Gotham City Soul

Every year that Martin Luther King's birthday arrives I am reminded of our national penchant for putting Dr. King into a more and more profound and iconic deep freeze. This may upset some reading this, but I’m a big fan of a moratorium on the “I Have a Dream” speech, an idea first put forth by Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Baptist minister and the author of the 2000 book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. , a book that dares to reveal Dr. King as multi-dimensional, a human being who made mistakes, but whose herculean and ultimately selfless effort to help the poor, downtrodden, and disenfranchised of the Earth far outweighed his personal flaws.  It’s not the speech—a speech that was actually first given on June 23, 1963, in Detroit during a memorial for race riots that had occurred in that city in 1863 and 1894— two months before his famous oration during the March on Washington. It’s the co-opting ...

This is my amazing friend Sacha Jones, whom I love very much. I have things that I want to tell you about her but, for now I want to tell you about some things I heard a few Sundays back, things that made me sit in a content silence after I heard them and smile into the soft dark of my living room, things I would not have heard if Sacha had not invited me along with her that day. Because I don’t want you to turn away from this piece, I’ll keep it simple and quick and not tell you everything. Just the highlights. I learned that my consciousness is a c ollection of karma , memories, and desire. Isn’t that beautiful? I learned that I must learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and unpredictability. I can be alright without knowing the very next thing. I don’t have to act immediately on every “problem” that comes along. I don’t have to understand everything right away. Sometimes I can do nothing, and nothing is fine—I can’t tell you how that takes the pressure off. ...

Godzilla , 1966, by Emma Amos I've been meaning to get around to this, this little review of Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective at the Studio Museum in Harlem. I'm including an excerpt from co-curator Emily G. Hanna's introduction to the original show, which opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art late last year (because I want to get this out to you now and it would take me a long time to craft suitable words to go with): "In July 1963 Romare Bearden initiated conversations with fellow painters Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Charles Alston about the prospective role of African-American artists in the Civil Rights movement. While their original focus was the upcoming March on Washington, attention was also given to if, how, and to what degree artists might assume a meaningful placement within the social change platform of the overall movement. The discussions evolved into regular meetings at Bearden’s downtown New York Canal Street...

A repost from a couple of years ago. It seems that my job is keeping me away from Gotham City Soul, and that Friday's are for abbreviated blogs that lift the spirit. I have so many many things to write about, and when I can arrange my time, I'll be giving you more history, and culture and soul than you'll probably want to read. Until then, this morning Cousin Taroue Brooks sent this video, the song "Sun Moon Child is by Imani Uzuri, created by Pierre Bennu. Lovely.

The Yusef Hawkins mural today. This morning I was reminded of Yusuf Hawkins, the 16-year old Bed-Stuy youth who was killed by a white mob in Bensonhurst , New York, just for being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was 22 years ago in August. But the reminder came in a positive story: A young white artist named Gabriel Specter, himself a resident of Bed Stuy is working to recreate the mural on a material called parachute cloth, to be attached to the original mural wall, which has, over the been painted over and has faded. I can't  find a photo of the original mural. Specter is paying for materials out of his pocket, and this just does the heart good. Hear and read the story from NY1  Yusuf Hawkins, date unknown As a sidenote: While I was searching for a mural image, I came upon a site with a painting called "The Murder of Yusef Hawkins." In the description underneath is the account of members of St. Dominic's Church in Bensonhurst laying a w...

I've been meaning to get around to this, this little review of the Spiral show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. From the National Gallery of Art's website (because I want to get this out to you now and it would take me a long time to craft suitable In 1963 Bearden and fellow artist Hale Woodruff invited other artists, later calling themselves the Spiral group, to meet at Bearden's downtown Canal Street studio to discuss political events related to the civil rights movement and the plight of blacks in America. Initially the group was concerned with logistical issues, such as obtaining busses to travel to the March on Washington in the summer of 1963. However, their efforts turned toward aesthetic concerns, rather than political. Spiral member Norman Lewis framed the question: "Is there a Negro Image?" To which group member Felrath Hines responded, "There is no Negro Image in the twentieth century—in the 1960s. There are only prevailing ideas that...

The East River park has been slowly, slowly, getting a facelift, to the tune of millions of dollars, all well-deserved. Of all the parks in the city, it is my favorite, not just because of its proximity to my house (Tompkins Square Park, another favorite, is closer), but because it's so . . . normal. There are no testosterone-fueled packs of extreme cyclists ready to mow everyone down like in Central Park. The landscape doesn't feel inaccessible, like Bryant Park (when it wasn't being overrun by fashion week or some such). Sure it has been worn down in places, but that's been worked on to wonderful effect. The promenade is being rebuilt and we have access to the river again. Here's something I wrote about the park some years back. It is a good park, the East River Park, measured not in acres, but in the sounds that it produces. First there are the obvious sounds. The big noise of Latin men playing the games of their childhood; Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and Cu...