U and I

U and I
are just two letters
with many others
in between

U and I
have never touched
have barely met
in diurnal time;
U and I
walk side by side
but still so far

U and I
share a role
and share company;
but still,
U and I
remain apart

To be together,
U and I
would be genius;
to put U
beside I -
two parts as one
in equilibrium

If only U
could dream of I;
to meet in dreams
when all is quiet

Fall in love with falling

Some fall in love

with bodies,

some fall for 

an ideal

And some avoid the 

fall at all;

their hearts stainless

as steel

But falling’s quite

the concept; 

see, you’re never in 

control

And though you might

think otherwise,

to fall’s what makes us

us whole

Of course, some land

with impact

and shatter with

a cry

But nothing’s wrong

with shattering;

in fact, it’s worth 

a try

So fall in love

with falling,

and don’t be scared

to break

Because it’s cracks and 

fractures that

the greatest impacts

make

On spraining my ankle at the bus stop

Today, I tripped

at the bus stop

and sprained my ankle

once again

But I got up

and swiped my card;

it turned out okay

in the end

Even though my

ankle was sore,

I did enjoy my

noontime ride

Because the sun

shone, as did I;

no weak ankle will

break my stride

I Build

Nights like these

when my head throbs

and my friends all

are elsewhere

and tomorrow

weighs upon my

brain and pillow

On nights like these,

I build

I build myself

a trojan horse

to lay within

and then emerge

to shocked faces

and smiling friends

I build a song

with chords like fire

and drums like fists

to share my heart

in sound and lyric

I build a meadow

and rocky stream

on which a tree

might someday grow

and I will plant

the first seeds

I build a world

in which I fly

and grow beyond

my body

and its limits

I build my world

with keystrokes

and pen strokes;

with rhyme and

vision; with

fear and false

security

as cornerstones

On nights like these,

I build

I Love Ladies: My International Women's Day Tribute to Femininity

It’s almost laughable how blatantly the patriarchal backbone of our society structured my own life when looking back; it would be laughable if it weren’t for the unfortunate mentality it forces into the mind of young boys, myself included. Growing up, I was “cursed” with a special yearly reminder of gender roles falling on my birthday. International Women’s Day, I am ashamed to admit, was something I once hated being associated with my day of birth. Of course, it didn’t help that other boys in my elementary school classes would inevitably tease me with that little bit of trivia each year, snapping me out of my self-focused birthday haze to feel my cheeks turn red at being associated with femininity. It’s absolutely stupid, in hindsight, but that was how it was. Not much more evidence is needed to prove a masculine culture than just a look at how little boys are raised to react to being compared to women.

But even at that age when boys and girls almost seem to be from different planets, I never felt quite right about the negativity attached to the opposite gender. As with many things in my life, this little paradigm presented itself to me most memorably in the form of music. In my younger years, I kept up with each semi-monthly NOW That’s What I Call Music! release, both to collect and to discover. Among dozens of tracks I still love to this day, many of my favorite discoveries on those releases were billed to women: “All For You” by Janet Jackson; “AM to PM” by Christina Milian; “Rock the Boat” by Aaliyah. “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child, I’m not even moderately ashamed to admit, was present on a mix CD I made in 2nd grade of my “favorite hits”. Despite the little quips by friends that my taste was getting a little too “girlish”, and despite the shame that society taught me to feel at that indictment, I never did feel truly ashamed for loving “girl” songs. A woman’s voice will always carry a certain emotion, a certain urgency that male singers will never truly be able to replicate - the ever-present knowledge that, in a man’s world, they are the voice that is able to be heard. 

