Great Albums: Loaded

John Updike’s first rule of criticism was “try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.” Whether or not Updike himself stayed true to this rule in his literary criticism is up for debate, but like Lucas’ line about how special effects should only serve the story, it should be a principle that we all hold true, regardless of who said it. I always think of that line whenever I’m listening to Loaded, the Velvet Underground’s fourth and final album. Among the online community of edgy, non mainstream Velvet Underground fans, the album is something of a pariah. It is the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or the Godfather Part III of the VU’s short and wonderful discography. It is the album for people “wanting to get into the Velvet Underground” they’ll write with palpable condescension.

Yes, yes, where is the boundary pushing experimentation, the abrasive drones of distortion, the dark and harrowing lyrics, the cacophonies of strange instrumentations threatening to topple into incoherence at any moment?

Well, shithead, they’re not there. Reed and company weren’t aiming for it to be there. If they had made an attempt at gritty and abrasive experimentation and had failed—as Reed would spectacularly on 1975’s Metal Machine Music—then there would be a point in such criticism, but as it stands, such complaints ring about as hollow as a person whining that Crimes and Misdemeanors lacked the absurdist humor of Sleeper. On Loaded, the Velvet Underground was aiming to make a pop album—a financially driven sellout move on par with that raven poem that Poe scraped together to make a quick buck.

In the dismissals of Loaded that I read in Youtube comments and message boards, I notice that its not even the music that they are criticizing, but the very fact that the Velvet Underground made something light and accessible. As though that made it any less worthy. If you don’t like lighter poppier rock music or think it less worthy than abrasive experimentation, that’s fine—you’re entitled to your opinion, after all—but any criticism you may make of a pop album would not be not so much a reflection of the album’s quality as it would be a reflection of your own tastes. For example, I hate musicals. Cant stand them. For me, it’s like watching a porno without jacking off. I sit there, watching the obligatory plot unfold, and then suddenly people break into completely illogical displays of physical talents that I do not possess, as I grow uncomfortable and wonder what to do with my hands. With that being said, I cannot in all fairness ever make a valid criticism of Singin’ in the Rain or An American in Paris. The fact that I do not enjoy them is a reflection on my feelings toward musicals in general, not on their quality as films.

And as it is, Loaded is a fuckin great pop album. It’s a masterpiece of the form on par with Rubber Soul or Pet Sounds. From the jangly opening of Who Loves the Sun, the album hits you like the first burst of sunlight when you were a kid stepping out of school at the end of the day. Suddenly the sterile bleakness of florescent tubes is gone; the world is open, if only in your mind, and there is nothing in front of you but hours sitting by the creek and watching the sun shimmer off the water as somebody passes the joint around.

Sometimes it’s the ones you least suspect who will voice something the most genuinely. On their prior album, a bunch of atheistic drug addicts crafted a prayerful ode to Jesus, more compelling and earnest than any of the tripe put out by the most pious of Christian rock groups, and on this album the Velvet fucking Underground of all bands, did something nobody could have expected; they put out a celebration—a thing of joy. The opening chords of a song like Sweet Jane simply melt into you. Reed’s voice—that sneering thing of dread and more-dead-than-alive weariness from Heroin or I’m Waiting for the Man—morphs into a new and carefree thing. Without seeming to have changed at all, it emerges from the grime and murk like a gentle, peaceful comedown from some terrible trip. Rock and Roll hits you almost bluntly over the head with its seeming purposelessness. “Her life was saved by rock and roll?” What the fuck is that? But as the music goes on, you’re drawn in; the music recreates its subject—that single innocent moment that even the most jaded and cynical of music fans had, lying on their stomach, enraptured by the wonderful and eye opening sounds flowing from the radio speakers. And from the almost tangible plooms of smoke radiating from the fun stoner jam of Cool It Down, to the pure goofiness of Lonesome Cowboy Bill, the album takes you back to that moment over and over.

