Tag Archives: Writer

“Home of the Real Deal”

It was three short listens of Willie Nelson in “Smoke Hour II” on Cowboy Carter. I have seen a video where someone complained that Beyonce should not have used Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton on her album as if only a white voice could legitimize her foray into a countrified Beyonce project. However, I saw it as a flex because they are legends and because Linda Martell is prominently featured on the album as well, the commentor’s complaints did not have legs. The album’s influences and features have many Black voices, past and current, so again, no legs to stand on.

But back to Willie Nelson, the quote in this interlude/intro: “Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you on to some real good shit”..elicited the strongest of head nods from me. It is true. Sharing the love of a song, a book, a TV show, a movie, a new artistic medium (for me, it was weaving on Friday night and songwriting class on Saturday morning) creates community and builds on that trust.

I don’t know about any of you but a recommendation from a friend or trusted source rouses me to try that new thing. Even if I don’t feel the same, I am almost never disappointed that I tried.

That I introduced something to this day that the previous one had never seen before.

“How does it feel to be adored?”

I am four listens in to “Alligator Tears” from Cowboy Carter and I find myself thinking of every element from the meter to the chorus to the hook. I normally would never use those words but I attended my first songwriting class this morning. I cannot sing or play any musical instruments. I cannot read music but I was still drawn to this class. I told the instructor that I will never hear music quite the same and it’s already true.

I let myself get carried away but there was a second listen where I thought about what words were stressed versus unstressed. How deliberate the vocal arrangement is especially when she sings “Sunrise in the morning.” Most of the time and this will persist of course, I allow myself to be swallowed up by the music but I liked how learning new information expanded the way I experienced the music.

As for how I feel when I listen to this track, “I’m into deep.” I love it. I want to slow dance with myself. I want to slow dance with my husband.

It is a romantic lullaby.

I want to hug myself to sleep and wake up whispering “I adore you.”

“Come Get Everything You Came For ” and “Howl to the Moon “

I am surprised to watch myself type this but this was the musing I was most inspired to write. By the way, it’s “SpaghettII” on Cowboy Carter—three listens back to back to back. The first time I listened I could not stop shouting back “Come Get Everything You Came For” at the song. I think I was shouting it at my life. I am certain every time we try for something, be it a failure or a success, we are coming for it. Every time we love as hard as we can with all of the fullness, we are coming for it. When I step behind a podium and read my work, I am coming for it. When I board the plane for my next trip, I am coming for it. When I show up for the people who matter. When I say no to preserve my peace, I am coming for it. And it keeps me wanting more, doomed or destined to become the explorer I was meant to be in this life.

I could not stop singing “Howl to the Moon” on my walk today. Something about Shaboozey’s voice made me want to heed his command, be out in the open air with my friends, my own riders. It also transported me to the top floor, La Terraza, and La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico in December 2022. I have written about it here. After a dancing hands meditation, led by Jane Sibbett, where I weeped uncontrollably and she saw my ancestors behind me, I was drawn to the moon. I wanted to free myself from my bra and walk outdoors on the terrace and bathe in the moonlight, my own howling at the moon. I stayed indoors to circle up with my fellow participants and listen respectfully to their experience but my eye would drift to the doors.

I guess it hasn’t completely left me, over a year ago and thousands of miles away.

The last thing I will say here is that the voice of Linda Martell was a wakeup call disguised as an intro: “But in practice, well, some may feel confined.” She was referring to the concept of genre. We are all guilty of being placed in a box or climbing inside ourselves and fastening the lid, scared to come out or even loosen it to peek at what’s on the outside. We should all feel free to bust out of the box and climb back in as we please and not solely for others.

We should all feel free to come get everything we came for, howl at the moon and defy our genre.

“Help me, Lord, from these fantasies in my head.”

I listened to “Daughter” three times from Cowboy Carter. Back to back to back. I spent much of the day working and then playing caddy for my husband this evening. I thought I didn’t have it in me but I think this ritual is starting to grow roots.

I heard a painting in this song. A woman beating someone to death, standing over the black and blue bruised corpse, coolly measuring just how distressed to look as she makes her exit, scantily clad with fabric torn.

I thought about why anyone would choose to bring such a fantasy to life with their angelic voice. I think she is singing it because we all know living out our angriest, coldest fantasies is a non-negotiable. We would be lying if we do not admit there has been times where we picture ourselves as the main character in the violent, revenge film or daydream about a world where we could do whatever we want without consequence.

I know “I am not colder than Titanic waters” but that version of myself is free to live in a fantasy or singing alongside Beyonce from my couch as I did this evening.

“I’ma stand by him, he gon’ stand by me(I’ma stand by her, she gon’ stand by me)”

Three listens of “Jolene” today from the Cowboy Carter album. Back to back to back. Even with a title like that, I thought less and less about the woman she was describing and more about the rooted relationship she wouldn’t hesitate to fight for with all of her “Creole Banshee” might. When you pour a decade or two of yourself, your very life force into a bond, there isn’t much you wouldn’t do to protect it. There isn’t much you can say to adequately explain how each of you are rooted in one another. It doesn’t mean there won’t be crushes or the occasional wandering eye (Don’t we all love a shiny bauble from time to time?) but to break it, crumble until it’s dust is another matter altogether.

I love the smooth rides, the hectic days, the humdrum of our life. I can’t imagine a Jolene or a Jamal or whomever or whatever tearing it apart.

But.

We can be our own Jolene, desperately searching for something that we don’t need or another person or so-called adventure to fix what we believe is broken because we haven’t done the internal work to show up as our best self for our partner.

As the song says, I’ma stand by him. But I also going to stand by and up for us.

“But it hurts just the same.”