It took years for me to be able to commit those thoughts on why I love female vocalists to words, but even in saying them, I concede that I’ll never truly be able to describe the unique power that a woman can convey; no combination of words will ever eliminate the fact of my privileged perspective as a male fan. Nevertheless, I’ll always be awed by the power of a committed woman to break through the ceilings arbitrarily set before her. This applies even more to women of color; as a longtime fan of R&B, from my young days with Janet to listening to Tinashe today, that’s a layer to the genre that I’ll never be able to ignore. And nor would I ever want to; when my little sister was able to go to a Ms. Lauryn Hill concert recently, I was beyond excited for her to experience firsthand the emotion and raw girl power I’ve always been awed by from an outsider’s perspective. That feeling of empowerment and gender positivity will always seep from between the notes of the feminine songs and artists I’ve admired, and it’s incredible to see the way that young ladies today can be inspired from them to speak their own truths. 

Today, on my 22nd birthday, I woke up and thanked those who had wished me well. But I did so with “Make Some Room” by The Suffers as a soundtrack, because there’s something else very important to be celebrating today. In a society that will always lean toward men without a concerted effort to the contrary, celebrating a single day each year to its fullest is the least that we can do - men especially. I’m lucky enough - I know this now - to have a very blatant reminder on my day of birth to celebrate the women that have made my life and the lives of so many others as great as they are. And again, celebrating one day is the absolute least that we can do in thanks. Each year, increasingly as I’ve grown and learned, I try to hold International Women’s Day as a signpost to keep in mind until the next time it rolls around - an impetus to always be thankful for the women that do the most to make this world a beautiful place.

One of the highlights of my semester thus far was the MU Vagina Monologues, a feminist play that my campus has held a rendition of for the past several years to highlight the issues that women face daily, the atrocities suffered by their gender that many would like to forget, and the feminine spirit that burns in each woman despite society’s constant efforts to snuff it. It was my first year attending, and I got to see several good friends of mine participate in discussions and readings that have stuck with me since. I can’t think of a more powerful singular piece than that evening that I’ve seen in quite some time, and International Women’s Day is as good a day as any to once again voice just how much respect I have for those women and all of their peers around the world who are increasingly carving for themselves the platforms they want to speak from. All I could think of while watching that show was how much I wanted my little sister to see and know those messages of self-love and gender positivity. Once again, the most awe-inspiring thing I always come back to about the female spirit is how powerfully they can and will inspire future generations to be the best women they can be. I’m just lucky enough to be able to appreciate all of it from the sidelines; it’s girls like my sister that will really be emboldened to grow from it. 

So, today, I wanted to just take some time to celebrate International Women’s Day and each and every one of the people in my life who are celebrating it as well. I love my mother, who will and always has been the biggest cheerleader I could ever ask for, and my father for showing me what it means to be a respectful, loving, and supportive husband. I love my sister, who seems to only ever be increasing her momentum toward a beautiful and successful future. I love my friends - those girls who let their voices be heard on the Vagina Monologue stage, those ladies who bring their own feminine spirit to each day and situation that they encounter to improve it, and my fellow men who hold their own respect for the women that help keep their world spinning. And most of all, I love that I was born on a day of such positivity and appreciation. You’ll catch me wearing out my “Power Womz” playlist today, and I’ll leave you with one of my favorites from it:

Kanye West and the Curation of Frustration

When Kanye West breathlessly exclaimed the release of his new album, The Life Of Pablo, on this week's Saturday Night Live, he wasn't met with the gasps of shock that he was likely looking for. Online, the general reaction was one of relief; after a notoriously messy rollout that was beginning to threaten the convolution of Rihanna's Anti, the final product was here at last.

Well, not quite yet. On the other side of the screen, my friend and I spent a good half-hour desperately googling for a link or a sign of the supposedly-released stream. In typical modern West (and Tidal) fashion, the release was late and came with multiple misnamed tracks, seemingly as unorganized as they day it was conceived. One might expect a reaction here of frustration, but again, this wasn't the case. For us who had been following the rollercoaster of a release, such a drop was more than just par for the course - it was the only logical conclusion to the whirlwind ride that had caused Pablo to arrive two days late and stumbling into the light as though shaking off the hangover of an ill-advised night out. 

