12 YEARS A SLAVE: The Story Told As Hollywood Could Never Tell

12 YEARS A SLAVE:

The Story Told As Hollywood Could Never Tell

Written By David Vollin

The closing of the film, “12 YEARS A SLAVE”, was not unlike both the tacit closing of a casket and the emotionally noisome deliverance of a newborn child in the same broad and timeless instant.  The dread and beauty each so substantially and absolutely real, administered a final yet potentially unstable neutralizing effect upon the psyche of each and every person emerging from the last black and white flickers of text as the house lights mustered themselves to amber hues and then sought to revivify our confidence in those random objects which define the tangible world we have come to know as our own.  Watching the film I felt as if I had been washed by and immersed in a rare and sacred ablution, as if I had ingested its clairvoyant potion enabling me to spectate whilst the fell and glorious history of a man named Solomon Northup and his troubled times re-lived their most intimate moments before me; and so by this voluminous liquid river of a film I was thus enchanted…

Very few movies have the ability to sting and kiss their audiences so.  And I say so as a man who, watching this tragic drama play itself out in another man’s life knew it could easily have been his own.  Even worse I knew it had been the despicable and sadistic reality that millions of black men, women and children suffered without resistance until they were laid into their unmarked, forgotten graves. The plot unearthed the foul, decomposing corpse of the very soul of evil, personified in these American lands as slavery.  Slavery was the antebellum curse on America's conscience, a cancer that took root and flourished  in the hearts of the most diabolical human beings and was dismissed by society as the embodiment of divine order of things.  Abolition arose as it's natural challenge, and this film highlights a rare accomplishment of that glorious effort. The film exposes the medieval practices of slaver as a case study in sociopathic behavior.  Revealed was the profane and dispassionate pathology of slavery and of a nation bound with the same chains as its captors; bound both to a sadistic and immoral hell. It is the haunting interstices of the untold story here that chide us the most as we reckon with the reality of what suffering can truly be.   No movie could ever convey the full extent that a man can suffer mentally and physically for the 103,680 hours that represent 12 brutal years of enslavement or for that matter for the totality of a life so enslaved.  The story to be told, the lesson to be learned was not just the vile perniciousness of the practices of slavery but also the willingness of others to defend or to challenge it and the strength of those chained to it, to endure it and to defeat it.

The immediate and permanent effect of 12 Years A Slave is that we know it is real, shockingly real and yet as its centrally sinister and lugubrious plot seizes control of the viewer’s consciousness they realize that the surreal has established itself as a sobering testimony to the human condition.  I tell you as a Black America man who has witnessed the unfathomable cruelty and candor of racism first hand that this story is not unimaginable; it is as real and as tangible as the cold iron that was forged into shackles designed to kill the will of the human spirit itself.  The main character Solomon Northup was very much like the mythical character Jonah swallowed by the most fiendish and random of fates and just as unexpectedly freed from its slavering jaws; the jaws of human enslavement.

The director takes great pains to show how southern slave masters institutionalized Christianity within their slave populations acutely in complete contradiction to the ways in which slavery was actually practiced and enforced.  In theory chirstianity was marketed as a peaceful and forgiving religion but its twisted truths were brutally applied.  The slaves themselves rock back and forth upon a storm wrecked ship between the way scripture has been perverted to suit the argument for the divine right of one race to oppress and enslave another and their inherent sense of humanity, dignity and aspiration for self-determination juxtaposed by their own hyper-literal interpretation of what they understand or misunderstand to be the word of a god that had been forced upon them.  The film exposed religion as one of the primary instruments used to intensify ignorance and thereby achieve docility in slaves.  Its powerful hex of fear and guilt transfixed the tortured population of slaves cacooning them with a diabolically perverted justification for their tortured condition.  In their own twisted way slave masters and their sympathizers had to force themselves to believe the lie of divinely ordained racial inferiority in order to live with their guilt and horror while administering its fell directives.  The film conveys all too well how slave and master became twisted into a Hellish drama set in motion by the desire of one race to have dominion over another.  The director presents Sunday worship as a family event with the master administering holy Zion to his own family, white hired hands and the extended family of slaves under the yawning mosses of the Louisianan clime.  The exposure of religious abuse is yet another difficult dynamic for American audiences to comprehend in this film.  America has historically chosen to ignore the raw and dirty issues defining the institutionalized operant conditioning of slaves via a religion that also condoned the sadistic torture they were obliged to endure from the cradle to the grave…  No one has thus undertaken this task with such uncanny eloquence… no one has dared to imply that the sociopathic trends common to slavers bear horrifying resemblance to heinous crimes committed by the the criminally insane because this would mean that some of the founders of this nation and that many men and women held to be distinguished, genteel figures in American regional history were indeed sociopaths.  

The film leaves us wondering how emotionally moved Solomon Northup was after being heroically freed.  His reunion with a family he no longer knew was private and emotional and appeared to have established a new and far more precious bond between them but one wonders how he was able to face white men again or rather how he equipped himself to move forward knowing that he was both betrayed and championed by them…  The film exposes a great many of these social conflicts and contradictions many of which continue to chide us in twenty first century race relations in America. We in America continue to struggle with race.

The film also delved into the heretofore unexplored realm of interracial intimacies between master and slave revealing an indelicate and treacherous landscape shaped by the divine right of a master to take on a slave as a lover even when married and the Victorian dichotomy of indifference and shame that branded those who dared to delve into an emotional realm that viewed them on the white side as a man and his animal and on the black side as a man and his victim.  The candid and unexpected examination of a masters love and lust for his slave juxtaposed by his obligation to discipline that lover which he deemed to be above all his unequal and his property painted a deranged and socially corrosive picture of antebellum life.  On the other hand it depicted slaves that had enjoyed the favor of their masters being lavished with all of the amenities of a white woman or man but ultimately subject to the dictates of their station as a slave should their benefactor die or fall upon hard financial times, it was a bonfire of vanities never before exposed and explicated with this degree of detail. 

