A grungy neighborhood on the side of downtown Dallas is dressed up with commissioned graffiti and sculptures. The three main streets that make up Deep Ellum run parallel to one another and are filled with tattoo shops, bars, clubs, industrial art spaces, and commercial kitchens. The loft living comes with homeless pissing. An occasional gunshot or stabbing is still part of the territory. Back in the day, there was a music venue, dance club called The Bomb Factory. I went there with a couple of guy friends to hear The Chemical Brothers. Their electronic dance music was perfectly set to a light show catering to people trippin on acid.
In high school, I was addicted to Lauryn Hill and The Fugees. At parties, one of my best friends and I would always perform for the crowd and sing from their album.
Memory: I hear the beat and it brings me back to you. We are dancing together in the living room. In our own little world -spinning each other, then pushing apart to individually croon into imaginary microphones. We are putting on a show. Attendees are half engaged in muffled conversation and half giving us attention. We take on alto and soprano, bellow with the crescendo, then all attention focuses on us. Always. We concentrate the room. We are performers. Many of these people have little in common, but we brought them together.
When Lauryn Hill and the Fugees came to The Bomb Factory, two of us got tickets. It is no exaggeration, we were the only white girls there. I knew then, as I still know: Lauryn Hill is an avowed racist. She said it; she says it. But that didn’t make me hate her or her music then -nor now. I can separate the two.
I reflect on this often because we have become incapable of taking people as whole individuals with lots of components and disparate parts. There’s no requirement that we must like, love, or adore everything about someone. There’s no leniency or forgiveness. Society lashes out with one-and-done. People come as full packages, and we are becoming more immune to forgiveness.
~~~
Rappers get away with saying anything
They tell the truth
Hard lives in their rhymes
To have music to it
Soothes it
Back to the poetry
It's always a story
The rhythm is there to elevate, ease the pain
Avoid the literal for the metaphor
Soften the blow
~~~
Poetry is perceived as boring or unapproachable. There’s little relaxation in having to analyze. It comes fraught with over-romanticized, snobbish pomposity. Songs often fill themselves with the same level of metaphor, simile, and intellectual difficulty, because they come so well disguised in melody. Do you feel the music or do you not? Nothing more is asked of you. This is why pop music is so POPular; it has minimal lyrics and minimal looping beats. It’s easy to digest and market.
Poetry wants to be heavier. It asks you to work for it. To hear the writer’s rhythm, to find your own rhythm. It is not more superior, only less frivolous. Reading a poem can be both blissful and daunting. This is why fewer people make time for it. Poetry is not just sonnets or unrequited love of the melancholic, misunderstood artist; it is everything we have ever wanted to say and have no other way of expressing.
It turned out, I found myself writing music as a way of not coming right out and saying it!
*I performed at a couple of the clubs in Deep Ellum back when I sang.
**The Bomb Factory originally operated from 1992-1998. Legendary bands such as PHISH, Radiohead, Dave Matthews Band, Sonic Youth, The Ramones, INXS, Nine Inch Nails & Fugazi have graced the stage. It closed, then reopened in 2015 under new management, now called The Factory. ‘Bomb’ had potentially violent connotations.