Playing Against the Paradigm
[Music from Fodder opens the piece]
SARA ORTIZ: That is a snippet from Fodder, the improvised album by poet Douglas Kearney and musician Val Jeanty.
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SARA ORTIZ: Welcome to Black Mountain Radio, broadcast from the Mojave Desert. I’m Sara Ortiz.
ERICA VITAL-LAZARE: And I’m Erica Vital-Lazare.
ORTIZ: You came back as our guest host! We didn’t scare you off?
VITAL-LAZARE: Not yet. We’ll see what this episode brings. What were the risks involved in taking on Black Mountain Radio?
ORTIZ: There are always risks involved when taking on something new (and creative), especially when a team is pushing its boundaries, so there are unquestionably substantial risks in creating Black Mountain Radio. Not to mention, there is a substantial level of vulnerability in hanging out with you in a recording studio.
VITAL-LAZARE: Yes, there is always a risk of knowing too much and getting too close. That means we will in some way be accountable—that we will have to accept the failure or the victory—or that ultimately we have to think differently and therefore do differently. Or, goddess forbid suspend our judgement.
ORTIZ: Yes, this resonates with me. Risk which can certainly lead to failure, which can then in turn lead to judgement, and that’s intimidating, daunting. Sometimes, we just have to let go.
VITAL-LAZARE: Yes, letting go, and allowing new knowledge and new experience in, it’s part of the winning side of the risk.
ORTIZ: The slogan for over a decade here—was “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.” Then back in Jan. 2020 weary of the salacious associations—the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority shifted the slogan to “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here.” Both are true.
VITAL-LAZARE: When it comes to raising children in Las Vegas, and this is something that those who are non-Las Vegans actually intuit. And it is a driving force behind that question— how do we raise children here? To do so is, quite frankly, a risky prospect. I admit I was once a little guilty of thinking so myself. I’ve raised two sons here…
ORTIZ: Who are great and amazing human beings.
VITAL-LAZARE: Thank you, I rather like them myself. But when those questions come, those questions tend to focus on the risk involved. What is the impact on the kids that you raise here?
ORTIZ: Yes, many people who live here are often asked the question: “Do you live in a casino? Did you grow up in a casino? Were you raised in a casino?” As if it’s only The Strip that exists in Las Vegas.
VITAL-LAZARE: Or “Did you gamble as a kid?”
ORTIZ: “Have you ever won big?”
VITAL-LAZARE: The one story that pops up among the many others that doesn’t involve the big win may just involve the flip side of that, which is losing big. And so that is the question that is often not asked. You’re not asked, “have you ever risked it all?” No one really wants to pose that question or know that story. It’s not necessarily a sexy one.
VITAL-LAZARE: Attorney Dayvid Figler actually did grow up, not in a casino, but near the famous Las Vegas Strip, and with a casino worker for a father. He left the city at age 16, and when he returned with a law degree seven years later, he also had the realization that there was more to gambling than his own experiences with it. Today, his practice has a major focus on those who gamble in unhealthy ways.
ORTIZ: Gambling, of course, is the main industry in Nevada and is omnipresent in Las Vegas. As some form of gambling has expanded to almost every state in America, it’s vital to understand the impact on communities, both good and bad, as seen through individual stories like those of Dayvid and his clients.
VITAL-LAZARE: Throughout this segment, we’ll also hear from Nann, whose story is proof that the seemingly mundane escapes we take to relieve ourselves of the pressures of everyday living can combine with our unique histories and chemistries in unexpected ways. And that can happen in any town, any hamlet, city or burg in America.
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COIN IN, COIN OUT
[Slow, lullaby-like synthesizer plays in the background]
DAYVID FIGLER (NARRATION): I not only grew up in Las Vegas, I grew up immersed in its gambling culture. The apartment complex where we lived until I was 13, shared a block wall with the Riviera Hotel and Casino. My father walked to his job, which was dealing cards at the Sahara hotel. Because I spent so much time in those casinos, I remember the interior of all those joints better than any of the parks, libraries, roller skating rinks, movie theaters or arcades that were also part of my life.
We’d go to casinos for dinners, for shows, to pick up my dad from work, to track down my dad when he didn’t come home from work, to meet up with visiting friends and family, or just to hang, in or around, while my parents gambled, mom mostly bingo, dad mostly craps. Vivid childhood memories.
[Sound of rapid knocking on a door swells into a menacing, musical rhythm]
But I have other memories, too, of my parents “discussing” gambling. I recall those as being “really loud” -- scream-fests actually -- to the point where I had trained myself to quickly fall asleep on first scream or at least try to, more loudly, think about something else.
[Electronic music, reminiscent of a dungeon arcade game, plays in the background]
When my dad won, he was lauded as the greatest hunter and gatherer in the city. Sometimes stacks of cash would be spread out on the tables.
