i knooooo u c it

u ever sometimes just want to be scene? not so much understood. just looked at. not a glance but like, i good long stare. lol. wack i kno. hopefully i grow out of it.

but i knooooooooooooooooooooooooooow u c it.

Simple Struggle

Sometimes I just need to just speak plainly. Even though I am a writer. Perhaps especially because I am I writer. Sometimes I have to be my own best friend. my own father.

After one too many arguments, I now realize that I been trying to make Gods out of mere men. Mere women. Mere people--with emotions just as fragile as mine, with intellects just as meaningless as mines, with eyes just as clouded. I could not even be the friend I demand of my quote unquote friends.

It just came to me, real clear. People cannot give what they don’t have. Asking people who don’t know what love is to love me is like…asking Bush to speak intelligently, like asking me for patience, like Wynton trying to rap, like asking America for freedom. People cannot give you what they don’t have, what they don’t know. I struggle with the simple things in life, seriously.

So ima just stop asking folks, yo. I haven’t been just asking, I been begging. I play these really subtle games and things. I curse when I want to cry. I hurt because I want them to know exactly how that shit feels. Because a lot of the times, people don’t even know what they’re doing to me.

And I argue. I try to intellectualize legitimate, nonsensical emotions because people don’t respect feelings. They respect cause and effect. Logic and shit they can find in a book. But sometimes I’m like yo….even if u don’t understand, can u be there? I think this is the appeal of sex to me. And y I have so much of it. Just be there yo.

Fuck all that understanding foolishness. Because honestly, the same way u don’t understand you, I don’t get me. Anything else is a lie. And to touch is to be redeemed. And that is a lie. But a pretty one.

But I feel like I’m letting go of people by not arguing with them. Arguing is a manifestation of love. Because when you argue you’re saying that u value the other persons opinion. If u didn’t value their opinion, y would you argue? Sometimes I argue because I want them to be there. And so I think that some kind of intellectual understanding would make them act right. Make them love me.

But honestly, people use intellectual shit to tell lies. People intellectualize their fear, sadness. By intellectualize I mean try to justify themselves. I'm doing it now. Here's the honesty:

I’m soooo tired.

Of hurting.

So I’m not going to hurt anymore. And I’m going to fuck more often. Not because I’m shallow…but because sometimes that is the most u can ask from some people.

It’s not right, but it’s ok.

yo i'm a pianist! www.myspace.com/unlockthekeys

www.myspace.com/unlockthekeys enjoy the sounds! add me! give me a gig! or a straight financial donation. college ain't free! (and it's barely useful). "keep it movin" (my aunt pat):

i orginally wrote this for my myspace page. but someone thought it was unchristian, so i removed it. it's wierd but i feel like i'm going to have to edit and revise myself, in order for people to see what they need to see. i thought a pure calvin would be enuff. but obviously not. so henceforth everything will be "an image". you'll c.

anyway, this is back when i was trying to let people c me. foolishnes (or purity, innocence) is bound up in the heart of a child. here it goes: as unchristian as it gets:

i's my fathers son.he had a temper.sometimes he would hit me out of anger rather than discipline.impulsive.aggressive.as he is, so i am.with some exceptions.i didn't like football.he played in highschool and college.i didn't like the outdoors.i had allergies.and plus all the ( ) kids were skateboarding.and i tried skateboarding but it wasn't for me.nor were those kids.//i did gymnastics.i liked seeing dominique dawes at the '96 Olympics.her sexy behind.i like the idea of being graceful.of being limber.being fly.jazz.flying.on the fly.on a wall.crying.but i will also hit a mutherfucker.out of anger.as i am my father's...i hit hard.on the keys.not touch wise but i'm saying i be going for it.i be playing but not playing around.inside.outside.over.through.but never around.i like being fly.like ms. dawes. i do sound b(l)ack flips.handsprings.summersa(u)lts.no clogged arties.two my cuzins dead from over indulence...my cuzins talking bout where daddy at.where are our fathers?...Jesus Christ saved my life.and in the spirit of sonship i look to my father for a lot.last week for the first time, he talked to me like i was a man.//"if u want to stay in new york this summer, make it happen."//i hate college.i go to the new school for jazz and contemporary music.(i think jazz is contemporary music.maybe that's the problem.i definately know there is a problem.i got theories and shit.holler at me.)i love music because at the end of the day i'm not that smart.reality is a bitch and i head that she bites. i'm tryign to take a bite out this big apple, is hard.hard.paying rent for the first time.hard.insufficient funds. HARD. wanting those new kicks and having to wait.hard.that motherfucker shooting at Virgina Tech, right in my backyard.them not releasing those names soon enough.HARD.//music is a way for me to transcend my limitations as an intellectual.it is worship to me.when i can forget the circumstance say...God is.where i can feel beyond what i know.where faith and the joy of Lord are palpable.when i can nob my head in reverance.jazz is that vibe, in the moment.i'll take u to church the club.in Jesus's name.//i'm a writer sing (a little.of this little of that).but ma(i)nly.i'm my Father's son.they tell me i'm the spitting image.that would b nice.but sometimes i hit.hard.not out of discipline.but anger.young.black.male.stuntin like my Daddy.

www.myspace.com/unlockthekeys

and if u really want some more calvin, a be on facebook quite often. it's like myspace, only cleaner. like difference between sam'l club and walmart. i'll let u think about that one. alright.--calvin

