Category: Me Myself&I

You know, I really feel like we’re stagnating hard. It is exhausting. There are no debate, studies or discussions to have –been there, done that for the past three decades- we need this shit to stop, period.

The web we have to save.

I just love reading so much. I think it’s because it allows me to listen to music at the same time, thing I can’t do if I’m listening to a stream.

I grew so much by reading things I wasn’t supposed to read –thanks hyperlink-, we all did. Algorithms totally suppress that.

No one cares about the web except nerds like us who spent so much time making it, setting up servers and domain names. Masses don’t care about technology/ethics they just use things and the easiest, the better. Then it’s too late.

What scares me the most about the open internet is when Facebook will start a micropayment system in such a way that no one will pay outside that system. The open internet needs that before walled gardens do.

Timing is everything.

There’s this huge elephant in the black america room: religion.

I grew up non-religious in my foster family and then my Catholic dad adopted me, tried to get me into it but gave up when I just didn’t believe. As a kid it was easy for me to dismiss religion: God is good? Then why don’t have I my parents? He ain’t good with me so fuck him, I didn’t start the beef. Pretty sure a black church –through the power of music- would have converted me to a bigger extent but you know, white Catholicism in Europe is probably the best way to not make you religious, ever.

But it was deeper than that. Religion just didn’t fit the 80s, technology, rockets etc. Like, not at all. Go home religion, you’re drunk.

I think that’s why Ta-Nehisi Coates is more feared than appreciated for his glacial and fear-inducing vision of a world where there’s no god.

That’s where I connect with his writing, when he’s not pushing anything but as pure as possible reasoning and simple facts. Chirurgical, devoid of emotions, precise. He demonstrates that  sorry to be blunt, your prayers didn’t do shit and won’t, that black person will still get killed within systems –street, police, employment- that are all, all of them, human made.

This, is all there is. As Ta-Nehisi writes it down so well, it is scary to acknowledge that but oddly comforting to know that we humans made this. Because it means we can unmake this too. It’s not hope, a vague notion, it’s a fact like rocks in the desert: we can change what we made. It’s not hopelessness nor a focus on struggle, it’s a focus on the real, big work/tiny chance we have. That’s all we have. People always seem to prefer fantasy and we’re paying with flesh for that. So much inaction or action that doesn’t change anything.

I know, around 80% of black people in the US are into religion and go to church. I also know how messed up the relationship has been between black people, Christianity and  History.

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice

Christianity to me growing up in Europe and studying there, is kind of a cancer that screwed an entire world up. Imagine a bunch of dudes going down Africa like “hey lil nigga, you heard about that book?”, tricking people into something. The church as a powerful institution is a failure of the state, supposed to provide. So I never had a great, positive view of religion besides watching black people dancing and harmonizing here in the US. We don’t need religion to sing and dance though.

In the end what frightens me the most is the future and  how religion isn’t helping black people, like making them averse to science for example. It’s still true in 2015 and knowing how the world is shaping up I really don’t like seeing that. It makes me feel I will have to wait more and I don’t want that.

I had read his book “Come on, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors”. It was one of the first time I was reading statistics about black people and those numbers were filling me with fear and sweat.

Yes, even in France the Cosby show was huge. Of course my white liberal parents loved it, probably for slightly different reasons I did (though some things are universal like father/son relationships). Fat Albert was big too, we had reruns in the 80s.

I don’t give a fuck about my Bill memories.

We know rapists get away with rape all the time, even when they are not one of the most powerful and respected black man on earth. We know women under-report rape because they know they will not go anywhere with “justice”. We know most rape happen within personal circles family, friends. We also know that people very rarely falsely accuse people of rape. You just don’t do that for fun. Standing up and having the courage to say “that person abused me” is not a little thing.

46 women, 35 together in an article and probably more who didn’t say anything. Yes, I too have this feeling of being wrong to take a black man down. We don’t have a lot of those, at the top, respected by absolutely everyone. In 2005 when the first “rumors” about him and his pills appeared, I didn’t want to believe it but I knew it smelled real: powerful man, young women? I’m going to go for believing the victims because Bill was way too weird about it. Ten years later I know we’re doing the right thing. Since the first reports appeared I couldn’t  trust that man, even from my couch.

James Brown was the first one that I had trouble to deal with, having pretty much invented a music genre I adore by himself and his band, band he completely abused and stole from. He threatened his wife with a shotgun at some point. People are acting like he was losing it, he wasn’t, he was like that from the start we just didn’t see it when he was on stage, looking at his foot work. Hot pants.

The last one I heard about is Marvin Gaye. Yes, another big black icon. The dude was 34 when he went on seducing that 17 year old foster child who will become his wife. Oh of course, he was already married with three kids. It’s already so wrong at so many levels but that’s the start.

Jan Gaye is releasing a memoir in which we learn how Marvin forced her to have sex with other people and other terrible things. This entire freaky, sense that women are things you consume, control and throw away, I’ll never understand. It broke my heart reading that about Marvin Gaye, another one bites the dust. Glad and proud of Jan for doing the right thing, tell the truth.

It’s just that most powerful men are powerful psychopaths with outdated values I guess. We don’t need them.

It’s a wonderful story. Here’s the intro:

At age six, I ran away with my sister to escape the Rwandan massacre. We spent seven years as refugees. What do you want me to do about it? Cry?

It’s all about luck:

After a few months, Claire broke down — of course she did. This life wasn’t going to lead anywhere anyway, and marriage (however personally problematic) was a lottery ticket out.

Her sister got married to get a chance to live a better life, aka she was attractive enough to have someone take care of her.