Invariably though, the celebration would devolve.
It was, of course, worse when he lost. Then, my mom would chide him as a fool who put us all at risk; those “talks” lasted well into the night.
And when, on occasion, my dad disappeared for extended periods, there was never much doubt where he was, and the solo screaming was aimed at the walls, ricocheting into oblivion.
[A scream joins the sound of the music]
If all this sounds frantic, it was. Just not obvious to me. Because despite these emotional fluctuations, my parents were good at making everything seem more normal. Dad’s benders aside, my parents never missed any of my recitals, award ceremonies, parent-teacher conferences, or Cub Scout outings.
We never went hungry, though [short laugh] we had more than a healthy amount of impractical meals in casinos: shrimp cocktails, prime rib the size of a small pony and cream pies galore, all “comped” by the pit boss. Mom got adept at balancing the unbalance-able ebb and flow of winnings and losses, and dad always had a backup paycheck coming in to keep the family afloat. We were never evicted, and, to my knowledge, they never stole as so many problem gamblers do; no one injured themselves, or to my knowledge, had those sort of dark thoughts.
Still, as I came to realize that what I considered normal was not everyone’s normal, I knew I had to leave my hometown, to experience other ways of living, to do something “reputable” like... law school?... to get far away from the tumultuous world of gambling.
Now, in my 30th year of law practice, my parents long passed away, I find myself immersed in lives impacted by gambling, anew, and “normal” is the last word I’d use to describe it.
[Slow, lullaby-like synthesizer plays in the background]
FIGLER: So, why don’t you start, Nann, by telling me your name and then why don’t you tell me how we met?
NANN: My name is Nann. I’m a person in recovery from problem gambling. I work at the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling as the operations manager.
I’m 58 years old and the first time I met you, I was incarcerated. I was starting, it was in my first year of a 4 to 10, and I had called and asked to see if I could hire you about a law I’d heard [of] after I came to prison that involved problem gambling.
FIGLER: Once I got into it, I pretty much figured out that you didn’t get the appropriate treatment from the court that the law said that someone in your position should have. I remember you asked me if I could find out more to see if we could bring the matter back before the judge who sentenced you to prison for a period of time, between 4 and 10 years.
And then, we embarked upon that adventure together.
FIGLER (NARRATION): In addition to Nann, I know and represent many people who have committed very serious criminal offenses that would have never have happened but for a verifiable psychological condition that puts them at grave risk. People with disrupted executive functioning; people who risk more than money when they gamble; people who stop seeing money as money, but just a means for escape. People like my parents who went a step beyond.
NANN: Gambling was something that was a fun thing, that we’d go out and do with my mother-in-law. Done it for years. It was fun. It was structured. There was very little money to play with, and I stuck to that. As the years went by, life changed, things changed. You’re raising a blended family. The kids are getting older. Life just takes hold. Things get harder.
My parents had became ill. There was a lot of traveling back and forth with that.
I realized that’s where the crack in the foundation began, was realizing I could lose my rocks, which are my parents. And so, gambling became an escape, and then it became the desire to do it more than just two hours on a Friday night.
FIGLER: How much were you gambling at your peak?
NANN: Thousands. Thousands that I was fully aware of in the moment, but not until I ever went and got that statement that was printed out did I ever see a true figure of a year’s worth of gambling, coin in and coin out, was over a million dollars. That was sickening.
FIGLER (NARRATION): Most of my legal career has involved advocating for those without a voice, helping the indigent, challenging the processes and harsh consequences of a problematic criminal-justice system. But since I met Nann, I’ve begun to question whether having legalized gambling is worth the risks despite it being responsible for so much of our state’s revenue.
[Thoughtful, videogame-like music plays in the background]
NANN: We have a phrase, “our brains are hijacked.” And so, what was a normal way of thinking is no longer a normal way of thinking. I’m sitting in front of a machine. I was no longer anyone’s mother. I was no longer anyone’s employee. I was no longer anyone’s wife. I was literally connected to that machine. And it was just a place I could sit that was me and only me. And the money going in, it was what was needed to continue to play.
The guilt was so great; the lies were so great; the depth of which I was digging myself, burying myself in a hole, knowing that, someday, this had to stop; only knowing I couldn’t.
FIGLER (NARRATION): Nann should have never gone to prison, but I get it. There was a lot of money involved and angry victims.
But learning about the explicit details of Nann’s experience in prison, it is painfully and tragically clear that none of that matters; that, ultimately, our laws need to be reexamined to be mindful of helping people with mental challenges, addictions, and their own unique circumstances. When it comes to the outcomes and impact of gambling as it relates to criminal justice, Nevada is a real mixed bag. And as more and more states come to gambling, the same questions will arise.
