I found this on fellow slicer Elisabeth Ellington‘s page at The Dirigible Plum. I liked the idea and decided to use it (Thank you Elisabeth!):
The highlight last month was: I finally- FINALLY – stopped letting, and I do mean letting, all of the little things get in the way of me concentrating on the book of poems I had been working on forever and worked on finish the first draft.
This month I want to feel more accomplished with the book and so far I am feeling really good with how far it has come compared to where I was at the beginning of the year. Hell, I am feeling really good with how far it has come compared to where I was at the beginning of last month.
I’ll be over the moon if by April I have it back from the editor so I can move on to the next step.
One thing I’ll regret not doing in March is not having the whole process completed so that I could have a physical hardcopy in my hands by April 1 which was my original goal date.
I want to give myself permission to not shoulder what is not mine to bear. Sometimes self-care means saying no loud and clear and not accepting feeling guilty for it.
If I get stuck I’ll remember that I do not have to do everything on my own. I do have resources and it is not a failure to use them.
It is scheduled to rain this afternoon. It was overcast by my home when I got on the train early this morning to come to work. Thus, I was delighted to see El Sol was out and about when I came up from the subway near my job.
It’s the little things that bring simple joys.
El Sol giving me giraffe legs.
The Commons around my job have wonderful landscapers. There are seasonal plantings: various florals in summer and autumn, lights for the December holidays. Yesterday afternoon when I left work this plant box still held winter evergreens. This morning I am greeted by this unofficial but oh so important harbinger of spring: tulip bulbs! So come on rain and help out. I now look forward to seeing this and other plant boxes throughout The Commons ablaze in colorful tulips n a couple of weeks.
Fellow Slice of Lifer, and friend in real life, GirlGriot recent posted a slice that touched on how classical music once felt “forbidding” to her. I partially understood that sentiment from the perspective of my enjoyment of thrash metal music, something that many still that think I as a 56 year black is crazy for it.
Popular television and cartoon shows were my earliest experience of classical music. I imagine like most inner city Americans over the age of 45, we likely first heard classical music, jazz standards and big band from classic Disney (“Fantasia”), Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny), and Max Fleischer (Betty Boop) cartoons. There is a reason that for many, many, many years most Americans knew a particular piece of music not as the finale of the William Tell Overture, but only as the theme to The Lone Ranger.
Other than television shows and cartoons as a black inner city girl, born in the early 60’s my exposure to music primarily came from very specific sources: my mother’s record player that only played black gospel music as she did not approve of secular music; my southern grandmother’s radio which only played country music, and the radio that mostly played what was popular at the time (classic and soft rock, and of course disco). Songs on the radio were only heard at friends and neighbors homes as it was not allowed in mine. Everyone regardless of color/ethnicity listened to the same stations for popular music because it was all we had. Sans those who eschewed most secular music of course, what would eventually be dubbed urban (aka Black), adult contemporary radio had become the thing. From the mid-1970s, when such radio stations came into existence until the late 2000s, whether as a political statement or as personal choice, if you were black you mostly listened to 107.5 WBLS (contemporary and traditional R&B), and the now defunct 101.9 WQCD (contemporary jazz) and WKRS (dance, hip-hop and rap) stations.
Yes, they exposed Black-Americans to more or our own music and to artists who may have been marginalized and not broken through the glass ceilings of other (aka white) radio stations, but at the same time it bred a subculture that made it all but verboten to listen to, let alone enjoy, anything else. I distinctly remember standing in queue at a department during the holiday store happily singing along to Billy Joel’s “A Matter of Trust” on the PA system when I was asked why I was singing that and told I should not be supporting their music because “Listen, we don’t do that”.
Excuse me? Yeah, that conversation did not go down well for him at all, and thus the point I wanted to make.
GirlGriot had once felt listening to classical music forbidding. Her story is her own and I will let her tell it. In my case, classical music, world music, and the early emergence of metal were not things I listened to because I was not exposed to them. Though artists who had massive crossover appeal like U2, Eurythmics, Blondie, The Police, Culture Club and Wham! were notable exceptions. While radio stations such as WCBS (music from twenty years ago), WKTU (dance), and WLTW (soft rock and adult contemporary) that crossed genres and remained popular enough, in my then insular world where everyone mostly listened to Anita Baker, Public Enemy, and Michael Jackson on the radio I did not have regular exposure to Bach, Mozart and Rossini. Why? Though the words were rarely so blatantly spoken, other than the guy at the department store, it was implicit we don’t do that.
Then the advent of personal music players and MTV happened.
