I went to college in one of the poorest cities in the United States. I believe it was number seven at that time. The college itself was a Hogwarts style oasis, complete with gothic clock towers and leaded glass windows. To be honest, I felt more immediately at home in the city part, as it reminded me of home somewhat, and was the only place I could get my hair properly cut.
I only had to wander about three blocks off campus to find an actual barber shop, with actual men sitting around talking about fights on TV and neighborhood gossip, but no one knew about the place because it was off-campus – and we had been instructed with gusto to remain on campus. No one mentioned specifically why, so as poverty levels and societal disparity were never brought up, I think most students assumed that trolls lurked in the dark urban woods just beyond the gym.
I’d been told about the barber shop from the other black guy in my class, the one whose name everybody called me (and vice versa). I was a long way from home, trying not to make any stupid mistakes, so I used my neighborhood smarts and kept my eyes open along the way and everything was just fine.
At home my mother cut my hair, because barber shops were expensive enough to be considered unnecessary; my classic hairstyle growing up was even all over, with a sharp line around the back sometimes accomplished with the help of a Cool-Whip™ bowl. I’d wait patiently in the folding chairs opposite the barber chairs for someone to call me over, and got a fade with a #3 guard length on top, which for me was super fancy.
I went off campus a lot. There were real grocery stores, hardware stores, and places you could still get shoelaces for 49 cents. It was great having this secret resource for practical items. Eventually I moved off campus, and kind of commuted back to Hogwarts.
But one night I was walking home from a party of some kind, maybe 2 AM, and weirdly found myself alone on the streets. It was late fall, I had a coat and hat on, walking briskly, keeping my eyes open, when I saw a figure in the distance, coming toward me. I minded my own business and kept walking, but the figure kind of loped forward, one hand inside their coat, leaning sideways. It took about a half a block to tell that the man was black, and by that time I had kind of adopted my own tough walk, less authentic from street culture and more reminiscent Martha Graham choreography - head tilted / shoulders forward / uneven steps. I kept wiping my nose for some reason.
Quite seriously, there were only two solutions to this scenario: I would meet his eyes and tip my head sharply up in the traditional greeting, or he would not return the greeting and there would be trouble.
I didn’t even have a spoon to fight with. I also didn’t have any money… I may have had a Walkman in my pocket, but it probably had a cassette of the Police in it. I wasn’t going to win a fight, so I had to win this walk, I had to convince him that it wasn’t worth it to even slow down, that we were on the same team, everything was cool. If he thought I was from the city, I’d be fine.
His hand moved further into his coat.
There was no point in trying to cross the street, there was no one over there either. I tried to look taller. I bobbed my head super slowly as if acknowledging the fact that I was a badass, but inside I knew I was 22 steps from being a victim if I was lucky, and a statistic if I wasn’t.
18 steps.
15.
9 . I remember inhaling and holding my breath.
About five steps away, I recognized that it was the other black guy in my class.
“What are you doing??”
“What was I doing? You scared me half to death!”
“I scared YOU? Why were you walking like that?”
“Because YOU were walking like that!!”
Thus ended my last experiment in code-switching.
There’s not really enough of me to be more of me, so I’m just the one me I am, everywhere. Rather than change my tune, I just fiddle with my volume and tone knobs – adjust the brightness and contrast on the same show. Pretending to be more authentic results in a weirdly self reflexive form of cultural appropriation.
Which brings me to Sting. As a midwestern teen in the 1980’s, the music of The Police was my first introduction to reggae. Cringingly, I sang all the songs on their first three albums in Sting’s (singing) accent. Loudly. In my car. With the windows down. Only in college did I learn about Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, Eek-A-Mouse, and Black Uhuru, and the guy who introduced me to those bands was from Long Island, not The Islands.
It was through the lyrics of Sting that I was introduced to The TAMI Show, mentioned in the always relevantly titled song “When the World is Running Down, You Make The Best of What’s Still Around”. The TAMI Show was a film capturing a live concert in Santa Monica, California in 1964. The audience was a full auditorium of teenagers, and artists included Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, and The Rolling Stones. This was a fully integrated concert of both artists and audience, held three months after the signing of the Civil Rights Act; same stage, same show.
It was James Brown who delivered the standout performance, a 17 minute no-holds-barred incendiary blast that in many ways feels punk rock even though it was pure soul.
The Rolling Stones had to come on AFTER him.
They didn’t want to. Much of their music was inspired by the very music James Brown played. If you watch the film, they look deeply nervous; Mick Jagger’s trademark swagger is entirely muted by the immediate echo of a man who helped inspire it. But they played anyway. It takes about 13 full minutes for Mick to get his mojo fully back, and it is HIS mojo, you can see the influences but also the originality there.
Until YouTube, it was almost impossible to find a copy of this, and again, I owe my knowledge of it to Sting, cultural ambassador and yoga enthusiast. I don’t know if there’s a pure resource for history, like a cool mountain stream you can bottle it from directly. Even given his teaching experience, I wouldn’t pick Sting as a reliable Black historian…maybe an enthusiastic hobbyist.
The Police were “adapting original material”, but I didn’t stop listening to them because of that. Through their music I discovered their inspirations, including that concert, a rare piece of cultural history that still inspires me today.
To consider Black history only history with black faces offers a mere slice of how art and empathy work. For that reason, it’s important for me to be open to everything, not to distance myself from the world, pre-judge or categorize, because I really can’t see all that well from a distance.
Mirror Mirror.