So what adds up to an extraordinary story given the times all begins to make sense once the main character of Solomon Northup is masterfully developed.  Well respected by white businessmen in the north Solomon found that he elicited the irresistible favor of  his many slave masters in the south.  He was indeed an extraordinary man discovering in the south how his genius would be envied and hated by the white employees of his masters who resented his intelligence and how it was acknowledged and valued above their own.  In no other place than this was the bonfire of vanities more heated.  The politics of being smart and playing the role of a slave have been explored in this film with uncanny precision.  Solomon Northup a respected business and family man in upstate New York is tricked, kidnapped and forced into enslavement as far south as can be imagined where he uses his wits to legally escape and be restored to family and home. There are few American stories more amazing and extraordinary than this...  

The question has been raised so many times by critics regarding whether or not the film was an “American” film or foreign.  The film was actually a British-American effort but it is truly only an American film in theme.  That being said it is my opinion that not being a Hollywood “Baby” 12 Years A Slave, which has had a limited distribution in America was perhaps better suited to be made outside of Hollywood.  American made films of this sort often get too watered down as an accommodation to avoid offending white audiences but an insult to the intelligence of its enlightened and informed white and black American audiences.  The result often becomes a bland soup of mediocrity ultimately failing to convey any verisimilitude at all.  But not this film! 12 Years A Slave is raw and uncensored, I was surprised at its candor and breadth realizing immediately that it was truly not conceived in the tradition of the American made film.  If 12 Years A Slave had been made in Hollywood tradition it would have been censored to the point that the story would not be worth telling at all because the central and ugly truths behind it would not have been conveyed. 

To its credit the film was beautifully acted, the set, costume and screenwriting were historically accurate and detailed with a painstaking perfection.  The camera and musical scores were perfect. Every detail of this film was exceptionally executed.  One of the most moving scenes was the burial of a slave man who dropped dead in the middle of the cotton fields, a reality supported by slave narratives.  The slave was beaten even after he had keeled over and died and when he was buried that evening the most soul rending blues/gospel hymn intercedes to calm our passions… One of the hallmarks of this picture, and a most effective conveyor of mood, a credit to the detail lavished by its producers, was the use of pause, deliberately extended moments of emotional contemplation expressed before a character responded or interposed within a conversation.  This masterful and unique technique served to pull the scene out from the film itself and lay it upon the table in effect to magnify the poignancy and gravity of what was being said.  As I said, it was masterfully executed as a cinematic technique sometimes with the cries of locusts, crickets and all of the beasts of the Louisiana Bayou in full concert whilst the viewer waited for the actor’s weighty response…  To say that I had not at first expected such wittiness and craftsmanship or such unexpected artifice in a film charged with explicating such a sobering theme would be an understatement were it not that I was so magically overwhelmed by the product as delivered.  The film was a success because the actors truly became those men and women, villains and heroes they portrayed characterizing the truly acid pathology of a culture that is now little known save by historians of the antebellum south.  If anyone desires to understand why racial tensions are what they are in twenty-first century America then surely they must understand what happened to Solomon Northup 174 years ago in 1841 and also what fate befell those like him most of which were never refurbished with their freedom. 

I will not waste your time regurgitating the plot of the movie 12 Years A Slave as an enticement to provoke you to see it instantly re-served.  You have seen the same theme many times before, “a man overcomes his obstacle”, it is a cliché, but this film is not! Ultimately you must make the decision whether or not to go to see it for yourself!  The intent of my review is to point out the finest elements which make this film unique, to excite the sensibility of human curiosity and to promise that it will be artistically satisfying if one is so inspired to venture there.  If it were not great cinema I should not bother to even mention the film and in fact I find it to be a jewel of great beauty.  The movie, 12 Years A Slave is tremendous and it treats an uncomfortable aspect of  American history that heretofore has been avoided because of the obvious human rights issues and contradiction to the egalitarian ideals of American freedom that slavery and racism represent.  Therefore, if you go to see this movie do so not to prove or disprove what you have read here, rather do so because you desire to be enlightened and extract your own interpretations of what you have seen to play out before you. 

Written by David Vollin

FOR THE BROTHAS INTELLECTUAL/CULTURAL SALON

WWW.FORTHEBROTHAS.BLOGSPOT.COM  

NEVER GONNA QUIT!

NEVER GONNA QUIT!

A man calling himself AHusbandsman1on1 went online and posted this ad on several social media sites.  The ad was eventually removed after it became the focus of a great deal of controversy:

“I am a handsome, intelligent and successful Black professional who is looking for a husband.  I can work with a brotha on the husband thing, but I need you to know that is where I’m heading if we start a relationship.  Right now I’m not going to make any special requests of my future husband, I just want to see who responds, what they respond with and take it from there!  I am not making any promises to anyone right now except that if you sound, look and feel like somebody I think would be right for me I will devote my undivided attention to you in the hope that we might discover something truly remarkable.  I ask that you send your name, general location, list your favorite thing to do (honestly), and leave your cellular number with a time that you can best be reached.  If I do not respond within 12 hours of your post please continue living a beautiful life.  If I respond within minutes please be ready to at least receive a call so I can hear your voice”. 

PS… just let me convince you that I will make an excellent partner and husband for you and I promise you will not live to regret it!

Sincerely,

AHusbandsman1&1

The man known only as AHusbandsman1on1  woke up early one morning and realized that he was growing old and lonely.  He feared that if he did not cultivate the relationship that would one day lead to the companionship which would see him through to the end of his days he would die a bitter and disappointed man.  AHusbandsman1on1 had so much to offer the world, everyone who knew him said he was a true renaissance man but he knew that the world was not currently or presently having a renaissance, everybody was just trying to survive to the next goddamed second of the next goddamed minute of the next goddamed hour of the next goddamed day… Notwithstanding the shortcomings of the world he had managed to somehow exist outside of, he was really a grand old gentleman.