That’s not to say that the whole album is merely some light, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” fluff. Inspecting a song like “Who Loves the Sun?” a little closer, lyrics like, “Who loves the sun/ who cares that it makes plants grow/ who cares what it does/ since you broke my heart” pop out at you. Throughout the album, streaks of negativity and sarcasm can be found. Am I contradicting what I just said about the album’s joyousness? Very well, then this album contradicts itself. It is large. It contains multitudes. And that is what makes it, if not my favorite Velvet Underground album, then certainly my most played. Because something like White Light/White Heat exists only on one level. It’s an album you turn on when you feel like shit—when you don’t want to feel sorry for yourself but don’t want to feel better either; you only want to grind yourself further into the grime until you reach that bitterly gratifying point where you can sneer at the shit from behind your cigarette. Loaded, on the other hand, is an album that exists on multiple levels. It exists on the obvious joyful level described above, but it also exists on the level of irony and sarcasm and parody. In a sense, the album’s subtle subversion of pop conventions are even more interesting than the full on assaults of the Velvets’ first two albums.

Of course, that does not mean that the album is emotionally empty. After all, even irony is an expression of emotion. It is a very specific state of mind that would sneer “who loves the sun?” through a bubbly smile. But there is also earnest and heartfelt feeling running through the record. Again this hurt and pain found throughout the album is much more subtle and on a far less grand scale than on their early albums. It can be found in the quiet desperation of an aging actress on New Age. It can be found in the spine tingling croons of “I Found a Reason”. On the album’s closer, you can simply feel the ache dripping off the gorgeous guitars and Doug Yule’s voice. In seven and a half minutes the song encapsulates all the bittersweet sadness and beauty of every love’s futility.

Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older. When I was a teenager, I fell asleep to Heroin with Rimbaud open on my chest. I was angry and miserable in that romantic teenage way. Everything was a grand and crystal clear battle, and my eyes were being opened to the dark existential forces that encased us all. And so I connected with “searching for my mainline” and the “big decision to nullify my life” with an earnestness and seriousness that I almost miss. But now it doesn’t feel so gritty; I don’t feel fatalistically and romantically tied to the drowning, drunken boat of my uncontrollable passions. The down-to-earth and small-scale emotions of Loaded hit me with much more force. After all, as much it would have disappointed 16 year old me, I didn’t turn out as a heroin addict or a transvestite hooker.

And listening in 2013, the album feels much more refreshing than their earlier ones. When the Velvets were making music, their gritty depictions of the underbelly of urban life were artistically brave and important. Lou Reed, as a literary man, almost a journalist, even, was shining a light onto the small pockets of humanity that culture turned a blind eye to because they were too unpleasant. But now things have changed. Those dark, gritty, “perverse” pockets and depictions of humanity have become something chic. There is something deeply unsettling in this.

It reminds me of the first real underground show I ever went to. Me and my friends were maybe fifteen or sixteen at the time and we were going to some shithole basement in a slum section of the city to see a no-name punk band. It felt dangerous and exciting. As we walked through the streets, feeling cool and rebellious as we snuck gulps of whisky from a water bottle, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. There was a young mother, maybe no older than I was at the time, crying and running after her young daughter. I suddenly felt dirty. It struck me that this was a real life that some people had to live every day, and not merely some symbol of grittiness and romantic authenticity to gratify my suburban sensibilities. That’s not a criticism of the Velvet Underground’s early music so much as it’s a criticism of how we listen to it or at least how I listen to it.

So, fuck it, I’ll say it: Loaded is my favorite Velvet Underground album. It’s the most down-to-earth, the most subtle. It is above all else—above all the subversion and heartfelt emotion and sneering sarcasm—a thing of joy. And what’s wrong with that? Sometimes it’s nice to know that even the most beaten down of derelicts can feel good for 40 minutes or so.

Sometimes even Lou Reed smiles.

Because What's Left to be Written About Shakespeare?

