The Politics of Dancing And Loving
Three Favorites: Storybox, Brendan James and Splitting Adam
1983: news of AIDS (or what was then Gay Cancer or God’s Punishment—how melodramatic and evil), I’m fairly new in a relationship with another poet, and we’re at Carol’s Speakeasy in Chicago when Re-Flex’s “The Politics of Dancing” comes on. The boys go wild and take off their shirts so that we’re like an army of lovers warring against all the social justices outside of the corporeal disco. It was an era when curious sweat shined on our questioned bodies, when psychic arms went into the air to bring down the spying moon just on the other side of the roof. The lyrics for “The Politics of Dancing” say this: We got the message I heard it on the airwaves The politicians Are now D.J.s And we understand that the media is being Reaganized, that we gays are cultural and spiritual criminals simply because of declarations that simplify us. So some of us choose to resist—by dancing! By keeping the sexuality in homosexuality. Take a look at the original music video by Re-Flex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAS7RxK4Uvc This memory has been stirred by Storybox’s LP, No Dancing Allowed. This LP’s scenario is even more apocalyptic than in the 1980’s. In the title song, the singer wails and demands that the revolution against tyranny begins with the individual body. Big Brother is everywhere; dancing is wisely forbidden by the powers that be (read Republican, I suspect). This is a great dance tune that offers hope as resilience while Storybox sings and plays: “Your hands on your back / your face on the ground /Thou shalt not dance.” The music swells into a song you must dance to for in small acts of defiance do wise choices become apparent. This is a song about defiance through dancing, through the body, through the right of being a citizen equal to anyone else. The police sirens, the Biblical passages, the disco hook of repeating a chorus are powerful presentations of the human spirit’s embroilment in the contemporary. Finally: imagine a world without music, not the kind one can dance to or that is allowed to negotiate between cosmic and human powers. The rest of the LP is also solid as it investigates love and place, passion and the times. My favorite song is “Dream Ghosts” for it reminds me of life in a contemporary city in which one’s memories collide with the present architecture, people, facts. Storybox moans, “just release me from this pain” but it is obviously an impossible request. They go on, “wake me, wake me, I can’t take it anymore.” Again, I’m returned to the Chicago of my 1980’s after AIDS has invaded Boystown. I remember one night walking home from the clubs and noticing it was less crowded than it had been years ago, that the city looked haunted, that the mannequins were mostly dressed in circumspect black. I opted for a winged taxi and the driver said, “Where to?” And I didn’t know the answer right away—the past? the future? home? But I thought of the young men I knew, some who were lovers, whose bodies were shipped back to Kentucky, Mississippi, elsewhere as if their years in Chicago were nothing, as if they hadn’t been forced to seek solace and joy far from families and religion. This is why art matters: ghosts need to be honored for their years of scars. There are other great songs of course, like “Therapy,” and I recommend this LP without any hesitation. Storybox is a new discovery to me and the sound reminds me of Thomas Dolby having a love child with The Thompson Twins (all three of them!). It’s rare to find someone who follows his own way and yet generously invites us along. Dancing and revolution, I’m convinced as the years add on, are synonyms. Taking a different approach is Brendan James’ EP, The Ballroom Break In. With just four songs, Brendan astonishes; having your heart broken by astonishment is worse than having it broken by sorrow. How dare he give us hope even as he doesn’t deny issues of war, familial failures, and the struggles that any and all artists face in trying to be honest about their witnessing. In the first song, “All I Can See,” Brendan tries to teach himself optimism. This is political work indeed, for the singer insists that we mustn’t be myopic; all the while, his dreamy voice, gentle but self-confident, is like Virgil talking to Dante. Being a performance artist in Chicago, I learned that it was easy (and popular) to be jaded. I remember when Tim Miller flirted with me and said something casual that he probably doesn’t remember, “I survived just to be here.” That struck something in me, or as Brendan says, “I will never rest until I see all that I can see.” Obstacles must not define us. In my favorite song, “The Hero’s Song,” war is evoked but not in a tone of anger or resignation; this is a song about sorrow, what Wordsworth talked about when he wrote what “man has done to man.” A soldier is in the desert, a voice admitting that “a flood of hate surrounds me…I cannot die this way,” a place of explosions (physical and mental). This song makes me choke up, I who have no sons or daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I do have students who’ve returned profoundly changed—often bitter, silent. What strikes me about this song is that Brendan’s voice sounds fragile, catchy, and he never lets his lyrics overpower his talents. This is a classic song. There are two other songs, “The Other Side,” a personal song about singing near a town where his Father, who abandoned the family, lives. This is a beguiling song about strength and learning to value life’s lessons. Finally, there is “Let Your Beat Go On.” Brendan has one of the most beautiful voices I’ve heard in years—not just for the sound of it, but there is color in it, an honesty rare in these pre-packaged days. He is earnest and in this age where any show of sincere emotion is suspect, I find this song to be brave: “let the silence be the music.” The references to uncertainty are counterbalanced by the desire for more, for the freedom to be yourself—at last. This EP is a prophecy of great things ahead for Brendan James. I chose this LP and EP for my first column because everyday I watch CNN advertise that it is the place for politics in 2008. What politics? Storybox reminds us of how oppression longs to stop being subtle and Brendan James reminds us that our interior selves must become realized. Listen to the politics of dancing, the dancing politicians, the dances that defy politics, and the slow dances that are more political than DC handshakes and embraces. I’m going home to Chicago this December and I’m taking this music with me on my iPod for sometimes I must remember that I’m not a ghost yet, that I can still spark revolutions outside and inside of me.
Also, The Future Is Here: Vancouver’s Splitting Adam has a two song EP/demo that is full of promises. “Sleeping With Strangers” sounds like a sure hit and it reminds me of the confusion of sexual politics and the expression that we’ve forgotten collectively: “the personal is political.” The singer asks, “Is it right to need you / when I disappear?” We can wear masks but there are intimate moments when the masks fail at veiling us from ourselves—how do we act as citizens if we have to hide from ourselves? This catchy, rhythm-driven song, wearing the voice of the weary, captures how confusion, in the long term, can offer little balm. In “Daylight,” Splitting Adam changes pace and offers a percussive interpretation of wistfulness—“somewhere where daylight never fades.” Utopia always seem impossible and yet ever a goal. This band is solid and the singer’s terrific voice is unafraid of being vulnerable to tenderness and fear. Their music reminds me of my fantasy of being a singer in a rock band, to tell people in song what is fragile in me even while muscular in appearance on stage. Contradiction, as Whitman insists, is very New World. I’ve sneaked one of my song lyrics into my Selected Poems, “The New Jezebel.” It’s from a time period when some of my friends gathered at my place and we performed for ourselves in my loft without worrying about our talent or lack of fans. How we sang and performed and it was a better education about music and rhythm than any course I took in my Ph.D. studies. Listening to Splitting Adam, I hear us as we heard us—behind closed doors! We wrote the song lyrics, stole music samples before it became an industry, looped them, choreographed, and created costumes. Later, these private performances led to my first major performance art piece at Randolph Street Gallery: Private Radio. This demo reminds me how talent and desire are key ingredients in alchemy.
Where to find this music:
Storybox: www.myspace.com/storybox (site and info for purchase)
Brendan James: & www.myspace.com/brendanjames
Splitting Adam:
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