AHusbandsman1on1 trembled as he watched the posting affix itself to the expressionless membrane of his computer screen watching as the prompt populated in the form of a cartoon bubble, saying, “your message was successfully posted”! He had not been quite that excited about anything for as long as he could remember.  It was at that instant that the gravity of his desperation really hit him, he realized it was purely likely he might not ever get a response.  He referenced the clock at the lower right corner of his computer, it was 2:00 A.M.  For the first five minutes after posting he stared at the dumb glow of the unchanging screen daring it to notify hi of a response… but the screen just glared back at him emptily and began to go into sleep mode.  It was as if the screen refused to validate the shimmer of hopefulness which had ignited the purpose of his very being.  About 4:00 A.M.  the room began to light up  with virtual feedback from AHusbandsman’s cellular phone.  He had programmed his email address to play, “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Barry White when a new email hit his in-box.  The computer, which had also been programmed with this feature, began to echo his phone.  The room was awash with competing bursts of Never Gonna Give You Up at different points of execution but he lay motionless sleeping through the entire cacophony of thrill. 

A week later AHusbandsman1on1 was found dead in his small apartment.  There were no relatives to manage his affairs and he laid in the morgue until money was raised by some residents of his apartment building to have him humbly funeralized by manner of cremation.  One neighbor remembering he was not religious decided to hold his memorial services in her living room and after the ceremony she poured some votive essence of his ashes into the terra-cotta pots of the flowers on her balcony.  Her balcony which was really nothing more than a fire escape was where they would sit and talk about life but often they just sat noiselessly listening to the resonance of the outside world as it riveted off the walls of the narrow alley into which the fire escape encroached.  AHusbandsman1on1 had loved her plants many of which he had given to her over the years.  Before his belongings were removed to be set out on the sidewalk as if AHusbandsman1on1 had been evicted she confiscated his plants, noticing the landlord had left the door unsecured, and set them beside her own..  And there the plants flourished until she died five years and seven months, ten hours and  fifteen minutes, twenty-two seconds later…  

Written By David Vollin

REMOVING THE OLD SLAVE CEMETERY

“There used to be an old colored slave cemetery in Arlington Virginia at the terminus of the “Pike” but it was dug up in the early 1970’s to make way for a new hotel.  Many of my ancestors were buried there it being one of the few cemeteries for colored folk in the area.  Nobody knows what happened to the remains of those men and women…” D. Vollin

There used to be an old colored cemetery there,

Underneath the waist-high weeds… the empty eye-sockets of slaves,

looked up to the heavens from their graves,

though no reference remained to mark just where.

So long that field had lain without ceremony or gathering,

whilst poke weed climbed and quickly ripened in the spring,

when its sanguine berries swayed on withered stalks as the land was autumning,

and when the smooth snow leveled it, hiding it away from reckoning.

O’er time I imagine that every plot had been filled,

It being the only place around for burying the colored dead,

the land climbed a steep embankment flattening as the slope came to a level head,

but remained untended by the colored folk still living near that hill.

When time remembered where my father’s lay,

it knew their families had not died out or moved away,

we all watched as the green hillside was cut down deep beneath the clay,

so the wheels of progress could have their way.

By David Vollin

GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES

I HAD TOUCHED THE FACE OF SLAVERY…

I HAD TOUCHED THE FACE OF SLAVERY…

Yesterday I took a trip back into history.  I visited three Virginia Plantations upon which Black men and women were enslaved from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, nearly 200 years.  As I approached the grounds as a free and enlightened Black man I realized countless of my ancestors had trod the same steps from birth till death without any hope of escape.  Today we have no idea how they were actually treated, but as certain things emerge from the dust we catch a glimpse of the perverse hatred and mistrust that surely existed between slave and master.   One example was a relic plate used for slaves to serve their masters because it was considered to be socially degrading for a white person to take a cup or a glass, a book or pen or anything directly from the hand of a Black person or slave.  Yet in striking contradiction Black women were trained as midwives to deliver the offspring of their masters in one of the most personal and intimate rituals known to man, childbirth.  Such instances fully expose the superficiality of classism and racism.  The absurdity of such a practise is again exemplified by the fact that Black slaves prepared the food by hand having first grown and harvested it by hand only to serve it in its final form on a silver tray to create the ridiculous appearance that it had not had contact with a Black person and that there had not been any actual physical contact between slave and master in the merest of things such as the handing a drink of water from one person to another.  While musing over these and other peculiarities I was reminded of the hilarious British comedy, “Keeping Up Appearances” wherein the main character, Hyacinth, is eternally obsessed with the public affirmation of a her fantasized nobility.  The zaniness of Hyacinth’s pretension is justly mirrored here save that it is not just a harmless sitcom it actually played itself out in the enslavement and degradation of millions upon millions of men women and children.  In order to understand and appreciate slavery for the horror that it truly was one has to be able to measure it against simple, rational and ethical standards.  Simply because these were the established standards of the day does not absolve them from being wicked and evil practices because the standards of human dignity are universal and this is precisely why slavery was abolished with the American Civil War.  In simple, common terminology racism is “Doing Too-Much”!  Racism goes all the way across town and back to do something rather than just reaching out and doing it in a few seconds.  Racism expends unjustified resources in order to appear to prove a point that really does not exist.  Racism is all smoke and mirrors, hocus pocus, a mindfuck, a hoax a scam!  But when I think of the countless lives that were wasted just to prove a point that was never valid I cry tears of pain and sorrow. 