            Bukowski was a misogynistic, juvenile, posturing relic of an image of meaningless masculinity. But so what? The true juvenility is in failing to segregate the morality of the man from the quality of the art; it’s in trying to judge literature by the racial/sexual/ethnic enlightenment of its author. Or maybe that’s just liberalism. I say ‘literature’ and I almost feel myself scoffing. This is the snob part of me who has moved onto the subtle and reserved in tone. That is the natural response, of course. To scoff. Every morning we wake up in complete horror at the ourselves of the night before. In a frantic rush we burn all evidence. Disavow all ties. And if we are to disavow juvenile interests, what better than fantasies of alcoholic, wife beating, and oh so free existances?

            Or perhaps we just pretend it’s that. Sometimes I wonder if I disavow Kerouac and Rimbaud and the like out of maturity, or disappointment—pontificating the superficiality and pretention of the clichéd bohemian ideal, only out of bitterness and spite that either they lied to me, or worse, I lied to myself.

            No matter though. The point is that in disavowing the past, we limit our sense of sight to that of ourselves at 17. We block off the idea that perhaps there is more there. Upon adult inspection, Bukowski was a juvenile misogynist, and at least 9/10s of his poems reek of posturing. But that is exactly the point. That is why he is one of the most important writers of the 20^th century. Bukowski wasn’t merely an archetype of miogynistic, hard drinking masculinity; he was a man obsessed with the image. Amidst the endless tough guy stories something seethes underneath. I flip through his books and just as I begin to tire of his neverending sexual and alcoholic adventures, I find bluebirds that wont be let free and old men, driving around, alone and confused, wondering what they did wrong.

            What Bukowski presented to the world was the character he created. And it’s not that it was a lie. No doubt, he was an angry, misanthropic alcoholic, but in opening his mouth, in writing his poems, in finding the comfort of an image that he found extremely attractive, he destroyed himself, and became the character he both loved and hated. The fact that he chose the character he did is irrelevant. The comically crass misanthrope, the sincere intellectual, the heady neurotic, the fun loving partier, whatever. The moment we open our mouths and create an image, even if just to ourselves, we limit ourselves and deny something realer and truer, and a rage grows, a longing, that is only quelled to quietism by the realization that what we desire is impossible. At each moment, in each person there is love, hatred, rage, lust, jealousy, pride, goofy humor, bemusement, irritation, and more than I could possibly name, but in our heads and in our social actions, we pick and choose which genuine truths and emotions and impulses to follow based on the most suspect of criteria. We ease ourselves into personalities, built upon linear cohesion. We are defined by them; we rely on them; we lose ourselves in them. And yet some part of us hates them because the truth that they represent is the most dishonest in the world when compared to the sum truth of every complexity within us.

We know that we wear them out of weakness. We wear them to shirk the unimaginably difficult task of discerning from which self each of our impulses springs from in our day to day actions and decisions. Abstract bullshit, I know, but take any real world situation. Do you forgive your girlfriend for an action that could, in all good conscience, be grounds to break up with her for? An initial impulse may say yes, but from which self does it spring? Does it spring from the self that is filled with love and can truly forgive or does it spring from the self of degregation and shallowness that in self-hate would sacrifice any shred of self respect for a warm wet cunt to have every night? Or is it the self that is merely concerned with the way others view oneself and the desire to be viewed as forgiving and kind? Or is it the self of passive agressivity that hates the girlfriend, and would conceive acts of grandiose kindness merely to make her feel less worthy? There are a thousand other possibilities, and this is what the self aware person goes through every day, in every moment, with every decision and word and interaction—that need to sort out from where their impulses spring, lest the person become something that they fear. And so they form personas, premade and highly attractive, to lift the weight. The persona sets a track that is easily followed and therefore the responsibility is no longer on the psyche.

            Jesus, it’s no wonder that alcohol played such a huge role in his writing. There is no greater gift to a man obsessed with his own self-definition. For just a few dollars worth of liquor, the cringing stops at the opportunistic, child-like sketchings of self-definition and the genuine ideal. I look at college parties of FUN at all cost and shake my head. From Bukowski’s view, and mine for that matter, they’ve completely missed the point. Alcohol’s not about being made happy; it’s about being able to stop being something, and just be. You’re happy, goofy, sad, angry, bitter… As Bukowski once wrote, it’s better to be happy if you can, but make no mistake, being able to just be sad is infinitely better than being happy by arbitrary choice and suspect omission.

