My friend kara is amazing. A beam of light in one of my darkest years. And she is looking for new music. So I made her a mix. and i decided to share it with you. Just a few songs I thought she’d like. That I thought, you reader, might like too.

shouts out to lauren whitehead, lauren nagel, ainye long, saterah moore and jasmine johnson. my best besties.

Come see my play? Please? Pretty Please?

Tuesdays at ThickWit are about music. The first Tuesday of the month will be dedicated to an album review. If you’re interested in having your album reviewed, or are interested in writing a review on a female identified musician of color, drop me a line at chinaka@gmail.com
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When Sade’s last album was released I was a Junior in High School. This I remember for a few reasons.

One – I used to listen to music in the six minute passing period between Chemistry and English. Six minutes was exactly enough time to plug in headphones, ignore a good friend in the hallway, and fall into the lyrics of King of Sorrow. I learned the album verbatim that year. Knew the lilt and fall of her background vocals, and knew when to shield my eyes so no one would see me mist. I didn’t know why it hurt to listen, but finger to flame, I could never draw back in time.

Two- That was the year I fell in love. The year I fell in love with falling in love. The year I learned to smell someone’s hair and to come home a little late and to sneak out of class a little early. That was the year I learned to pick the roses that grew next to the corrugated tin next to the Donahue Gym. These were the pink flowers, of which I have written before. The ones I learned to put into my own hair for storage, and over the ear of a boy who held me close. The year I was dumbfounded to first kiss and be kissed in return, ardently. And this was the year I learned how to listen closely to the sultry and sexy movements of Sade, and to identify their genesis, at the root of sorrow.

Three- All I ever want is to be touched. And that is a precarious way to be in the world. This, too, I learned in my Junior year.

I listened to Lover’s Rock enough to make it my own cliche. Way past playing it out. Listening now conjures very few new emotions, or any response at all. I learned to detach from music I loved that year, too, I suppose. Problem with that is what does one do in the nine year gap between opuses? One listens to india for a bit and then fiona and wayne and drake and lupe and tariq and quest and stevie and stevie and donny and the noisettes and and minnie. Brilliant, all, but few satiate the rough edge of me Sade found with her last effort. An effortless effort, it seems.

Needless to say, I’ve been eagerly anticipating Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 for nearly a decade. Suffered through a release push back, and tormented by the majesty of the first single. I got an advance copy but plan on buying two or three in the record store, just so I can frame the cover art.

I’m not a big anatomy buff, but I do know that the brain creases and folds as it is exercised. My heart, I think, does this same thing, a crepitating billow. Want to listen? Come close. Put your ear right here. See? See how it sounds? Just like Soldier of Love.

I am listening to it now. Flying on a plane. Using internet in the sky. Feeling wireless and dreading the reality that all heavy objects will one day meet the ground. Even this plane.

My thoughts? Her sound is what provokes some folks to use synth. There exists a timbre in her voice that’s a sort of automated corporeality that feels a little sumn like autotune. Which is a frail simile, maybe, but you know what i be trying to say when i be saying stuff. Also, it bears noting that the production on this piece is tougher than what we’ve heard before. In the gamut of music production, I’d say Sade and collaborator Mike Pela are now closer to Timbo than Sly and Robbie. Soldier of Love is a bit grittier, befitting its title, perhaps. It is dangerous, more adept at navigating the risk of falling.

I am tempted, reader, to give you an analysis of each song. I am tempted to transcribe all of the lyrics and to link them to the corresponding carrie mae weems images that spring to mind. If you are a man I have loved openly, or am no longer speaking to, or have once kissed amidst the budding coral rose of corrugated high school walks, I am tempted to tell you to buy this album and walk into the darkest room you own, and purge yourself of thoughts and second guesses, and to turn the volume up, neighbors be damned, and to find me in the quarter rests. But I will not tell you to do that. That is just what I will do. When I am home, and grounded, and listening for something beyond my first time.

“my heart is a lonely warrior// that has been to war//so you can be sure//in my heart your love has found the safest hiding place//inside is a stream//around is a wall//no one from hell could break.”

Remember that kid everyone wanted to be in high school? The one who ran really fast and made all the other kids on the track swoon? The one who took time away from athletics to be in the school play? And then did poetry at the local independent theater? He wore pajama pants to class and set off a small fashion trend in and around your forward thinking friends.

