Words Exchange

There was a story on the radio about the English Screen Actors Guild. It seems a lot of actors were not joining because so many of the names had been taken. So if your name just happens to be Roger Moore, and you wanted to keep your name and join the union you'd have to wait until Roger Moore died before you could do so.

What would it look like if writers had to do the same for words? Once a person realizes that they want to be a writer they'd put in a petition for a batch of words. You can only get new words when someone dies and there's a lottery held and you put in a bid for a word. Or you can trade words with another writer. Imagine Toni Morrison calling you and telling you that she'll trade you August, a word she had bought from the Faulkner estate with the money she made as an editor. In return she'd like your word beloved because she has this story she's trying to get out of her marrow. Marrow she tells you is a word that was once owned by Charles Chestnutt, you know, the famous turn of the century African-American writer.

Sensing your hesitation she agrees to toss in Carson McCullers' and Dorothy West's old word wedding because she bought that one for five dollars from this writer who was just trying to raise some money to buy groceries for a week, but she eventually realized that like most women of her generation, that word might not be worth as much. Therefore she'll throw it into the trade for beloved because you might be able to get some use out of it.

Right now, as much as I love Morrison’s work, the author whose words I’d probably most want to own, or in fact may owe a huge debt too because of how his language parachuted throughout my speech in the last year is John Kennedy Toole. Immediately after reading it Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces immediately shot up to the top of my favorite books list. It’s wonderfully imagined and even more exquisitely written. Words that for me always seemed mundane, trite and sometimes even harmful exploded off the pages of A Confederacy of Dunces with a vigor that I have never encountered in another book.

Prior to reading Toole words such as “abomination,” “corruption,” or “abortion,” had become stale in my writing and thinking; and if you had asked me what a “pyloric valve” was, I would probably told you to ask your mechanic. But as I read A Confederacy of Dunces these words blossomed again like a plant long thought dead which for inexplicable reasons buds anew one spring.

Well enough of my thoughts on the man’s words, I’ll let them speak for themselves:

A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.

John Kennedy Toole

Some how, some way, instead of thinking about the fact that this week marks the 37^th anniversary of his suicide, I wonder if we would not improve our theology and geometry by giving some serious thought to the import of those words in our contemporary moment.

Don't Call it A Comeback

Of the current top 5 topics you don’t want me to get started on: (1) The Knicks (2) Tim Thomas (3) The Bush Administration (4) Haiti’s Recent Elections (5) Reinhold Niebuhr

Number two Tim Thomas is admittedly the least compelling and soon to be the first one off the list. His ascension to the top five was a surprise in itself. One day while reading Bill Simmons, aka, ESPN.com's "THE SPORTSGUY", column I found myself doubling over in laughter as he brought up the peculiar saga of then Chicago Bulls' castoff Tim Thomas. As far as I, and most basketball fans know, the Bulls essentially asked Thomas not to bother showing up for work while they tried trading him and his expiring contract. This was bizarre for two reasons, one as Simmons alludes there was no reported Thomas outbreaks. Secondly, he was in the last year of his contract a year where NBA players usually play at a high level, thereby implying that he'd bust his bust behind this year and what NBA team could not use a gifted 6'10" forward capable of playing all three frontcourt positions giving his all on the floor as he plays for a new contract.
In fact the Bulls were in need of very such a player as they fought off early season injuries along their frontline and a Tyson Chandler slump.

What struck me most about Simmons' column (in which Thomas is only alluded to by the way) was the following claim:

Here's one of the underrated sports stories of 2006: What about the Bulls' acquiring Tim Thomas, burying him on the bench, then telling him to just go home while they try to trade him ... even though he's making $14 million this season. Has anyone ever made more money for doing nothing? Shouldn't magazines be assigning writers to hang out with him, just to see whathe does every day? If he's making $14 million, that means he's getting a check for about $525,000 every two weeks (minus taxes). Would you even work out if you were him?

