Category Archives: Storytelling

Go Tell Michelle

This is me telling a story at a friend’s artist collective.

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Because our families are Black History Month.

as i’m reflecting on my age and the age i live in, this picture always comes to mind. it’s me, my mom, my grandma, my great grandma, and my great-great grandma. these women sacrificed and lived with secrets, lies, and shames so i could exist. they gave me a sense of unconditional love that it’s taken me until recently to understand isn’t universal. we weren’t rich but they gave me a richness in character that comes from a pride that they didn’t always have. they also gave me hangups that i can now see were necessary for their existence that aren’t necessary for mine. but i needed them to know what i don’t want. they instilled in me a love and respect for education, but not just the book sense, for learning about the world and a belief that anything and everything is possible. they were proud of me but let me know that my excellence wasn’t an anomaly, it was what was expected of me. to whom much is given much is required. this from women who picked cotton. who came north for better lives and carved them out. who loved men who, while not always physical faithful, were fiercely loyal and loved them implicitly. and they were not victims. they were these fierce creatures who loved hard, drank hard, smoked, fought and raised a strange crop of progeny.

My Grandpa, his mom, me, my great grandpa’s mom, great grandma, great granddad

ons

Gentrification Blues #3

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This weekend was hot. It was the official beginning of summer. I barely left my house. When I did I was again confronted with the changes in my neighborhood. It’s like the rats on a ship or roaches in the dark metaphor. Into the blinding sunlight and mildly scorching heat came the ghostly bodies of my new neighbors. Mouth dryingly pale and still without manners. It’s going to be a fun summer. I love sitting on the stairs of the library, now known as my office, and having to stare down the Park Sloper with the baby crying because it’s hot and mommy can’t take it in the library SCREAMING like that to cool it off or leave because she’s got a great spot to get some sun on her legs.

So here I am sitting alone listening to my iPod scribbling furiously on the stupid story I’ve been hacking away at, I mean writing, for like 2 years now…. “Sorry, what? No, no one’s sitting there.” What could I say? No one was sitting there. I wasn’t prepared to act crazy and have imaginary friends. So down she sits and my table’s perfectly placed for two ways to get sun and put the baby under the umbrella. The screaming baby. The baby screaming so loud that my Erik Satie makes my head hurt and hands shake cause it’s too loud and grating. I stare at the mother who apologizes profusely, but what am I supposed to say? “I accept your apology, but it would be better if you took your SCREAMING MONKEY home.”

She started doing all the things mothers do to make their children shut up, to no avail. I start shifting. I’m already hot and uncomfortable and writing outside and feel weird. How do I describe how I felt with the future sitting there raising hell and a mother who kinda didn’t give a shit. (Now, let me say that I have friends with kids and I know it’s a tough job and adults don’t want to be cooped up with kids all day. But I also know that that’s why I don’t have kids and really resent being subjected to other peoples problems.)

I guess it’s just that I’m seeing something more and more that disturbs me about this neighborhood I love so much. Too many babies. When I’m dictator, I’m putting a moratorium on procreating in Prospect Heights. Go to Queens to fuck up your kids.

A Conversation About Race & Choice

If you build it…they will come?

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So I have started a storytelling night at Bar Sepia and I have no idea what I’m doing. Whoo. That felt good. Now maybe I can organize it or something. I know, I’ll write out my mission statement for it here:

Mission Statement:
To create a safe space to share real life stories and making our neighbors (and new neighbors) know each others humanity thus strengthening our neighborhood.

That sounds awfully lofty. Does it even mean anything? Speak plainly kiddo.

I want the newbies in Pros. Heights to hear the stories of us old timers and for us to hear them. I’m doing this for myself because I don’t particularly take a shine to the newbies. I think they’re arrogant and rude for the most part and inconsiderate of the people who’ve lived here before them. I know, it’s still part of my gentrification blues. I know, they’re not all demons and some of them are struggling. But the ones who are buying million dollar apt’s and giving the finger to us poor renters, well fuck you too.

So that’s why I wanted to open a forum to help me with my own prejudices and tell some stories. I also want to be able to tell my own stories. It’s funny how everyone has a certain idea about why I want to do this. But it is really something I’d do for free. Sure I need money, but I know the money will come. It always does. I want to do it out of love. That’s what always brings me money.

My first month was excellent. I was nervous but I knew I had some great stories coming my way. This is what I do. I tell stories. I have to get over myself. I’m still censoring myself publicly. I want to tell riskier stories but get freaked out by it in front of my friends. It’s like, am I too fat to tell this story? WTF? This world’s done a number in my brain.

So I’m building it. I hope they come. I want to be cool as a cucumber and just trust that I do what I do.

We’ll see next Monday.