Yes, it hurts just the same. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what you look like, if you have loved someone, your heart has the potential to break just the same. We also hold the fear someone or something will break what we hold dear, whether we see it coming in the form of a “hussy with the good hair” or not. A simple interlude from Dolly Parton or “Dolly P” as this track is entitled, reminds me of this truth.

I may have smiled, getting excited to hear “Jolene” next but memories of my own made my smile lose some of its shine. I remembered what it’s like for my love to be threatened, hollow as it was. I am glad I had women who were my peers and older and more experienced than I to show me that they have been here before. And I was never alone.

“And I’ll Be Damned If I Cannot Dance With You “

Today is “Texas Hold ‘Em”, the seventh track on Cowboy Carter. Through each of my three listens, besides restraining myself from dancing in this very public space I happen to be writing in, I found myself wanting a good time. The good whiskey-guzzling, tornado-escaping into a dive bar time is something I may never have but it’s not the point.

I was nostalgic for the time where my friends and I used to dance at a bar over the state line in West Virginia because it was the closest thing we had to a club. Drinking and dropping it low and backing it up and laughing and slow dancing with our friends and crushes. A time was had.

I don’t crave that exact experience again but I am so damn happy I had it. I never have to wonder what it was like to have the “red cup kisses.” We didn’t do it for the gram or to be seen because not a single picture was ever taken at that club. We did it because we needed the release.

As I am writing this, I am realizing that is what never changes.

Needing the release.

Sometimes, the “you” in “And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with you” is me.

Sometimes, that is all the release I need.

“Don’t Let Go.”

I almost didn’t write this today. After all, it’s “just” an interlude, “Smoke Hour” with Willie Nelson that features song clips from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Roy Hamilton, Chuck Berry, Charles Anderson and Son House. But this sixth track isn’t “just” anything.

There was an intention.

It’s let me give you the history, the foundation on which country and rock and blues and gospel was built. You are going to hear it and if your ignorance won’t allow you to hear it, even with Willie playing it, that’s on you. You have chosen your truth even if it’s a lie.

And another truth comes into view: There is nothing new under the sun. We are ever in the practice of highlighting, attributing, borrowing, paying tribute with our homages, and being influenced by those who come before us. I spent hours today in the company of poets who read original work but undoubtedly there was the influence of religious texts, other poets, and musicians. It is all around us and we cannot help it sinks deep into our psyche, falling in step with our thoughts, coming out to play in the expression of our art.

We only need to say thank you and play the next song.

“So Be Fond Of Your Flaws, My Dear.”

Today’s listen was the 5th track from Cowboy Carter, “My Rose.” Three listens. Back to back to back. I don’t know who she is singing to but what I love about this song, this 53-second nugget, is the harmonies. Let me tell you why. When you hear anything that encourages the listener to “be fond of your flaws”, you want it feel like a chorus of people trying to lift you up with their voices, which is exactly this song did with her harmonies.

Sometimes, the negative voices seem to boom and drown out any semblance of positivity. We can focus on our thorns, not even believing ourselves worthy of our gorgeous petals.

I need every bit of power encouraging me, hoping the best for me, acknowledging my inherent “rosiness.”

Even if it’s just for 53 seconds.

“Shine On Your Own”

The fourth day of my Cowboy Carter musings. Three listens. Back to back to back. Today’s track was “Protector” featuring her daughter, Rumi Carter.

I wondered if I was going to be able to write about this. I wanted to run away from it so I stalked my own floors in circles as if it were going to take me someplace else, far away from my wishes. In November of 2022, a door was shut on me. Life most likely would never be able to grow within me.

I booked first class tickets to the Santa Fe retreat that I planned on going to and I sobbed at a dancing hands ritual and wanted to take my bra off in the moonlight and panicked and wrote and cried and dreamed and laughed the whole time I was there.

Listening to this song also reminded me of the poem “Etch a Sketch” in my book, “She Lives Here”:

I maneuvered the white knobs in my head over the years.

Dexterous hands that exist only in my imagination

Sketched brows, thick, heavy, hairy

Noses with width and forgettable nostrils

Lashes so long they rested on the apples of the cheeks.

Narrow hands, bony fingers, wide feet.

An afro

Strands that are coarse, curly, silky, kinky spring to life on this

One head

A buck-toothed smile

He will need braces.

Diagnoses made, the other side of 37 reached and

I could not get my fingers to work,

Manipulate the knobs

Not even where my dreams reside

I picked up the gray, flat screen with the red plastic frame

And shook it

Until

He disappeared

And I crumbled.

The aluminum powder and the beads

Dissipated

Because he

Was never real.

Because he

Was never

Ours.

Even though a part of my heart will always be cracked, I know it’s because I yearn to protect and yearn to be needed. Maybe this isn’t always a healthy thing. But it’s real. And it’s God honest me. I remember wanting to protect my brother since we were both little (I am 20 months older) and peering over my sister’s crib, when she first came home. I wanted to make sure her jaundice was gone. I remember fighting two boys for a friend at 9. I still think of my guest room as a just in case they need it spot for my brother and sister even though that will likely never be the case. I journal about my dreams for nieces and nephews and hope they happily live out their own.

I long to be a resting place for them. Their Auntie who will always be there for them.

I even have to disentangle myself from those thoughts when it comes to my own husband. I want to be his protector but there have been times I have had to realize he wants to be mine, too.

That is the beauty of our love.

While I will not have a daughter where I see her father’s gaze, I know I am that for my mother. When I watch my sister cradle or embrace her children, the joy I feel for her is indescribable. It belongs to them.

When I hear my brother’s children speak or are reminded of him with their mannerisms, I can’t help but be transported to our childhood…it’s so damn beautiful. It all belongs to them.

Everything is as it is supposed to be even when it hurts.