Fall Bucket List 2014 -- The Harlem Edition

Sure, I made a list like this last year but it wasn't comprehensive enough -- and it was way too generic.  Maybe this one is way too personal. No need for candy apples of any kind (I won't jeopardize my dental work!) or football (I'm only remotely interested...) or haunted houses (in other parts of the country, they're really haunted!) or hayrides, which aren't as fun as you might think.

The list above is for a suburban midwesterner.  This list isn't specific to Harlem, per se -- but I am, more or less. This neighborhood's ongoing tide of gentrification makes me feel like even more of an outsider than I did when I got here. If you're in New York City and if you're as geeky and curious and insatiable as I am, and if you're not interested in going where everyone else boldly goes, this list is definitely for you.

1. The New York Comic Con -- October 9 - 12 at the Javits Center! That's right, kids -- I'm going to the nerd prom. Wheeeeee!
2. Exhibit #1: See Prune Nourry's Terracotta Daughters at FIAF.  From the website: An army of young girls assembles in the first U.S. showing of Terracotta Daughters, a monumental exhibition of 108 life-sized and individually crafted clay sculptures that recall China’s famous Terracotta Warriors.
3. Sample the fall menu at The Cecil.  I will miss the Frogmore Stew but I am very much looking forward to the bold, inventive additions to the dim sum menu and yes, their African/Asian take on roast duck.
   
4. Do a 30 day cleanse. This time around, I'm doing The Clean Program for at least 21 days, I'll be incorporating a 7 day cleanse initially and I'll be working out. Yep -- I'm going to be a lot of fun in October.
5. Go to a drive-in movie!  Click here for a list of five movie theaters that are less than a 2 hour drive from New York City.  I'll make a picnic basket and maybe we'll catch a double feature...!
6. Go to The Halloween Parade and Pumpkin Flotilla -- October 26th, 3:30pm - 6:30pm This is way more fun than wandering through a pumpkin patch. It's a family-friendly, beautiful and yes, free annual event, sponsored by the Central Park Conservancy and it features music, arts and crafts, and glowing pumpkins, floating across the water at sundown.
7. Exhibit #2: See Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion at the New York Historical Society. From the website: ...explores the centuries-long history of trade and immigration between China and the United States—a history that involved New York from its very beginnings—and will raise the question “What does it mean to be an American?” The exhibit narrative extends from the late eighteenth century to the present and includes all regions of the country, thus interpreting the Chinese American saga as a key part of American history.
8. The Apollo Theater Presents Apollo Uptown Hall: The Harlem/South Africa Connection -- October 12th, 3pm. This panel discussion will feature Harry Belafonte, former Mayor David Dinkins and other notable speakers/activists. And yep, it's free.
9. Exhibit #3: The Matisse Cut-outs.  You're welcome.
   
10. Wine Tasting Series in The Balcony Lounge at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This happens on the first weekend of every month.  And MPB says it's delicious. I have a serious thing for this lounge, anyway -- mostly because they have wifi and they let me stay for as long as I want.

and now is right on time

i've come such a long way to get to where i am now. it seems so random at first glance but every haphazard thing has happened for a very specific reason. all those solo shows i wrote and performed with so much joy and ease as i worked one crummy corporate day job after another.  singing with big bands.  my texas years.  my grandma says i would make up stories and act them out all over the place when i was no taller than her knee -- and here i am, making up stories and acting them out all over the place. have i really come all the way back around to where i was when i started? or did i ever really get up and go? maybe everything shifted and moved around me and i'm the same as i ever was, when i was three or four or so.  i can't tell from here.

sometimes the curtain is pulled back and i get to see a little more of the bigger picture than i thought i would. that's what happened last week during the performance residency at the apollo theater.

there was a moment when i literally lived through the rush and flow of my dreams coming true.  for once, it wasn't something that i realized later in a random meditative pause or an epiphany that hit me in the head like a hard pillow, or floated over my head like an imaginary light bulb, glowing with the promise of a good idea. because that's what usually happens. usually everything zooms by, like a fast train.  it's over and i'm overwhelmed and i don't know what happened. but not this time.  this time was fast and slow, like peckinpah. i could feel it all rip right through me and hit me before i hit the ground running and falling all at once.  to be in midair and to sing and to feel and to fall and to rise and to fall again. to stay on the ground and never touch the ground at all. it stayed that way. i think everybody got lifted.

