Poems and Fall

some in-class poetry from October 20, 2008— It was a beautiful Fall day, despite this somewhat existentialist tone I’m just starting to write formal poetry even though I’ve been “writing” for a very long time.

dawn is a new day, 

I’ve heard it all before, 

flushed in new ways, shaking trees hopeful for the 

body & heart still sore, 

composed, yet batter soul.

 

Federico Garcia Lorca’s face…

Straining to see/ 

his reality/ what formal bowtie/ that prevents him from wanting to cry

in the midst of his fame and fortune/ for his intellectuality/

ironically causes a perplexed bluriness/

like me/ Trying to see a face of fuzzy fluriness.

My new doctor is Doc Pomus

I have not been able to resonate so closely, emotionally and intellectually, with an author’s text in a very long time. The last time I felt as though I could extract such meaning from a book was the last time I read “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, which I have read four times now. However, after reading Doc Pomus excerpts from his journal in Daniel Halpern and Jeanne Wilmot Carter’s “On Music” I, once again, was able to re-ignite that feeling of satisfaction from a piece of literature that is able to fill an empty void that is constantly calling for words to immensely overflow it with another’s voice. I cannot express how Doc’s words have compared to my life in scarily close ways. But, I can say that it was astoundingly comforting to be reminded that I’m not the only one thinking the thoughts I do, when I do, and how much I do for someone so my age (19)…

“Teach me to feel again/make the world real again/help me find my place/and still give me space” -from “Fragments”

… exactly, Doc Pomus, exactly.

Confusion about Decameron…?

After reading Boccaccio, Decameron, Day VII, Story I I was left extremely perplexed. I understand that the story tried to discuss how subtle and tricky women can be, but I didn’t understand where the story portrayed women’s “unlawful desires”. The language of the story was misleading and convoluted with with words. It was definitely a creative one, but not very clear with intent. However, it was an easy and relaxed reading compared to other “creative” stories I’ve read. I just will never know why the woman in the story REALLY wanted to make her husband, John of Lorraine, think that a Spirit was knocking at the door?

Plat Eyes Take Me Home: A tale of growing up

Rita was told to never go near the yellow house, covered in moss, trash, and smelliness. For most of her short twelve years living on the South Carolina coast, Rita had lived in constant fear of “Plat Eyes”. So hideous, malicious, and tricky was the cultish spirits that have historically haunted the Georgia and South Carolina coastal region. Those tales told by the old hag that lived ‘round the corner, the lady whose hair was always wrapped with white twine, whose garments hung loosely from her emaciated frame, the lonely woman who came out of slavery times and who Rita’s parents told her to stay away from, have haunted Rita’s mind as long as she can remember. However, Rita’s always used this fear to drive her through obstacles the unexpectedly popped up during her adolscence. She placed Plat Eyes evilness above human evilness and saw those cruel and unusually sinister people in her community as those who were possessed by Plat Eyes. The evil spirit came to explain everything “wrong” in her young perspective on life. The beggar she walked by everyday to school must have been mean to his dog or daughter and Plat Eyes is now punishing him.

         During leisure hour at school Rita got pure pleasure from listening to the older kids talk about how close they got to the “ole boo hags” cottage. She would picture in her mind how they must have crawled on the ground inching closer to her porch so not to be bewitched and end up dead and half eaten in a boiling kettle of poisonous brew. Listening to these accounts, whether they were true or not, made Rita want to try to see how close she could get for herself. Of course, she was well aware of how such a bothersome creature could use the magical powers of Platt Eyes to fly through the air and ride children’s skin in their most petrifying nightmares. Rita didn’t care. Rita wanted to push herself to the limits. Most of all, she thought she could save the tortured soul of the boo hag. As she learned in the sacred Methodist Chapel every Sunday, she was a “Child ob Gawd” and she could trust in Him as He trusted her to spread love. So, she convinced herself that all that the witch needed was to be led away from Plat Eyes’ evil grasp and lured toward to tender embrace of Gawd.

         With the bright emergence of the sun, Rita awoke refreshed and completely determined to save the world. Of course, that meant saving the world of the old hag. She rolled out of her cot that she shared with her younger sister Amerie and marched into the quaint kitchen of her family’s one room cabin. Her father, Temante, build the cabin March of 1936 after his missionary slaveholder had freed him as long as he “stayed Christian”. Rita’s family lived in a small community of ex-slaves right on the beach. She loved where she lived, oblivious to the brutal nastiness of the people who forced her life to be how it was. Along with everyone else in her community, Rita walked through many dangers. She had since she was born. She was born into a nest of danger and she was about to encounter another later that day.