The irony in Simmons's suggestion that "Shouldn't magazines be assigning writers to hang out with him, just to see what he does every day?" is that the very magazine/media empire that Simmons writes for did exactly what he was asking to be done for Tim Thomas. In fact, they did it twice in the past year.

First was last year's ESPN's hawking over Barry Bonds carried out by ESPN reporter Pedro Gomez . Gomez followed Bonds around during the entire 2005 baseball season, from spring training through when the Giants season ended last August. Given Bonds superstar status and the fact that he was on pace to break the all-time home run record, it's not that surprising that he might have a reporter following his every move, (I guess). But it is surprising when this athlete does not play until the last fourteen games of the season.


So instead of Bonds' chase for Babe Ruth's and Hank Aaron's home run records, we got Pedro's stalking of Barry which produced a lot of copy about his steroid allegations, a very serious public matter. However it also ratcheted up the volume on some of Bonds' very personal problems and struggles relating to his marriage and relationship with his children, the latter culminating in a bizarre interview conducted with his son at his side.


If Barrygate was not enough, ESPN followed that up with TOgate in the fall of 2005. Now TO, unlike Bonds, was a willing participant. He wanted to use the media to strong arm the Eagles into giving him a better contract, and the media wanted to use T.O. to... actually it never really became clear what use T.O. had for ESPN, so I guess why they were able to dispense of him so easily.


But during their shotgun marriage, viewers were provided with stories featuring T.O. working out in his driveway, getting booted from Eagles camp, walking back into Eagles camp, and boarding flights from Philadelphia to his home in Atlanta.


The private investigator, uh, I mean reporter, assigned to T.O. was Sal Paolantonio. Paolantonio did an excellent job of reporting the non-news that was often the trademark of the T.O. saga. Unfortunately all of this over-reporting trivialized the central issue in this case, the right of an employee to renegotiate with his employer. T.O. had a fair case, he outplayed his contract and deserved a new one. But the public quickly forget that nugget of information as it became a matter of his attitude, approach and feud with quarterback Donovan McNabb.
Instead of becoming a champion for worker's rights T.O. was turned into another spoiled, self-centered athlete who offered little character wise to his team or society.


Every once in a while during all the chatter about T.O. a football player would come on and talk about how NFL players hate the fact that their contracts unlike those of NBA and MLB players are not guaranteed. Which brings us to the case of Tim Thomas, NBA role player, who happens to be making 14 million dollars this season.

As you can see Tim Thomas is no Terrell Owens when it comes to physique and neither of them are Barry Bonds when it comes to stature. In fact these three barely belong in the same sentence. When placed alongside each other however, they do reveal a strange and rather disconcerting development within the sports world, in particular within, the ranks of the Disneyfied world wide leader in sports. A network founded on delivering sports news is struggling like general news outlets to keep the interests of its audience. Rather than sticking to their guns and doing what they do best, or selectively incorporating the elements of network TV, ESPN, has picked up the worst elements of network news and entertainment. The network has put a premium on entertaining its audience, while forgetting what made it entertaining in the first place, and that sports themselves are inherently entertaining.

Even their own ombudsman, George Solomon has addressed the troubling ramifications of the networks continuing ventures at blurring the lines between sports news/reorting and entertainment (see: here and here ) From simulated press conferences to the most recent attempts at stirring a feud between Kobe Bryant and Ray Allen during a televised game between the Sonics and Lakers on ABC, ESPN's sister station. A graphic outlining a comment made by Allen last year concerning Kobe was repeatedly brought on screen to remind the audience that there was a feud between Bryant and Allen. The comment was trivial at best, and the concocted feud was a wildly unimaginative way of drawing interest to a game that at first glance may have seemed undercast by the poor records of the two teams. However, Allen, Bryant and their teammates did what they were supposed to and played good basketball and in turn put on a spectacular performance for those in attendance and watching at home. They did not need broadcasters drumming up a feud, what they needed was a ball, two hoops and eight other guys willing to run, and once you gave them that Allen and Bryant were more than capable of taking care of the rest.


