Random Thoughts as Usual

I'm back in school, back to normal. I don't know why, but recently I feel most at home in this place. I go back home and I feel more like a spectator then a participator. I mean, I know the same love and affection is there, it's just that it reaches me differently now that I am more or less absent from the family dynamic. I come here and realize that I want to cut my hair. Big desision sense it has become a part of me now. It's similar to finally throwing away your favorite shirt. You know, the one that seemingly represents how you view yourself and and how you wish the world to view you. With this hair I feel (or have felt rather) like a rebel. A aestheticly deviant individual if you feel where i'm coming from. Now....I don't know so much. Maby it's because my enviornment has changed. Maby it is more diviant to be different when you look less different. It is almost expected for those who appear unique to be unique... but is it not even more unique to look less unique and act unique anyway... maby i'm reading into this thing too much, but seriously, it seems like the more orgional I try to be, the more like others I become... I get clumped into the group that consists of the "unique" folk and my efforts are defeated. I can't be the only one who see's the irony in my predicament. In order for me to become truly different I feel i should adopt physical apparences ( at least where my hair is concearned) that I once viewed as common. Life is funny that way I guess. All this to say .. I think I will cut my hair.

seven in the morning

I awoke to fox news this morning. My mother had the remote last night, so I had no control over what channels I would watch. I went to sleep to "Mystic River" playing in the background. For there to be so many motion pictures in the world HBO sure has a nack for showing the same ones with almost sickning regularity. I had to sleep for work this morning so I chose to forsake the movie in favor of my job. I couldn't seem to get to sleep after some jaded newsperson woke me at around six. Maby it made me think too much. I love to think...when its condusive to my body's healty operation, but at that moment I wish I could have stopped. Why anyone's mind, when trying to sleep, would race at 60 miles per second at six something in the morning is beyond my comprehension. Being as though I have a whole two hours before I have to be at work I figured I'd write this down. Not that it's profound or anything...as a matter of fact, I don't know if anything that I write is profound. Maby it is, I don't know and right now I can't honestly say that I care. Hope anyone reading this has a nice day. I'm praying that I have one too.

"Peel Me A Grape"

....not many people I know listen to Diana Krall... of course I’m a black teenager from South West Philly, so -- assuming that the people I know reside in at least semi-close proximity to my geographic location-- I guess it's not surprising. Sad but understandable... maby. I mean Hip-Hop... the genre of music that is widely believed to represent "the voice" of us (using "us" not solely for the fact that I feel I should be included but also because "us" is much easier to type than African-Americans and has less negative connotations than "blacks") is ironic.

Something that is supposedly used as a vessel through which we are allowed to show who we truly are is taken as just that and is therefore viewed as the proof that serves as yet another thing to fuel the fire of stereotypes and prejudices . For every one of us whom I have known to have done the things that these artists talk about in their music, there are at least ten others who haven’t. This is understood by me because I am part of the "us", but what these artist have to realize is, by making public the ideas that they bring forth in a genre of music that is seen to be as culturally representative as Hip-Hop, they are intrinsicly justifying the social and political attitudes that have plagued us for hundreds of years.

Why should respect be given to a group of people who do not respect themselves enough to entertain their communities with something other then self defeating, socially masochistic ideas of themselves? We complain about not being able to gain equal footing in society, and yet we support those of us who tell musical stories of their contentment with their constant struggle, and how these individuals feel most at home in life and death situations. Although these artists have different goals in life, we must realize that they are us. They are one of the most noticeable representations of our cultural grapevine so to speak.

Understanding this, we should take a little of our respective sweetnessess (it may not be in my dictionary but it fits) including the high expectations, the strong moral foundations, and the deep cultural identities that make us what we truly are as African-Americans, and push them through this grapevine instead of letting the negative, undesirable, bitterness that these huge Hip-Hop artists (the large grapes that everyone goes for first) continue to be a sour representation of us. In doing this, the artist will have no choice but to adopt these attributes for themselves and thereby become a positive force in our still continuing effort to become socially and culturally integrated.

All of this from Diana Krall... maby I should go into politics...