Let’s try throwing caution to the wind.
Eat your heart out, Beyoncé
Here’s a little ditty I wrote a few years ago for Valentine’s Day:
All the single pirates (All the single pirates)
All the single pirates (All the single pirates)
All the single pirates (All the single pirates)
All the single pirates, now put your hooks up!
If you lost your eye, you shoulda put a patch on it.
If you lost your eye, you shoulda put a patch on it.
Don’t be mad ’cause you know you can’t see from it.
‘Cause if you lost your eye you shoulda put a patch on it.
Yo ho ho.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
*Note: There might have been bourbon involved.
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Love is a homemade mix tape
“Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” – Robert Frost
Everything I’ve been reading lately seems to be laced with a subtle (but often not-s0-subtle) reminder that Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching. Stores have been decked out in pink-and-red heart-shaped decor since before Christmas. It’s hard not to be reminded of the commercialized flavor of love hanging in the air.
I know I sound like one of those bitter single people who hates Valentine’s Day, but I’m not. Honestly, I love Valentine’s Day. It is the herald of two of the most wonderful things ever: Cadbury Creme Eggs and deeply discounted Valentine’s Day candy! My inner pirate loves the spoils of war, and there are no spoils sweeter than 75% off goo-filled chocolate that some poor girl’s sweetheart neglected to buy her. So, to all the forgetful, negligent significant others out there, this fat girl says, “Thanks! And keep up the terrible job!”
But my favorite non-food-related thing about Valentine’s Day is that it makes me reflect on the way I define love. And my idea of love hasn’t changed since I was a kid. To me, love will always be a homemade mix tape.
Where is my John Cusack with his boombox and mixtape of classic 80s music?
Whatever happened to the mix tape? I’ll tell you. The digital age has forced it to evolve. First, it became a mix CD. Then it became a compilation of songs on a flash drive. Now, the mix tape has been bastardized into random playlists on iTunes or Spotify. Don’t get me wrong, I love playlists. I’ve made a gazillion of them. But they don’t hold a candle to a mix tape.
Mix tapes, back in the day, took time and effort to put together. It was not a click-and-drag operation. You had to time it just right to start recording when your song began or run the risk of cutting off the beginning of your song or wasting precious tape with white noise. It was even worse if you didn’t own the album and were waiting to tape a specific song from the radio. Yes, in the way-back-when, we didn’t have an entire global catalog of music at our fingertips. We had the radio. And you had to deal with radio edits or annoying DJs who liked to cut a song short to interject an opinion or catchphrase.
The best mix tapes were the ones that included personal intros or messages from the mixer. The messages often included a declaration of love or an explanation of song choice.
To this day, mix tapes are still the thing that most personify love for me. They require a lot of time and care to make. You can’t just slap one together in 2 minutes and expect to get laid. A good mix tape could take hours to compile. A lot of thought goes into making the perfect mix tape for someone. You can’t just cram together a bunch of your favorite songs. You have to think about what the recipient would like. You have to really know someone to create just the right mix. Music is so incredibly subjective, which is why creating a personal mix for someone else is tricky.
But that’s love. It’s time-consuming and tricky. You get so wrapped up in it that you lose part of yourself. But if it’s a good kind of love, you only lose the worst parts.
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50 Shades of Black
My dear cohort co-conspirator friend Liz alerted me to a column yesterday thinking it might be of particular interest to me. Man, was she ever so right.
Leonard Pitts, a spectacular columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote a piece about blackness that resonated very deeply with me. In his column, Pitts tackles the notion of being “black enough” highlighting the incident in which ESPN commentator Rob Parker questioned whether football player Robert Griffin III (RG3 to his fantasy followers) was sufficiently black enough.
According to Parker, having a Caucasian significant other and being a Republican significantly dilute one’s “blackness” and turn one into a “cornball brother.”
As a biracial gal, I’ve struggled with my ethnic identity for most of my life. I’m constantly told I’m not “black enough” or that I’m “too white.” I’ve always been very articulate. In fact, when I was little, my dad used to call me “little Bryant Gumbel” because I talked a lot and liked to use big words. That’s just the kind of kid I was. I loved to read and was in advanced classes. Growing up, I had a lot of white friends. I also had a lot of black friends, Filipino friends, Hispanic friends and friends who, like me, came from multi-ethnic backgrounds. I suppose the melting pot that is my friend pool also dilutes my blackness.
But what exactly is “blackness”? I’m confused by the notion. Is there a checklist somewhere? Can I see how many items of blackness I’m able to tick off so I can get a better assessment of my blackitude? Does the fact that I’ve been to Bonnaroo and belted out Reba McEntire at karaoke night mean I’m not black enough?
I’ve never been arrested nor convicted of a crime (that you know of), but I have white friends who have spent a night or two in jail. Does that mean they’re more black than I am? I finished high school and even attended college, all without getting sidetracked by an unexpected pregnancy. In fact, I don’t have any children or a “baby daddy.” Is it just me, or are all of these “black qualifiers” pretty negative? Why is that?
My black family members are not a bunch of “ghetto hoodrats.” The ones who have gone on to have children are good, loving parents. They even hold down steady employment. Does this make them less black?
Perhaps the biggest question I have when I hear that I’m not black enough is this: Black enough for what? For what exactly is my blackness being measured? It’s bad enough that I’m already told that I’m not thin enough, not feminine enough, not pretty enough. Now I have to worry about living up to yet another superficial social standard? For what? Will being blacker help me achieve a more successful career, a bigger paycheck? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
It’s at this point in my rant that if I had a mic, I would drop it. How’s that for being black enough?
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It’s never too late
Sometimes you run across just the right words to put things in perspective.
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