Hurston, Moses and the Responsibilities of Freedom

SUMMER BOOK REPORT
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Zora Neale Hurston

HERE CAME ZORA, to tell me a story I've heard thirty-three times and make it new. Moses, Man of the Mountain is the Exodus story, which I've heard each year on Passover, told in a 1930s southern African American voice. It's like Siddhartha's half-black half-Jewish cousin.

Hurston's biblical characters are not idealized. Aaron is flagrantly annoying; Miriam is bitterly asexual and petty (a far cry from the feminist hero of Debbie Friedman songs and lefty Haggadahs); Zipporah is kinda superficial; Pharoah is not an avataric demon, but a man flawed by grudges and pomposity. Moses is heroic, but in the manner of a real person: arguing with himself about the right things to do, mad at the feebleness of others, forever hated upon.


MOSES SUFFERS the burdens of leadership, and his poll numbers swing with the Israelites shifting fortunes. They are capable of idolizing him when things go well, but even happier to blame him when things go wrong, at which point they go on about how they were better off under Pharoah. Instead of assessing the man and what he has done or tried to do, they take a look around and wail,  He's in charge! And everything sucks! 

Leaders make sacrifices. Hair grays; privacy disappears and responsibilities never do. You might want to just go hoop with Malia or whatever, but the lives of other people are in your hands, and a true leader is acutely aware of the fact. For all the worry: you may never see the Promised Land.


THIS BOOK also concerns what my Bat Mitzvah speech rather bombastically called 'The Responsibilities of Freedom.' Much as a slave yearns to be free, and celebrates when freed, the moment of liberation is actually only the beginning of a rough climb. Just the unshackling is not freedom. The enslaved have been robbed of the opportunity to grow minds and wills of their own; the Israelites spent forty years in the desert battling to become free selves before they could enter the Promised Land.

Hurston writes:

[Moses] found out that no man can make another free. Freedom was something internal...All you could do was to give the opportunity for freedom and the man himself must make his own emancipation. He remembered how often he had had to fight Israel to halt a return to Egypt and slavery. Responsibility had seemed too awful to them time and time again.

THAT IS also a perfect example of how Hurston wrote. She chose simple words when fancy ones were not needed. Her version of the Exodus helped me think about two peoples, hers and mine, and the struggles they have faced in that long desert between Egypt and the Promised Land.

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Of Strippers & Rappers

STRIPPERS AND rappers keep a curious symbiosis. In this "Rack City"-"No Hands" era, it is especially evident that rappers are great fans of strippers. Where the boast was once True pimp n****s spend no dough on the booty, it is now a point of pride to spend racks upon racks on the booty. One throws hunnids.


But despite their proud fandom, rappers--in thoughtful moods--view strippers with naive paternalism. Lil Wayne, as fanatical a stripper fan as there can be, and a critical thinker by his own estimation and mine, demonstrated this all too well in last year's "How To Love" video. The soft song was an admirable risk, and the video a well-made split narrative following two potential paths of a mother and daughter. Mother makes healthy choices and daughter becomes a smiling graduate. Mother makes poor choices and daughter becomes: a stripper.


The video is a variant on the tragic stripper fable. Due to hard life circumstances a decent woman must "resort" to stripping to feed herself or her children. She may be good, but her work is bad, and must corrupt and corrode her. In the "How To Love" video, bad daughter lets a skeezy white longhair take her home on what appears to be her first night dancing. He leaves money on the dresser and gives her HIV. I wonder how the accomplished pole dancers who work on Weezy's tour feel about this insultingly simplistic portrayal.


ALAS, THE SAME ATTITUDE underpinned Method Man's riveting 2005 documentary The Strip Game. Mef seems sincere in his mission to understand strippers, to humanize them. He and his film crew interview dozens of dancers from New York to LA. (He rainmakes on a few.) Their descriptions of their work run the same gamut most occupational interviews would: cynicism, enjoyment, burnout, professional detachment, amusement at the customer's expense, gratitude for having found lucrative self-employment. Some find the job titillating at times; others never.


Method Man sums up what he learned thusly:

I wanted to go up inside the clubs because I always felt like it was like this certain culture that nobody ever really on the outside can understand... The reason why the girls even feel like they gotta resort to the option a taking their clothes off for money...Picture a woman that gotta struggle with three kids by herself...she resorts to maybe going to the strip club, checking it out, and wants to take off her clothes for money because this is all she has left to do right here...So who are you to judge what anybody does to make their money.

