Bambi Got Fixed

What ties us together, blond or charred or ginger snappish, but a ribbon of asphalt? It winds on from that tunnel in Paris ten years ago today (so image-savvy the People's Princess, to bleed out internally while retaining her beautiful surface post mortem, une infante defunte truly worthy of Debusy's Splenda'd Pavanne) to the Jersey Turnpike: Up for Sale--Yours for the Low! Low! Price of your Mortal Soul! and 35 cents every fifteen miles or so. What ties us, M.I.A./Patti/PJ Harvey/Madonna/Fantasia, and You, my partner . . . You, La Migliora Fabbra with the Open Sesame secret to invoke sleep that I can't trick, seduce or bribe into sharing my bed.

What made Patti write? She wanted to be like Jo in Little Women: a tomboy who wasn't a "bull" and had lots of boyfriends (see the Unauthorized Biography). What sucker punched her?

“I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, ‘You can’t be wrestling outside without a T-shirt on.’ It was a trauma in fact. I got so fucked up over it when my mother gave me the big word—that I was absolutely a girl and there was no changing it—that I walked out dazed on a highway with my dog, Bambi, and let her get hit by a fire engine.” (UB, 26)

My sheltie's name was Peter. I loved him but one afternoon I hit him over and over with a Madame Alexander Scarlet O'Hara doll I'd given my sister, because he had chewed on it while we were out and because the teethmarks in her pink plastic "skin" would not would not would not would not--

My dad slapped me as hard as he could. First one side, then the other. It stopped with me holding the doll in one hand and Peter's chain link collar in the other. My father's hand was raised and I could tell from his squeezed red face he wanted to hit me again and for once he had the perfect justification. My sisters and my mother were watching. The word hysterical was swarming the air like a hive of yellow jackets. No one had to say it. Peter's panicked ribs rose and fell. We were in the closet in my sisters' room, where the pile of clothes on the floor made a place to memorize everything you could see with your eyes closed. I think I went there then.

the quietners: ps and m.i.a.

without ever having listened to one ps tune, even one melody, or read through a single poem, m.i.a.'s getting herself compared to ps, by no less than the chairman of Interscope, Jimmy Iovine. iovine says he's not concerned that m.i.a. won't make "much impact...on the mainstream" (Ben Sisario, "An Itinerant Refugee in a Hip-Hop World," New York Times 19 Aug. 2007).

he goes on: "the left of center artists...you really wonder about them. can the world catch up? can the culture meet them in the middle?" (sisario).

born in london, raised in sri lanka, traveled everywhere, and like a squeezed sponge, it all comes out in her lyrics, instruments, beat, her duds, dance, and lingo:

unbud for a minute:

synliterate/globalkitch, to the too-much point -- and she's not blonde.

so we're back to the beginning, the first set of questions:

does ps influence female artists after her?

well, yes, clearly, in this case; although neither m.i.a. nor ps may know that the influence is taking place.

john szwed, one of the professors that i studied with when i was in graduate school, might respond to this effect, as he did to so many others: "who can explain it?"

culture'n axshin, there's no 'splayn'n.
but quietn down, now, she needs to make a sound...

rap saved Beah's life

i just finished teaching a summer writing course. the primary text for this course was Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which is also the first year reader at the school where i work.

students in this summer course wrote their final essay on Beah's use of music. in their work, many students noted that music, in particular rap and reggae, saved Beah's life. he skirted certain death on a number of occasions, students observed, either by performing rap, by repeating meaningful Marley lyrics in his head, or by writing out complete soundtracks in a notebook. music triggered memories, the means for healing when Beah was in rehab, as the first grip of the AK-47 squeezed them out of his mind on the front.

Beah also experienced environmental sounds as music: the beat of rapid fire gunshots in the distance, the melody of dying gutteral wrenching, the percussive crack of dry branches under the weight of soldiers' boots, the soft timbour of rain on the underbrush. this music saved Beah's life, too, when he was hiding from the rebels and, later on, after he joined the boy soldier ranks; during these two periods, he didn't have a player with him, so to keep on, he listened as if the world out there composed tunes for him -- violent and anguished tunes, cautionary tunes, soothing tunes.

students connected to Beah because the music he listened to was also the music they listened to. although they did not live through a war of the same sort as Beah did and although they were not compelled to serve as boy soldiers, many students fought wars on urban streets, wars at home, and wars with themselves. many claimed to know a need similar to Beah's desperate moan for lyrics and bass and refrain. music saved their lives, too, even as it folded into wind around the lives of their friends and family.

to those of us who need music for transport to other worlds, who find music in our environments that sets the pace, who beseech music to time travel, who make music to tell a true (war) story, the power of music is power -- to know, to move on, to remember, to change, to stay alive.

the students this summer didn't even know who patti smith is, but they definitely gitR.