            But along with alcohol, perhaps the biggest motif (well, besides pussy) to be found in his writing is isolation. Bukowski’s declarative stance on the issue can be found in the script for Barfly, where Chinaski says “I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they’re not around”. This love and glamorization of solitude is found throughout his writing.

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude,”

That itch for solitude and irritation at the company of others is indicative of the conflict of self definition and persona found in his writing.  The desire for the comfort of persona is irrevocably mixed with the desire for isolation because the balance of a persona is a precarious one that must be carefully controlled at all moments. Alone, pacing and thinking and drinking and chainsmoking and writing, one can be the master of their self-image, one can mold themselves into any unseen, grand and tragic hero they desire, but the complications and pressures of social interaction jeopardize that completely. In social situations, in actively seeking human connections, compromises must be made, and as in all situations, the tree that grows too stern risks snapping in brutal winds. Again though, the human and the genuine in Bukowski’s writing rages against the comfort of dehumanization, and the conflict manifests. This resistance comes throughout his writing, often in ways so small and seemingly insignificant that they could be passed unnoticed, like in ‘Women’ where he shows the Chinaski character validating the importance of human connection by weeping over a lover, or in ‘The Crunch’ where he writes of “a loneliness so great that you can see it in the movements of the hands of a clock”, which leads to “the terror of one person aching in one place alone”, only to find hope and a refusal to retreat into quietist isolation when looking upon young girls who “stem flowers of chance”.

What can be gleaned from his writing is a search for the genuine in the fight against the narrow dehumanization of self-definition. It is the internal conflict between the cocoon of a persona that deflects pain and the desperate need for human connection and true humanity. 

Kanye West: The Voice of a Generation (for better or worse)

Kanye West is my favorite living artist. Not for his music—although I do enjoy a good bit of his music—but for the wonderfully douchy, diamond-studded enamel it comes cased in. Every time he highjacks an award ceremony or a charity fundraiser to go on a wildly inappropriate, barely coherent diatribe, my heart rejoices. Every time he tells some interviewer that “I’m doing pretty good as far as geniuses go” I feel the joy of a beautiful spring sunrise. Every time he does something like replacing his bottom row of teeth with diamonds, I feel the indescribable light of the Holy Spirit shining down upon me. People hate him with a truly amusing intensity. I see it even in my day-to-day life. Any time that I am in a packed car and hear one of his songs come on the radio, the surrounding voices merge into a single harmony of groans. Sometimes I will admit to liking a few of his songs just to hear the car burst into cacophonous jeers. The fact that one of the most critically acclaimed musicians of the past ten years—his five solo studio albums have an average score of 84 on Metacritic—can be reviled to the point that it pains people to admit to liking his music, is indicative of a huge shift in the way that we consume entertainment. And it’s something we’d better start getting used to.

When I was 12, my favorite rock star of all time was Keith Moon. He was the loveable wild man behind the drum kit. His crashing, out of control drum fills were what made The Who my favorite band. He was the archetypical figure of excess that we all aspire to at such an age—the girls, the drugs, the unhinged behavior and wild stories and don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. But unlike a Keith Richards or Jim Morrison, it didn’t seem like he took himself too seriously. Underneath the antics, it seemed like he was probably a genuinely sweet guy who just wanted to have some fun and make people smile. So for my 13^th birthday, I asked for the recently released Keith Moon biography. It was sure to be a fun read. Instead, what I got was the story of a violent and emotionally unstable alcoholic who would routinely beat his wife whenever he became jealous. After that I was unable to listen to The Who the same way. And in a way, I’ve never listened to them the same way since.