On the road to its release, the album we now know as The Life Of Pablo saw many forms. It went through numerous title and track list changes, many of which were announced on a barely legible notepad autographed by the most lucrative of names. These updates were peppered with increasingly troubling tweets, from West's now-infamous Bill Cosby siding to his defense of an embarrassingly juvenile line about Taylor Swift to the admission just before SNL that he was $53 million in debt. What this very public descent into madness says for West himself is horrifying and another topic of discussion for another day. 

What it says about the current state of music releases is another thing entirely. Through all the changes, all the confusion and all the middle fingers to the world at large, the public remained all-ears for West’s next opus. In fact, the constant flux of information created a curious effect; it actually became difficult to not anticipate the album. Even the biggest Kanye haters still found themselves refreshing their feed for a new morsel of half-baked opinion presented as ambrosia; the think-pieces on the ignorance and spectacle of the man only began to add into the hodgepodge of promotion for the release. West took the concept of “no press is bad press” to a whole new level - he actively curated frustration to fuel the hype.

Now of course, West would vehemently disagree with this assessment, but this was no revolutionary idea. Just a few weeks ago, the aforementioned Anti finally launched with a whimper via an accidental Tidal release to the chorus of millions of Rihanna’s Navy banging their heads against their walls. Besides the obligatory chart-fodder of the Drake-featuring “Work”, there was no clear hit on the album; even “Work” barely fit that bill. Remaining true to its name, Anti subverted all exceptions and hopes from both fans and critics alike, resulting a piece of work uniquely removed from realistic expectation. One could argue that this was Rihanna’s plan all along; one could just as easily argue that she truly stopped caring somewhere along the road. Either way, the album has been received mostly with surprised acclaim laced with bitterly conceded respect for its sheer irreverence to the structures that were once as integral to Rihanna’s star as her own voice.

Going against the grain doesn’t always work out as well, however. Nothing is more proof of this and relevant to the topic at hand than the case of Frank Ocean’s missing sophomore LP. The project had been rumored and hotly anticipated from just after the release of his debut channel Orange. The elusive R&B singer set the blogosphere ablaze early in 2015 when he posted a picture of what seemed to be his second album packaged as a magazine with a teaser hashtag of #JULY15. Well, as the sun set on the final day of July 2015 with no sign of an album much less an acknowledgement, fans began to crumble into hot frustration that sent Ocean’s name to the top of the trending topics. Unfortunately, there is yet to be a culmination to this story; his project (rumored to be called Boys Don’t Cry) still is nowhere to be found, with Ocean himself neglecting to even reference the stressful July of the past year. Fittingly, the only place we’ve heard Ocean since then is on The Life Of Pablo, soothingly closing the somber "Wolves" with a show-stopping verse that - again - brought him right back to the forefront of music fan’s discussions. With almost no promotion and little more than 20 seconds of total music released in the past year, Frank Ocean is once again the most anticipated name in R&B.

And likely, this is exactly what he was going for. In all three of these aforementioned cases, the collective anger of millions of fans and foes alike coalesced into something tangible. Trending topics, news headlines, thought pieces and condemnations all cobbled together create a fascinating whole: the modern promotion chimera. The days of traditional rollouts are slowly beginning to fade, and the proof is in the results; did anyone even blink when Coldplay announced A Head Full of Dreams, an album that bashfully released four weeks later to weak fanfare and middling reviews? No; it was Wilco’s release of Star Wars a day before their headlining performance of the whole set at Pitchfork Music Festival that turned modern rock fans' heads. Did Justin Bieber’s Twitter manipulation and use of famous friends to announce the release of Purpose light up the web? It did, but not as much as when Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late - a glorified mixtape - showed up on iTunes with little more than word-of-mouth leading up to it to become one of the biggest pop records of the year. Both in terms of initial impact and long-term retention, the modern music-consuming public is clearly showing their preference.