NANN: The amount that I am charged with, that I’m paying restitution on, is a half a million dollars. And I will never be able to pay that back in my lifetime; [emotion wells in her voice] as hard as I try, as much as I want to, it’ll never be paid back. And that’s an insane amount of money. And the realization of that figure, it’s very hard to understand that I’m associated with that kind of debt that came from theft. It’s just, I can’t.
FIGLER (NARRATION): I even understand the resistance to a gambling diversion law in a state where it is important to have as much gambling as possible, and where talk of consequence is virtually taboo.
I’m proud of my work in helping establish the gambling court that, in part, needed to come into being to accommodate its first participant, Nann. I couldn’t be happier that more and more individuals are being admitted into it now that it exists, and the diversion law has been revitalized.
But I’m worried, too. As states tighten their budgets and some expand gambling options to fill monetary gaps, funds for problem gambling are likely to be some of the first to be cut. Nevada is already below the national average. I’m worried that the positive trend of the casino industry working harder towards responsible gambling efforts loses importance when profits are again foremost to their bottom line.
But I’m worried, most of all, that people are still getting caught up in a system indifferent to the pathway of how they got there. That traditional risk/reward, crime and punishment models are absolutely obsolete; that problem gamblers, especially prone to mischaracterization as simply having “greedy ways” or “lacking personal responsibility,” get ground up in the bigger system; a system focused on the size of the financial crime more than the human behind it.
NANN: Problem gambling diagnosis doesn’t define the individual. We’re so much more than a diagnosis, [emotion wells in her voice] and there’s some really beautiful people that had an addiction that took us across a moral line. And to spend the time in prison that some people are spending because of this addiction? Good people who are now waiting just to get out, to start their treatment, we’re talking years.
It’s hard to understand the guilt that I’m here and they’re still there. It’s even hard because this is something everyone should have at least the advantage to have.
Not everyone has to go to prison. Not everyone deserves to go to prison because it is a diagnosable disease, and these are good people.
I have found three women; we all are here because of our crime, which resulted from gambling. So this law keeps being brought up -- why didn’t any of us get this chance?
[Slow, lullaby-like music plays in the background]
FIGLER (NARRATION): As a Vegas kid, I finally understand that, while anything but normal, my upbringing prepared me to be where I am right now, in a city that can bet on itself to do better.
Las Vegas is a place that will always be different, but against all stereotypes, I’m committed to it also being a place of thoughtfulness, compassion, and care.
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VITAL-LAZARE: Nann continues to work with those who suffer from problem gambling addictions at the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling. Dayvid continues to advocate and also perform.
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ORTIZ: Erica, how have you been practicing escape this past year?
VITAL-LAZARE: Well, we were talking about judgement briefly earlier, so don’t judge me please… I often lament that I was born too late to truly benefit from some of those trips recommended by Timothy Leary and Carlos Castaneda. But in a very real way, I tune in with my Kemetic yoga or kundalini communities with the singing bowl or gong, and I travel. Or sit within the vibration of the djembe with my sisters on the West side, as they lead the community through African dance and in that way, I AM GONE—astral flight through sound.
ORTIZ: That sounds really amazing. beautiful and also so spiritual. It’s syncopated vibrations guide this next segment. Fodder is a collaborative improvised album produced by Fonograf Editions. This LP (or a recorded live performance) features Douglas Kearney’s award-winning poetry collection Buck Studies and Val Jeanty’s original composition, samples, and improvisation. Together, they create this live sound chemistry, which oozes and emanates raw energy. Their collaboration is like a kind of dance improvisation, where both artists bring risk, breath, and trust into a shared space.
And you can hear Douglas Kearney putting it all out there. In tandem, Val alternates between conducting, performing, and composing. It’s so rich, it’s so raw.
VITAL-LAZARE: It sounds like you’re a fan, Sara, and so am I. I love the way Val refers to her music as “a prayer language” and has collaborated with musicians as wide-ranging as Terri Lynn Carrington, Kris Davis and Akua Naru and worship practices as rich as buddhism, hinduism and her home traditions of vodoun. The roots of her music and spiritual practice are informed by the singular liberation story of Haiti and ritual connections that harken back to Western and Central Africa. It was in honoring the legacy formerly enslaved populations in the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe that she was able to find a like minded spirit in Douglas Kearney, who is also a fellow traveler in that rich tradition of looking to the past to make extraordinary futures, in common with African creative and spiritual expression that she found a fellow traveler— flaneur—Minnesota-based poet-performer-librettist Douglas Kearney.
ORTIZ: I love what you’re doing here with the flaneur, the traveling, the trips…
VITAL-LAZARE: And it strikes me as you’re listening to the album as a whole, spiritually, silently. They have agreed to surrender to each other in their work. Trusting that one will not lead where the other will not go.