Well, that kid for me was Daveed Diggs, and he’s still at it. The decade since Berkeley High Yellow Jacket days has treated Diggs well, and in addition to being a stellar educator and acting as a lead in a new production opening in a few weeks, he’s also got a blossoming rap career. He’s still a beast on the track and an anchor of The GetBack, a Bay Area based musical phalanx, Daveed has just debuted his first solo music video, as directed by emerging filmmaker Daniel Truog.

Check for it here.

So, for the last 3 years I’ve been following a holiday tradition begun by my good friend Adriel Luis of Ill-Literacy (@drizzletron). Basically all of the brilliants in my circle of friends put together a compilation of the songs we fell in love with in that particular year. Doesn’t mean the song has to have been released in 2009, for example, but rather that 2009 was the year you finally gave a sincere listen to the White Album, thus Happiness is a Warm Gun is now your main isht. Or perhaps there’s that one song that kept coming up on random shuffle while you were driving the distance between Santa Cruz and San Francisco with Lauren Whitehead (@ladywhitehead) in the passenger seat. Or a song that best describes your moods over the last 12 months. So you take all the memorable songs from 2009, and you make a CD length playlist. And then you share that mixtape with your close friends over edibles and egg nog. Those are the rules. Now you know. We try to exchange before the close of the year, and usually in Oakland. But this year, we’re swapping in NY and today’s the day. How splendid.

Some of the folks are still back West, though, and we want their input too. So I created my playlist as a widget on grooveshark.com, and i’m posting it here. I’m hoping that you’ll be inspired to create a mix of your own, and then send me a link here or post a widget of your own in the comments section. I’ll listen to them all, and the best mix will receive either 2 free tickets to see Mirrors in Every Corner, next month in San Francisco or my very last copy of For Girls With Hips.

Hopefully you enjoy the songs that I discovered, wept to, laughed along with, and shouted about last year.

*note: there will be 3 more songs added as soon as grooveshark allows me to access my newly uploaded jams.*

In that THE BRIDGE is not over.

I know this doesn’t really count as a post, but at the very least, you get to see two of my friends in a video.

Do DAT is easily one of my favorite performers of all time. Charismatic, funny, personable and lyrically gifted. Plus I don’t think anyone reps the town as hard as he. Maybe me. Maybe.

And as far as ThickWits go, well, just look at/listen to Melina Jones. Nuff said, yes?

ill-Literacy, the bay area’s favorite spoken word group gone east coast rap trio, drops their first full length album today, i b4 the 1.1

i’m not going to lie and say i know how to pronounce, as you say, this album title. and i haven’t had a chance to listen yet — but when three brilliants like Dahlak Brathwaite, Adriel Luis and N.I.C. gather around a microphone and make art, it’s gotta be special, right? n.i.c. (aka Nico Cary) was my roommate for the initial gestation period, trekking between Oakland and Sacramento California thrice weekly to bring this beast of an album to fruition. if the mumblings i heard while Nic cat-napped on the couch are any indication, the gas and late night were well worth it. plus, you may have already heard two singles from the album, so you’re probably salivating already.

thick wit congratulates the squad on this ill-ustrious occasion.

dear reader and whom it may concern,
chinaka hodge fell down a well for a eleven and a half months, and didn’t write anything for her blog. she suffered major injury from stone and water and darkness. she’s healing now and has a comprehensive plan for thickwit, including movie and film reviews, features on emerging artists, and guest appearances from the smartest women in the world. please accept this note and allow her to do make up work for the coming year.
sincerely yours,
the doctor.

you saw the doctor’s note right? thanks for understanding. do i have your permission to begin again?
cool. I’m back up in this.

what a pleasure to begin the blog again on this momentous occasion. such holiday. such pomp and circumstance. i can hardly contain myself. the ticker tape. of course you know what i’m talking about. the big release? Medicine for Melancholy is officially available on dvd today. gasp.

you haven’t heard of it? my word. apologies all around.

Medicine for Melancholy is the debut feature from Bay Area filmmaker Barry Jenkins, and easily my favorite viewing experience of the year. And if you know me, that’s a lot of on-screen hours. I’ll be honest and let you know that I missed the first three minutes of the film, so perhaps i’ll have to run a retraction after my (ahem, preordered) copy arrives. I can’t really imagine what would break my enchantment, however. Maybe Keyshia Cole and The American Dream singing a duet? Maybe. Probably not. I digress.