Visitation of America’s Plantations by Black Americans is a necessary pilgrimage that will serve to cleanse our hearts and souls of racism by bringing us full circle, face to face with the dirty, unfiltered truth.  Only time can hide the outrageous atrocities witnessed by these silent temples of inhumanity now calm and soft in the brilliant sun.  The stocks and whipping posts are long since rotted in the moist southern air, trees bearing the whips lashing are felled or dead.  Every eye that witnessed the horrors of slavery and every tongue that might have told its nightmarish stories has long since died and been buried in the wet sanguine clay.  What we now have to rely on for understanding are our instincts as human beings.  When we see the harsh relics of slavery no matter how gold or silver gilt they might be we see a mortal struggle between master and slave crushing and extinguishing any hope of dignity or freedom in Black people, a despicable war in which any means necessary to subdue a person of color was ethical.  When I return to those hallowed grounds, hallowed by the pain and sacrifice of Black slaves and I will return, I will do so to properly mourn them.  I will touch the face of the living earth and knowing that my ancestors remains are lying someplace beneath my feet I will touch my heart and then reach up into the sky to symbolically release them, a gesture I know is merely a personal sign of humility and understanding designed more so to free my own mind for surely they have already been set free by death itself…

Written by David Vollin

A BLACK AMERICAN MAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE 4TH OF JULY…

A BLACK AMERICAN MAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE 4^TH OF JULY…

The fourth of July is always a bittersweet day to me.  On July 4^th, 1776 Black people were effectively written out of the great socioeconomic promise of this country.  It took Black Americans 188 years to finally change turn the nation’s policy in the direction of their favor, an accomplishment earned with the most intensive of struggle… 

I like to believe that the founding fathers, enlightened as they were, embedded the kernels of freedom in the Declaration of Independence knowing that one day the hidden argument for freedom would finally be successfully argued.  But that is at best a poetic leap of faith, a romanticized maybe because at the end of the day it was only through struggle that freedom was finally achieved.  On July 4, 1776 the founding fathers opined not to invest in an historic opportunity to thoroughly realise their vision of freedom including their brothers in struggle who had fought beside them during the difficult American Revolutionary War, turning their backs on the Black American man.

Emancipation day appears to be a more appropriate time for Black Americans to join in celebration, with food, fellowship and colorful incendiaries… Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, John Brown and other activists rather than the founding fathers appear to be the appropriate icons for those votaries of freedom who trace their ancestry back to free African slaves stolen from their homes and civilizations and thrust into a hellish cycle of fear and inhuman brutality.  The sociopathic nature that characterized the enforcement methods of institutionalized enslavement continue to affect the psyche of Black Americans traumatized by centuries of abuse.  Likewise, the insanity and pathology typified by those who enforced institutionalized slavery upon innocent men, women and children continues to haunt the psyche of white Americans who must divorce themselves from the sociopathic traditions of racism.  Emancipation Day completes the bright but underdeveloped promise of July 4^th 1776 as does the Civil rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 bringing true freedom in America full circle... 

To a Black American man who is enlightened the fourth of July is represents a critical date in the evolution of human freedom, the culmination of centuries of social debate and evolution known as the Enlightenment but yet another stumbling block for the Black man in his continued struggle for freedom and equality in a land he has now earned the right to call home…

Written by David Vollin on July 4^th, 2013

HOUSE OF CARDS…

HOUSE OF CARDS…

When we met it was as if I was finally getting to know someone who might at least end up being a dependable friend.  Though our differences were pronounced I perceived that we had the maturity to balance our philosophical differences.  So we talked and talked and talked until we had virtually run through every possible scenario in our mutual lives but of course this was just the groundwork… nothing had been built, we were still in the conceptual design phases of our association.

We knew there were some challenges to our association but after a couple of years we revisited our interests and the very first layer of structure had got erected.  It was a delicate balance at best, we were wholly unfamiliar with one another so we had to literally hold the cards in place so that the occasional breezes and bumps of the table, the wind caused by casual passers’ by, etc., would not disturb what we had so patiently built.

It was a promising enterprise; we had developed a philosophical connection and a sexual sophistication that allowed us to construct additional levels above the ground floor of our relationship of cards.  The weight of each new level acted as ballast to hold the lower levels in place but the lateral forces pushing our eloquent but delicate structure ever so gently and at times with brutal strength threatened to overturn everything we had invested in.  Notwithstanding, it was still only a skeletal structure, a flimsy edifice composed of the singular paper cards.  Each card was an element of critical importance in our relationship but the only cement binding them together was the gravity of our compassion and desire to come together. If one of us let go the house of cards, vulnerable, would collapse leaving all we had painstakingly built in ruin.

We never had a chance to complete the wonderful edifice we conceived, only its skeletal frame, a wish, a desire, a dream but one utterly unfulfilled.  I never did figure out why you left the structure incomplete but I thought about an ancient building left by a civilisation that mysteriously disappeared in Pre-Colombian Latin America and I thought about a fabulous temple in ancient Khemet that had been revolutionary for its time but lay incomplete and ruined for thousands of years.  We never got to enclose our structure with any skin, there was no façade and no roof, no foundation, no interior rooms, all bare all empty all unfinished!  So as I looked through the fragile house of cards I realized it was now doomed to failure, it would inevitably fall and in time be utterly forgot… I realized then that what we had built was not love… it was only a house of cards…

Written by D. Vollin

THAINK’N BOUT DHEY WHARH…

THAINK’N BOUT DHEY WHARH…

SHUGUHFOOT:  I rekun’s whin we’z free I’s gown lay dhaun an sleep fowuh nigh own two year’n fo I’s gown git t’uh do’n any’thin.  Weyeh I’s spek dhat cotton gown grow so while an high cuz ain nobodheh gown be dheyah t’uh kut am dowhn.  I don spek dhem wheyeiht fowks gown  wont t’uh do no nigguh’s  wohwk, heyell I’s spek’s dhey jes sell’s d’uh fawm ow jes leave’s it  t’uh us nig’ruhs t’uh run whilst d’hey’s a sit’n pruddey en d’hey ciddehy…

FISHEHEAD:  Naw! You’z got t’et towl wrong deyah Shuguhfoot! Dhem wheyeiht debuhs ain nev’uh gown let no nig’ruhs git naw ress while dehyess aw sun n’ deyh sky!  Is think’n bout a take’n up wit dhem fed-rhets dhen a slip’n owf t’uh dehy uthuh side an when dhey whup dees rehbuls ass I’s a gown bak up nowth wit dhem.  Ain nuf’n  for no nigguh en dheese pawhts… ain nevuh been n’ ain nevuh gown be’s I says.