What does this all have to do with Tim Thomas you ask. Well Tim Thomas never got his show and ESPN never assigned a reporter to stalk him. Maybe the network was tired of going to the well or with Gomez and Paolantonio still assigned to Bonds and T.O. respectively, they could ill afford to dedicate other reporters to such limited beats.


It's a shame that in all this talk about players and their salaries the network has not done an expose on the owners that pay these salaries. It would have been really interesting to hear Jerry Reinsdorf explain to a city in which Hotel workers have been struggling to get a fair contract, and workers in general have been fighting for a fair minimum wage--to explain to these people how he can agree to the release of one of his top five players without any compensation. Workers throughout the city of Chicago who have put up far more earnest fights than Tim Thomas, who by the way is not even clear put up a fight at all, and can not get a deal half as good as he did. Even T.O. would have probably kept his mouth shut if he were dealing with Reinsdorf, and Bonds would definitely give almost anything for the three months of anonymity at full pay that Thomas was recently granted.


In either case, ESPN opted not make a story out of this and on March 1st Tim Thomas was bought out by the Bulls and then proceeded to sign with the Phoenix Suns with very little fanfare. In his first game back after this three month sabbatical Thomas scored twenty points in twenty minutes in 123 - 118 Suns victory over the Orlando Magic. I'm tempted to call this performance a comeback, but then again, who knew he was gone in the first place.

A Change is Gonna Come

This past Monday (March 6th) my editor told me that they've decided to push my book back a year.

I smiled at the news, surely making my editor think I was a bit more off-kilter than he could have imagined after reading my memoir. It's funny I told him, yesterday's sermon at church was about patience, the virtue of waiting and putting oneself in a position to make the best of the best opportunity, rather than blindly seizing the first opportunity. Normally, I'd pick at the ideas in the sermon a bit more, but as I sat at dinner listening to my editor talk, I was quite content. He thought he was delivering bad news. I thought he was delivering good news. I am now going to get a chance to produce a better book.

All of this came at a price though: (1) I would have to seriously reorganize my summer now that there was not going to be a book tour; (2) I would have to think strategically how I was going to spend the next year and a half of my life; (3) That decision to keep myself off the dating market until September 06 (the end of the tour) would have to be seriously rethought--yet again; (4) I would have to learn to stop making decisions based on events that are six months away and learn to be comfortable in the present fettle of my life's skin.

Within days the news and what lay before me began settling in. I was gone from the publisher's pages (here and there) which made me think whether this was the first stage toward the eventual end? Then again I remembered the other lesson of that Sunday's s and every other Sunday's sermon, one must have faith, so I kept the faith that this book will come out, and started keeping an eye on what me, what Ferentz, will come out of this process, will emerge from this journey. I got scared. But as the believers like to say, "no weapon formed against me shall prosper."

I don't know about you, but in my experience my fears have been my greatest obstacles. Every girl I never tried dancing with, half the scholarships I never got, half the competitions I never won, were lost, or rather, never gained because my fears amputated my will compete. My fears amputated my chance to receive a blessing.

Then it hit me, this was not only a chance to write a better book, but a chance to become a better writer, and more importantly a better person.

The book may not be arriving in June, but I still got work to do, and I'm still on the grind because as one of the elders so beautifully sang out long before I had a story to tell, "A Change is Gonna Come"

A Change Is Gonna Come

(Sam Cooke)

As Performed Sam Cooke (1964)

I was born by the river in a little tent

And just like the river, I've been running ever since

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die

I don't know what's up there beyond the sky

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

I go to the movie, and I go downtown

Somebody keep telling me "Don't hang around"

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

Then I go to my brother and I say, "Brother, help me please"

But he winds up knocking me back down on my knees

There've been times that I've thought I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

In the summer/fall of 2004 for the first time ever I was blessed to have two co-workers toiling alongside me on the nightshift. It took some getting used to at first; we’d spend hours walking from one coffee shop to another in Brooklyn. We trekked from shop to shop desperately trying to avoid impromptu open mics, unadvertised changes to a shop’s operating hours or hordes of law or med students studying for one of their various professional licensing exams.