To return to West, did the absurd rollout process affect how the world received Pablo? At least in my opinion, absolutely. In fact, the context of his stream-of-consciousness public persona gave an essential level of detail to the amalgam of sound and statement that drives the album. Just as the irreverence of Anti’s release structure lent the same devil-may-care attitude to Rihanna’s art, the mania that is Kanye West in 2016 is perfectly emulated in The Life of Pablo. To think of the project as an aural representation of West spewing his thoughts out onto a blank canvas and handing it to the world with a cherry on top is not only logical; it’s almost demanded by the time one makes it to the end of the tracklist.

To say we live in a complicated world of music is an understatement. We’re in the midst of the shift from digital downloads to streaming, from the traditional industry patterns to an age of throwing things at a wall to see what sticks (and recoups investments). And in the midst of it all, the projects that stand out are those that embrace the chaos. “Pulling a Beyoncé” was just the start; in 2016, expect music releases to become even more convoluted, frustrating, and - most importantly - compelling. One could argue that the Kanye method of promotion and release - complete, utter insanity - could actually be looked at as an extension of the final work itself. I’d tend to agree; in such a scatterbrained world, focusing attention is an art all its own, and truly enterprising artists are starting to see the crafting of frustration toward an eventual payoff as a worthwhile pursuit. Where this path will lead for music’s future is uncertain, but it will certainly catch us off-guard again and again on the way.

Bernie Sanders, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

(Photo by Phil Roeder, via Flickr)

I’ve proudly displayed a Bernie 2016 sticker bumper sticker on my blue, slightly beat-up Subaru for a few months now. The amounts of little jabs at my ever-so-hip car-and-politics combo, middle fingers from people with trucks and confederate flag ornaments, and enthusiastic thumbs-up in the rearview that I’ve received in that time are more or less equal. I willingly and proudly became a stereotype in order to show support for the most exciting politician and, if you’d believe his words, revolution leader to come forth in my adult life. That this is only my second legal election is beside the point.

Actually, it’s definitely not beside the point. As the excitement of 2015’s historic “digital grassroots” campaign began to wear off, I started to feel a bit like the callow millennial voter I’d laughed off being pegged as at first. I began to find myself repeating the complaints of my parents and many others, things along the lines of “okay, Bernie, and what else?” No more common was this than during the Democratic Town Hall that was held last week; in such a one-on-one alternative to the gladiator fights of the debates, I was excited to see Bernie given the perfect chance and - more importantly - ample screen time to bring his message past the repetitive rhetoric.

And yet, he didn’t do that. In fact, he even fielded a softball pitch - almost literally “what does Democratic Socialism mean to you?”, clearly meant to coax this sort of detail - with almost exactly the line that my roommate predicted seconds before. "What democratic socialism means, to me, is that economic rights, the right to economic security, should exist in the United States of America," said Sanders, preaching to the choir with the intensity of a weathered pastor counting the number of sermons left before retirement. "It means there is something wrong and government should play a role in making sure that all of our kids regardless of their income are able to get a higher education." The words are strong and not without blunt truthfulness; they are also words that we’ve heard from Sanders many times before as part of the same grab bag of buzzphrases he’s seemed to pull from to answer every question while the camera is on.

What’s frustrating about this willingness to rest on his laurels is not just its contrast against Sanders’ repeated claims of a political “revolution”. It's far worse, in fact; it’s reflective of a confusingly unfocused late-game strategy that only seems to indicate a lack of planning for the campaign to have gotten to this point at all. These rhetorically charged messages, these facile castings of the government versus the kids, of income and class warfare, were essential to the establishment of the uniquely successful grassroots campaign borne of the Internet and a generation - my generation - more than willing to listen when things are put in such dramatic terms. Even now, they seem like great outlines, the kind of talking points that we cheered for when Bernie forced the hand of the election season into discussing them.