A co-worker was listening to this relatively new band on his Sony Discman. He was clearly enjoying the music, I asked for a listen. I was told I wouldn’t like, but I insisted. This most definitely would never be played on anything “urban.” I had never heard anything like it, yet I it felt lyrically and musically on a visceral level. I replayed the song and then listened to the remainder of the CD and was shooketh as the kids say now. I bought a copy for myself that same day.
I had just been introduced to four guys whose names were James, Kirk, Kurt and Lars. The song was “Master of Puppets”, the band was Metallica, and I have been a devotee of them ever since.
Still, for a while I felt I had to hide this new love, because we don’t do that. Then I remembered just how pissed I was at the department store guy who deigned to tell me what I should be listening to and stopped hiding it.
MTV introduced me to thrash metal, death metal and grunge by god I loved it. Come 2000, in the middle of the night MTV introduced me to a then little-known group called Linkin Park and I was shooketh once again. By then WWE was popular and my sons were as much into it as I because many of the popular wrestlers of the time made their entrances to the ring with rock and metal music. Because I listened to it and their heroes at the time listened to it, it never occurred to them that they couldn’t. Their generation was not coming up with the subculture of we do don’t do that musically. Their musical choices were as diverse theirs and theirs alone because of that exposure and I for was grateful.
My late-husband came home one afternoon while our sons and I were head banging in different rooms as we were spring cleaning. Every window was open, and Metallica’s “S&M (Symphony & Metallica)” CDs were on blast. We lived in a mostly Caribbean and Latinx neighborhood, he was shaking his head and laughing that he heard the music half a block away and knew it was our house before he pulled up to the curb. He walked up to me and yelled “You’re Black!” Because the cosmos indeed has a delicious sense of humor, his timing was perfect with the song that was playing, and I paraphrased the incoming chorus as I shrugged and sang “Where I play my songs is home!” and continued cleaning to Wherever I May Roam. Unlike the guy in the department store oh so many years ago I knew he was partially teasing because while he liked some rock, he was never a heavy/thrash metal music fan at all but was is his choice that he did not do that, not my sons and certainly not mine.
I was in my forties when I went to my first opera and my reawakening to pieces I didn’t realize I already knew thanks to cartoons. I made me search for more and yet a new musical interest in classical was sprung. It is not my strong suit as metal and R&B. Still, I enjoy it.
Though my first musical love remains Rock and Heavy Metal, they have happily shared space on my iPod with Country, Soul, Video Game Soundtracks, Jazz, Rap, Trance, Classic Rock, 80’s Hair Bands, 70’s horns, Blues, Pop, Movie Scores, Broadway Show tunes, TV Themes and so much more.
And all I had to do was be willing to listen beyond the forbidding listenwe don’t do that.
Someone had posted several images that had text in Spanish. I was able to to piece out the sentences on my own to get get the joke. However one of the phrases threw me. “¡más fuerte!” in English technically translates to “Stronger!” That was fine and all for the joke, but I was reasonably sure the person meant “Harder!” Now, I know the word ‘hard’ in Spanish is duro, but because my Spanish is horrible I decided to run the words through good old Google Translate.
Yeah… About that…
Anyone familiar with Google Translate understands that while you will get the literal translation of an individual word, but the exact meaning of sentences, phrases and especially colloquialisms can sometimes get lost in translation. To combat such Google will often offer alternatives of what it thinks you may be searching. Thus today’s slice…
First, I tried a Spanish to English translation of fuerte and was given the translation of ‘stronger’ which I expected. The fun arrived when I then switched it to translate from English to Spanish and entered the word ‘harder’. You can see the alternate suggestions in the screencap below:
Screencap of humorous, to me, Google Translate where one of the suggested phrases of what I might be searching for the word ‘harder’ is “harder daddy.”
I know the suggestions come from Google’s algorithms. These algorithms are based on the phrases most asked for by users. That it is the next suggested thing offer after the literal item to be translated means there are a considerable amount of “daddies” out there being asked to display a show a strength.
I am among the first people to arrive at my job in the mornings. Usually, there are one or two others on my side of the floor when I enter and all the lights are turned on.
Not this morning…
I was the first person in on my side of the floor today. This morning only bright daylight, yay longer days at last(!), and the emergency lights greeted me. It was an eerie sort of quiet and I liked it.
Still, knucklehead that I am all I could think of was:
it looked like a first-person shooter game where all is quiet before the zombies pop out of nowhere at any moment,
the chorus to the old Eric Carmen song “All By Myself” and
clearly I was in serious need of coffee.