This is meant to be sympathetic. Heroizing even. But it paints the women as infantilized victims with only the merest speck of agency in their lives. The language of "resorting" didn't come from the interviews. It was what Mef expected to hear, so it was what he heard. He couldn't humanize his subjects enough to imagine that they might value or enjoy their work, though he values and enjoys it.


Weezy and Mef and many of their ilk do respect strippers. (Many don't, of course.) But they can only officially articulate the "I respect that she's a hustler doin what she gotta do" interpretation. It would appear impossible to respect them for their talents as strippers. Controversial entertainers themselves, you'd think rappers would get it.


Indeed, many people who like rap--but can't quite accept that they do--employ similar mental gymnastics. Unable to reconcile enjoyment with disapproval, such types often end up listening to hip hop but belittling its makers.


I hope those shamefaced fans do buy the albums silly rappers make. And I hope the rappers keep tossing hunnids on those poor strippers. Let the dollar speak truth where the mind cannot.

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Nicki and a Lane of One's Own

Though I wanted my review to be just between me and Nicki's sophomore album, an interloper kept appearing. I found myself arguing with a straw man. In hipsterish dishevelment would he glance up from his Complex mag screen to hate upon Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded and pine for 'mixtape Nicki.'

His disdain crept in like a finger of frost, killing my enjoyment of tender annuals like "Starships" and "Masquerade." Nor could the solid rapping of "Stupid Hoe" please him; he facilely declared Nicki to be the stupid hoe, with her excessive weirdness and annoying voice. He called "Beez in the Trap" acceptable and gave "Champion" a mild cosign (though the latter came with open speculation about why Nas would thusly lower himself).

I will now muzzle the straw man so I can tell you how much I like this album. To placate him, I will begin where we most nearly agree.

When I (of course) pre-ordered the album and perused the track listing, I spotted "Champion," which purported to feature Drake, Jeezy and Nas. Imagine my delight. Within moments I'd cycled through the emotions, from thrilled anticipation to fear of dashed expectations to modest but fervent hope.

And indeed this song is really goddamn good. It opens on a soaring beat that sounds like a slow-mo finish line cross, arms aloft. "Chariots of Fire" for rap. Nicki sets the tone with a smooth blend of boast and ghetto-groundedness. Drizzy is no stranger to triumph and chimes in with Okay we made it to America and Nowadays blow the candles out don't even make a wish. And what's that I hear? Ah, the low smolder of the Jeezy growl! (I swear if Jeezy recorded Ulysses I could get through the shit.) Then Nas, the unimpeachable; one can but kneel and kiss the muhfuckn ring.

"Champion" also made me notice that Nicki's become quite the hookmistress. She's got the impactful wail on that song, a few licks learned perhaps from Gyptian for the islandy treat "Gunshot," the earborer "Right By My Side" chorus. I wanted to resent a pop&B song with Chris Brown, but resistance proved futile. If this is pop I'm getting really into pop.


The commonest naysayage about this album is exactly that: It's so pop, whines the straw man. I see it this way: Nicki composed a solid hip hop album, stacked with production, impeccable verses, the requisite guest spots. Then she got a bunch of sugary dancefloor beats, topped them with swag icing and rap sprinkles, and made the album half dessert. Hardly the worst thing.

Some of those pop songs happen to be great. "Va Va Voom" is a worthy successor to "Super Bass": bangingly superficial, and supportive of a cause dear to my heart, that of male objectification. "Pound the Alarm" could make me tear a club limb from limb. It contains this:

Bottle, sip

Bottle, guzzle

I'ma badbitch no muzzle

Which brings me to what I call The "Beez in the Trap" Paradox. It goes like so: if Nicki makes songs that flash the badge of hip hop cred (ooh a sing-songy old school chorus! measured, emphatic raps! manly swagger!) she is keeping it real. If she makes corny pop ballads or club bangers she is pandering and selling out. 

It is understandable that most people prefer to hear Nicki rap rather than sing. That I get. But is not a rapper's top job to spit smart lyrics that sound slick? What part of "Beez" does that better than I'ma badbitch no muzzle or I am the ultimate Svengali/You bitches can't even spell that/You hoes buggin, repel that--both from straw man-dissaproved tracks? Could we not just as easily call "Beez" the pander and sappily sincere "Marilyn Monroe" or fantastically strange "Roman Holiday" the risks?