We follow Micah (Wyatt Cenat of The Daily Show) and Jo’ (gorgeous newcomer Tracey Heggins) as they navigate San Francisco on the day following a would-be one night stand. True to Bay Area sustainable sensibilities, they journey through the city on foot and bike, amidst a flurry of poignant one liners. I’ll do my best to avoid plot spoilers, while I try to seduce you, reader, into copping the film from Amazon right now. Best nine ninety nine you’ll ever spend. Here’s my argument to coax that Hamilton from your recessed pocket:

Medicine for Melancholy worth owning because you’re in it. I swear. Me too. This is the first time that I’ve seen an image of someone like me on film, and not in the simple representational TV One sort of way. Not like how my chest swells a bit when Jada takes a good role. And that feeling is nice, don’t get me wrong, satisfying. But what’s at work here is a different kind of sorcery. Micah and Jo are two of the most complex black characters I’ve seen on screen. I’m intentional about qualifying them as black characters because I think the genius of the film is the pronunciation of how spectacular and mundane it is to be a twenty something person of color, in our age and geographic area. Micah and Jo are the people I chills with: reserved and brooding, hilarious under our breath, telling jokes about Carter G. Woodson on the way to indy shows.
I mean, if you know me, you know that I’m all about my Saturday afternoon Blackbusters, but what a special, charmed thing to see a film bereft of absentee fathers, great debates, spelling bees, basketball teams and princely robes. Micah and Jo don’t do that much on screen — in a way that makes me feel vindicated, because if the routines of Jerry and Elaine and Vince and Turtle and Rachel and Ross are entertaining and important, why not the kinds of isht we go through? Aren’t our subtle tensions and conversations at the toll booth and clumsy mornings-after the types of human interactions that change audiences, even in the slightest?

I saw the film at Elmwood on College. Six people were in the theater when the film began. Or rather 3 minutes into the film, when I arrived. I made six. Of us six, two black and twenty-something. Everyone else middle aged and phenotypically white. The IFC crowd. Other Black Girl and I found ourselves laughing louder and before everyone else (similar to the experience I had watching The Matrix in Paris with French subtitles). The couple directly in front of me sat uncomfortably for the first two acts of the film, and bounced before the last half hour. Just before they left, the woman leans over and asks the guy if he understands what’s going on. He says it’s really pretty, but no. Thought it was going to be a different kind of movie. (I wonder what kind of movie he thought it’d be). And they sneak out, making eye contact with me in the dark theater as they go. Just after they skirt, I turn round and left to check in on my sister-in-cinema, and she’s too rapt with the film to peep the interaction.

So, what’s the divide? Please believe me that I’m not saying middle aged white movie goers can’t enjoy the film. (In fact, the film was recommended to me by someone who fits that exact demographic essentialism). What I do think is that audiences in general haven’t been primed to watch a movie where the key interaction is about the delicacy of intimacy between two young folks of color. Because the backdrop is what we’re all going through: economic downturn, changing climate, shifting neighborhoods and a healthy distrust for the institution of love. But Barry Jenkins allows these two characters to speak about looming concerns with the humor, expertise and insight specific to our generation and experience. When else has that happened? Maybe in Raising Victor Vargas. Maybe.

And let’s talk about color, since we’re talking race. Cinematographer James Laxton is a visionary. The film appears to be your run of the mill black and white, but every scene has a very intentional burst of hue or light that interacts with the dialogue between Micah and Jo. As the audience, we’re pushed to consider why red is in this frame, why that wall is more illuminated than others. Such technical specificity lends itself to an unexpected sensuality, livened by the uncommon chemistry between Cenat and Heggins. Such a sultry movie, but not over-sexualized. Intellectually stimulating, but not didactic. Funny, though you’ll never bust a gut.

If there exists a remedy for anguish, that comes in capsule form, I imagine that it goes down smooth and last just a little while. There would be no way of telling if I’d taken it, other than to look for the lilt of an eyelid, or the disposal of a smile. If there exists a treatment for sadness in cinema, surely it is this film– one that chronicles the ordinary, but pushes the top layer back so that all can witness the onyx beneath. Take a peek.

Buy it here .

Today’s guest-wit is Dalia Yedidia, regular Thick Wit contributor and writer. A Bay Area Native and one-time New Yorker, she is currently living in Chicago. Dalia has worked on a number of civic and political campaigns and was one of the millions who attended the ceremonies in Grant Park. Here she shares an open letter to those of us living in the argument of activism in these United States.
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Companer@s, friends, family, people of the world living and breathing today,

Earlier, I received this email (excerpt pasted below), and my first reaction was an anger I am not familiar with, as I do not feel it often.

