Reclaimation

The past is a funny thing. I spend a fair amount of time worrying about it, and yet I’m not sure it actually exists. Now exists. But the past? Whatever went before is simply gone. Why perseverate?

At least, that’s what I tell myself when my personal hamster wheel is running at full throttle.

Last week, I gave my “Highly Opinionated Public Tour” at the Seattle Art Museum. It was a lot of fun. I’m glad I participated, and I’m relieved that I was able to muster an opinion or two to share. Mostly, I’m pleased that I had a chance to talk about my favorite thing in the space – which is of course a knit hat.

Like others I’ve discussed here, the hat was created by someone in the Bamileke community of Cameroon. It is a stunning hat in blues and tans, with a feathered crown. This is a hat of substance.

Honestly, I’m not certain what draws me to these hats. It may be the way it obliterates any distinctions between authenticity and theatricality. It may also be that I’m simply a bit odd. But I think the most likely reason is that if appeals to my sense of history and the feeling that something may be missing from my HVAC-coddled, tofu eating, minivan driving, day-to-day life. It reminds me of something gritty, grimy and, just maybe, African.

Let me explain.

A few years back I set out on a genealogy kick. I knew quite a bit about the origins of my mother’s side of the family, but relatively little about my father’s side. But the Internet being what it is, it wasn’t long before I was able to dig up quite a few records. Among those records were census entries from the late 1800s. And in those entries were a few surprises. One, in particular, stood out. Shortly after the Civil War, my family was living in Putnam Hall, Florida.

To most of you, this fact will seem innocuous. But I’ve been to Putnam Hall. Several times in fact. And I’ve spoken with several elderly Floridians and amateur local historians. And my observations seem to jibe with their assessments. White people don’t seem to have ever lived in Putnam Hall.

Let me be clear. I am pale. My father is also. And my children, thanks to the influx of Mrs. TSMK’s genes, bear a striking resemblance to beings sculpted from a melange of Marshmallow Fluff and Liquid Paper. No one would ever mistake any of us for being black.

Yet there it is on the census form. And although it is possible, I’m prepared to dismiss as highly improbable the possibility that Putnam Hall in the late 1800s was a progressive community with members of all races, colors and creeds linking arms and working side-by-side in the fields.

So where does this leave me, a man with a deep love of African art and music? A man who enjoys playing the banjo – which is after all African in origin? A man whose choices in clothing seem often to cause disdain among Caucasian colleagues but almost always draw compliments from friends with a more ample supply of melanin? A man who harbors a not-so-secret desire to moonwalk with wild abandon at every opportunity? 

Was my great-great-great whatever, so many years ago, black?  Did he ultimately pass himself off as white?  And if so, what did he give up in order to make that transformation?  What part of himself did he leave behind?  What part of him is in me, today?  And what part of him am I trying to reclaim for my own?

I'll never know. But after doing the museum tour, I did know that I needed a new hat. Something Bamileke-inspired. So I made one. And I wear it. And when I do, my friends of Swedish and Norwegian descent look down at their shoes and struggle to avoid eye contact. But I don’t care. I’m from Putnam Hall.

~TSMK

Aganist my Better Judgment

In one of my favorite movies, a young Marlon Brando is heard to say: "Daddy, I've got cider in my ear." 

He says this after accepting a sucker bet.  And though I haven't recently agreed to a wager, I'm starting to hear something swishing around near my tympanic membrane.  Against my better judgment, I've agreed to do something rather foolish.  Let me explain.

Several weeks back, I received an email from a fellow who works at the Seattle Art Museum.  They had a new exhibit coming up, and were looking for local people to lead what they refer to as "Highly Opinionated Public Tours."  The email asked me (TSMK, that is, not my day-to-day persona) to consider leading one of those tours.  

To truly grasp the chaos that erupted in my frontal lobes, a bit of armchair psychology is probably in order.

As you may have noticed, I blog.  And, in my opinion, unless blogging is conducted for purposes of communicating important messages or improving humanity, it is an exercise in narcissism.  It is navel-gazing with a microscope and a megaphone.  I've given this some thought, and believe the pantheon of egomaniacal behavior may be delineated as follows:

Now, suppose you're a blogger and a lawyer.  And you've been ordained over the Internet and occasionally refer to yourself not only as "The Reverend" but as "The Right Reverend."  And further suppose that you're the kind of person who will knit lace anywhere and everywhere, including in public.  You're not exactly working in a leper colony, now are you?

Coming from this perspective, its hard to decline when you're asked to do something where you're going to be effectively on a stage.  My first instinct was to jump at the chance.

But shortly after, self-doubt inserted its fingers into the nostrils of my subconscious and began to pull. 

What if I agreed to participate, but I was really boring?  What if I bombed?  What if people noticed that I know essentially nothing about art?  Worse yet, what if nobody bothered to attend?  It is one thing to do something poorly, its another thing entirely to go unnoticed.  Oscar Wilde was right - the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.   

The battle raged. 

I mentioned the opportunity to a few close friends.  Their response was unanimous; this was something I must do.  But then, cracks began to form in their facade.  One suggested I would likely go from piece to piece within the museum, making increasingly negative remarks until my tour culminated with a six-word indictment of one particular work: "That is a piece of [excrement]."   Clearly, my friends were having a laugh at the suggestion that I might be considered highly opinionated.  And they hadn't even seen the PEGB.

Still, the battle raged.

As my psyche cartwheeled from argument to argument, I started to notice something.  I do, on obviously very rare occasions, find myself having thoughts which could be considered highly opinionated.  Of course, this requires one to adopt tremendously strained definitions of both "highly" and "opinionated."  But still, it is conceivable that one might make such an argument.  Of course, if I met that person I would probably try to dissaude him or her from such an obviously flawed worldview, but then again that too might be considered the response of a highly opinionated person.  There was no way out of this conundrum.



And so, I have agreed to do this.  If you're in Seattle on March 11 and looking for something to do in the evening, please give some thought to stopping by SAM and taking in a tour of the new Nick Cave exhibition.  It looks really interesting - and even involves crocheted doilies incorporated into clothing.  If you're there at 8:30, perhaps we'll meet.  If you're patient and I'm extremely lucky, I might even think of something clever to say.  I just hope I can form an opinion.

~TSMK