literally glided across that stage. When Barack came out and stood with his arms raised in unison to ours, Michelle came up to his side and wrapped her arms around his waist as his stayed extended out to us…as if we were connecting to Michelle through the body of Barack. All of us unified in that moment of shared intimacy – an all-inclusive intimacy that knows no bounds.

I thought of the words about his wife from his Iowa victory speech:

“I think it makes sense for me to thank the love of my life, the rock of the Obama family, the closer on the campaign trail.”

And I realized he meant every word, he truly loves Michelle (and needs her) and wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a leader that knew how to love a person, not just a people (and thus power)? Can it be any other way?

Beyond that, I came away feeling better about America with the realization that woman are finally moving onto their half of this yin and yang scale. Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton are claiming their rightful role in the self-determination of political life - not just family life.

Which brings me to the website Open Democracy, I was first attracted to the 50.50 initiative because as they write:

“a global debate without the female half of humanity is neither global nor democratic.”

There are a number of great podcasts and articles created by woman. One of the podcasts that stood out for me is “empowering women in the middle east” where a woman named Hibaaq Osman stresses that “dignity” is the key. And at one point she asks what is the difference between the fundamentalist in her country forcing her to wear a headscarf and the French government forbidding her to wear one?

It is striking that with all the rhetoric the Bush administration spouts about bringing Democracy to the Middle East, we never hear them stress gender equality.

Forget the Bushies anyway…the enlightenment of gender equality will not come from rhetoric, only example…and the more Michelle, Elizabeth, and Hillary shine, the more the woman of the middle east will see the light…and follow it.