[If you don't want any rain on your Obama-parade, do not continue reading; if you are willing to read what you already know, but may have succeeded in quieting its powerful truth into a small dark corner of the brain, especially considering the raucous tears and screams last night from people like my mother, who immigrated to this country from Bogota during the McCarthy era, and the father of my baby cousins, who bought inauguration tickets back when Obama announced his candidacy in 2007 with the feeble hope that he and his daughter (my Mia) could be in DC for the inauguration of the first president that "looks kinda like Papa" (Mia commenting on Barack Obama's resemblance of her own father), then please proceed.]

EXCERPT:

Compas, I think it is important to remember what Obama’s role is. This is a man who
a) was running to be the commander and chief of our imperialist, military (thats what the president is).
b) has all the tools from the Bush administration (patriot act, momentum towards un-ending war in the middle east) with none of the criticism from the people that the Bush admin had.
c) is not trying to pull out of the middle east, and has said that he is going to escalate in Afganistan (bombing of civilians and villages), and has said that he is ready to go into Pakistan and Iran (2 more countries in this protracted war for control of whole people groups and countries)
d) has said that ‘the law must be upheld’ when asked about the Sean Bell shooting (Bell was a young black man shot 50 times by the police on the night before his wedding at his bachelor party, you guys have heard of this). Obama didn’t say a word about police repression, the disproportionate number of black people incarcerated, nothing. He said ‘the law must be upheld”
e) He blamed Black families and fathers in his ‘Fathers Day Speech’ for the number of Black youth that are on the streets and in jail, rather than say anything about how the system demands that their be the under and un-employed to further capitalist ends, rather than say anything about the school-to-prison pipeline and privatized prisons gaining from the huge prison population
f) he hasnt said shit about immigrants or the raids waged by the ICE to deport huge amounts of people without documents.
Obama isn’t a reason for celebration at all…

Like I said, my first reaction was utter resistance to the words and their meaning, a frustration and seething incoherence that could only be healed by writing this blog entry: Why can’t we just celebrate for one day? Why does this have to mean so much of our hope and momentum toward believing in change must be rendered false, inaccurate, or merely a product of a government-controlled media that preys on contrived “historic moments” that in reality signify empty paradigm shifts and the same old system with a new fresh face?

After walking with my initial anger, I began to process it more clearly, and link it to a dissatisfaction, firmly rooted irritation, and subtle fear I have relating to social actors, activists (self-identified), movers, shakers, party people with an eye on radical change, and all those who believe that another world is possible, in my life. This annoyance on a good day, and bottomless sadness on a not-as-good day, spawns from my observations and conversations with so many people around the idea that we, people working toward change in whatever capacity, are hypercritical, soul-sucking individuals who are ultimately unable to be satisfied due to our sharpened involuntary reaction to dissect, and therefore, destroy, any ounce of potential forward-movement. And while we could argue about happiness and joy’s worth or actual clout in a world shrouded in white supremacist hetero-patriarchal smog, for me at least, laughter, fun, celebration, and all those other seemingly meaningless and trite words of yesteryear are vital to my survival. Denying that fact is dehumanizing, on an individual and collective scale.

This idea that ‘us rads can’t never be happy’, or we just criticize everything to the point of disintegration, disinterest, or disbelief, is not new. Contrary to being an original thought, it’s a topic I’ve spoken with many of you about many times, though clearly it does not cease to plague my daily judgment with meta-judgment, or to allow my unconscious knee-jerk bickering with the world each morning go unchecked as I routinely switch to bickering with myself about bickering. This fear of our collective ability to extend beyond critique and dissatisfaction, in the end though, truly relates to me (read: PROJECTING) and my worry that I, too, am individually unable to just be happy, be okay, be satisfied, be.

