MY BIRTHDAY; A RESPONSE TO ALEX HALEY'S MALCOLM X
It is January 2nd, also known as my birthday. I am 27 years old today.
January 2nd is possibly the worst birthday. I do not say this with even a hint of self pity, it’s just true. It is a forgotten day. At best, it is the official start of the New Year, people go back to work. Growing up it was often the day we returned to school from winter vacation. At worst, it is an utterly depressing day to hopefully be lived quickly and forgotten and added to the list of days in the category. But it is certainly not an eventful day, the opposite. People aren’t really ready to acknowledge any day as special until about half-way through the month.
I returned home yesterday, January 1st, around seven pm in a taxi. It was dark and I wasn’t sure if it was morning, evening, or night. I really wasn’t even sure what day it was. I was shaking and drifting in and out of consciousness in the back seat. I told the driver I would pay him forty dollars if he helped me carry my things into my apartment. My things consisted of two turntables, two speakers, two speaker stands, three bags of records, and a bag for a mixing board and all the cords.
I had DJed a rather large new years eve celebration in a 5,ooo sq. foot loft on Gansevort Road and Washington Street. I had been up until 10 am on the 1st, slept four hours, then returned to the loft to pick up the sound system.
The loft was covered in plastic cups, bottles, and forgotten articles of clothing up to about knee level. I helped others pick up garbage as we took shots of tequila from an unopened bottle we recovered from the stage area. We smoked four or five blunts.
Because it was New Years day I was having a great deal of trouble getting a cab (I guess some people do things besides recover on the holiday). I asked one cab to pull around, I had some things to load up, and then I had to go to Brooklyn. He looked at me like I was crazy and sped off. I called car services for two hours getting busy signals as we drank and smoked and laughed, talking about how crazy the party had been. I finally got a car.
I got home and fell into bed moaning for breathe. I slept until today, January second, my 27th birthday. The reason I was so tired, even unable to carry my own things into my apartment, was that I had exerted an amazing amount of physical energy during the party. What had allowed me to do this was just having read the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Before the party I sat and thought about Malcolm before a public speech. He was such a strong man, a sure man, and when he did things he did them wholly. Earlier in the day I had told friends I was going single handedly rock the party with my energy, and then retire and never DJ again. I was sure of this because of the book.
I have done embarrassingly little reading in the first 26 years of my life, but lately I have been tearing through entire books in only a few days. I feel almost as though I am racing to their ends. As I read and complete these books I cherish the words often stopping after a particularly touching line to let it wash over me. I can feel the words not only becoming part of my thinking, but part of my personality and spirit. The books make me better, thicker.
Usually when I DJ I am effected by who is there and what they think of me. I simply no longer cared about those things after reading Malcolm’s story. I was going to let my light shine bright right in the face of all the 500 people coming to the party no matter what happened.
The clothing I wore looked something like pajamas from 3030. I wore a pair of leopard print hammer pants and an oversized orange t-shirt with new all white Fila shoes and my longish curly hair (not optional). I was on a stage where the turntables were set up, and there was another platform the same height as the stage just in front of them. I was playing records, wildly dancing, sometimes walking around to the front of the stage to overlook the crowd as I addressed them with the microphone, “Are you mother fuckers ready to have some fun?”, the noise in the room would raise to a fever pitch as I ran back behind the turntables to play another tune. I did this for hours; sweating and dancing, screaming and mixing, drinking and hugging until I had fulfilled my promise to unleash.
When I awoke today, my 27th birthday, from 15 hours of sleep, I picked up Malcolm X and read the final pages, though, which I have led you to believe I had read already, I hadn’t. I had thirty pages left, and to be completely honest, I still haven’t read the epilogue (but that doesn’t effect the powers it gave me).
In these last thirty pages Malcolm returns to the United States from his first trip to the Middle-East and Africa when he reformed his thinking some what. If Malcolm had a flaw, and he admittedly had many as the humble last line of the book illuminates, “Only the mistakes have been mine”, it is that he lacked even an ounce of skepticism. He lived and preached what he believed to be true until he had an experience powerful enough to alter that course, even if it was completely contradictory to his prior notions. People saw him as powerful because he didn’t doubt. From when he grew up hustling to his education in prison, to his rise with Nation of Islam and his eventual split with them, he was exceptional in his commitment.
The next thing I did this morning was send the promoter of the party that had hired me a text message saying, “I’m retired”. If I learned anything from Malcolm X it is this. A great man need only see once what he ought to do before he starts doing it.