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FODDER
[Clip Douglas Kearney performing “Do the Deep Blue Boogie” in a loud, boisterous voice to the sounds of swirling electronic drums]
DOUGLAS KEARNEY: I’m Douglas Kearny. I’m a poet, performer, librettist, and teacher.
VAL JEANTY: I’m Val Jeanty, an electronic music composer, turntablist, drummer, also teacher from Haiti.
[Sound of synth and drums playing in a syncopated, angular rhythm plays in the background]
What you’re going to hear when you hear the album, Fodder, is the fifth time that myself and Val have gotten together and performed something. It’s just us listening, talking, connecting, and being together in Portland in August of 2019.
JEANTY: There’s a vibe in Portland. There’s a spiritual thing in Portland. I don’t know what it is, [laughs] but Portland’s got that vibe.
[Music fades out]
KEARNEY: So, we met on a project organized in tribute to Sekou Sundiata, the late poet, and she had arranged this whole band, crew, tribe of people to come together for that. And so, we’re doing this piece, and Val had her own piece. Val was working with everybody.
As we were going through rehearsal, there was a moment when I was performing and doing the drum machine, sample box approach to performance that I try to do. After we did that moment of rehearsal, Val was like, “oh, okay. I see what you’re doing.” [Laughs] She was like, “I see what you’re doing.” And that, to me, was like a victory.
That was like, “wow! Okay.” And so, [laughs] I don’t know if that’s always how Val thinks about it. I do feel like that was me auditioning to potentially work with you again.
JEANTY: I think, for me too, maybe not a test, but just to see how far we can push it as just artists. And the second time we met, we had to do something, and you came to my loft in Brooklyn.
And then, I was totally like, sure. Like, “okay, Doug is not afraid. Doug is ready to just go.” It’s not just for one gig because you could just do one gig and it sounds great, but then the next one, you don’t know how that’s going to go.
The thing too, with us, we never have to talk about it. You just send me the texts. When I read your texts, because it’s not just like straight, it has all shapes. It’s not just flat, it moves. It’s never, like I said, a straight thing, this way; it’s always like it’s moving; it’s like the words are here or there.
And that creates a sense of movement. And the movement for me is a sound.
Now, I was like, “oh, of course, Doug is not afraid. Let’s go.” [Spoken with excitement and laughs] It’s a blessing to have what I would call a spiritual, artist connection.
And those are hard to find, but I think the second time, it was like, “yes, there’s a connection here.” We don’t even have to talk about it. You just send me the texts, and I’ll just send you some beats, or just some ideas, and then we just go. From that point on, I was totally convinced. The first time, it was definitely like, “hmm, really? He’s not afraid?” But, the second time, I was like, “okay, let’s just go.”
Also, perfect artists, companions, take risks, and risk, for us, that’s where it’s at, and it’s great to have like that partner, like, “okay, you want to go.” And you just keep pushing, and that’s how we’ve gotten to this point.
I feel like, especially when we did that gig, the one at Portland, we barely spoke. You were just like, “okay, are you good? Okay. You’re good. Alright. Cool.” And we get on stage and then [claps hands together for emphasis] boom.
[Upbeat, syncopated synth and percussion from “Do the Deep Blue Boogie” plays and fades out]
KEARNEY: So, I’ll send Val the words, and, each of the times we work together, you’ll send me some tracks, but there was a time in Arizona where I didn’t hear the tracks until the day of the gig.
We always make sure that there’s one piece in every set we’ve done that’s just one a hundred percent improvised, not even from a text. We’re just up there communicating. We don’t rehearse the set so to speak. We’ll do a sound check, but the big thing is to not try to reproduce whatever you did in the soundtrack check.
Cause, you know, that’s when you start chasing instead of leading.
JEANTY: That’s the thing that’s also so fresh working with you, Doug, but when we get together live, it’s a whole different thing. Just like you were saying, I would send you a track, and then when we do live, we may start there and then we flip it to something else.
When we’re live, when you’re doing your like arrhythmic stuff, for me, that’s like a drummer. So, I’m right there with you; I’m like, “oh, okay. Okay, he wants to go there.” So, it’s not just the words, it’s how [you’re] kind of like playing the words like a drum. For me, I feel like it’s always a hundred percent improv.
Always because after we do the sound check, we always say, “okay, we’re not going to do that.” [laughs]
[Kearney’s soulful moaning and Jeanty’s off-kilter percussion and synths from “That Loud Ass Colored Silence” plays and fades out]
KEARNEY: And you talk about the drums. The voice becomes a drum, and your music is always a conversation. You are always communicating. It just feels like you are reaching out, reaching back, reaching forward. And you’re just drawing all these different sounds and textures. When you’re playing skins, or when you move to something electronic, or you’re processing, all of those are like different languages and different frequencies that you’re bringing into it. And so those are the moments where I feel like, “oh, okay, I need to be even more percussive now,” because you’re talking, you’re singing, you’re making sound in that way.