Relating my emotional (and therefore entire) state of being back to Obama–because he seems to be all anyone’s talking about today, Wednesday, November 5, 2008, which also happens to be my own brother’s 24th birthday, as well as the day that election results confirmed that California, my home state, voted to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry (the right was passed almost 6 months ago, in May of this year): As it stands, today it is impossible for me to just feel one thing, and that thing be overwhelming positivity, because of who was elected president of a country I still don’t know if I can call my own on November 4, 2008. As much as I would like to blame the email I received (excerpt above) as the source of my internal conflict, that is false. As much as I want to say that the email was written by some cynical anti-capitalist who hates everything and is incapable of feeling happiness due to not having enough love, support, delicious food, good sex or people they admire in their life, I know I cannot because their face, politics, and sentiment are too often reflected in my own. I could have just as easily written that email and included reasons from a-z about why “Obama isn’t a reason for celebration at all…”

So why am I, are we, so goddamn critical? What gave me the self-righteous privilege, and time and resources, to never want “to settle”? Could it be because I’m young, and, unlike my parents, I don’t and will never know what life was like prior to the Civil Rights Movement? Or is it because I just have that youthful vigor and still have the ability to expend all that energy on demanding higher standards and being willing to say that good enough really is NOT good enough? Or maybe it’s a combination of those possibilities (a big maybe) along with the idea that “People are complicated,” which is a favorite saying that means absolutely nothing and everything all at once that someone I know happens to use too much. That someone also said that what matters is what we do the other 364 days of the year, because voting takes 5 minutes (or 5 hours, depending on your geographic location) out of your day, and then we got the rest of our lives to act (or not).

I have received so many emails in the last 24 hours from friends and random folks I must be cosmically connected to, that wrote emails, blog entries, poems and little snippets of truth beautiful, eloquent, and incredibly inspiring forms. The words, aside from actually igniting some petty jealousy in my choosy-heart that is always aspiring to become one of those people who says that “writing just comes easily to me,” moved and challenged me deeply. Your words have pushed me not just to write this mediocre, unfocused post-Obama bandwagon banter you are currently trudging through, but to keep writing and dialoguing about these issues that are layered in ways I’m only starting to uncover, thanks to your probing eyes. I am grateful to you, who constantly push me, and in turn all of us, to be resilient, open warriors and artists who are forgiving in all the ways I still must learn because you are firm in your ideologies, but more than that you believe in the human capacity to change. Maybe you’re saying, “Who is this ‘you’ Dalia is talking about? Is she about to get all vague and hippy-dippy and pull the s-word (society) out on our asses too?” But I am talking to you, to anyone who found one reason to be grateful today, to be giddy, to thoughtfully offer criticism and worry not without hope and care, to believe in the possibility of our coalescing spirits while remaining rooted in the knowledge we gain, and have gathered since birth, everyday through our lived experiences.

In closing, I will speak directly to my birth-state: Oh, California. Above all, you are the momentous proof of the work to be done that anyone who maintained their semi-melted brain throughout Obamania constantly references. California, you are my strongest witness to another world being possible (The Bay), and to the fact that this process building our many other worlds is neither pure nor linear.

But the joy and the connection I felt last night to others, as I have on countless other unsung days and nights, including with many of you at rallies, marches, in kitchens, backyards, backseats of old Volvos and on the street, was real. It confirms that we will continue as strong people, regardless of charismatic leaders who claim to guide us toward change or fundamentalist propositions that threaten our identities. We have been, and can only continue, to do good work every day of the year. If anything, the first Tuesday in November this year allowed me a space to acknowledge all of the beauty I have been fortunate enough to participate in or hear about through those I love, and I can only hope it offered the same for you.

Lastly, let us not forget that it is not just easy, but crucial towards our acceptance and celebration of our own humanity–of that need to connect to and with others, to believe in our capacity to change, to become a part of an energy, a movement that is larger than the self and the truest testament to our belief and action toward real transformation–it becomes more than a mere need, to rejoice. Our survival is contingent upon our ability and the opportunities there are to express joy.

I pray for more in all of our lives.

love and pieces,
dalia.

I’ve been on hiatus for a while, swamped in work. I realize that if you’ve been coming here to get my opinions on things election related I have failed you. Failed miserably. You’ve met and hated Palin without me. You’ve already voted No on 8 by absentee ballot. So, I’m not going to preach Barack to the converted. That would be a bridge to nowhere.

What you might not know is exactly how some of my compatriots have been organizing in the past weeks to inject their own voices into electoral politics. Errytime I look up, a friend of mine is shining in an issue-related web based video. Through the gMagic of embedding, I can share their brilliance with you.

Take a look see, and I promise promise stick a needle in my eye promise I’ll get back on my Thickwit grind this week.

My girl Kelly Tsai’s “Black White Whatever”

My people at 247townhall.org present
“If I Were President” Starring Mos Def.

Oakland’s Own Lee West with Generation We