January 2nd is possibly the worst birthday. I do not say this with even a hint of self pity, it’s just true. It is a forgotten day. At best, it is the official start of the New Year, people go back to work. Growing up it was often the day we returned to school from winter vacation. At worst, it is an utterly depressing day to hopefully be lived quickly and forgotten and added to the list of days in the category. But it is certainly not an eventful day, the opposite. People aren’t really ready to acknowledge any day as special until about half-way through the month.
I returned home yesterday, January 1st, around seven pm in a taxi. It was dark and I wasn’t sure if it was morning, evening, or night. I really wasn’t even sure what day it was. I was shaking and drifting in and out of consciousness in the back seat. I told the driver I would pay him forty dollars if he helped me carry my things into my apartment. My things consisted of two turntables, two speakers, two speaker stands, three bags of records, and a bag for a mixing board and all the cords.
I had DJed a rather large new years eve celebration in a 5,ooo sq. foot loft on Gansevort Road and Washington Street. I had been up until 10 am on the 1st, slept four hours, then returned to the loft to pick up the sound system.
The loft was covered in plastic cups, bottles, and forgotten articles of clothing up to about knee level. I helped others pick up garbage as we took shots of tequila from an unopened bottle we recovered from the stage area. We smoked four or five blunts.
Because it was New Years day I was having a great deal of trouble getting a cab (I guess some people do things besides recover on the holiday). I asked one cab to pull around, I had some things to load up, and then I had to go to Brooklyn. He looked at me like I was crazy and sped off. I called car services for two hours getting busy signals as we drank and smoked and laughed, talking about how crazy the party had been. I finally got a car.
I got home and fell into bed moaning for breathe. I slept until today, January second, my 27th birthday. The reason I was so tired, even unable to carry my own things into my apartment, was that I had exerted an amazing amount of physical energy during the party. What had allowed me to do this was just having read the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Before the party I sat and thought about Malcolm before a public speech. He was such a strong man, a sure man, and when he did things he did them wholly. Earlier in the day I had told friends I was going single handedly rock the party with my energy, and then retire and never DJ again. I was sure of this because of the book.
I have done embarrassingly little reading in the first 26 years of my life, but lately I have been tearing through entire books in only a few days. I feel almost as though I am racing to their ends. As I read and complete these books I cherish the words often stopping after a particularly touching line to let it wash over me. I can feel the words not only becoming part of my thinking, but part of my personality and spirit. The books make me better, thicker.
Usually when I DJ I am effected by who is there and what they think of me. I simply no longer cared about those things after reading Malcolm’s story. I was going to let my light shine bright right in the face of all the 500 people coming to the party no matter what happened.
The clothing I wore looked something like pajamas from 3030. I wore a pair of leopard print hammer pants and an oversized orange t-shirt with new all white Fila shoes and my longish curly hair (not optional). I was on a stage where the turntables were set up, and there was another platform the same height as the stage just in front of them. I was playing records, wildly dancing, sometimes walking around to the front of the stage to overlook the crowd as I addressed them with the microphone, “Are you mother fuckers ready to have some fun?”, the noise in the room would raise to a fever pitch as I ran back behind the turntables to play another tune. I did this for hours; sweating and dancing, screaming and mixing, drinking and hugging until I had fulfilled my promise to unleash.
When I awoke today, my 27th birthday, from 15 hours of sleep, I picked up Malcolm X and read the final pages, though, which I have led you to believe I had read already, I hadn’t. I had thirty pages left, and to be completely honest, I still haven’t read the epilogue (but that doesn’t effect the powers it gave me).
In these last thirty pages Malcolm returns to the United States from his first trip to the Middle-East and Africa when he reformed his thinking some what. If Malcolm had a flaw, and he admittedly had many as the humble last line of the book illuminates, “Only the mistakes have been mine”, it is that he lacked even an ounce of skepticism. He lived and preached what he believed to be true until he had an experience powerful enough to alter that course, even if it was completely contradictory to his prior notions. People saw him as powerful because he didn’t doubt. From when he grew up hustling to his education in prison, to his rise with Nation of Islam and his eventual split with them, he was exceptional in his commitment.
The next thing I did this morning was send the promoter of the party that had hired me a text message saying, “I’m retired”. If I learned anything from Malcolm X it is this. A great man need only see once what he ought to do before he starts doing it.
posted by Dr. Fish | 2:06 PM
1 Comments:
Well written article.
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