In New York you see them with their guitar case laid open on the concrete floor singing their hungry hearts for change and dollar bills. Some walk by and cringe in embarrassment. Some place dollar bills in their hands. Some, mostly kids, make fun or harass. It’s not an easy life. In the summer, they hang in parks selling homemade t-shirts, jewelry or paintings. Some think they are hippies. They sometimes perform Isben plays or recite Shakespeare. In Louisiana they dance to drums and perform acrobatics. It’s a hard living. I say it is art by any means necessary.
In life we are supposed to stop and smell the roses but ignore each other. On my way to an interview for a job I didn’t want, I saw an older male group singing 60s souls music. The harmony was beautiful but I was in a bitter mood. My first judgment was they were homeless or crack heads who could sing. At first, I felt a little annoyed because I judged their presence as pollution to my mundane existence. I didn’t like my life. At first judgment, I felt sorry for them, figured they couldn’t get a real job and leave decent folks alone. Yet, in my heart, I knew I needed them. I needed their sad eyes and struggled smiles to be there singing their hearts out for pennies. I needed that part in the world that went against the status quo, that part in the world that made me believe just because it didn't make a lot of money or some fat head didn't approve, it can still exist. I tipped two dollars I couldn’t afford. Some people stop and smell the roses to feel better about their life. Some give money to the homeless to better appreciate their own homes. I give to the street artists, those who I figure are refugees. I have to support the fight for freedom. This is my life.
Where I grew up was like communism China but we called it the niggard ghetto. It’s always been “art” by any means necessary. To be soulful wasn’t encouraged unless it came in capitalistic constraints. I ran away. I didn’t feel like dying in a war I didn’t support. I became a refuge artist. When I’m on the streets in my "I'm a writer" t-shirt trying to sell my comic some look at me like I lost a war or something. I just hope they support freedom.
A refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, finance, religion, nationality, artistic expression, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.
I don’t claim to be a Darfur victim, but some days it feels like it’s my life or my art.
The war with money had become an issue in my life again. I had somehow figured out a way to escape it for a year with food stamps, unemployment and selling my comic. The unemployment ran out. I didn’t recertify the food stamps because I hated feeling like a loser. I had no choice. I was going to have to find work again. I hadn’t won the war yet. I was still a refugee.
Every time I look in the “want” ads I get a headache because I don’t want anything in it. I usually feel queasy and have to go lay down for an hour or two. I used to think it was laziness. I have to force myself to scan through the job ads because bartenders and the weed man don’t like broke people.
In life we are supposed to stop and smell the roses but ignore each other. On my way to an interview for a job I didn’t want, I saw an older male group singing 60s souls music. The harmony was beautiful but I was in a bitter mood. My first judgment was they were homeless or crack heads who could sing. At first, I felt a little annoyed because I judged their presence as pollution to my mundane existence. I didn’t like my life. At first judgment, I felt sorry for them, figured they couldn’t get a real job and leave decent folks alone. Yet, in my heart, I knew I needed them. I needed their sad eyes and struggled smiles to be there singing their hearts out for pennies. I needed that part in the world that went against the status quo, that part in the world that made me believe just because it didn't make a lot of money or some fat head didn't approve, it can still exist. I tipped two dollars I couldn’t afford. Some people stop and smell the roses to feel better about their life. Some give money to the homeless to better appreciate their own homes. I give to the street artists, those who I figure are refugees. I have to support the fight for freedom. This is my life.
Where I grew up was like communism China but we called it the niggard ghetto. It’s always been “art” by any means necessary. To be soulful wasn’t encouraged unless it came in capitalistic constraints. I ran away. I didn’t feel like dying in a war I didn’t support. I became a refuge artist. When I’m on the streets in my "I'm a writer" t-shirt trying to sell my comic some look at me like I lost a war or something. I just hope they support freedom.
A refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, finance, religion, nationality, artistic expression, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.
I don’t claim to be a Darfur victim, but some days it feels like it’s my life or my art.
The war with money had become an issue in my life again. I had somehow figured out a way to escape it for a year with food stamps, unemployment and selling my comic. The unemployment ran out. I didn’t recertify the food stamps because I hated feeling like a loser. I had no choice. I was going to have to find work again. I hadn’t won the war yet. I was still a refugee.
Every time I look in the “want” ads I get a headache because I don’t want anything in it. I usually feel queasy and have to go lay down for an hour or two. I used to think it was laziness. I have to force myself to scan through the job ads because bartenders and the weed man don’t like broke people.
After I send out my resume, I remember my cousin Tweety. He was one of those kids who had gone bad like dandelions in a good yard. Everyone whispered about it like his family forgot to cut their grass in the summer or didn’t put up Christmas lights. I was only eight years old. I thought Tweety was the coolest motherfucker I knew. He played basketball like a speed demon or like some twisted Salvador painting, absurdly brutal and vicious. He was very popular and all the girls liked him because he was very good looking. I remember my grandmother saying in disgust that he was full of sin. She said he sat around and worried his parents with his nonsense of wanting to be more than what he was. The odds were against Tweety. I mostly remember the disapproving tone in her voice. It was as if Tweety not wanting to scrub McDonald’s toilets or whatever job there was for a black kid growing up in the ghetto was something his parents needed to cure before something really bad happened like the cops.