SHUGUHFOOT:  Wit chew dhenk dhem wheyeiht fowks wun wid chew? Wheyen dhey leave’s t’uh go home dhey’s a leave’n y’awl heyuh t’uh fix up dhis got-dayum mess!  Dhey ain brang’n dhey lhikes uh yoo t’uh fuk dhey dowtah’s an drank dhey beer!  An dhey ain got naw cott’n up dheyah neer t’ubaccah evah.  Awl dhey got’s es sum ole farms wit t’cup’le uh ole caaw’s n’ ghowt’s, nuff’n dhey could’n do bye dhey selfs.  You is bet owf dhawn hurr wheyah you’s know how t’uh make a liv’n hones n’uff.

FISHEAD:  I swarnee you’z wuz awlway a got-dayum slave nigguh think’n son of uh!  I’d send’s you a telegram dhown frum up nowth but I’s spek yo dum ass caint evun read it when’t comes!  I rekun you’z bes come with me cuz dhey ain got no use fo no lazy nigguh lhike  y’awl dhoun heyah no mo.  An dhey ain got no use fo y’awl up dheyah neithaw.  Y’all jes come wid me cuz ain nobody stud’n own no crops rhiyt naw, dhey’s awl get’n ret for dhis heyuh wharh. 

SHUGUFOOT:  Hell I ain fitt’n t’uh get maw heyhd bow’d owff n’ no wharh wit chew!  I spek I jes wait rhyht hurr till dhem Yankees burn dhis shit rhiyet dhown t’uh dehy grouwn.  Naw I’s spek dhese wheyeit fowks ain gown jes a let me wolk own out uh hurr but I’s sure gown try! An I rekon I’s gow’n out wess wheyeh dhey ain nevuh had no slav’ry out dheyah a’towl. 

FISHEAD:  Wheyeh Sugufoot, we’s still got’s sum thyme yet de souwf ain fowl’n yet so I spek we’z stiyeh gowt thime t’uh think bout t’it t’owl.

SUGUFOOT:  Wheyeh Fishead, I spek you’z a rhyht  bout dhat dheyah.  Pass dhat moonshine main I spek we’s got sum drink’n t’uh doo too tiyeh we has t’uh make up ow mines wit we gown do. 

FISHEAD:  Hey dheyah Sugafoot! Naw what dhat I sees ovuh yonduh, look lhyke uh Yankee uniform if’n I’s evuh has seed one! 

SUGUFOOT:  Fishead yo awnry ass nigguh, dheys duce if’n I’s a day owld and I’s spek dheys gown fit us bowth purt’n nice…

FIN

WRITTEN BY D. VOLLIN

A MA’YHEN K’AWL’D MOSES…

A  MA’YHEN  K’AWL’D  MOSES…

Mauh peepull’s is lookun fouwh uh maihn kawl’d moses kuz dhaiy’s towl’d,

he gow’n seiyh’t dhem freeh jes lhik’n he did freeh deyhm slay’vs uh owld,

deyh’s wheyet’n fouwh him t’kum dhahwn fru’m dhey mount’n top whilst dhey sins,

cuz mauh peepull’s dhink he gow’n make air’y dheng rhiya’t a’ghen,

an lauwud, dhat’s whie dhey’s so easy t’uh lay down dehy air’y caiyeh,

fo awl dhem fas towlk’n preashuh’s look’n lhyke uh blaihkh jesu’s wit guwedd hey’ah,

mauh peepull’s ain got noe am-bisheyn t’uh taik no mayet’ah en dhey’s ouwn hayens,

dhey’s jess a’wheyet’n t’uh bee’s dhey-leyah-vuh’ed bie dhey lauwud’s choe-sin ma’yhen,

but I ain’t a’look’en t’uhwawed’s nobodhey’s bhet me,

t’eh sayuvh mauh sowle an set mauh speer’it freeyh,

mauh feet’s ain dayun’sin t’uh noe diddeh play’ed bh’ie n’aireyh udduh com-p’oe-suhs,

an aiye ain ghat no thyme t’uh wheyet’n own a ma’yhen kawl’d moses…

FIN

Written by Bigdaddyblues aka David Vollin

www.thestoriesofblackmen.blogspot.com

DEH RHEK’LEKSHENS OF A FREEDMAN 1.0

Dey worked us niggus from sun up till dark er’y day

we ain nevuh had no break tiyeh we’s free’d

lot’s uh massahs beat dey slaves awl de time

i’s seent a many niggus kill’t! whipped t’death!

ain nuf’n nat’ral bout dhat kin’a hate… jes evah

i’s so glad dhat i’s free naw, caint no man be happy

if’n he’s a slave…

when I goes t’vote first thime i membuhs a whiyht main evuh wanno know

how a nigguh feel bout nuf’n

hell, I thought I’s en troubuh, he tryn’a fine out if’n i wuz gunna vowt

fow dhat darkey stead uh dhat whiyht main

but i wuz e’cited bout dhat thime an so i went down t’uh vote

first thime I sees awl dem niggus off deh plantashen

dey wus frum e’ry wheyuh cum t’vote too

i knew  dhen, dem days wont gown lass

cus dey ain nevuh gibe nuf’n good tuh no nigruh

dhat dhey ain take back

i smiled dur’n dhose thymes but i knows dhengs wus gown change

r’hiyt soon as dhey did

i saw dhem rebels wach’n us dey spit rhyt own us whilst we walked up t’vote

i said i wuz’nt gown see dhem cuz I came to do business

an I ain have no business wit dhem

Union officers held dhem back, sum of em wus colud an dheyhated dhat too

own deh weyh home I passed deh cemetery wheyuh dhey haid berry’d sum

o dhem nigruh dhat helped on deh side o dem confederates

dhey wus jes servants but awl deh same i's a'shamed uh dhem awl

i spat own dhey graves! An I ain’t nevuy took dhat road again

naw I goes nery a mile roun faduh so as I don have to see dhat disgrace again…

Written by D. Vollin aka Bigdaddyblues

A TOKEN OF THINE SELF-RIGHTEOUS SWEETS…

"La vanite est un jeton ephemere de tes sucreries auto justes"