And it’s that constant exchange and that feeling of, you were saying earlier, I’m not scared when I’m up there. There’s no fear. And so much of that is because the only way I can mess up, the only way I can feel like I can mess up when I’m up there with you, is to stop listening.
Once we’re up there and we’re hitting, the text is like a suggestion. [Laughs] Right? It’s a context, but we’re transforming that as we go, and that, to me, is incredible. So, yeah, you are a sound chemist because, whatever a sound is understood as, you transform it when you play.
JEANTY: I have to find a way to interpret that movement.
Not just the word because the word is just the word. Let’s just say “love.” Of course, for love, I could have some pretty sounds because of how we perceive love, but the way you would say love, I have to think of a different sound for that.
[Clip of “Sho” plays. Kearney recites lines of poetry emotively as the sound of wind, birds and chimes rises and fades out]
KEARNEY: Anybody who listens to what Val and I do understands, I think, better the kind of freedom that I want people to feel in these poems that are set all across the page in different ways. They have to know that I did not plan. However it comes out that performance, that’s the spontaneous moment.
And for me, Val creates a room to be in, a space to be in, and then I provide the other part of that room.
JEANTY: If you’re a musician, first, number one, you have to be fearless, especially doing this kind of stuff because what I do is super avant-garde. So, you know, that world, you already have to be— [laughs] there’s no fear.
I mean, you’re already in the avant-garde zone cause I feel like we’re not just working. I mean, it is art, but we are doing things. We’re creating a better world. We’re creating portals, creating different ways to approach our physical reality. We can create all these different worlds to escape to, to help others. So, it’s not just about the art. So, you have to approach it with no fear in general, whether you’re alone or whether you’re playing with someone else. You just have to be that kind of artist first.
Cause when you get with that other person that doesn’t feel scared—so, depending on whatever situation, if it’s working with, let’s say, a full jazz band, it’s the same kind of approach. You have to approach it with at least some kind of joy because, for me, that’s what it is.
That’s what takes out the fear of things. You just have to have more joy than fear.
KEARNEY: A part of the reason why there’s no fear, is exactly what Val is saying about the joy. I am so happy to be in the room with that. The moment I said, “okay, Val needs to be on this,” the idea of, “oh, we gotta do something different cause it’s recorded.” No, the moment I said, “Val, can you do this?” And Val was like, “yeah,” I didn’t feel like I had to think about the recording of it anymore. The preparation for the significance of the event was the last time Val and I hit [laughs]. That was the preparation. That spiritual connection, that artistic and creative connection, takes all the fear out of it.
JEANTY: It’s straight creatives, spiritual connection straight up. Yeah. Yeah. Such a blessing. Such a blessing. And for us, I think risk is a good thing. We want to take those risks. It’s like, “yes, push yourself.” And it makes it a lot more fun. And that’s how you get to these places.
You don’t get to these places by just being safe. You have to push, push things beyond risk. Yes. Beautiful risk. You know, dance with it, dance with the risk. That’s what we do. We dance with it.
[Clip from “I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always” plays Kearney is heard reciting lines of poetry rhythmically over the atonal beating of drums and metal skins.]
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ORTIZ: Douglas Kearney is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee and a Cave Canem fellow. He’s published six books and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Val Jeanty is a Haitian-born, Brooklyn-based Afro-Electronic music composer, drummer and anointed turntablist.
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ORTIZ: For our last segment, we submerged into the BMI Archives and extracted a recording from our 2015 Jim Rogers Contrarian Lecture, an event that typically invites a person of “considerable accomplishment and intellectual heft (no one can see me, but I’m doing quotation marks) to discuss a contrarian point of view.” A controversial or even unpopular idea.
VITAL-LAZARE: Yes Sara, and who better than Walter Mosley to stand as that first inaugural speaker in 2015 for that event. Walter Mosley is known for his Easy Rawlin’s mysteries, particularly Devil in a Blue Dress. He has gone on to write countless works, we can say over 34 books, but I suspect he writes under other pen names as well, he’s so prolific. He has also founded an organization to break down the barriers in publishing, and he writes sci-fi, and has published deeply in essay work, short story work and has published a graphic novel. His nonfiction often turns to concepts of class and the shell-game of inclusion and exclusion. His thesis for this “contrarian lecture”: the white race does not exist.
ORTIZ: Here is Walter Mosley back in 2015.
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RACE IS NOT A COLOR
[Sounds of violins, reminiscent of a BBC documentary, playing in reverse]
WALTER MOSLEY: So, I decided that I’d talk to you tonight about a lie. A lie that almost everyone accepts as truth. A belief system that is not questioned, but if it were, the whole world would change, opening a door into a space that might, counterintuitively for many, deliver us from doom.