It was the late 80s ghetto. The sad part, Tweety did get a full scholarship to college but his freshman year he got busted for selling drugs. He lost the scholarship and got a couple of years in prison. No more Michael Jordan dreams. Six years later when Tweety got out, I was fourteen years old. I remember him on the basketball court. He was still popular and good looking. He was still a legend in my humble ghetto. I saw him on the basketball court and he looked so free, the way he moved was like he was playing against himself, playing against his demons. Seeing my cousin Tweety on basketball court I knew in my heart that it was the only place in the world he could win. I knew if he stayed inside those parameters he would always be the hero, but the second he stepped outside the boundaries, he was just another black kid in the ghetto who dreams didn’t work out. It was that need for money, that instant gratification that caused Tweety his dream. He couldn’t sacrifice. He couldn’t starve for his art. He didn’t even know he was in a war. If only he had become a refugee. Maybe he could’ve been saved.
A friend who buys my weekly comic every week at the bar called me a starving artist. I didn’t like it because I knew what it really felt like to starve. In the ghetto we were so “po” that we couldn’t afford the last part of the word. It was the shame the food stamps. It was the constipation of the government cheese. The electricity got cut off every other month. Most of my clothes were from the Salvation Army or hand me down clothes. I remember bathing and brushing my teeth with baking soda or eating cereal with water or mixing that awful dry powder milk. Then there were days when we just ate rice with pepper because we didn’t have sugar. There were days when we just didn’t eat. I lost the use of my legs when I was eleven years old for a week because I wasn’t getting enough sodium in my diet. So I knew what it felt like to starve. I wouldn’t do it on purpose.
Yet, I knew a different type of starving artist. Art was like food for me. When I can’t express, it feels like I’m starving. When I was in ninth grade I won the U.I.L playwriting contest for my play “Rosa Parks.” The finals were going to be held at University of Texas which was an hour and half drive. I knew my grandmother wouldn’t let me go because it was after school. My school Principle told me he called her and she said I could go. I knew he was lying. I didn’t care. I wanted to perform my play. I didn’t get home until almost midnight that day. We won. I got a trophy and a certificate. I got a standing ovation. I couldn’t be more proud until I got home. The second I walked through the door my grandmother slapped me to the floor. The trophy fell and broke. It didn’t matter that I won because all she cared about was that I didn’t come home from school to do my chores. I remember after the beating nursing my bruises. I cried not because of the pain. I cried not because of the trophy being broken. I cried because it felt like my soul was being purposely murdered. There was a part of me that needed freedom and it was imprisoned. I felt life was unfair. I was finally getting three meals a day in that prison but I was starving.
So I went underground. I became a refugee. I hid. I wrote my stories at two o’clock in the morning on that back of cereal boxes or the corners of newspapers. I snuck and acted in plays. It was like this force I needed to get out of me.
But war is hard especially if it’s with your family. I got tired of having to fight or hide all the time. It started wearing on my soul. I stopped taking my art seriously. I stopped seeking the expression. It was like I died. I just didn’t want to be a burden on my family. I just didn’t want to embarrass.
I know a different type of starving. When I graduated high school and went to college, I did what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy. I got the big job in the city. I got a great apartment. I wore fancy designer clothes. I had really cool friends. I wasn’t happy. We would go to art shows or museums and I feel part of me screaming. Every time I walked into a book store I feel a part of me clawing at my beaten into submissive demeanor. I felt so cold inside. Every day I got on that elevator in Chicago to go to the 42nd floor to my cubicle, I felt like I was suffocating. I was suffocating in my Hugo boss slacks, button up shirt and that shiny red tie strangling my neck. I started to know what it really felt like to starve as artist. I spent three years in Corporate America and was skin and bones. I walked around life like I was an emaciated skeleton. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t feel the kiss of a lover. I couldn’t feel the cold Chicago wind against my face. I couldn’t feel the pleasure of an orgasm. I had all the material bullshit but couldn’t feel. I felt as if I was barely breathing. I believe it’s because some people just got to dance. Some people just got to sing. If they don’t it’s like the sun not rising. It’s just darkness.
When I walked away from “good life” no one understood it. My sister only understood that she got really cool Christmas gifts and that was ending. My friends understood I could afford the tab at the trendy restaurants and that was ending. I understand I was in a loveless marriage. I was playing straight and gay as a two dollar bill. I wanted love that made my toes curled. I was looking for love that when I went to sleep I couldn’t wait to get back to it. Real success was finding something to love and allowing it to love me back.
The day I realized I was going to be an artist, I cried. I had to accept it. I had to find a way. But it’s a war to make a living. I want the same things other people want. I want security. I want a stable home. I want to be able to afford dry cleaning again.
It’s a war to get the respect back from your family after too many years of doing what they called child’s play. It’s the reason I call myself a refugee artist. It’s like when I was back in ninth grade, how I had to find a place that would allow me to be without the persecution. I think of my cousin Tweety on the basketball court. I know the only way I can win is with the pen and paper.
And then there’s the war inside my head. I’m constantly apologizing to grandma or my family for the embarrassment because I haven’t’ made it yet. I don’t make much money. I got to supplement the income with selling comics on the streets, bars and clubs. I got to get jobs I don’t like. It’s still a refuge. I don’t want the alternative. I need to express. I am a writer. I am an artist.
Thank you for your purchase. Stop to smell the roses but don’t stop supporting art. You see me singing my heart out in the subways. You see me painting faces at carnivals. You see me dancing in the parks. You see me playing my saxophone in the rain in February. You need me. We are all in this war. Let’s be free.
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