THE BLACKNESS OF MY BLACKNESS
There's always something behind my anger that let's me let go as fast as possible. It can take as little as a minute. But there's always another part of me that tells me to stay angry on the outside, to keep up my act until I'm certain to other side of the anger gets the picture. The blackness of my blackness is the blackness within my blackness that let's me go to a friends house the next second like nothing ever happened. It let's me turn what I was angry about into a joke when speaking to a different part of a person knowing that they will laugh but the anger is still there for me. Beneath the worst of my anger there's always something more that tells me that none of it will matter in a few days or that this will matter for the rest of my life. It's the rationality behind my rage and it's my Jiminy Cricket leading my down what seems to be the right path. It's what stays true to who I am no matter the mood or situation and is stuck there, I'd never think of trying to remove it.
Omari--
ReplyDeleteI think what you entailed in your piece, how you're able to easily stow away your anger, easily pertains to what Louis Armstrong embodied. As I mentioned before, being a black an in the era in which he lived, Louis Armstrong inevitably had his share of hardships and prejudices set against him, telling he just couldn't. With songs like "What A Wonderful World" and performances like the one you posted, no one would really assume Armstrong was anything less than ecstatic about the world he made poetry out of. Music for him was what your blackness for you. It allowed him to cope with the hardships thrown at him, turn them into something beautiful, just as your blackness enables you to "turn what [you] was angry about into a joke when speaking to a different part of a person knowing that they will laugh but the anger is still there for [you]." The anger may also still be there for Louis, but at least he has solace in the fact that there is something there-- a constant-- to help him cope.