The connection this talk has to the university is, to me, obvious because almost every school in America perpetuates this lie. And it is only through true investigation and education that we can dispel its foul effects.
This lie can be compressed down into a single word, a color: white. Supposedly, in nature, the composition of all visible light. In political and social reality, however, it is the source of a great blindness. It is my argument that the white race does not exist, has never existed. And the promulgation of any idea of race in the modern world is, consciously or not, the attempt to dominate economically. Which is to say, absolutely.
And so, I begin the talk with a simple question. Who am I? I am an American, from the soles of my feet, to the hair that once adorned my bald head. An American whose dark-hued ancestors were stolen from their lives and cultures and piled into the holds of ships like so many sacks of skin. An American whose Jewish ancestors stowed their lives into the holds of later vessels running from 1000 years of antisemitism that was soon to blossom into Holocaust. An American whose ancestors walked across the frozen waters from Asia to North America discovering a new world, a world that would one day be stolen from their descendants. I am an English-speaking American, whose language is also whispering French from my Louisiana relatives, and sublime Spanish from the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans I rubbed shoulders with growing up in Southern California. A man whose music is the blues that became rock and roll and hip hop, jazz, that is the bastard child and the heir of the unconsecrated coupling between Africa and Europe.
Who am I? I am a man formed by history but oddly lacking in a clear perspective of the past, a man with so much to me that there is no clear identity to grab onto or to claim. I might be related to Thomas Jefferson, or any of 10,000 masters who raped and, sometimes, even loved their slaves. Who am I? I’m the target of admin and pollsters, census-takers and the evening news. To some, I am the enemy, both inside this nation and internationally, and, to some, I am a brother. I can be at the same time invisible and yet profiled, counted and yet forgotten, imprisoned by circumstance and yet declared free by one of the great documents of political history. I’m prejudged for my skin color, gender, age, education, and even for some things that I’ve actually done wrong. I’m a minor shareholder in the great corporation of America, and therefore responsible for everything good and bad that we’ve done in the name of business. Things we did before I was born, and events that shall occur after I’m gone. I am the amalgamation of all the ignorance, ambitions, yearnings for freedom, and religions of the world. I am, have been, brainwashed so many times that innocence is second nature to me. Contradictorily, America is what I am but not my history, not my identity. I am a new man almost every day. I and mine were once colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, African-American, brother, sister, Uncle Tom, revolutionary, good one, bad one, convict, malingerer, miracle, and so much more. In the end, I can say with conviction that I am many men, and many Americans. Through my veins runs 10,000 years of history that touches every continent, deity and crime known to humanity.
[Short laughs] This history is not composed of false accounts of the past. It is the blood and the beat and the light that passes through my mind and yours. I am your sibling, whether you know it or not, whether you accept me or not. We, known and unknown to each other, form an identity that I can express but still not know, not completely. And for the state of being, I am infinitely grateful because it means that I can be a part of something greater than the individual while still I am at home in my heart.
[Laidback, hiphop-ish drumbeat over reversed violins plays]
I am a Black man; this is the truth. This is a lie. This is an oversimplification. This is a confused notion. This is a declaration of war. It defines me, certainly, within the labyrinthine political, economic and social definitions of American culture. I am a Black man but look at me. How can I make such a bold statement without some twist in my voice, some irony? My skin is surely not black, not dark brown, or even medium brown. The only way to see it in this light would be in contact with other colors in the same scheme. “How can you call yourself a Black man?” I’m often asked by people outside the system of American racism. Sometimes they say, “other people surely don’t recognize you as Black.” They think that this is a political statement I’m making, that I’m identifying myself with ancestors that I don’t want to let go of. But this is not true on any level, I don’t have to let go of my culture because it was ripped from the minds of my ancestors by European slavers here and colonized beyond any recognition on the mother continent. I didn’t have to come up with the idea that I’m a black man in America, I just had to walk down the wrong street at twilight, and spying on me from a block away, the police or one of their assistants were happy to stop me and remind me that I have no business in that neighborhood.
Race is not a color. That’s stupid. Race, as I have said, as I will keep saying, is an economic coding system that, hopefully, has begun to outgrow its relevance through intermarriage, music culture, sports, and the unbelievably slow response to the outcome of the Civil War. Our people, especially the youth, have seen the blurring of lines between the peoples of color: red, white, black or other.