         After her typical Saturday breakfast of grits, homemade biscuits and butter, and freshly cultivated oranges, she set off down the beach towards the humble abode of one of Plat Eyes’ minions, also known as the old brute. Trudging through deep white sand she passed the yard entrance and suddenly was caved in by yards of soggy moss. She knew this must have been a sign from Plat Eyes coming to get her, either that or trying to warn her to stay away. Blinded by her determination, she ignored the weepin’ moss and moseyed along to the batten, old white porch steps. Even though her heart was beating so hard and fast it could’ve broken the door down, Rita kept truckin’. She knew that the witch was probably taking various shapes of Plat Eyes and trying to lure her there to rob her of her sanity, but she didn’t really care at that point. There was no one on the porch. Empty and silent the overly-ripened cottage stood. There was smoke coming out of the cylinder, tin “chimney”, so someone must’ve been home, she thought. Rita didn’t sense any movement or sound coming from inside so she crept around the porch to the back. Stealthily creeping on her hands and knees around to the back, she saw that there was indeed a back door and it was wide open. Rita hesitantly looked around her to see if her chances of making it inside were possible. It was. Without thinking she raced to the door and dashed inside to hide under the kitchen table that stood very low to the dirty wooden floor. It was dark and musty. The only light guiding her way was from the hot, luminous sun that beat down on the sand and through the open door.

         Rita heard nothing. She decided to go further into the house now that she made it that far. She wasn’t even thinking of how Plat Eyes could get her there. Rita tip-toed to the first door on the right of the kitchen. She heard what sounded like heavy breathing coming from inside. With her hand shaking as viciously as the witch might attack her at any moment, she held the door handle with as much anticipation as God gave her petite little pre-teen body. Alas, the rusty door made a noisy as a door can when she opened it. But, it didn’t matter because she saw the dear boo hag retired and dead as a dog lying there on the rotten cot.

         Rita had never seen, smelled, heard, or felt death until that very moment. And more than it was frightening for her, it hurt. She stood frozen for ten long minutes as though the witch had caught her red handed. She wasn’t scared anymore. Rita was poignant. The look on the woman’s face broke her heart. She had never seen any human being have such a facial expression of misery, loneliness, and hopeless solitude. Although she felt pain and emptiness she also felt as though she was home.

         At the age of twelve, Rita grew up. Rita grew up as she stared solemnly into the face of the feared dead witch that no one would talk to all her life. Rita understood now Plat Eyes. People have orally twisted the meaning and purpose of Plat Eyes’ “evilness” and curse of bringing death. Rita saw this and realized that these evil spirits were simply spirits of the cycle of life, which ended with death. Someone along the way must have veiled death with the name ‘Plat Eyes’ Rita thought. Why were people so scared of the end? Rita walked calmly out of the small, vacant cottage with her head down, her heart broken, and her mind enriched with thoughts no twelve year old should be dwelling about.

         For the rest of Rita’s life, the lifeless face of the old hag burned in her head as she slowly turned into that old woman children were terrified of. Rita subconsciously became the lonely and isolated outcast she once was so curious about. For her whole life she failed to connect with other humans on any level, all because of that day. Rita grew up at the age of twelve and missed out on all the years that should have made her life worthwhile. She was consumed with the guilt that she could not save the witch after she vowed to herself she could. After Rita found her dead that dreadful, sunny day she yearned for the witch to come down, take her skin, and fly home like she was always told witches would. Everyone’s childhood ends sometime; the witch’s death marked the end of Rita’s childhood.

          

Santogold hand-picked me!

