Slighcarp and Grimshaw

I am aware of my bias, and I am aware of other folks’ bias, but here I sit (as per usual – weekend-wise) in our kitchen, rocking the radio, tuned to WNYC. I (and I speak for Sarah, too) love NPR. There are those that argue that NPR is old, boring, staid and completely MOR, catering to self-satisfied, college-educated, comfortably upper-class urbanites, with little to do with the world on the ground, working-class people. I disagree (duh).

In the last half-hour of Weekend Edition this Sunday, I heard three very interesting stories. Story the first involved the 30th anniversary of Roots (involving an interview with LeVar Burton, who despite Aaron McGruder’s Most Embarrassing Black Person Award a couple of years ago, is a completely reasonable person to speak to about this subject). Story the second was about a performance-art/hip-hop experiment going on in NYC subway system wherein there are periodic takeovers of subway trains by local hip-hop artists, who perform to captive audiences on their way from one place to another on the train. People from all different schools of hip-hop are performing. There are beat-boxers, MCs, and singers from the undi- scene to more spoken-word performers to harder-core, less family-friendly fare (one woman rhymed “like an icepick/stuck in my left tit” which was bleeped out, but the point was evident). The reporter talked to the artists involved and about their interest in bringing artists who normally wouldn’t collude and making each other hear what is going on outside of their earshot. One young man said, “I may not agree with some of the raps I hear other people are doing, but it’s a freedom of speech thing, and it’s good to hear what different people are saying, so as not to get stagnant just listening to the same beats and rhymes.”

Art makes me happy. The community of artists is how we keep going toward whatever pursuits we have. Those of us in the pre-book/record/gallery have only our contemporaries, those working toward the same thing to keep us going. Going forward is really hard, all the time. I don’t have a book manuscript yet, and the thought of getting enough together to have one is daunting and so far away as to be almost unbelievable. So I share with those I trust, use their interest and enthusiasm as a touchstone when I’m feeling wretched about my work. There is no way to do this by myself. Kenneth Patchen has a fantastic poem called “No One Ever Works Alone”, which says it better than I ever could. We are surrounded by the world, and for the most part, the world doesn’t give a good goddamn whether we produce art. We do because we are arrogant enough to believe that we have something worth saying, and we have enough people around us who agree. And don’t be fooled, it is arrogance and pretention – but the good kind. We need it to keep going.

The last story I heard was about a group called the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group working in the old-timey black string band genre. These are 20-somethings interested in history, and working within the spectrum of the black American music experience. They are working with the two or three people in the world that are still alive who were involved the first wave of this music. Their community exists, but is much more nebulous. And damnation, they opened for Taj Mahal last year! Holy shit.

So yeah, NPR. Making me appreciate what I have. Doing my heart good. Filling me with some pride as part of an artistic community. Making me want to make. And that’s not nothing.