I don’t mean to be rude or  judgmental or anything. It’s just survival. But it says something though: we’re bodies too. We’re bodies first, despite the intellectual tendency to make believe that mind and soul are independent from the envelope.

Ta-nehisi Coates has a book coming out focusing on the pain inflicted to black bodies. Look at how much bodies are important and determine so much: Clemantine and her sister are gorgeous and that’s what made them escape a probably terrible future. I was a cute baby, probably not screaming too much and people, multiple people wanted to save my orphan ass. I remember being struck reading about Simone Veil, a great and beloved French minister who survived Auschwitz and who said a bit annoyed by all the praise she got for surviving: “you know, I didn’t do anything. I was a kid. A beautiful little girl and that’s what saved me.”

The body. What women spend so much time and money to paint in the morning. The body, taller on heels which creates all kinds of social behaviors. Our abundant society that makes lean bodies more attractive than plump ones. The body, photoshopped in every single ad, that we still try to match regardless. The body, that trans people are not happy with because it doesn’t connect with who they are. How come smart and public people are pretty much always good-looking if not drop dead beautiful or handsome?

The body might not be everything. But it’s a lot.

It’s pretty painful for Gen X Europe to witness what’s going on with Greece. We are the only generation that grew up with the idea that Europe was the goal, the answer, the neatest shit we could conceive.

But we got screwed. Boomers, again, totally hostile to mixing up cultures and sharing our good stuff to each other. Boomers’ elite created that insane technocratic layer on top of Europe’s institutions. Millennials screwing things up too because they didn’t grow up with any ideal and don’t necessarily want to work to fix what previous generations have let go. European millennials, they like their comfort and are not that curious about their neighbors, they have tablets and the world at their fingertips. Why would they?

So it’s a mess. One currency to rule them all wasn’t enough. When I see how hard it is for those countries to get on the same page for stupid things like driving laws or more ridiculous, I kind of feel like it’s never going to happen. We haven’t been able to make work laws more consistent across Europe and we wonder why people don’t move so much and blame other countries.

And always the same problem of not asking Europeans what they think. Most Europeans knew that Greece wasn’t ready in 2000. I wasn’t for it. At that time, bigger economies like Spain and Italy were slipping away. We were already seeing that it was complicated to “synchronize” countries economically and we were adding one with a pretty weak economy. We should have said no to Greece and fix issues with South Europe first and I’m pretty sure that citizens would have gone this way. But we’re never asked directly, instead populist politic parties jump in and tell everyone that we need to go back to National Bullshit. And a lot of people are listening to them. It’s a mess.

Obviously banks are the happy architects of that clusterfuck. They assisted governments lying and profiting meanwhile, people think it’s all about immigration laws and “who’s leading” Europe. That’s genius. Evil, but genius.

I don’t know how it will get better. I feel like we’re passed the point where there was a simple and straight answer to Europe which was let’s build it.

Internet K-hole (IKH) was amazing. For anyone who grew up in the 80s, even outside the US IKH was that bottomless window on that period. Those washed up pictures, the simple fact that we had to wait before seeing those pictures! And of course the entire eighties aesthetic and the sighs it makes you do now.

IKH was on Blogger, that terrible Google-owned blog platform. It is now on Tumblr and updated daily. This fucking sucks.

IKH was mysterious, we didn’t know when it would be updated and then BAM fifty or more pictures would be coming out of nowhere like a random Christmas.

RSS was the way to subscribe. the feed would be silent for months and then one day you would have something to look at, a free trip to nostalgiaville. Time would stop, you would get stuck in that hole. It was glorious.

This obsession for eyeballs and immediacy these days is so stupid. Some things are better when they’re slowly consumed and unpredictable. Receiving daily visual doses of the end 70s/80s/early90s just makes you feel like “the fuck am I doing?”. There’s no joy anymore.

That intersection between something I like, technology thinking it knows what I want forcing me to consume in one single way while the creator is stuck with said technology that doesn’t want him to be free so he just follows what tools and “fans” demand.

Bye IKH.

New art next door

One year on West Adams Blvd. I was the newest roommate and I’m soon going to be the oldest. People follow their jobs, their loved ones. Things move fast. Sometimes.

Still great to be here. There are some amazing jewels around, places to hang out or places I’m lusting for.

There is coach Tily, Q, Jerrick, Mariana, Stephanie, Israel, Jimmy, Fred, Miguel, Car Wash, Yvonne. Brendon, Teddy, Archie, Ben. Oji. And so many more.

I might call it home now.

We can never NOT compare those two now can we?

2 – 4 VS 6 – 6 (finals won – finals appearances).

Now that I have watched Lebron almost as much as Michael I understand better why I’m not loving his style.

Lebron plays like a bear, Michael played like a deer. Statistics will never show that.

Lebron’s legacy will be that basketball is a team sport. That building teams takes time. That it takes a leader some humility to make it work. And that despite everything, he’s not doing so good on that side.

People forget the immense contribution of the team in Jordan’s undefeated Bulls. YouTube makes it look like MJ does all the work. People forget how hard the Pistons hit them for years, how Scottie became so good he was basically Jordan II, same moves, same speed, same hunger. MJ was just one of them. Curry with the Warriors looks exactly like that.

Lebron hasn’t been able to do that at all. I watched him won with the Heat then lose with the Heat then lose with the Cavs. When they won they came back from nowhere thanks to the team and Ray Allen’s three. When they lost they really lost, they couldn’t do anything against the Spurs circulating the ball so well.

This year, same. This is why numbers don’t matter. It’s all about the team. That’s the constant in basketball.