The reason for this is that the relationship that you have with a favorite artist is existential in the strictest sense. It exists only in that which they present to you. You say that you like Marvin Gaye or F. Scott Fitzgerald or Humphrey Bogart, and although you really mean that you like their work, your words are more telling than you realize. After all, the aim of a piece of entertainment or art is to make a personal connection with its consumer. You make a personal connection with a book or an album or whatever, and those personal feelings transpose themselves, not onto the paper of the book or the vinyl of the album, but onto the person who created it. And so, a very narrow, one-way relationship is formed. It’s like the relationship you had with your teachers when you were a kid—when you loved Miss Smith and hated Mrs. Johnson. It didn’t matter that these personal assessments were based on the narrow criteria of their teaching. You truly loved Miss Smith and you truly hated Mrs. Johnson. And if you had run into either of them at the 7-11, it would have been a mind-boggling experience indeed.

Another reason that people fail to distinguish between their favorite musicians/writers/filmmakers as artists and their favorite m/w/f as people is that they see that their favorite artist seems to have it all figured out in his/her work. And so why wouldn’t that apparent understanding translate itself to his/her personal life? They hear John Lennon earnestly and beautifully articulating the values of peace and love in his music, and assume that their was no way that he could have possibly been a neglectful father and abusive husband. Or they see David Foster Wallace endlessly wringing his hands over the way that women are treated by chauvinistic men, and assume that there was no way that he could have been a tactful and accomplished womanizer. But, after all, the creation of art is a work of obsession. That sentence makes even me cringe in its pretentiousness, but think about it: a writer spends years working on a book—making notes, writing draft after draft late into the nights, rearranging the order, editing, writing more drafts, etc. A musician spends months writing an album’s worth of songs on the road, tweaking them and perfecting them during performance, changing the lyrics at the last moment, and then spending weeks locked in a studio to record the album. If there was not near-maniacal obsession with the work and the subject matter, they would do what a normal person would do. They would throw their hands up and go “fuck it” a few hours or days or weeks or months into the process, and abandon the thing. Obsession is needed. And while the person who is obsessed with, say, diet is likely to have some good insights on how to cut down your sodium levels, in my experiences, the people who spend weeks and months and years obsessing about what they eat, staying up late into the night wringing their hands about it and becoming emotionally immersed in the subject, are unlikely to have the most healthy relationship with food in their own lives. Objectively speaking, it would only make sense that the same would be true for the person obsessed with ethics or the sexual treatment of women or the dangers of emotional codependence. But the nature of the relationship one has with a favorite artist/entertainer obscures that truth.

For a long time this relationship between consumer and the artist was kept fairly clean. Jimmy Page existed only as the towering rock god, coming out of a mist of smoke on the poster on your wall. Bob Dylan existed only as the chainsmoking young vagabond on the album cover. John Cheever existed only as the black and white, kindly old man on the back of your old copy of Falconer. It was easy to keep our idols. Left to our own imaginations, we could mold our heroes in the image of their own creations. And although it should be obvious that a distinction must be made between the artist/entertainer and his work, it is not always so easy. Sometimes I find myself reading some literary titan of centuries past, and I wonder if I would be able to take their self-consciously profound musings on God and Human Nature and Ethical Responsibility so seriously if they were no longer a LITERARY TITAN and were just… some guy. If I could pick up a celebrity rag and see Walt Whitman picking his nose while trying to work off his paunch on an exercise bike, would I still be able to be so enraptured by his poetic declarations of nature’s singular holiness? Would I be able to read Dostoevsky’s dialogues on the beauty of faith and the meaning of suffering with such solemn seriousness if I could turn on TMZ at night to get the scoop on his latest vodka-fuelled gambling binge?

Well, that’s what we’re going to have to find out. The age of an artist’s mystery is dead. The days of mythic rock gods and mysterious literary figures are six feet under. They have been buried by the information age of ubiquitous celebrity magazines, gossip television, paparazzi, websites, blogs, facebook, twitters, and a thousand other mediums to make sure that we can no longer hold our favorite entertainers as idols or our favorite artists as heroes. Every abused girlfriend and slipped racial slur and personal tragedy and arrogant quote and unfortunate full frontal flash will be ours for the taking. Our insatiable appetite for gossip has reached critical mass; our desire for personal tidbits on our artistic idols has gotten so great that no a line must be drawn in the sand once and for all to segregate an artist as a person from his work. In the coming years we will have no choice but to finally give up our idols and accept the fact that our favorite writer is just some guy and our favorite rock star may just be some asshole.