[Laidback, hiphop-ish drumbeat over reversed violins plays]
People who share oppression of identity in the modern world, at least the modern world that I live in, don’t poke their stick at the corpse of the obvious. But even taking this argument into account, I do not deny that calling me a Black man, me calling myself a Black man, is somehow a travesty. I come to this realization through a slightly circuitous route. That is, one day, I realized that people asking me why I define myself by color rarely or ever ask themselves the same question. I mean, what is a white man? They are pink, tan, olive, ruddy, freckled, milky, chalk-skinned people. They are blond, black-haired, brunette, redheaded. They have every color eye, gray and blue and green. So-called white people have a broad palette of views and features, but in my experience, it’s rare to meet a person who denies his or her whiteness. Why would they? People blame me for perpetuating racism by my self-identification, and, to some degree, this is true. Me accepting the color-coding of the plantation owners and the factory owners and the men who stole the land that they made my ancestors slave on, to a certain degree, me accepting their explanation of my existence maintains their claim to power. But blaming a Black man for his golden chains and earthy hues, his unaccountable ahistorical existence and deep-seated unfathomable rage, is like blaming a hausfrau for global warming because she uses a spray can once a year. She is contributing to the problem, but she is not the cause, not nearly. No, racism, race itself, is not caused by people like me calling themselves what they have been called since they were born, since their great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were born. Racism is born of white people accepting that appellation as fact.
On the day that so-called white people stop recognizing themselves by that terminology, on that day, the linchpin of racism will be pulled out, and the entire prejudicial mechanism of the new world will grind to a halt. And I’m not talking about political correctness here. I’m not saying that all we have to do is stop using certain words like white and Black. No, I am saying that we have to strive for a place where people honestly don’t recognize race as color, dialect, gender, or any other physically manifested feature. The denial of race is not enough. The idea has to be to be disproved and discarded, eradicated from the minds of the responsible, educated, and/or sophisticated member of society.
[Laidback, hiphop-ish drumbeat over reversed violins plays]
Years ago, I imagined in one of my political monographs — by the by, that nobody ever reads — what race was in the eyes of any Black woman, sister, Negro, African-American on these shores. Race for us Black people, sequestered on the isolationist outpost of America, was simple to define and impossible to avoid. Race had a white face. Race was the boss at work, the president and his courts and his congress, radio voices, even Amos and Andy, TV and movie stars, race was the concept of beauty in magazines and on billboards, race was the policeman, and the laws he executed, race was prisons and cotton fields and economic disparity that was presented as a reality that cannot, that should not be denied. Black faces were rarely seen, and when they were, they were barely human. Shiftless, comedic, and most honestly spiteful.
We had no history, were not a part of history, and could not in any meaningful way contribute to history as it unfolded in the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world. How does one, so oppressed, so isolated, begin to shatter the false notion that has oppressed her more than any physical weapon or law?
One would expect the solution to be akin to the Gordian knot, impossible to break without terrible violence, but no, the answer to the refutation of racial stereotyping is simple. All you have to do is look in the mirror. Isn’t it wonderful to think that your university could be a mirror, you know? It dawned on me one day that any man, woman, or child from any race, when they peered into the looking-glass, all see the same thing. That is, they see the Self. This identity is beyond race, language, gender, and even history.
When you look in the mirror, race becomes a minor detail within the panoramic vivid image of you. Holding that image in mind and imagining the possibility of that image in the minds of others, we can begin to see how the dictates of racial orientation are superfluous to the roots of identity. White Joe sees Joe in the mirror. Black Jamal sees Jamal in the mirror. Therefore, Joe equals Jamal. |
[Laidback, hiphop-ish drumbeat over reversed violins plays]
America was once a land isolated from its peer nations by vast oceans and the huge expanse of unconquered sky, but no longer. Our science has crushed the world down into a minimum of 24 hours to traverse. It has also transformed history into moments rather than centuries. In Vermont, they used to say, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” [Distant laugh of an audience member] Today, we say, “if you don’t like the world, give it a day. It’ll get worse.” At one time, America was a country that was removed and simple in its prejudices. The red man had been defeated and imprisoned, the Black man had been put down, his life codified and his true image erased. And the brown man from south of the border, he was nothing to worry about. The rest of the world, it was too far away to be of any consequence. We fought two world wars within three decades, and hardly one shot was fired on our shores.
The idea of race itself has lost any true significance in the modern world. Today, the Black man has to consider Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and China’s polluted rivers before saying that an action was taken to deprive him of his rights, his humanity. The white man has to wonder who owns the lands that have been traditionally his domain, and the red woman might still get her day in court. The world is changing rapidly, whirling out of control. Black children soldiers kill Black men and Black mothers. White captains of industry close on white high school dropouts. Women deny girls, and there is no true Hispanic. Our lives are run by technology and money, while we talk about color and gender and the way someone rolls her Rs. We live in a fallacy, a virtual world created by a system that only needs for us to toil and die under its rule. And it doesn’t matter if you call yourself Black or white, Jew or Christian, chosen or defiled. What you think, what you feel is true does not matter if you have not come to terms with the image, the Self in the mirror. If the so-called white American impregnates the so-called Asian woman from the example above, then the child that results will be his child, and hers. This simple fact eradicates any notion of a separation of race. If a Black man pays taxes to a government run by gun dealers and oil moguls, and that money is used to buy guns to kill other Black men on other continents, then that taxpayer, regardless of so-called race, has murdered his brother. Our brother. If I light a fire, the smoke fills our air.