So last Sunday I went to the Santogold concert. You may not know who she is, there is a video below so check her out if you haven’t heard her… she’s fresh off the market, very M.I.A-like, but more vocally. She played with some Alicia Keys wannabe and Mates of State. Mates of State were okay, I’m not really into them, but they do have some heavy hitters. Anyways besides the fact that her performance was incredible and mezmorizing, she picked me, along with about eight other young rugrats, to come up on stage and jam out during her last song. Yeah, I know, ballin’. The lighting was amazingly florescent, with shadows you could not stop following. Long story short, during her last song she says, “I know I shouldn’t do this, but… WHO WANTS TO COME UP ON STAGE AND DANCE WITH ME?!” Of course, everyone was yelling for her to pick them, so she points to a few people in the front row then comes down off stage to the aisle that separated the 21+ from us little tikes. My friend, Lauren, and I were standing right on the aisle, and the spotlight goes on her, which means on us… she comes up to our flailing arms and puts her hand on our shoulders and says “Alright! You ladies!”. Alas, security lets us up onstage and for a whole song, “Creator”, we are just jammin out on stage and it was the best 8 minutes of my life. BUT the best is yet to come… after the song was over she says thank you and I just couldn’t control myself. I ran up and gave her the biggest bear hug and told her she’s wonderful for doing what she does. Then, of course, everyone else tries to get a hug in. But I was high from that experience for a good couple hours after. Incredible. It’s almost hilarious the crazy experiences that pop out of no where in life. You just never know what is going to happen at any moment, or with who, so I say just be prepared for EVERYTHING. toodles.

My Funeral…. I’ll be the one speaking, too

Stephanie Liana Nicole Jones. The best moments of my life understandably define my happiness. Almost all of these moments involved music one way or another. I hear my mother playing Chopin on the piano as I am crawling. I teach my little sister, Monica Louise, my moves to rhythmns of Ace of Base. I sing The Little Mermaid chorus while I gallivant in my backyard in the sweet summertime. I succeed and fail in numerous piano recitals and competitions, attempting to play Burgmueller, Mozart, and Schubert. I perform the most embarrassing dance to Enigma with my best childhood friend, Molly Breen Quinlan. I sing musicals and belt it out with “Summit Singers” at Carnegie Hall, elementary school Christmas and spring musicals, and in my true-blue bathroom. I learn to dribble a soccer ball to the beats of James Brown. I’m seven-years-old and I memorize all the lyrics to “Electric Relaxation” off my dad’s A Tribe Called Quest record. All emotions I feel go the extra-mile as they are enhanced by music. The tune is extending the longing, urge, satisfaction, or whatever I am for two, three, or more minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Smell is not the closest sense tied to memory. For me, it is listening to music. When I hear that ‘one song’ reminding me of that ‘one person’ or that ‘one time’, I recollect my life in the time span of the music. Music is my unwritten diary, my photo album. I put faces to songs. Change in scenery results in my headphones to my ears and many mental Kodak pictures of where I am and whom I’m with, and why? The significant musical artists’ in my life speak to me as if they are delivering a personal, motivational speech. I say significant to mean the artists I can say I know more about than just their name, the ones whose music or song I can listen to again and experience the feeling of my heart swelling as it did the first time I heard their music. Keep going, it gets better, I promise. And it did. It has, they weren’t lying. They, and I say ‘they’ because I cannot pinpoint only one or two artists, have reminded me I am not alone in this suffocating, exhausting world when I am positive no one living even has an inkling of an idea of how I feel towards humanity, the disconnection between people, and just gosh darn life. Good music sticks to the heart, literally, and my heart is glued to my ears. And I must confess a little secret… all the songs you are probably listening to right now have made me cry more than once. Not just because they are beautiful, but also because how, not what, how the music makes me feel will never be able to be expressed with words. And it shouldn’t. That’s why it is what it is to me and I hope you are listening, really listening to what it is trying to tell you. This is the cold hard truth right now, music has made my life, and it has been people that have broken parts, but I know I’ll get by with a little help not from my friends, but from the my music. I can say it’s mine because it really is, and I’m sure you have yours too. The most valuable advice I will leave you with: listen, truly listen, and not with your mind, but with your heart. You’ll understand what I’m talking about much better if you do. I promise.

 

 

 

 

“IF I HAD TO PICK ONLY 13 SONGS TO PLAY AT MY FUNERAL CD”:

 

1.) Twenty Two Fourteen/ The Album Leaf/ In a Safe Place           

2.) Midnight in a Perfect World/ DJ Shadow/ Acid Jazz and Hip Hop

3.) Comptine D’Un Autre: L’Apres Midi/ Yann Tiersen/ Amélie            Soundtrack           

4.) Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now/ The Smiths/ The Best Of The Smiths, Vol.