Many times Kanye West has called himself the defining voice of this generation, and in opening his mouth to say such a douchy thing, he may just have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jake Hamilton, Samuel L Jackson, and the Interracial Discussion of Race

            In the mild controversy surrounding Django Unchained’s release, one particular event caught my eye. Houston’s Jake Hamilton was interviewing the cast and crew, asking the typical sort of questions about the film’s content and production to Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington, and Christoph Waltz respectively. Last, but certainly not least, came Samuel L Jackson, looking immaculately young and chiseled—how the fuck is he 64?—in a Jackie Brown hat and stylish glasses. Having had history with Tarantino’s treatment of race and the controversies that have surrounded it since the “Dead Nigger Storage” scene in Pulp Fiction, along with a clear investment in the struggle against racism—Jackson was affiliated with the black power movement in the late 60’s—, it only seemed natural that Hamilton would begin with a question on the film’s treatment of race.

            “There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the usage of the N-Word in this movie and…”

            “’No?’ ‘Nobody?’ ‘None?’” Jackson broke in with deadpan inquisitiveness, “The word would be?”

            “I don’t want to say it” Hamilton muttered softly through the fading smile of a child

            “Why not?”

            “I don’t like to say it”

            Jackson paused thoughtfully for a brief moment, realizing the trap that Hamilton had walked into “Have you ever said it?”

            “No, sir”

            “Try it”

            “I don’t like to say it”

            “TRY IT”

            “Really? Seriously” Hamilton said, smiling with embarrassment and looking to his sides for help

            “We’re not going to have this conversation unless you say it”

            “…”

            “Do you wanna move on to another question?”

            “Yes! Awesome!”

            Jackson immediately broke out laughing in loud, pronounced syllables, easing the tension.

            Just when they seemed to have sailed on to clearer waters, Hamilton decided that the most prudent thing to do would be to remind Jackson, once again, that he did not like saying the word. This started a second round of back and forths that finally ended with Hamilton retreating from his question and saying “Sorry guys, it would’ve been a great question” to which Jackson replied “It wasn’t a great question if you can’t say the word”

            Watching the interview unfold, I was reminded of maybe a half dozen encounters that I’ve had with black acquaintances where the subject of race was brought up. In each case, upon seeing my obvious discomfort and quietness, they would laugh good-naturedly and say something along the lines of “Don’t worry so much. I love it when white people just be honest and real about race”.

            In theory, I agree with the mindset of Jackson and those black acquaintances. The whitewashing of our psychological truths only hinders a discourse that could move us forward as a culture. As Lenny Bruce argued, let’s use and diffuse these taboo words and subjects. Don’t sit there and pretend that the word “nigger” has never passed through your lips. There probably isn’t a man alive, white or black, which hasn’t said it in one context or another. In pretending otherwise you only obscure the sight of that you wish to combat. Racism in America is a monster, but how can we fight a monster in the dark?

            That is what I believe. How I actually act is a different story entirely. Upon hearing the laments for honesty in regard to a white person’s perspective on race, I nod my head thoughtfully and agree, but I never say anything substantial or personal. This is because any person’s true feelings on the thorny and multifaceted subject or race are going to be conflicted and critical and self-doubting and occasionally negative and occasionally hurtful.

            This is the truth. I was once working at a youth center. Kids would come in and play basketball, and it was my job to keep everything in order and do general maintenance and whatnot. The youth center was located directly on the divide in between the city and a nice suburb. As it happened, there was a relatively even divide of white kids and black kids who came in. More often than not, the white kids were from the suburb, and more often than not, the black kids were from the city. One day these two kids, who happened to be black, started asking me about my sex life. When I told them that that was none of their business they started laughing and saying “what’re you, a faggot?” As I was righting up a report, one of my coworkers, a black man named Paul who was in his late 20’s came up to me. “What happened?” he asked. I told him and he shook his head, “Were they black?”

