Men That Beg: "I miss you"

It was in one of my previous post that I randomly said “art is pain.” I declared that I would do an entire post with that quote as the focal point. I will, but that time is not now. Today I refer back to that quote because as I sit in my apartment listening to The Chi-Lites “Have you seen her”, I am reminded that it is that pain, that raw emotion that brings a smile to my face. Oldies warm my heart. They take me from my current situation of observing too many men take too many good women for granted, to a place where men pour their hearts out for them. It’s like they bled on those records. They bleeeeed. They bled in a way that rappers who prematurely say “I’m going to bleed on this track” can’t even fathom. It’s exactly that back in the day “rapping” my mother refers to, when she talks about men knowing how to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. She calls it rapping. I call it begging. And while I’m not fond of men who beg, I am favoring of men strong enough to be desperate for an incredible woman.

I have long established that I am generationally misplaced in a way that leaves me feeling like my old soul is being compromised by this modern age. I often wonder how I would have been “courted” if I dated men blessed enough to have the “oldies” as their generation’s music. Oldies, the kind of music that gave men a reference point on how to appreciate and treat women. Plainly, this music had an effect on how those men regarded women. I would even be willing to bet, if this kind of emotionally charged music was blaring from men’s radios today their hearts would reflect it. Life would imitate art. They would be better men for it.

The only genre of music I label, hesitantly, as comparable to old school soul is Rhythm and Blues* (R&B). Actually, this was the blanket label that all Black music received in the twentieth century. Sadly, even contemporary R&B is being phased out on mainstream radio. In its place, rap is monopolizing. To make matters worse, the pop like songs that fill the nominal place of R&B do not remotely scratch the surface of what soul sounds like. Erykah Badu, whose music I have recently discovered an appreciation for, I heard took to twitter recently to verbalize her disgust with the current state of the soul in music. I share similar sentiments. Where is the soul? Even when I hear songs that express feelings of love it seems so artificial and contrived when you place it alongside oldies from men like Marvin Gaye.

For several months I have contemplated the difference in the quality of emotion showcased in R&B compared to the oldies. It doesn’t make sense that these male artists seemingly pour their hearts out, and the end result is still-- flat. I listen to a Brian McKnight cover of Marvin Gaye’s Distant Lover and I literally laugh at his poor rendition of it. The fact that he would even try to cover a classic like Distant Lover is laughable, but more-so the way that he thought he could cover it without committing to the song was what really tickled me. His cover though, is a perfect indication of the current state of what use to be soul music—these men are trying to be cute with it. These male singers are putting artificial sweetener in the tea, and like artificial sweetener it taste bitter. There is nothing pretty about soul. An attempt to make it cute is going to be a failure on its face. Soul is a combination of desperation, pain, and bliss. An emotion intensified is what it is. This kind of exaggeration is not pretty. It’s ugly. You don’t smile through soul.

I watch people regard Trey Songz like a modern-day Marvin Gaye and it’s funny to me. Instead, I see him as an overgrown boy. He sings about sex often but the way he sings about it reminds me of an inexperienced boy mimicking what his older brother said on the subject. I’m not saying Trey Songz is a virgin, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m just saying that his attempt at trying to sound passionate and sexy comes off hoaxy. To be sexy and passionate when you sing about sex, I would think you would need to intimately know the soul of the thing. He obviously doesn’t know the soul of sex.

And this is what I have come to believe is the problem with male artists today. I don’t think they sing with any soul because they haven’t found it yet. It is my belief that soul is created through hardships. I think soul becomes visible through the evolution of that adversity. On both points, I think modern day men are lacking. Further, I don’t think you hear the soul in these men’s voices when they sing about losing a woman because they don’t know the pain associated with losing one. In order to feel that kind of pain he would have had to place a lot of value in her in the first place. I think that goes to the deeper reason for the absence of soul—men’s decreased value in a sole woman.

A friend of mine, who will smile as he reads this, is one of the best quality men I know. If I have a daughter one day I would feel comfortable with her loving a man like him. I asked this great quality man what he thought on the issue of modern music compared to the oldies. He told me that songs are different now because women have made men different. He thinks that the value of women overall has diminished in men’s minds because there are so many bad quality ones that allow men to run amuck. Although we go through different avenues we both arrive at the same dead-end road. The songs sound different because men feel differently about women. And again I say, this comes from one of the best quality men I know.

I try to do at least two miles of cardio a day. What takes me to three or four miles is when Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes I Miss You randomly pops up from my shuffled play-list. It gives me just the burst of energy I need to go another thirty or forty minutes. Its takes me to a whole different level. It excites me, inspires me. (Full disclosure: it sometimes makes me teary eyed, leaving me trying to camouflage the tears as sweat). And if the incredibly beautiful pitches and perfect harmonic tones are not enough, towards the end of the song he stops singing and just talks to her. He talks for five minutes of the song. At one point he begs“If I could just/If I could just see you/Can’t really say what you mean or what you want over the phone/I swear I miss you/You’ve done heard it ten times or more but/I swear I done changed/I swear I done changed.”