A Short Mystery Written by David Vollin

Whilst walking through the French Quarter they encountered a woman dressed in purple, so rich and dark so that it was almost blue.  She bore a small hand-woven basket with a shallow but wide basin that had a  broad orb of a handle to it as if it had been designed so that people might freely pick from it.  As she walked she looks straight forward holding the basket handle with both hands clasped, arms  folded beneath her breast.  Her hands shone diminutive but strong, black as a starless night beneath the dense canopy of  an ancient woods.  Her skin was rich and lustrous, only the thick reticulation of veins higly profiled against the feint outline of bone betrayed her years… Her face was absorbed beneath a veil of fine silk but as she spoke the feint glint of yellowed teeth and eyes shone through.  A short woman of merely 5 feet 6 inches her presence was none the less captivating than it was haunting…

She spoke no words and appeared not to focus on anything except the road before her yet her absence of gaze was felt all the more acutely.  The eye was inevitably drawn into the belly of the woven vessel before her as if it were the bare womb of a pregnant mother.  She paused before them speaking naught, still and patient beneath her robes as if waiting for them to take something from the basket in order to release her from pause.  The two couples obliged her reaching into the vessel and picking up what appeared to be identical trinkets, cruciform in shape, painted red and in fact tiny  boxes upon which was written in gold, “A JETON DE SUCRERIES toi-JUSTES, “ or in the vulgar tongue, “A TOKEN OF THINE SELF RIGHTEOUS SWEETS.”

No sooner had they selected from the basket did all find themselves privately absorbed in marveling at the intricate craftsmanship until when they had finally broke free of the enchantment the last inch of the woman’s purple robes could be seen to disappear around a left corner three blocks ahead.  They discussed the matter deciding she was an eccentric who had enjoyed beguiling visitors to the ancient city of New Orleans for many years with these cryptic trinkets. 

No sooner had beignet been served with the most exquisite coffee outside at Café du Monde did a glistening carriage roll by driven by two pristine black horses.  The carriage was the same purple as the woman’s robes trimmed in black with intricate brass fittings and fretwork.  Emblazoned on the side of the buggy was the phrase, “A JETON DE SUCRERIES toi-JUSTES. “  The couples all stared the coach into oblivion losing its distinct luster to the general haze and bustle of the days commerce many blocks after it had passed them. 

Nearly a block from their hotel the couples paused to listen to an elderly Black man playing the harp deliciously upon the sidewalk.  After his performance had concluded it became apparent that tithes should be forthcoming to summon more of his miraculous talent.  One of the couple obliged spilling the trinket from his shallow shirt pocket where it had lain as he reached down to pull the prudently hidden petty cash from the antique money clip in his sock.  The entire disposition of the minstrel changed as soon as he spied the cruciform box, even as the first centimeter peeked from its perch his eyes followed it as a marksman’s sight would prey; even as it rolled to settlement did his eyes follow its trajectory to its final resting place.  The mood became ominous; everyone was reluctant to entertain the minstrel’s obvious interest in the object.  Insomuch as the two couples had collectively decided to forgo an inquiry into the nature of the box the minstrel broke his silence having been the first to retrieve the trinket as it rolled to an unlikely terminus upon the very black leather of his boot-toe.   His shoe-black hands and fingers were like an old leather bag that had been painstakingly maintained, oiled and polished by generations of owners.  His face was tight showing no wrinkles save about his neck.  His lips were full and lively muscles trained and made supple and strong by years of harping on the New Orleans streets.  He examined the box as if it were a familiar theme but one that was often counterfeited with offerings bearing dubious hallmarks.  So long did he maintain his inspectors gaze, checking every crease, opening and closing the box examining the seams and the paint, tilting it in the light, viewing it from every angle and weighing it in his rough hands that the couples began to wonder themselves how they came upon so fine a gift for free.  Then the minstrel examined them all one by one and then as a group, measuring them from head to toe, looking back and forth as if estimating where they had come from.  He placed his harp into a fine old leather sac and placed it into the left pocket of his coat.  Then he positioned himself as if to speak, saying,

“Three other boxes were taken; they were not given because they were empty and now they must be retuned but only under the condition that they are filled.  They are reliquaries for the self-righteous sweets of mankind and they will not suffer to be filled with any other treasure.  You should not leave until they have been properly returned.”  The minstrel then reached his long arm out to the man who had dropped the box and as he placed it into the warm palm of his hand he squeezed his hand firmly but not impolitely fixing his gaze as if to read the man’s thoughts.  He politely nodded to them all and bowed in acknowledgement of the generous tithes they had bestowed upon him and them disappeared into the matrix of the ancient city of New Orleans.

When the couples returned to their hotel room one of them goggled the cryptic phrase written upon the box but no offering was bestowed upon them from that engine or any other.  Later that evening when they were leaving a restaurant where they had eaten dinner and had drinks they happened upon a cheesy souvenir shop buzzing with wild kids and wide eyed tourists looking to buy cheap mementos for their family and friends back wherever home was for them.  To their delight and amusement they found dozens of similar trinkets in various colors, sixes and with varying degrees of craftsmanship but none so fine and unique as those they took from the lady or the person whom they had assumed to be a lady.  None of the trinkets had the markings in French like the ones they had taken.  The shopmaster offered to buy them from the gentlemen for a considerable price and two of the men sold them to him at a considerable profit.  They did not even understand what the inscription meant nor did the shopmaster but he insisted that it was some form of Creole or an obscure Patwa phrase no longer in use.  It was clear that he was completely ignorant of the origin and meaning of the phrase so after patronizing his dubious historical assessment of the artifacts for nearly 16 minutes they bade him and his ridiculous historian swagger farewell…

It did not occur to them what the inscription could have meant until they visited the necropolises just outside of the French quarter.  One of the men was fascinated by the epitaphs inscribed upon the graves of the dead and he read them like sweet poetry in the sweet summer air, thick with the acid aroma of boxwood and juniper.  The mausoleum was set aside by itself amidst a large family plot bordered by finely wrought marble curbs with low cast iron tracery railings which still showed remains of gilding.  It was an older structure built in a stlye that was popular in the late eighteenth century derived from ancient Etruscan Temples along the Mediterranean coast.  The structure was a huge two-story columbarium for which the funerary urns had been fashioned in the likeness of none other than the reliquary boxes taken by the four men. 