i'm so happy, so relieved, so grateful. really elated that everyone embraced this new idea and wanted more. and i feel justified. i'm making the art that i want to see in the world -- art that empowers black women, employs black people and uplifts the race.

so now what.

now the world rushes in. gigs and money, off and on and on and on. dental work and oral surgery and pain most unholy and drugs drugs drugs -- thank you Jesus for the drugs.  on camera work.  guitar practice. voice lessons.  eating clean.  running in the morning to wake my body up.  boxing in the evening to wear myself out.  the steam room, the sauna.  losing enough weight to get back into not some but all of my summer clothes. copy editing from my couch, in my underwear.  wearing short wigs to hide my whoa, it's getting longer! beautiful natural hair. writing and rewriting, over and over again.  mental health days and beauty days and errand days and harlem nights.  soaking endlessly at spa castle.  finishing my album.  graduate school at nyu/tisch.  drunken tea parties and bar hopping uptown. long hangs with black girls who really know what's up. making art with francesca harper. live shows and burlesque and dim sum, oh my!

and as the world turns, i will work on the billie holiday project all over again and wait for another break in the ice. because a bigger part of what it means to make art is to wait. it's what i do while i wait that really matters.

The Billie Holiday Project 3.0 - a few thoughts...

although brad learmonth of harlem stages instigated all of this with an invitation for me to fuse billie holiday and zora neale hurston and perform at lenox lounge for the very first harlem jazz shrines, i felt compelled to take it further when i read zora's newly discovered harlem based short stories. i think farrah griffin knew what she was sparking up when she gave them to me. they didn't just speak to me -- they felt like some other part of me that i didn't know was there. i knew those people, i recognized them. all of me fell into those pages and got lost, wandering in and out of their lives.

it was a beautiful moment of discovery, to glimpse more of zora -- someone whose work is so fresh and unexpected and new with every read. these newly discovered stories haven't seen the light of day in more than 70 years. all of a sudden, the literary world shifts and realizes that perhaps they didn't really know her as well as they thought they did. if they are ever published and widely distributed, the rest of the world will, too.

i began toying with the idea of doing an album of billie holiday's rare sides when i started collecting various box sets of her work awhile ago and unhinging her earlier material. there was a ton of it. i already read and researched enough to know that she was more than the torchy, brooding victim in a gown at the mercy of a heroin needle with a heavily scented flower in her hair. everyone seems to recognize that image instantly and cling to it in this sometimes really insufferable way. like she couldn't possibly be anything else. in those box sets, i heard everything else -- ambivalence about love, so much hope and yearning, a good time girl and yes, sometimes even a sunshiny disposition that positively bounced with joy. great tunes, too. where was the tragic victim? why hadn't i ever met this billie holiday before?

to tell you the truth, i don't really listen to jazz vocalists. what i mean is, i certainly know who they are and what they sound like. i've done my homework, extensively. however -- when it comes to growing and refining my sound and my style, i listen to horn players because frankly, that's what those jazz vocalists did. and then i reach for my own ideas in the moment. louis armstrong sounds like a horn when he sings. he's not imititating another singer that's imitating a horn. he's not imitating anyone. but i digress.

i created the billie holiday project because i wanted to make the kind of art that i'd like to see in the world. i want my blackgrrl stories to be told -- and judging by the sold out run at the apollo theater this weekend, there's someone out there that would like to see them, too.

i hope that this will be the first of many performance moments -- for this idea and others. please stay tuned.

Great news, sports fans!

