The Limits of My Lackness (Or Black Thereof)

When I went to ask myself what great lesson I was learning about the limits of my blackness, I felt a bit guilty. Was I missing out? I would think that if I was "getting it", that I'd notice some discernible change.I was asking myself this - "what have you learned?" - because I didn't feel like I'd had any epiphanies.

Then I realized that the real issue was not my blackness or my relationship to it, but something else. In this show, or rather by doing this show, I define my blackness not by commenting on Stew's story, but by making my own Real. By going through the process of this show and creating, I walk a parallel path to Stew's. (It's not exactly his path. His real is his own and mine is my own.)

It's clear to me  that this show allows him to recreate his world in a way that he can deal with. By creating a microcosm of his life, he's been allowed to skew the trajectory of his life, or maybe to bend the image of it through a different lens. I do the same thing by putting his mantle on. In imbibing this show, we can resonate with some of the same struggles and experiences as him. I am the Youth, as you are the Youth, as he is the Youth. The pilgrim soul is the one reading this blog.


I took a class in college called Autobiography of French Women Writers with Dr. Durbin. The class was in partial fulfillment of my French degree, and it stuck with me. Marguerite Duras, writer in the Nouvelle Vague style, wrote two books that could be described as autobiographies. Their significance to me is that they tell two completely different stories, and that they're both real. The first is concrete and detached, the second is a cinematic ego-stroke. But because it was her own life that she commented on, no one can dare tell her that one is more real than the other. She says that over and over. Even details that conflict must reconcile each other by existing in the same space. And like the second of these books, Passing Strange is the Art that comments on (or reinvents) the life of the creator.

The line between fact and fiction is unclear. Stew has already himself admitted that some of the facts don't exist as presented in the show. But that's immaterial. The artist can rewrite his life, and thereby rewrite his own reality.

Believe for a moment, that your reality is not circumstance. It is not the sum of statistics and events. It is instead choice. It is what you choose to leave behind. The artist takes control of her life by choosing to rewrite it, because once you've decided it's true, it is.

The Youth tells Stew not to give up on Art because it is the one thing "that can bring her back." This scene is a recreation of his own conversation with himself; the one where he consciously chooses to be the author of his own life.  But as Scott has already made clear to me, there is a Zen permeating this piece. There is an abandon in the inevitability of it all.

"Don't be sad about your chosen path, and where it's taken you thus far. 'Cuz this is what you did, and that is who you are. And it's alright."

This show is its own Serenity prayer. God grant that I should change what I can, accept what I cannot, and be wise enough to know the difference. Can I get a Amen?

So this all being said, my relationship with my black costars, my relationship to the audience, the content of the show, the black idioms...none of these things define my blackness. More importantly, it is the choice to do this show that has the most effect on my identity. This process is the defining factor. Or one of them, at least. Who knows, maybe I'll write a Passing Strange one day.

How much real can YOU handle?

Ok, I’ve been stalling on posting for a while for several reasons. I’m much more of a have-a-glass-of-wine or enjoy-a-recreational-joint-and-talk type of person; it’s when I try to write things down that I have trouble. This show is way deep, and it’s hit on a whole host of things near and dear to me. “A boy and his mom….”          

 Now it’s not fair to neglect to mention my loving sister and my somewhat estranged father, but for some years after my parents’ divorce and my sister moving to college, it was just me and my mom. My parents split up when I was in 6^th grade, and it was the three of us (Devon, Mom and I) against the world.

The central theme of a Youth dealing with his blackness is more universal than it seems – everyone has to look in the mirror at some point and have a conversation with his/herself about who they are. Being a biracial kid growing up in a mixed family with mixed surroundings is a HUGE part of who I am. Damn, an anthropologist should come to my house stat. I’ve even started writing long rambling paragraphs and had to delete them several times because I don’t want to sound like, well…a rambling idiot.

Alllll of us have said or done things to their mother that they’d wish they hadn’t, and the death of a parent is chilling, even if you’re fortunate enough to have both living. All of us in the cast have been called selfish or childish or self-indulgent for our love of the arts (or at least for choosing to pursue them). How many of us have had a Philistine moment where the whole world seems to waggling their collective finger at you?

And there’s always the question of “the real.” How much real can you handle? Scott posted this quote on the New Line FB.

"We have art in order not to die of the truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Desi says just about the same damned thing to the Youth. Maybe you have to be German. Try replacing the word “truth” with “real” and you’d think that Nietzsche was part of the band.

 And to me, this isn’t just when reality is too harsh or ugly. Life, whether you see it as perfectly planned in God’s mind, or the Universe’s happy accident can be too big, too beautiful at times.  I immediately thought of the scene in American Beauty where the kid is filming the plastic bag, and Kevin Spacey’s voiceover is talking about he thinks that sometimes he feel like his heart will burst, things are that beautiful. Several times the Youth is on the brink of something beautiful, but he leaves “right when it was starting to feel real.” Question is, how much real can YOU handle?

Vissi D'arte!!

Here goes!

Waking up this morning was a process. (I wrote this several days ago.) It involved a few incoming text message chimes, the snooze button *several* times, and a break to go wee and have a cookie. But every time my conscious mind overtook my unconscious one, that is to say, every time I woke up, this one part of the show kept creeping in. La Franklin, the Southern Baptist Rebel (played by Colman Domingo) loses himself for a moment while smoking a joint. Maria Callas comes through, ever immortalized by queers everywhere. Vissi d’arte! I was going to say that it was that image from the movie that was on loop in my head, but the visual was secondary to the sound - his falsetto, the notes themselves, and the reverb effect.

I agree completely with Scott’s comment about this show’s “earworms”. It’s an apt description for niggling little bug things that make their way into your brain’s folds or that set up shop in the curve of your ear. They’re welcome to be there – most of the time – but I admire the talent it takes to craft one. I doubt it was wholly intentional. I don’t think Stew and Heidi engineered each one of these sound bites for the purpose of being catchy; that’s the pop music mogul’s job. “A colored paradise where the palm trees sway…” The words are soothing, but still the dated language makes something in you (me?) recoil. The cast sings like wind through pastel trees. The electric guitar is honeyed butter, soulful but not mournful. It’s quite likely that people like us are more susceptible to things like this. I mean, we’re already choosing to give up so many of our evenings to be in a musical, but I think that non-Passing-Strange-fanatics might catch themselves humming.

It’s bad that I don’t recognize the aria. I’ve never even heard Tosca in its entirety. (And I got a degree in this shit!) But a quick Google search reveals that Vissi D’Arte translates as “I lived for art.” Now that I look back on that scene, it fits.