After about two weeks of this meandering from place to place, we decided it was time to open up our own coffee shop, and soon after, Café Ferentz was born.

Along with less expensive teas, healthier snacks and later hours, another benefit to Café Ferentz was that my co-workers and I got a chance to choose our music. No more random electronica, freestyle and definitely experimental hip-hop and reggae blends being played without our consent. And to make it ourselves feel really at home, we gave ourselves family names. As the proprietor of Café Ferentz, and the one who lives to make the ladies comfortable, I became “Big Daddy,” my sparring partner and alleged true boss of Café Ferentz became “Big Mama,” and our friend/antagonist who although two years older than me and Big Mamas, we seemed to always have to keep in check, so we named her “Baby Girl.” Call us crazy, or do as Sister Sledge did and shout out, “we are family.”

The personality traits behind these names really came out whenever we had to decide on the music for our work sessions. Big Mama loved herself, loved to love—did I say love—well Big Mama loved herself some Maxwell. For whatever reason whenever she got to the cd rack at Café Ferentz Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite was guaranteed to be her choice. Now, I know as well as anyone else that music could take people places. Music can steal our minds away on journeys far removed from our present situations. What I was never able to understand about Big Mama, and quite a few other women between the ages of 28 – 35 is how y’all are able to go on that journey with Maxwell at almost given moment.

Whenever Maxwell came on, Big Mama got this twinkle in her eye. I could see her body relaxing as the guitar chords from “The Urban Theme” began floating through the air. Big Mama was sure to be gone into fantasy land by the time the saxophone materialized on the track. Call it mojo, hoodoo or whatever you will, but whatever Maxwell put into the songs on that album evoked as powerful of a spell over Big Mama in 2004 as it did when the album first came out in 1996 .

Big Mama might be able to keep working through “The Urban Theme,” but once the song “Welcome” came on, work, as in the work she had to do to finish her book was the last thing on her mind. At this point, she’d usually put her pencil down, stop composing the haikus that she needed to complete her book of poetry and would start telling Baby Girl and me about being in Atlanta in 1996. She'd get happier and happier as she reminisced out loud about the late night drives with her home girls to The Waffle House or to Mick’s where they'd along to Maxwell from their AUC dorms and back. Or better yet, she loved telling the story about the drive to Howard University’s homecoming where she got her first chance to see him live, and how even though she did not know who Maxwell was, he had managed to leave an indelible mark on her heart. What really got her going, and let you know that she was done writing for the evening was when she started talking about the song “…Till the Cops Come Knockin’”

I mean, can you really blame the woman for being unable to focus on worl; just peep the first three lines of the song: “Didn't you dig the way I rubbed yo back girl/Wasn't it cool when first I kissed yo lips/Was it enough to penetrate yo dark world.” As much as I tried playing Big Daddy in order to keep Big Mama on top of her writing, even I could not deny the power of this song.

As she told us about the first time she heard the song, Big Mama started running her hands over her kneecaps, sliding them down over her shins, and then bring them back up the side of her thighs. She’d then bring them back up as if she were giving herself a hug, warming up each forearm, then bicep and then shoulder with her palms. The more that she told her story the clearer it became that everywhere her hands went were places that a lover had at one time or another had left a kiss, and that this ritual with her hands was a retracing of each kiss, each memory left on her body to the tune of this Maxwell album.

While I was willing to join Big Mama in submitting to the power of Maxwell, Baby Girl on the other hand…….

Night Shift Chronicles Vol. 1 No. 1

Ever since I turned my book in to the publisher I continue to have these moments where I kick myself for forgetting one song or another. Going in to the project I knew it was going to be difficult to discuss all the songs that have been key in my life, but at the same time, I did not think that I was going to have any glaring oversights. After all, all how hard could it be to make a list of my favorite songs, and then take it from there…easier said than done.

The song that I regret most not including, or rather, forgetting to include in my memoir, is the underappreciated Commodores classic, “The Nightshift.”