I just found out a few weeks ago that I got accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts MFA program – dramatic writing for musical theater. It’s a two year program, it is intense and it would mean fully immersing myself in the creative collaborative process. If all goes well, I’ll start in the fall. It’s a real kick in the head, just knowing that I made the cut and I’m bright enough and talented enough to be a part of such an illustrious program. I feel especially grateful – and sweetly relieved.
The application process was harrowing, in a way. Once I completed all of the paperwork (which was as thick as a small town phone book, and no I’m not exaggerating), there was an applicant’s weekend where we were arbitrarily paired off, librettists with composers, and asked to write a five minute script to song in a day from a list of about 10 prompts. yes, that’s right – we had ONE day, more or less. we met on friday evening, worked on our idea saturday and presented on sunday at high noon.
The process was unexpected, for me at least, but I totally get it now. The faculty needed to see us work under pressure as strangers because that’s pretty much what we’ll be doing in the program. You can’t necessarily teach someone how to collaborate – and collaboration is the absolute backbone of what they do there. It’s a bigger part of what creating a musical is all about.
That was trippy – sitting in the lounge area that Friday evening, listening to everyone introduce themselves and unravel their stories: where they were from, how they got here from there, what their lives were like, their hopes and dreams. It felt like the first day of school. Or something.
It helped a great deal that I got really lucky with my random choice when I was paired with Benjamin Gammerman, a recent NYU graduate from Long Island. He was pretty much bubbling over with snippets of little ditties at all times. He’s the kind of guy that can turn anything into a song. Not only that but he was open, friendly and willing to start working right away. An added bonus was that we both have pianos (in case we got stuck and couldn’t get to the rehearsal studios) but the real kicker was that he lived four blocks away from me.
Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn’t luck at all. God threw me a bone.
I don’t mind putting my life on hold to pull this off, if I must. I’m already writing musicals. This week has me in Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theater for a performance residency that will culminate in 2 performances this weekend. One of them is already sold out. (No pressure…)
I have always believed in having something solid and meaningful to show for my time, especially in a place like New York City, where one can burn through time exponentially without even realizing it. Two years goes by in this city in a matter of months. I have friends who are already figuring out what their options are for retirement, and they’re in their 30s. (Egad.)
The real work with graduate school? Figuring out how to pay for it. Stay tuned.

See more progress on: Go to graduate school

The next gig: "The Billie Holiday Project" April 13 & 14, 2012

With a cast that includes Francesca Harper, Charles Wallace and Keith L. Thomas, I'll be performing my latest idea The Billie Holiday Project at Harlem's iconic Apollo Theater's Music Cafe on Friday April 13th and Saturday April 14th. As of March 28th, the first performance is sold out and yes, there are still tickets available. (I think.)

I couldn't be more over the moon about this idea -- fusing Zora Neale Hurston's newly discovered Harlem-based fables about black city folk, stories that haven't seen the light of day since the 30s (!!!) with rare sides from Billie Holiday's early recordings. I want to reintroduce the audience to two black female icons that they thought they already knew -- something fresh and new and interesting from both of them, blended together in this really effortless way.

My goal was to create an urban version of George C. Wolfe's Spunk! I actually saw that production at the Public Theater thanks to my ATL pal Chris Adams, who took me to see it because he couldn't stop thinking of me when he saw it initially. At the time, people were constantly telling me that I looked a lot like Danitra Vance. But that's another conversation.

More updates later. For now, get a ticket if you can. It's going to be a fun night!

I must say -- seeing this on the marquee as I enter the Apollo to create some powerful black girl wonderment NEVER gets old...

a debate watch party!

what a great idea: have a get together to watch and discuss the first presidential debate. 

the apollo theater (in collaboration of CNN and the greater harlem chamber of commerce) will be hosting a debate watch party that's going to feature political analysis, voter registration and entertainment. and yes -- it's free and open to the public.

for information and tickets, call 212 531 5305 or visit their website.

james brown's wake: a view from west harlem

I got a phone call from Jack Sprat in the middle of the afternoon a few weeks ago. He told me that they had brought James Brown’s body down 125th street in a white carriage earlier, drawn by white horses, festooned with white plumes on their heads. They drove all night from Atlanta to have him there by 1pm. Later, I would see photos of his family walking beside that carriage led by a remarkably somber Al Sharpton, with all of the pomp and dignity that’s usually reserved for dignitaries and heads of state. How completely and utterly perfect, to bring him to the very heart of Harlem, the (cultural) capital of Black America, the site of what many consider to be his greatest triumph – Live At The Apollo, the series of performances that changed so much for him. For all of us as a people, really.

This is the part where I was going to try to explain exactly why Harlem is such a special place and why it matters so much to me and just about every other black person that I know or have ever met. How when I decided to live in New York City, there was no other neighborhood. But I don’t think I can.