5.) Reckoner/ Radiohead/ In Rainbows           

6.) Skinny Dip            / Tim DeLaughter/ Thumbsucker (Original Score)           

7.) Hysteria/ Muse/ Absolution           

8.) Mazurka in A minor/ Idil Biret/ The Very Best of Chopin           

9.) Luchini/ Camp Lo/ Best of Camp Lo (Collection)  

10.) Lovely Day/ Bill Withers/ Menagerie           

11.) The Woman With the Tattooed Hands/ Atmosphere/ Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EP’s           

12.) Part of Your World/ Jodi Benson/ Little Mermaid – An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack (Special Edition)           

13.) The Needle & The Damage Done/ Neil Young/ Greatest Hits            

I am Billie Holiday…?

Dear wondrous and mysterious world, 

I believe I am a very timid reincarnation of Miss Billie Holiday. As I am reading Lady Sings the Blues, autobiography of Billie Holiday, written by the Lady herself, as well as William Dufty, I notice page after page I resonate with every aspect of her life… except her singing of course. I say this with the notion that I have other means of musical/artistic expression. I play the piano, paint, draw, and write. So insert those forms into Billie’s singing talent and you’ve got a real duplication!

I have grown up listening to her from my father and his parents, my paternal grandparents. Them, being my Afro-American side of the family, were drawn to her for her representation of Afro-Americans and their struggle during Holiday’s lifetime. That is how she influenced me growing up–a representation of the Black struggle and success. 

However, after the first couple pages of her autobiography, I find I identify with her in many other ways. The way she describes her self-image growing up, her relationship with her family, her perseverance at work and in relationships, and mostly, the way she views humanity. I love love LOVE when she says, “Everyone’s got to be different. You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.” 

I nearly cried when I read that, because I thought I was the only person in the world who had the exact same feeling. Billie Holiday is SUCH an amazingly controversial and inspiring person, not just musical artist, that I vowed to name my daughter Billie, after her. 

I shall read on. I’m only half-way through. But I’ll tell you, I haven’t laughed this hard since I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and that’s a heck of a lotta laughing!

What history that lies behind a name

My first name was my Khun Yai’s (Thai for “grandmother”) doing. “I want them ALL to have Saint names”. Even though ‘Stephanie’ is not even a saint! St. Stephen is where she said she got it. My middle names, Liana and Nicole, are like apples and bananas. I don’t know how Nicole was chosen by my parents, but Liana was is my favorite and done by my Portuguese grandfather. Since I have four other siblings, I’m aware that not all the time and effort was put behind choosing my name… at least that I am know of. I am the middle child, and the only one with two middle names, so in yo face brothers and sister. My first middle name, Liana, fits me best, I think. My last name, Jones, is a slave name. When  a few of my father’s ancestors were forced to this country, they took the name of their slave master, which must have been Jones. I honor the struggle of my last name the most, and it makes me shiver at the thought of how much painful, rich history lies behind ‘Jones’.

Control

Ready, set, read… Maynard Solomon’s excerpt “Beethoven and His Nephew”, that is. The article, taken out of Solomon’s “Beethoven”, about the legendary classical composer, among many other things, is balanced and relevant to his music. However, after reading the tragic story of the conflict surrounding his nephew, you’ll realize that Beethoven was not ‘balanced’ at all.

Solomon’s story of Beethoven and brother’s son, Karl, takes place between the periods from 1815 to 1820. During this time Beethoven wrote his 8^th symphony in F major, Op. 93, and this article reveals a fascinating musicological thesis behind this piece, as well as the rest of his music.

            The tragic tale reveals a whole new world of the connection between music and psychology, the psychoanalysis of a composer’s musical creativity, and how the trauma of childhood can directly inhibit creative genius.

            In Beethoven’s early period of life, known to most as ‘childhood’, he was dealing with an alcoholic, abusive father, the death of his mother when he was only sixteen-years-old, and taking care of this two brothers. It is clear that playing a nurturing mother figure to his siblings feebly forced him to grow up quick. In 1792 his Vienna career took flight sooner than he maybe could have mentally and emotionally prepared for. In a nutshell, Beethoven had an awful childhood, if you might say he had one at all.

            During the middle period of his life from about 1808 to 1815, Beethoven began the battle for custody of his brother Casper Carl’s son after Carl passed away of tuberculosis in 1815. At the start of this all, he was crowned a Vienna hero. His reputation only grew from that point on, piling on expectation, pressure, and more creative energy. The loss of his hearing also occurred around 1802.