Listen to those words. It’s not the validity in what he’s saying that is so on point for me. Has he changed? Probably not. This man is saying whatever he can to get back into his woman’s good graces. He goes from “I’ve changed”, to” I’ve got a gig” to “I won the lottery”. Nothing in what he is saying logically flows. The point is, his words don’t have to necessarily be perfect. With perfection though he completely humbles himself for her. He puts his pride aside. I swear on this blog, if a man that I remotely still had feelings for just played this song for me because he was unable to find words of his own, without a second thought he’d be forgiven. I make this promise, so freely, because I know that men of my generation will never call my bluff. Men of my generation wouldn’t think to do this for a sole woman. Even if she is a soul woman.

* Neo-Soul definitely came to mind but it does not have the historical implication that R&B does.

**Please if you don’t know the songs I am referring to listen to them here, here and here. Even if you do, just go for the reminder.

The Baggage of Black Men

I am interested in black men. I mean really really interested in them. I am not talking about the interest that makes me want to kiss them or have dinner with them. Not the interest that makes me want to meet one that will love me and that I can also love without pretenses, without all the superficial fluffy stuff. I am interested in black men in a way that makes me feel for them, want to understand them, want to encourage their evolution, want to know what’s behind all that forced masculinity. I am interested in black men in a way that makes me want to kiss away all of their issues. And that means I want to do a whole lot of kissing because black men seemingly have a whole lot of issues. Erykah Badu’s bag ladies probably couldn’t fit all of a black man’s baggage into a thousand of their bags. I’m talking about major baggage. I am interested in that baggage not only because from a spectator’s point of view it's interesting but also because it makes answering questions on black men’s behavioral traits easier. I am interested in their baggage because while there is all this uproar about single black women and what they are doing wrong I want to look at all the bags of these black men.

Start focusing the attention on who these black women are trying to date and then that tired conversation of single black woman might go somewhere. I am not saying point fingers, shift blame. This is a blameless situation, everyone regardless of race or sex is pretty messed up. I’m just saying let’s critically look at what black men are bringing to the table. Let’s look at all of their baggage and then that might be more of an indicator on the supposed demise of black relationships. Black people as a whole are a complex people. They are fascinating and multifaceted. I am proud to be black but that doesn’t mean I have to turn a blind eye to our unique dysfunction. Instead, I intimately understand it and want to explore it.

Today, black women are beginning to openly admit their psychological woes, will even skirt around with the idea of therapy. We are for once starting to break the misconception of the superwoman strength complex and starting to admit that we do, in fact, have struggles. If you start asking a black man, however, what his damage is he will look at you blank faced. And even if he begins to reveal his struggles, he nonchalantly relays stories of legitimate childhood trauma with a shrug of the shoulders. I understand their inability to really explore their baggage. Their strict rules of masculinity do not allow it. Their strict rules of black masculinity definitely do not leave room for it. In understanding that though, I also see the lack of possible evolve these men have. There can absolutely be no real evolution without this kind of introspection. And there lies problem number one--black men who have so much potential are simply not evolving, not getting through their basic level roadblocks.

Black men I have observed, sadly, have a tradition of parental dysfunction largely paternal issues. As I discussed in an earlier post they are the prime example of runners of this type of mommy/daddy cycle. Therefore, how can a man, any man, reach his full potential when he isn’t severing such profound issues from his past? Men boastfully say that women hold on to baggage from past relationships. I do not disagree with that. Women have their own unique inability to sever relationship issue leaving them to fall into patterns of vigorous repetition. Men shouldn’t boast too loudly though because while women are carrying around relationship baggage these black men have a much heavier load. They are carrying around things that they literally cannot face that like an invisible leech is stunting their growth. They carry around bags of junk and haven’t even taken the time to look in the bag to understand that junk is what they are carrying. That is sad. It’s sad because their oblivion of their issues leaves them subliminally masking it, putting up sky high walls so that no one can touch that wound. It’s sad because they are never quite able to understand why they cannot fully give themselves to anyone especially not to a woman. One commenter last week simplistically labeled this problem as “emotional laziness.” I respectfully say to that commenter that it’s not a “lazy” issue is an inability one. How can any man be emotionally alert with a woman when they have had to emotionally disconnect, emotionally check-out just to suppress things from their past. They check-out in order to go on with their regularly scheduled “masculine” disposition. It should be no surprise that they have difficulty flipping that switch back on to deal with the world's most emotional creature--a woman.