From the heavy filigree of the bronze gates could be seen two levels of niches containing marble and granite urns some of which had never been used, their surfaces never inscribed to memorialize the name of one who had died to spend the ages locked within.  Sure as day was the inscription repeated over and over again and etched in smoothing bas relief o’er the heavy Tuscan lintel of the deep cut entry of the tomb, “A JETON DE SUCRERIES toi-JUSTES. “

Back in the hotel room the men goggled the history of the ancient family.  From the lack of recent graves they deduced the family had died off, the last urn bore the inscription:

 Innocence Du Coeur

Dort ici Innocence Du Cœur
Né dans les dix-sept an cent soixante dix neuf
Est mort en dix-huit an cent soixante-dix
La vanité est un jeton éphémère de tes sucreries auto justes

or in the vulgar tongue :

Here sleeps Innocence Du Cœur

Born in the year seventeen hundred and seventy nine

Died in the year eighteen hundred and seventy

Vanity is a fleeting token of thine self righteous sweets

The four men continued on their tour of the ancient necropolises of New Orleans delighting in the serenity of the landscape and beauty of the statuary but the inscription on the tomb of Innocence Du Cœur remained the primary focus of their collective consciousness.  In order to change to mood they left the downtown French Quarters and sat down for drinks at an elegant bar situated on a pier that punched into the calm waters of the Pontchartrain sipping the exquisitely balanced cocktails of the renowned beverage chef,  Sean-Paul Poinnard.  Sean-Paul Poinnard was a wealthy Black Creole man who had spent many years in Africa, Asia and other Tropical locations studying the ancient techniques for making beers, malts, liquors, spirits and elixirs.  He grew many of the rare ingredients on a large farm in the everglades.  Many of the ingredients were extracts and fruits from little known aquatic plants many of which had eluded Darwin and other botanists who first explored the Americas.  Sean-Paul was the descendant of freedmen who had flourished in New Orleans for over 300 years as business entrepreneurs.  His skin was smooth and flawless as the ebony lacquer of a Chinoiserie cabinet.  His nose, lips and forehead were wide and distinctive; there was a rustic and refined handsomeness to him and he spoke with a distinct Parisian accent.  Sean-Paul was an old school restaurant owner and host who ritually visited the tables of his fine guests, sitting down with them and engaging them in conversation in order to assure himself they were being properly pampered, and to discuss the provenance of the exotic ingredients and his culinary philosophy.  He also enjoyed hearing the traveling stories of the many tourists who came to New Orleans.  Because his family history was so intimately woven into the land he was a wealth of knowledge, in contrast to the shopkeeper of the souvenir shop.   

Before Sean-Paul left the four gentlemen’s company one of them hesitantly pulled out the reliquary box fearful of being pegged as a typical tourist who thinks he has stumbled upon a treasure only to discover it is merely a common tourist souvenir.  Sean-Paul sensed there was some urgency in his deportment and sojourned to relax the gentleman before asking if there was not one more thing he had wished to know about New Orleans.  The other three men cut a glance to the third man not to bother him with the trinket but by then it was so apparent that there was something of great importance they shared and wished to know they were compelled to reveal the object so as not to be thought of as strange or antisocial.  Sean-Paul examined the box without any emotion at all.  A manager waived to him to come deal with some detail and he signaled him that he would come in two minutes.  So without remark he placed the box on the table without any particular care or delicacy and bade the gentlemen not to leave until he could return.  A couple of free rounds of premium cocktails and jellied alligator, peacock and turtle terrine served in successive courses followed to entertain them while they waited for their host to return.

When Sean-Paul returned he bought a large leather bound book with him.  He turned the heavy pages of pigs hide until he found the page he was looking for.  The page showed the family crest they had seen carven into the frieze around the inside and on the outside on the entablature of the columbarium.  The family had owned a wealthy shipping business specializing in the importation of books, clothing and other commodities from Europe as well as slaves and the export of sundry products manufactured in and around New Orleans destined for Caribbean and European markets.  The shipping and slaving industry was a treacherous occupation with a high mortality rate.  Pirating was frequent and crews of stolen ships were seldom allowed to live to incriminate their captors.  The phrase, “La vanité est un jeton éphémère de tes sucreries auto justes,’’ or in the vulgar, “Vanity is a fleeting token of thine self righteous sweets,” was their family motto.  The family died out in the late nineteenth century but there was another side the family that continued to this day.  In New Orleans there are always two sides to every great family, a white side and a black side.  The box is a reliquary originally intended to store mementos of the person while living to be interred with them upon death as a reminder of the brevity  of youth and of life and of how meaningless our vanities are at the end of life when we are focused on correcting the many mistakes we made in our youth.  Vanity and pride is for the young but wisdom and humility is for the old and the dying.  The bigger our vanities the greater our fall when the ravages of old age take our suppleness and wit away replacing them with stiffness and senility, all that was once loved and coveted is forgotten  and none can be taken beyond the grave.  There were only a finite number of these reliquary boxes made at the time the mausoleum was built and this is one of the original 46 crafted in 1730.  For 283 years these reliquaries have been passed down first only to members of the family and then to others whom fate chose; but they have never left New Orleans in 283 years.  The legend says once a man has opened the casket he may not pass it on. Once a man has opened the casket he must humble himself until it becomes clear to him what offering he must place in the reliquary in order to free himself of the vanity of youth.  Our self righteous sweets are the aspects of our  constitution that cause us to challenge the omnipotence of god or whatever cosmological structure we envisage as the driving force behind creation.  In our youth and innocence they are sweetness that gives us our sense of value because we are then too ignorant to understand who we are and why we are.  We do not then respect our mortality nor do we comprehend how deeply responsible we are for the welfare of others.  We are nothing if not for our ability to serve and bring peacefulness and beauty to others.”