            The middle period of Beethoven’s life undeniably foreshadows what some scholars would call the late period. The nephew controversy continued into very early 1820’s and maliciously his music compositions flourished, not to mention he began to heavily influence his contemporaries.

            Beethoven had a subconscious tendency to dislike women. He despised his sister-in-law Johanna. It was ingrained in his mind that he was saving his nephew from the depths of hell that would surround Karl if he were to live with his mother. However, Solomon asserts that “… Beethoven was beginning to have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality,” during the start of this conflict. Underlying this misconception about Johanna, women, and the need for custody of his nephew was his most inner-desires to be a part of a family-like unit.

            The thesis of Solomon’s article, as I put on my scholarly goggles and detect such a thing, would be that the middle and late periods of Ludwig van Beethoven’s life especially affected his music developments. The article on himself and his nephew flawlessly portray the suffering artist who triumphed through insurmountable creative expression. Through his trials to be a ‘father’ and with women, he became a contemporary hero. Beethoven’s conflict allowed him to suffer in ways that ended up helping him in his music creativity. This period in his life represents an internal-external conflict of trying to fulfill his own desires as well as ‘make it’ in the ways his associates and society want him to take control. He emotionally yearns to be a part of a family and wants to be loved and cared for in every way possible. Yet, he is expected to be a musician and honored member of the nobility.

There are a few ironies of Beethoven’s situation: 1.) I have seen it before in artists, musicians and 2.) I do not think that he intended, in any way, to use his sufferings as a means to generate music. This is what should be highlighted in the ways Beethoven in a ‘contemporary hero’.

One musician whose life resonates on the same tracks as Beethoven’s is Ian Curtis of the Manchester, late seventies rock band Joy Division. Both musicians deeply fight inner-desires and grasp for emotional affection as well as ward off external social pressures of their career. In the end, Curtis ended up committing suicide not being able to find a manageable equilibrium or peace of mind.

Beethoven and Curtis’s struggle to stay afloat says something more than creativity can sometimes stem from hardship. I think that those following the yellow brick road known as creativity should not plan for anything bigger than what they are willing to and intend to express at present. Any artist, musician, or writer must do. Just do. When expectation, money, other people are brought into the picture, trouble stirs. I think it is better to work solo, the way you envision your dream, and let everyone else gawk from afar. If you are an ‘artist’ that is looking for the big bucks, then this analysis was completely irrelevant to you and you should go sell your soul to the devil, a.k.a the Man. But, everyone has his or her own struggles; it is just a matter of interpreting them in a constructive way that deflates it. That is how I do and perceive art. I don’t know any other way and I do not want to practice it any other way. Art for me is expression of the heart and mind. I’m not sure what is for you, but I hope you are able to express it with your own vision of life, no matter how fucked up it may be. If you are ever being told your not doing ‘it’ the ‘right’ way, run away. Run very far away and never look back. 

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8

It may just be the crazy hair of the conductor, but I can feel the crazed turmoil Beethoven wrote his Symphony No. 8 in 1812. It was during the time in which he took custody of his nephew, Karl. My analysis of their relationship will not do it any justice in terms of how intense and psychotic the situation was. Solution: read Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven and His Nephew. You’ll then understand the unconscious logic behind Beethoven’s No. 8.

The pulsing beats of the violins and the exaggerated notes on string must represent the strong emotion, both positive and negative, Beethoven had towards women, his sister-in-law Johanna, and his nephew, Karl. It is noted by Solomon that he hid his positive feelings a lot of the time, especially towards a woman. 

The segments of calm and quiet strings with steady, easy rhythm must represent the few moments he was content with his relations. However, most of the time he was in distress about how to keep suppressing a human emotion, called love, and act as a dictator in his household and with his associates. The psychotic state he possessed at the time he wrote No. 8 has been argued by scholars to explain for the creative explosion of Beethoven’s compositions during the era of 1812.

Like I probably mentioned, the lucidly beautiful symphony in F, known as his “little symphony in F”, was pure genius. It was composed like many of it’s kind, by other tortured-soul-like artists and musicians have. They all then to have used internal, mental hardship to foster the acquired taste for music and art everyone wishes he or she had. Of course, people intrinsically want what they don’t, right? GOODNIGHT!