I remember when a trip to Charleston brought me to a family reunion for my aunt’s people. When I told one of them that I lived in Harlem, she looked starstruck. I felt compelled to ask why. She said that although she traveled far and wide, she’d never seen anything like it: coming up from out of the125th station at Frederick Douglass Boulevard, there was every kind of black person imaginable, from all over the entire span of the African diaspora, every shade, every ilk, everyone – from the beautiful Senegalese woman draped in beautiful robes waiting to cross the street to that Nigerian graduate student on his way to City College to the Kenyans and the 'Bamas playing chess and arguing politics at Starbucks to the that ghetto princess, that thug, that hoodrat that everybody knows to the neighborhood grandmother from somewhere down South that everybody loves, making her way to prayer service, and all kinds of southerners everywhere – everyone, all together, and busy, moving at a pace she could neither understand or keep up with. All of us, a sea of Africans to the core, living ordinary lives of epic significance. This sight, when combined with the history of the area that oozed at you from every nook and cranny all around you, had a dizzying almost stultifying effect on anyone that came uptown. More so for black folk, because it’s ours.

I can’t forget the look of awe and wonder and pride that was set aglow on her face as she described all this to me in painstaking detail.

If Jack hadn’t called me, I would never have known that they were holding a wake for James Brown at the Apollo. I was resolved to go the following day but before I knew it, I was in the throes of unhinging my apartment – cleaning, reorganizing, and discarding things that I’d held onto for years. Dana was moving into her own place off Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and I told her that she could take a few large pieces. She promised to come by at 4pm. Three hours later, she showed up – all apologies. The wake was to end at 9pm but I went anyway. Ralph went with me.

In retrospect, I’m glad we did.

We walked down Convent Avenue to 126th street and headed east, the route I used to take when I did Harlem Song. I can still remember the older black folks I would wave to on the way there, the bodega I’d stop in to get a cup of tea occasionally and the crackhead that would wave me down everyday before I got to the backstage door, like we’d known each other our whole lives. (I miss doing that show...) That familiarity still rang true. Although we could hear it from Convent Avenue, by the time we got to St. Nicholas Avenue, we could see the overspill, and it was all over creation. It was all of us Africans from the far-reaching corners of the globe that my distant relative had seen on her Harlem visit, to the tenth power. And it was glorious.

The line stretched all the way down past 129th street with a huge bottleneck in front of the benta funeral home, strangely enough. There were a lot of police and an endless array of barricades and the confusion that comes with traffic routed and rerouted. There were storefronts and boomboxes and cars circling the area slowly, all of them blaring James Brown songs. There were those who felt compelled to testify, to television interviewers on cameras and into radio microphones and to any passerby. There were those who played congas in the middle of the street, those who made grand proclamations and read poetry aloud. There were those who cried openly. There were those who felt compelled to dance. All of this was happening all around us. It was emotional and spontaneous and random and free. The last time I felt anything anywhere near that, I was either at the Grand Canyon or a Parliament Funkadelic show. Both experiences left me with the same sensation: that i was face to face with something that completely overwhelmed me from the inside out.

Once I realized that I couldn’t get through the backstage door, Ralph remarked that they may as well have had a gigantic pile of pure gold inside. The security around the area was that tight. We drifted towards the front of the building in the hopes that I would be able to grab someone that I knew but a cop told me that they were about to cut the line off because they didn’t want to stay out there all night long. Ralph quickly suggested we get going before the rest of the crowd behind us figured it out. We drifted along its periphery, chatting here and there until we walked the length of 125th street and realized that we were hungry. we opted for fish in a nearby african restaurant off of St. Nicholas Avenue instead of a fish sandwich from my favorite spot, "a taste of seafood (and a touch of soul)" over by Mt. Morris Park (or Marcus Garvey Park, depending on who you ask).

there was still so much excitement in the air, as we drifted along. I couldn't shake the sensation that something was about to happen. i think that's when i realized that all of us, all together -- that was the excitement. our unity, our collective selves, even in sorrow, made us one and filled us with conviction and joy and a kind of power that can only come in such moments. when do those moments happen nowadays in the black community?

it was revolutionary, somehow. it was explosive at that moment, as someone walked by brightly singing "say it loud (i'm black and i'm proud)," i felt a wonderful connectedness to every African everywhere, whether they were from mali or all the way around the corner. i knew that the love i felt in that instant might fade but that connectedness never would.

what's the next spark to bring us together?