My loneliness, and potential active zombie bait imagination, lasted all of maybe seven minutes before the next person arrived, breaking the spell.
My penchant for Verbal Diarrhea has reached a new high. Or is that an all-time low? You decide.
The Scene: Where a lot of my early morning pre-caffeinated colorful commentary is created – my morning commute on the subway:
The cast: Two women conversing a little louder than they realized. One nosy Raivenne.
ACTION!
Even through I am heavy metal head bopping to Anthrax on my iPod, my smut monitor suddenly pings loudly – to quickly eavesdrops when the word phallophilia is heard.
Wait… Whaaaat?
I mean it is 6:45 in the blessed morning – who says that? – I must have heard wrong, right? I reach in my pocket, press pause on my music and listen.
Oh hush! Most of you would have listened also for a moment also – don’t judge me!
Sure enough, the two women were indeed speaking on the attributes of a specific person they both knew. I was about to turn my music back up when one asked “Is there a technical word for getting your rocks off looking at dick imprints in grey sweatpants?”.
And I’ll be damned if my not-so-inner Luci-fer and her minions (Sarcasm Siren, Dirty-minded Diva, Verbal Virago et al), did not simultaneously enter my throat and vocalize.
“Medectophalia.” Spews out before I can think to stop myself. Worse, I say it loud enough, that even though I am not looking at them, the two women know it’s addressed to them.
“Sorry didn’t mean to listen in.” I quickly say as they both turn and look at me. Damn my mouth!
“What’s the word?” the one sitting closest to me asks.
Naturally, once those chicks open my mouth and drop the bomb, they immediately depart en masse leaving me holding the detonator. Bitches!
Oh, well – in for a pence, in for a pound. – is one of my many mottos for a reason as I go into pseudo professor mode.
“Medectophalia is a fetish: It is the excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire for viewing the underlying shape of the penis/labium in the crotch region of another person’s clothing. Otherwise known as getting one’s rocks off on moose knuckle and/or camel toe in Urban Dictionary lingo. Whereas the opposite, medectophobia, is the fear of such.”
Now, when I tell you I have NO idea where that bullshit came from, I mean it. While I know for fact medectoPHOBIA is a word, I had no idea whether medectoPHALIA existed.
Naturally, I hear those conniving inner bitches reappear as internal Greek Chorus applauding my aplomb. As always, I am both awed and appalled with how my mind works.
The two women and I then have a lively discussion of technical versus street slang terms we know until they disembark. I immediately Google Medectophalia only to discover the term does not exist.
* My not-so-inner demons and their minions chuckle darkly. *
An online discussion came up regarding vinyl recommendation services. The complaint being what one asks for versus what one is presented with .
I say yes to Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, and Ed Sheran, and get John Legend as my first recommendation.
WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON.
Not a damn thing.
I understood – don’t agree with, but understood – music profiling in brick and mortar stores. The two associates (African-Americans) who asked if I needed help had no idea of whom I spoke. I finally had to be blunt and ask for a white associate. The music I actually wanted was in my hands in less than five minutes after. It happens to me a lot given my music inclinations go against my presumed demographic. But that was face-to-face, vinyl recommendation services are online. How jacked up are the algorithms, that considering the exposure people have to so many genres of music these days thanks to the internet – it is disappointing they still can’t get it right, but sadly not surprising,
The path on the bus from my home to the train station leads past several tenement buildings and projects. A part of City life is the occasional appearance of memorials for the recently departed. I’m ashamed to say, they are so much so a part of the scenery that while I look at them, I really don’t see them anymore. At least, until this morning.
This morning as I pass, I actually noticed the memorial, this was somehow different and as I looked closer, I understood why. The large portrait was that of a baby. This life could not have been more than a couple of months if I am gauging this infant correctly. Someone lost a baby. Do we even want to go into all the reasons why the younger a life is when it departs from us, the more tragic it seems? No. It just is.
I was conversing with a woman on the train about the frivolity of some of the rich when she jokingly queried “What happens when you’ve been there, done that?” I got the joke of it, I did and I smiled at it, still…
I think of my sons, my friends, others and myself. We spend so much time a’bitchin’ and a’moanin’ about the things we can’t do, the things we want to do, the things we have yet to do. We wrap ourselves in the dreams of the next big adventure we often barely appreciate the act of the things we have done once they become memory. All the things we’ve already done even the truly regrettable ones, we at least got to do them.
So right now, right now, I keep thinking about this newest angel looking down upon us who didn’t get to do anything but brighten someone’s life for the briefest moment in time and think…
“What happens when you’ve been there, done that?” …
Raivenne-lations 