But we’re not in 2015 anymore, and that ingenious social-media fueled early campaign has given way to far less than its counterpart at the national stage. Bernie Sanders is not just an established name at this point; he’s the direct underdog-with-candor in opposition to Hillary’s “establishment” politics, and certainly able to be considered a big name in the election season. He’s eaten up a sizable - but not majority - portion of the Democrat preference. And here he is in a position many dreamed of but a year ago; live on national news, in front of millions, engaged in a one-on-one interview with the attention of not only the devoted, but the unsure and even the opposed. Here, of all places, he chooses to lean on the same surface-level quotables we’ve heard for the past year.

Granted, Sanders has always favored an easy grab for a head-nod over detailed explanations of his policies. Granted, he did do a solid job with litigative transparency later in the discussion when he compared his voting record to Hillary’s in big votes such as Wall Street deregulation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Granted, even, that he’s continuing to appeal very strongly to my generation which - granted - does not have the real-world stripes that lead many to shake their heads at Bernie’s idealism and ask to see the economic receipts. 

That all is granted, but a truly successful presidential campaign does not choose to shoehorn its appeal into one voter-base, and especially not one that historically has had a problem with actually getting off its asses come election day. The millennial still in college is all ears, of course, but Sanders has both the opportunity and impetus now to expand beyond his niche as the “youth candidate”. Ironically enough, the oldest candidate is still having issues reaching those closer to his age. To the average American, “Democratic Socialism” still sounds like something on a spectrum between Marxism and a blind fantasy that willfully ignores the capitalist backbone on which this country was built and continues to (for the most part) prosper. That’s not to say at all that his thoughts are to be laughed aside. However, it’s becoming difficult to argue for an unclear and controversial concept that even its champion refuses to explain. Such a politically inciting idea should be something that Sanders is itching to support with the sort of numbers-don’t-lie evidence that would appeal to the right-leaning voters he stands to sway; as it is, he seems content to let it remain a vague clarion call for those who’d rather not think about the details.

Therein lies the frustration of attempting to continue feeling the #Bern at the start of 2016. As fringe candidate Martin O’Malley continues an impressively stubborn losing campaign that has, to his credit, never fallen victim to sensationalism at the expense of never really gaining steam, many formerly unswayable Sanders supporters - myself included - are starting to wish that an O’Malley vote wasn’t so out-of-the-question. Even more frustrating, the Hillary Clinton campaign that has never truly needed to steady itself is still going strong, even as its candidate continues to prove that she needs to calculate the public response to any opinion (see: Keystone XL) before settling on something that would offend the least of her constituents (read: donors). Against a Goliath with so many weak points worth an attack, Bernie is playing a rather bashful David.

When the opportunity to unpack “Democratic Socialism” for the entire nation went unseized, thousands of Sanders supporters nationwide - once again, myself included - felt the momentum of his campaign begin to stall. As the night continued, those same supporters watched O’Malley make the absolute most of his time on stage with the charisma they once expected from their hero. They saw an ever-confident Clinton beam with renewed assurance that no more surprise “damn emails” moments would be thrown her way. And, frustratedly, they ended their watch with a feeling of lack - a lack of confidence in their candidate and a lack of an undefined but expected moment of #Bern that never came. Again, this is only weeks before the primary vote and days before the Iowa caucus. The #Bern should be burning brighter than ever, rather than complacently flickering as it currently seems to be. As the primaries loom on the horizon, now is not the time for Sanders to come off as anything resembling complacent. And unlike all of the other debates that left his supporters wanting more, there’s no longer a “next time” to hold hope for.

I’ll continue to rock my Bernie bumper sticker with the pride of a fan, albeit one with slightly less conviction. I’ll still be out for the primaries to cast my vote for him, even as I begin to accept that I will likely not be able to do the same in the fall. I’ll be following the Sanders campaign until he’s voted out of the race, a conclusion that is beginning to seem foregone. But I’ll be doing so with the concessive frustration baked into me by growing up as a Chicago sports fan - that my guy, despite all of the hope once poured into his name, will not be coming out of this on top. And frustrating of all - it’s his own doing (or lack of doing) that’s sinking the chance for a Sanders ticket.