Featured on the album of the same name, “The Nightshift” is an ode to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, two musical legends who passed away in 1984 a year before the song’s release. I was only eight when Marvin and Jackie died, and because my parents had only been in the states for that same amount of time—they emigrated from Haiti—American music was not that big in our household. This meant that only a few transcendent figures, notably Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and my mom’s crushes Smokey Robinson and Lionel Richie were the only African American musicians whose work they played with any regularity. Lacking the historical context needed to understand the relationships between these artists Jackie Wilson’s passing went unnoticed in my household. Marvin Gaye’s however, was a whole other matter.

My parents watched all the news reports about Marvin’s death, purchased newspapers and even an issue of Jet magazine, and spent hours talking with each other and their friends about this tragedy. I did my best to understand why my parents were so obsessed with this incident, but I could not make out the story that lay in between the lines of what then seemed like incoherent chatter. “Can you believe it,” Dad would pronounce before letting out a deep sigh that he liked to punctuate with a whistling sound, almost like a tea-kettle going off. Mom’s response was equally vague; she’d belt out “Oh Jesus,” then start shaking her head and if she were sitting rub her hands along her lap as if she were trying to iron out some newly discovered creases. And if she were standing, she’d cross herself, concluding a prayer that I did not know had started.

It was my friend Alex, who was two years older and was born and raised in the United States, who explained to me why my parents were so struck by Marvin’s death. He told me that Marvin was killed by his father and that his music was legendary. But it was time that eventually enabled me to understand the great loss suffered by the world with Marvin Gaye’s passing. And it was also time that eventually enabled me to understand the great gift bestowed by The Commodores to help the world commemorate the lives of Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson.

In all honesty for the longest time I thought “Nightshift” was a love song, an ode to working on the metaphorical nightshift. I never used to pay attention to the lyrics and instead let myself be carried away by beat, the delicate interplay between the maracas and bass, which are deftly accented by the various synthesizer chords and drums. It was also easier to watch Mom and Dad dance to this song than to try focus in and try to capture its importance. I was always captivated by the smiles streaming across their faces; especially Mom’s when Dad twirled her around, her hair briefly floating off her shoulders before settling back on them just as gently as she settled back into Dad’s arms. Holding hands, looking each other in the eyes, hips swaying up and down in unison, feet gliding across the floor, sweat slowly cascading down Dad’s dark brown forehead, mom wearing her favorite burgundy dress with the spaghetti straps and having a white napkin at the ready for when one of the drops of Dad’s perspiration threatened to get too close to her dress—and then he’d push her back, for a brief second their side by side, before quickly returning to their original dancing pose, smiling at their improvisation and sneaking in a guess as if they were still teenagers kissing underneath a remote tree in Petion-ville Haiti out from under the watchful eye of one of their parents. There was no need for me to pay attention to the lyrics in 1985 because the love in their eyes was a better melody than anything a musician could conjure up.

When I finally did learn the meaning behind “Nightshift,” I fell in love with the song. I thought The Commodore’s did a fabulous job of relaying the spirit of Jackie and Marvin, as well as the affection and inspiration that so many people have and cull from their lives and their music. “Nightshift” wonderfully captures the essence of Jackie’s transcendent talents as a performer/dancer, and then blends it with the eloquent lyrical sensitivity for which Marvin is famous.

The reason that I instantly began slapping myself silly once I realized that I neglected to include “Nightshift” in the book it has all the elements that I love in a song, it’s poignant without being sad, lively without being mindless, and most of all paints a portrait without losing the ability to be timeless or universal. And for the past twelve years as I have toiled on the nightshift trying to finish up one project or another, console a friend or finding consolation myself, cuddling up next to someone special or curdling with despair at the absence of that special person from my life, “Nightshift” has taken on a slew of different meanings and significance in my life. Far from a night owl, the energy that I have culled from late night listening sessions has made working the nightshift as sweet and unforgettable as the music of Jackie and Marvin that inspired this Commodore’s classic.

And while I may have forgotten to put in the book, I will never forget all places in my heart and mind that "Nightshift" has cultivated and made richer by its presence.