One of the things I haven't done in quite some time is write with any particular flavorish flavor. Once upon a long ago, it was all I cared to do, in lower case. The rush of stage poetry kept me dizzy and spinning out swoopy phraseology, but Papa's not always on stage. I caught a dose of raw ugly unleashed humanity. Remember that Malcolm quote, the one he said scared whitefolks to death? He said he would consider for the sake of his freedom anything whitefolks might consider for the sake of his captivity. Have you ever looked off the edge of a 50 story building? Have you ever held a gun in your hand? Have you ever stared at a footlong line of cocaine? Have you ever come face to face with your ability to will yourself into extremity? That's what happened to me after I already had babies. So I quit being a lover and started being a fighter.
The ability to stay beautiful despite the presence of reproductive superpotential is not the exclusive province of the homosexual nor of the prude, but it helps if you find the willpower to denounce breeding and that state of selflessness it commonly bestows. Staying beautiful is an artificial childhood, and those who extend that state beyond ordinary reason remain oddly interesting, even fascinating if they play it. To be fabulous. To create artifacts for the the curious. To entertain the senses beyond instinct. These are the callings of the Creative. Aldous Huxley said that the Intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex. I'm sure he meant it that way, but what if he meant marriage? Then he would be talking about the Creative as well. While its a conceit that all Creatives are intellectual, you cannot deny that they are anything Erma Bombeck or Andy Griffith.
The difference between Creatives and Intellectuals can often be expressed in the dissonance found by kneejerking critics of Michelle Malkin. She looks like a Creative, she acts like an Intellectual.
Creatives, the superset of producing aesthetes that would include many bloggers, rappers, singers, songwriters, playwrites, screenwriters, subway bombers (in the Hiphop sense), sculptors, buskers, performance artists and multifarious bourgeois types who bother to whiten their teeth or sculpt their toenails used to be more gay than we are. We Westerners are all descendants of the castrato, heirs to the jester and children of the men who would capture the world's imagination with instruments like pens for diversionary reasons rather than with weapons like cannon and laws and canon law. Creatives are the running buddies of power, and so they get prestige instead. Prestige tends to make one fabulous.
In the empowered world more than men can be creative. More than men can act and frolic and capture the attention of more than men. It's a whole industry and the gay tradition is subsumed. It ain't just singing cowboys any more. But I've been looking for black bloggers and creative writers and flavors other than the few that I've been knowing so long, and they're all gay, or at least seven out of seven tries have sent me down to the same keywords.
The urge to be black, fabulous and creative has a heavy pull and that's no bull. There's a sixteen beat behind you and something about the music gets into your pants, but it's not just enough to do the same dance as everyone else on the block. It's your Soul Train Line, remember? You can't be just another Negro, you have to aim for honorifics and kick other crabs out of barrels and into curbs. It ain't enough to just rap, you have to be Flavor Flav. Don't be a Do Bee, this ain't Miss Mary Ann's Romper Room, you in America now Kunta. You have got to be bigger than Mantan Moreland, bigger than Daddy Grace, bigger than Diana Ross. A little bit creative is not enough juice, and an ordinary brotha's romantic fantasies don't make for art.
It's not strictly only a black fabulous thing of course, but extra extra is the byline when you're coming from the basement. Extra. Like the models on Deal or No Deal that confessed that nobody took them to their prom, you have to dedicate yourself to be extra glitterlicious so that the contrast between before and after confirms your artistic transformation. Extreme makeover begins at home, and creativity doesn't come from homely people, well except for Jay-Z and Elton John.
I've been saying that black culture is over the table and therefore somewhat over. Oh but black gay creative culture, there's something filthy dirty fascinating huh? Still under the table, but peeking up periodically. Why, we don't even have the right myths and stereotypes down for that do we? I mean what if tomorrow we found out that Lawrence Fishburne was gay? Well, that's besides the point which is there's still some confounding mystery and a deep well of darkness that remains from the hole of soul. There's still yet to be our Big Black Gay Star, and RuPaul doesn't count.
In the meantime, there's a slim little comfortable alley to hang out in, still digging on the beats and vibes of the 70s, well trod ruts in the deep soul. It's frightening to learn how to play the bassline for Knee Deep and liberating at the same time. Such joy from such simplicity; my God our souls were purer than we ever imagined.
I don't know where the overproduction of gay lib takes us. It's still considered outre to out the closeted gay. What if Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion, was gay? Shouldn't we know? Shouldn't we care? Me? I say no. I don't want to ask and I don't want to hear tell. That's because I'm still with Huxley if not with Greek Dualism. I don't think there's much of a conflict nor much of a synergy between mind and body, between Intellectuality and Creativity, between being fabulous and being interesting. The beauty of the performer is a trick, you see. If you're looking at the person and that is part of their creativity, their appeal is instinctual but they are denying the instinct. The beauty of humans is its own reward, to translate it into art is the discipline of the performer. You don't have to be a homosexual or a prude but it helps. Somebody out there may have produced a ballet for pregnant women, but it will never be a classic. Somebody out there might call The Brady Bunch or Good Times art, but that's not what really cuts it.
The Special and the Extra, these are qualities borne by those Creatives pulling their faces into the picture, and those are the faces of those dedicated not to the humdrumeries of domesticity.
Who has time for the finery and frippery of aesthetics beyond the ken of the man on the street?
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