Race is a fiction, an outmoded term that is used by the systems that dominate to separate and conquer us, and it has been successful. As long as I am a Black man, a white man, a Chinese woman, or a Jew, I am removed from my species, my genetic identity and destiny. What we need is redemption. An old-fashioned baptism ritual where the one joins the many, where the word “human” means “all women and men.” We have to eradicate the concept of race. If you believe that the word is inaccurate, misleading, and wrong, then you have to make that realization part of your everyday dialogue, worldview, and belief system. You, especially so-called white people, have to deny the tag of race. You are a citizen, as are all people you know and meet, never know and never meet. Our race is based on an overwhelmingly internal sameness between all human beings — the slant of our eyes, the pigmentation of our skin, the texture of our hair, is the very least of us.
You must still ask why I put weight on so-called white people denying their race and replacing it with the notion of humanity. It is because the notion of a white world has brought down all the oppression on all the other so-called colored races of the modern world. Our identity was taken from us where the white identity, albeit unconsciously, was created for the express purpose of domination. When an idea or an ideal was raised to the level of respect, a white face was put on it. From Black cowboys to brown curly-headed Jesus, the imagined white world took our successes and turned them against us. From blues to jazz to rock and roll, we were disenfranchised. The Arapaho didn’t see themselves as Utes or Mohawks, the Puerto Rican knows that he’s not a Mexican. If I give up my so-called Blackness, your so-called whiteness will still be held over and against me. But if you stop being white, the course of history will be instantly and irrevocably changed. It’s like we’re two armed camps at an armistice at the end of a civil war. You attack me first, but we’re just the same. All I’m asking is that you lower your automatic assault rifle before I put down my switchblade. I believe that you could afford this gesture, and that in being offered this token, I will be able to begin to give up the resentment built over 500 years of war waged upon peoples who were, in reality, no different than their attackers. Race is based on gold and cotton and rice, on tobacco and oil, on the perpetuity of wage slavery and death. Lower your claim to a fictive identity, and you will see that there’s a world out there where suffering and riches are shared and dealt with. Where identity centers on the individual, and not the color-coded shades of capitalism. Thank you. [Audience applause]
[Reversed violins are heard to fade-out]
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VITAL-LAZARE: … to cease to believe in whiteness as a standard of power is a heady risk… I often suspect there is a sense of good-natured humor, awarding someone for their curmudgeonly insight when we appoint them the title Contrarian. And while yes, the wit and agile charm of the raconteur is undeniable, it has always been clear to me that in his nonfiction, like Baldwin, like hooks, Mosley is not playing.
ORTIZ: Absolutely not. He did not come to play.
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ORTIZ: We hope that you not only enjoyed this episode of Black Mountain Radio, but that you found meditation in it. Black Mountain Radio is broadcast from Southern Paiute land.
VITAL-LAZARE: Black Mountain Radio is an audio project of the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute. Sara Ortiz is the host and curator.
ORTIZ: And today’s magical, mystical, wise, lovely guest host is Erica Vital-Lazare.
ORTIZ: Our senior producer is Nicole Kelly. Vera Blossom and Layla Muhammad are our associate producers. Scott Dickenshetts is our editor. Anthony Farris is our production assistant. Fil Corbitt is our sound mixer. Art by Jesse Zhang; our theme song is by Jeremy Klewicki; and graphic design by Lille Allen.
VITAL-LAZARE: Special thanks to Dayvid Figler, Douglas Kearney, Val Jeanty, Nann, and Walter Mosley.
ORTIZ: Thanks to the rest of the team at the Black Mountain Institute: Kellen Braddock, Daniel Gumbiner, Haley Patail, Kristen Radtke, Summer Thomad, Michael Ursell, and Haya Wang.
ORTIZ: Black Mountain Radio is supported by the Rogers Foundation and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Big thanks to our sponsors at Zappos who helped make this episode possible and who contribute to Las Vegas’s creative communities.
ORTIZ: Our deep gratitude goes to Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting Black Mountain Radio. A special shoutout to our KUNV engineer Kevin Krall.
VITAL-LAZARE: So we can come back on air soon, please consider supporting this project and all we do as a Friend of the Black Mountain Institute. We welcome volunteers and advice, and urge anyone who is able to go to blackmountaininstitute.org, and make a donation of $10 a month. In addition to a heavy fallout of cosmic gratitude, you’ll get a subscription to The Believer, a thank you in its pages, and other tokens of our appreciation.
Learn more at blackmountainradio.org
Thanks for listening.
VITAL-LAZARE: Thank you, Sara.
ORTIZ: Thank you soo much, Erica!
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