            I cringed “Yeah”

            He shook his head again “Figures. They don’t have any respect for authority”

            There was no self-hatred in his voice; it was a mere observation. He was saying what we both knew: that the black kids tended to be from the city, that the kids from the city tended to come from poorer homes, that due to the high rates of single parenting among lower income households—along with the resulting need for the single parent to spend more time at work—poorer kids tend to have less parental presence in their life, and that kids with less parental presence in their lives are less likely to respond well to authority figures in general. We both knew that America’s history of institutionalized racism coupled with declining rates of social mobility and working class opportunity since the 1960’s were the reasons blacks faced these problems at higher rates.

            Objectively I knew all of this. And yet each time I got called a faggot or a retard by a black kid in the gym I could feel something maneuvering past my intellect and sinking into my bones. I could hear a voice in my head going “aw shit” when I’d see a group of black kids enter the gym. I could feel a tinge of disdain for them on sight. This was in spite of the fact that most times I had had no previous interactions with the group in question, and had nothing to judge them on other than the color of their skin.

            Now, that sort of thinking is obviously an example of racism. But does that make me a racist? I don’t see myself as one, but then again who does? In the end it doesn’t matter, at least not in the context of a black acquaintance asking for me to be open and honest about race. What matters is perception.

            Tony Hoagland, one of my favorite living poets, once wrote a poem called The Change. Written in first person, it described an unnamed narrator’s emotions as he watched a professional tennis match between a small white girl and a big, brass black player with “some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite”. As the narrator watches the match he finds himself, almost against his will, rooting for the white girl and feeling threatened by the black player.

            Such a poem may have a voice of racism, but it is an example of what open honesty in regard to race actually looks like. If you don’t believe me, go into any Irish Bar on the night when they bring some white fighter up for a shot at the heavyweight title. You’ll see three-dozen middle class dads cheering at each punch landed against black flesh and wincing at the final sound of white meat hitting canvas.

            Of course, Hoagland’s poem was met with controversy—or as close as the world of 21^st century poetry can come to mustering controversy—when the black poet Claudia Rankine decried the poem as racist. This is perhaps inevitable. And it is why I always find myself, in practice, going against what I believe in theory. Because even if a white person’s honesty does not voice racism, but rather a compassionate and fittingly conflicted perspective on race, there is always the chance that it will be misconstrued. That is not to say that black people are particularly likely to misconstrue a complex message; it is to say that a certain percentage of people, black and white alike, are shallow, hypocritical and unintelligent. And so, in offering what very well might be a totally non-racist, but unflinchingly honest perspective on race, there is always the possibility that it might be construed as racist. And if one were to make a habit of being open about race, it would be statistically inevitable that eventually one would hit upon one of those unintelligent people. It would be statistically inevitable that sooner or later someone would decry you as racist. And then your goose would be cooked. This is what all white people desperately fear—being deemed a racist. I proudly don the informal monikers of “dick”, “asshole”, and “shithead”, but even I would feel my stomach drop if I was ever deemed as “racist”.

            I realize that I sound somewhat callous right now in dissecting the dilemma that white people face. I am not trying to bemoan the problems that race causes for white people. Only an idiot would complain that race relations in America are particularly hard on white people. But realize this: if Hamilton had been open with Jackson and had said “yes, I have used the word ‘nigger’ in the past’”, perhaps his station boss would have respected his honesty and frankness, but then again maybe his boss would have gotten offended and fired him. So why would a white person be open and frank in that sort of situation? How could he be?

            Malcolm X once said something to the effect that the problem of racism will never end until the day when the white man and the black man can sit down together and speak openly and without fear of offending the other party. I believe that he was right. And I pray that that day comes. But I’m not gonna be the one to stick my neck on the line to bring it about.

            Are you?