Straw man may not like it, but there is an oft-corny popstar inside Nicki, and it has clearly been yearning to breathe free. Her pop efforts will fall flat on some ears, but I do believe this is the album Nicki wanted to make. Rap fans can be some conservative muthafuckas, and Nicki is pretty good at ignoring their shocked expressions every time she breaks code.

A rapper is not supposed to dilute the brand by being too soft or weird or accessible. But Nicki could give a fuck less what the rules are. Nor should an artist give a fuck what the rules are.

Nicki explodes out wildly in every possible direction, no matter what happens to be in the way. For that reason she always reminds me of the most important thing: To thine own self be true. Always do you.

IN THE VIDEOPLOG EDITION: clips of aforementioned PF: RR tracks, my "Stupid Hoe" breakdown and cameos from the straw man.





Related  posts: 
Hey Nicki! Hey Nicki! Asthmatic Ode to Nicki Minaj
Millennial Rappers: The 2011 Albums

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"Shake N Fries" As Performed By My Hens

My writing game has been off due to...ya know. I'm getting it back, but meanwhile please enjoy these video offerings.

You might also like "It Was a Good Day" as performed by my hens.

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The Adventures of Chronic Pain Barbie

It's never a dull moment in the life of Chronic Pain Barbie! Her adventures include stretching all day, getting misunderstood & disqualifying for disability--all while lookin fly.

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Millennial Rappers, The 2011 Albums

VIDEOPLOGGERY: Mini-reviews of five fave 2011 albums by Millennial Rappers to be found herein. Wishing you more good music--as well as non-musical good--for 2012.

Q: What do you mean "Millennial Rappers"?

A: Why that's the very first thing discussed in the video!

Q: Guess I'll watch then. Do you perchance do any videohoery in here?

A: ... :) ...

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When Occupation Is Therapy, Talk Is Not Cheap

I HAVE NEVER been fond of protests. I was inculcated into lefty protest culture at a young age, and it seemed to mean belonging to a marginal subgroup yelling irrelevantly, much like when I had to go to Lakers games and root against the Lakers.

I did not expect, then, that my heart would warm to the Occupy movement as it has. Here in Oakland things have gotten out of hand every possible way, and the local news is often painful. But I also got to watch news chopper footage of the Port with an ant swarm of Oaklanders, publicly agreeing on something quite important. Precisely what that thing is I can't say any more than they can, and I think that is fine. Not everything is articulable, after all.

The agendalessness criticism not only misses but subverts the point. Why must it always be anti-government nuts and right wing media screamers who get to be generally aggrieved, while lefty poindexters are supposed to tiptoe into the halls of power with their briefcases full of bullet-pointed 'demands' in a sensible font?

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker:

Yes, O.W.S. has 'changed the conversation.' But talk, however necessary, is cheap. Ultimately, inevitably, the route to real change has to run through politics.

And for the very first time I disagreed with him. In a world where Congressional Republicans are three hundred-pound brutes in pads who look plumply ineffectual but prove startlingly strong, and are single-minded enough to block our gallant, lean-muscled president from passing even a bill saying please let's at least keep teachers and firefighters...general shouting may be just the thing.

Rather than being based upon an agenda, Occupy is a manifestation of a feeling, one we all sort of have. When we see those protesters out there, we know what they mean. They don't have to spell it out. That they should make particular demands is great--like financial tranfers tax, awesome. But to focus exclusively on such would be a sign not of maturity but of timid self-limitation.

Occupy is a fresh wind blown in. The recent past has seen America awash in wealth worship. The vast cultural force that is Entertainment News scolds against hating on the rich. It's so flippin cool to be rich! cheer the Entertainment Newspeople, out of whose whitened smile mouths come terrible things. But hateration is about envy. The 99% solidarity ethos is about anger. Anger over wrongness.

Wealth can indeed be unethical, I believe. Hard core 1%-er wealth is inevitably built others' backs. The work of armies of immigrant gardeners and nannies and housekeepers hums along in the background. Regular people turn off lights when they leave rooms, while the fabulously wealthy keep a heated pool at a third home. And of course there's the elaborately choreographed fucking-over of other people that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.

There actually are limited resources in this world, and when they are allocated preposterously it's many ways helpful to yell about it. Even as cold and cops blow Occupy adrift, it does something.

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