I feel for black men and the strict social constructs that they have inherited by being both black and male. Issues of poverty are a much more intricate discussion when you start talking about its affect on black men. Issues on being black and growing up in suburbia or in affluent neighborhoods take on a very different picture when the focal point of that conversation is black boys. I say this to say that I wholeheartedly understand the reason behind the problem. I also understand that this problem isn’t going anywhere by continuing to carry around the bags instead of stopping to actually deal with the clutter inside them. Black people are very leery of therapy, I understand that. I just hope that one day black men, specifically, will find a way to deal with the complicated issues they are harboring. Black men are much too brilliant to let the past and their unwillingness to deal with it keep them from growing into the beautiful black men they are meant to be. Those bags are really getting in your way.

I Am So Incredibly Sorry

I am so incredibly sorry. I was so wrong. I have been preaching from my pedestal for years. I can’t help but cringe now that I think back to my ignorance. “The justice system is not just...” was a favorite line of choice as I concluded a soliloquy on my concern, rather disdain, with the justice system. Not only should I be apologizing for the lack of originality in that rhetoric but I apologize because I had no clue what I was talking about. I spoke about something that I had only an amateur understanding. I grew up around attorneys, practically in a law firm, but I was looking at some very complex issues very simplistically. I was omnipotent, to let me tell it, but really knew nothing. I was passionate and everyone else apathetic. Well, screw me, because I didn’t know squat. As I sat in my cushiony privileged life surrounded by protection and shelter I looked with contempt at all the players of the justice system, who I thought were destroying America. I held contempt for all the judges, all of them. I held it for the district attorney’s office. For lackadaisical public defenders. I held a special place of contempt for legislatures because I was just sure that they were passing laws placing the poor at a further disadvantage. I held contempt for every person that, during our conversations on the justice system, would look at me with eyes of “Erica this problem is bigger than you.” They were right. I was wrong. The problem of the legal system is much bigger than me and my superficial understanding of it. I am so incredibly sorry.

The problem isn’t that the justice system is not just it’s that life isn’t just. Therefore, any institution in this imperfect world is going to be tragically flawed. The justice system is flawed, yes. But it is not a complete failure. I pegged it as a failure. I propositioned that an entire revamp of the structure of our legal system was needed. I, little ole me, was put on the earth to single-handedly fix this corrupt system. I was to fix this system which imprisoned black men at disproportionate rates, destroyed families, and was only a means for a racist society to leave blacks oppressed. I went to law school with the notion that because I was interested in fixing this problem that it would be fixed. Again, a reflection that I have been protected and sheltered enough to think if I want something I can make it happen. Bump all the people before me that have tired. It’s a wonder that today as I sat across from a fifty year old white inmate at the county jail and had this epiphany that I did not have a complete nervous breakdown and my head blow off. In that moment and every moment since Monday when I started my first legal internship my notions about criminal defense have been disrupted.

I sit for most of the day in courtrooms that are fair. I have yet to see blatant prejudice. People who have committed crimes get chance after chance. Crimes aren’t just felonies most are misdemeanors and for those crimes people are working tirelessly on both sides to try to get plea deals for minimum sentences. Judges aren’t cold and indifferent, they seem genuinely concerned. They empathize. District Attorneys they cross the aisle and are sympathetic to a criminal’s circumstances.

I am mainly exposed to the workings of public defenders. Sadly this is where I think the problem lies. Money is green and life isn’t fair. There are much more criminals who need court appointed attorneys than ones that can actually afford a private one. It’s not the justice system that dictates this it’s just simple money, power and position. The people that need the most help, need the most attention receive fifteen minute interviews with their public defender the day they are to appear in court. They receive this kind of attention not because of an unjust system but because money talks and they don’t have any. In correlation to their economic situation, they are more likely to engage in criminal activity, violate great plea deals that their public defender gets them and end right back up in court. The public defenders are overworked, underpaid and quite frankly desensitized to all the bullshit their clients give them. They see the same clients over and over again. It has nothing to do with what happens when the impoverished criminals get in court, nothing to do with the justice system, it’s all based on the unfairness of life. It’s just life. So when a public defender said to me today “it doesn’t matter if he did it,” there lies the problem. She doesn’t care because she doesn’t have time to care. All she has time for is to see if she can get the man “time served “so she can go back to the revolving door of her two-hundred person caseload.

So, I am sorry justice system because you get a bad rep. I am so sorry to the judge who had every right to throw a bad attitude young woman in jail but didn’t because she wanted to give her one last chance to get things right. I am sorry to the district attorney who gave a young girl advice on not letting a man take advantage of her, went on to hug her as she cried after being sentenced to pay a large sum of money for a poor decision. I am sorry public defenders because you bust your asses every day and don’t see any real progress. I am sorry legislatures because instead of being informed on programs like STARR program which tries to help inmates with addictions, giving them treatment and lighter sentences, I was busy pointing my finger. I am sorry to any person that I have engaged in conversation about this and they listened to me sitting in a very ignorant position, preaching. I am sorry to myself because I am much too smart to label superficial rationales as profound. I am so incredibly sorry.