Sean-Paul excused himself and walked away from the men without explaining what they must do or how.  At this point it all seemed to be quite  too great of a coincidence for them not to take seriously the signs they had been given.  When they returned to the restaurant the next evening Sean-Paul had already left New Orleans to explore some remote tidal islands off the  coast of Guatemala.  From this point on they feared they were on their own. 

FIN

Written by David Vollin

"THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE" A MUST SEE FOR EVERY BLACK MAN IN AMERICA!

24 years ago five black teenagers were picked up off the street by Central Park police officers, coerced into making incriminating written and video confessions without any legal consul and while being separated from their parents.  They did not come home again until ten to thirteen years later.  For The Central Park Five the journey home was a long and difficult one but ultimately one that fate turned around in their favor.  The charge was the rape, attempted murder assault and battery among a total of 8 charges.  In spite of obvious evidence that these children were not the perpetrators NYPD and the NYC Attorney General, riding the wave of media frenzy, indicted and prosecuted all five teens until in 2003 the true rapist confessed to the crimes.  DNA and other critical evidence missing in the original trials forced the trial to be re-opened and it was finally determined that the five children, now grown into men were innocent.  Even though their records were expunged and they were released from prison the roughly 7 to 13 years taken away from their lives can never be repaid.   But the most disturbing fact is that the police officers and prosecuting attorneys, all of whom were in on this heinous crime to justice have not been brought to justice.  For their crimes their sense of home has never been threatened...

For 24 years Linda Fairstein, the District Attorney presiding over the Central Park Five case has lived with the knowledge that she wrongfully prosecuted and irreversibly damaged the lives of five young men and in order to save face, even though she left the District Attorney’s office in 2002, maintains that if the teens did not commit the crimes they were improperly condemned of then they must have been accessories.  The actual film footage of Fairstein, her assistants and the NYPD officers involved in the case shows that they not only knew they were lying but were actually winging it as they went along.  It is a sad commentary for NYPD but a wakeup call for every Black American man.  Throughout the more than 400 years that Black American men have been in the Americas our constant struggle has been coming back home...

As a Black man in America I was uniquely touched by this documentary and at the end I found myself no longer holding back tears.  The odd familiarity that acts of racism, no matter what the circumstances, have on the psyche of all men unify us across all racial, socioeconomic and political fields.  Racism has a way of pulling us away from who and what we are, it deprives us of home.  Defeating racism brings us back home again... Though racism is a universally felt force that unifies the oppressed everywhere, the experience of a Black man in America is unimaginable by anyone save ourselves and the more privileged ones upbringing the sharper the inevitable reality of racism will cut one's very spirit!   The sheer randomness and deliberateness of racism the cockiness and arrogance of its toxic and inane breath, the intensity with which its anger and hatred is focused leaves one virtually stunned if only for the first instant of realization that it has chosen you for its next victim!  But like anything else a seasoned, war hardened veteran not only detects racism well in advance but has a full arsenal of weapons to beat it back down into its grave!  These young teenage boys of 13 through 16 years old had not the wellspring of such an arsenal to draw from nor did their strong but naive families.  These children were tricked into writing being videotaped while making confessions with their families with the false promise and illusion that if they cooperated they would be free to go home.  Like many black people who find themselves in trouble they just wanted to do whatever they needed to do in order to  can go home again... The struggle of the Black man in America has always been for his freedom to go to a place he can call home and exist there without harassment or oppression by the pathological disease of racism.

I was disturbed that I did not see any other Black American men in the audience and that led me to understand how such a horrible crime could have been committed in 1989.  Vigilance and communication are key elements in preventing this kind of racial violence.  When I was in college we had a pact among my male associates that if we encountered another Black man being arrested or questioned by the police we would stand and watch, take the police car number, get the police badge numbers and if possible ascertain the identity of the brotha being detained to follow-up later.  I cannot count all the times I have done this then and now just to let the police know that somebody who is knowledgeable of their rights is watching them and taking notes.  Most racism in America is successfully executed because racists assume their victims are too ignorant and unsophisticated to fight back legally and eloquently.  What Black men must understand is that racism is a pathological disease similar to a psychopathic serial killer who gets off performing ritualistic homicides, who's lust is insatiable.  For many hundreds of years Black men were the victims of these psychopaths whose murderous lust was sanctioned by the very laws of our country.  To think that this blood-lust would suddenly die is grossly naive.  And to imagine that reason or kindness would engender humanity or conscience in  the cold heart of a psychopathic killer or racist is equally absurd.  Black men must always be on guard... it is the life we have inherited... Fortunately more and more Americans have made the choice to end the perpetuation of racism against black men in future generations... Unfortunately The Central Park Five were caught up in one of the most infamous race crimes and cover-ups of the late twentieth century... When one really thinks about the scale and gravity of this crime it is hard not to lose faith in humanity...  Fortunately it is  the miraculous way  this tale of horror was resolved that renews our faith in the ability of the human spirit to persevere and ultimately replace evil with goodness...

  

Go see this film, whether you are black or white if you are a humanitarian it will be an eye opener revealing the insidiousness and hypocrisy of racist practices which still haunt the legal system of this great country…  Go see it ASAP!  The Central Park Five is more than just a documentary about a monstrous event that pulled out the very worst of trusted public officials who sank to the lowest depths of racism and debauchery... it is ultimately a story about how five young black boys, after many years finally managed to get back home...

FIN

By David Vollin