Beautiful Things: Denny and The Revolutionary Every Day

It’s hard to eavesdrop. Polished wooden floorboards lie exposed down the middle of the rectangular room, and either side is lined with black leather seats. The room is generally neat and symmetrical, except for the area at the back of the shop where too many leather and poof jackets crowd the racks. But that’s the customers. Denny has nothing to do with that. It feels empty, with high ceilings and motionless fans, perfect for eavesdropping--but for the steady hum of clippers.
The shop is new, been open a year and some change. With 5 barber booths on each side, Denny Moe’s Superstar Barbershop is about three times the size of any of the other shops or salons on Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Blvd between 133rd and 134th streets. Despite the large capacity, there’s not that much talking going on. The 50% owner and manager of the shop Denny Moe explains that it’s because the shop is so big that conversations are usually confined to the barber and the client, instead of the philosophizing and banter bouncing around the entire place like it used to in older, smaller shops.
Speaking from 27 years of experience at 3 different barbershops, Denny says “most barbershops have an intimate setting. At the first shop I was at, we had no TV and radio was to a minimum. We had to entertain each other.” A middle-aged customer chimes in, gesturing and tapping his feet for emphasis with his head leaned back in a sink, hair being coerced back to youth. The men of the barbershop were “part barber, part psychologist, part fashion consultant. For years it’s been a therapy place for men, where we could congregate, talk, and chill.” The absence of women in most barbershops allows for black men to define themselves collectively. As such, in an era when blackness itself has become a brand, a commodity, and manhood is validated by mere things, the barbershop is a potent, vital place.

The flatscreen is usually tuned to Maury, Jerry Springer, Judge Mathis and his cohorts, or The True Crime Channel. Alternately barber and client alike criticize and revel in the outrageous, perhaps to normalize their mundane but underrepresented struggles. Today on Maury, a plump, oily-faced, weave-laden former prostitute is loudly admonishing promiscuous 14 year-olds girls, punctuating each sermonette with an angry “Nah hug yo mama!” And while we smile and shake our heads, it is understood that baby/mama drama is real.
Aaric, younger than some of the other barbers, is 34 but he could be 21. Clean-shaven with generous wide smile, he moved to New York to be with his former girlfriend and their daughter. He has another daughter in Ohio, “I hate it because I don’t see my daughter as much as I want.” Luckily he only has to pay child support for one child, which is 22% of ones income after taxes. “Child support is Uncle Sam’s sister.” As if to typify his story, a couple comes into the shop, the woman looking to use the restroom. While the she is gone, the brother hears our conversation and says “There go my daughter mother right there.” I think he said they were just coming from court.
Aaric: “And y’all can still walk down the street together? That’s a beautiful thing.”
“It is what it is.”

That single parent homes are a staple of the black community makes it unlikely that family could be created in a place of commerce. Aaric says “You live with these people. I feel closer to these dudes than I do my own blood.” Speaking of Denny Aaric says “You have to have a strong head of the table. Most owners don’t actually cut hair. They just come and collect the money.” That fact that Denny is a barber makes him a effective and empathetic leader.
Denny’s entrepreneurship is mirrored by that of his barbers. Each barber pays booth rent, sets his own prices, and deals individually with their own clientele. In this business model, individual and collective success is oftentimes one and the same. Denny mediated monthly meetings where the barbers set standards for dealing with customers, and settle internal disputes.
He also made sure that all of his barbers were licensed. Aaric says “To find a shop owner who has a masters who won’t charge $500 to $1,000 dollars is a feat.” Denny did it for free. The certificates are all neatly framed with taped in pictures of the respective barber.

Denny grew up Frederick Douglas Boulevard which he, like most Harlemites, still calls “8th Ave”. Walking down the streets now, you can see into Harlem. The flesh is torn. Newly completed apartments are still wrapped in metal structures, tall condos just in the beginning stages are bare skeletons of metal. Even the leafless trees seem naked, at the mercy of winter wind that pushes discarded artifacts down the Boulevard.
As his neighborhood is changing to accommodate people who aren’t from Harlem, Denny is expanding on the paradigm of the barbershop as community center. Denny tells his son that “he doesn’t need the hood, the hood needs him.” Activism through the shop is appearent in the little things. The counter beside the window is replete with advertising for other local black owned businesses, but also with flyers for financial and tax services, credit score recall and home ownership, cultural events around town, and barbershop events funding and coordinated by Denny. Last week’s was Networking 101, and this week it’s a poetry reading in honor of Women’s History Month.
Dressed in a Sean John shirt, Rocawear sweats, and clean white sneakers, Denny says he’s not too much into hip-hop—the deceased Gerald Levert provides the bumpin musical supplement to the shop’s Myspace page. But when asked he has plenty to say about our cultures obsession with consumerism rather than investment, the way promiscuity is glorified and how it undermines they family. But all of this consciousness he says, is rooted in a love for cutting hair, and compassion for people.
A big man who is quietly impacting, effortlessly authoritative, Denny was a bodyguard for 12 years. He used to work for Keith Sweat. “I love people smiling, b. I been doing security for a lot of years and my biggest thing is just seeing people happy. Sitting back and watching over them, making sure that they are safe…It’s a beautiful thing.”