fat juicy oyster

HARVEST

2011-11-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

1.
It's a common sight in Nepal these days: women (mostly) preparing rice for drying. Grain flies through the tiny slits of big round sifters (with the help of an electric fan in the absence of breeze), and lands in knee high piles shaped like cones on burlap squares in the sun. Tourists are encouraged by Lonely Planet to look out for such scenes; expect them, photograph them. Instead of whipping out my camera, I, ever obsessed with the roots and origins of things, think about the rice "terraces" stacked like stairs along the Himalayan mountainside. I think about what it takes to get those rice grains from there to here in the village square. Think about the women I've seen higher up in the Himayalas, drinking chai from silver travel mugs on their breaks, tilling the soil in saris glamorously red and pink, even doing such hard labor.

2.
Summer in Copenhagen saw Prince put on two days of The New Power Generation Festival, featuring Janelle Monae, Chaka Khan, and Raphael Saadiq as opening acts. The man himself was accompanied by Maceo Parker and a New Orleans brass band. We jumped and grinded until the last sweet burp of Parker's sax sounded out in the packed Scandinavian field, saturated by Purple Rain.

Blue Eyed Soul managed to wrangle us a spot in line for the after concert, coiled around Amager Bio. Janelle Monae sang "Tightrope" acoustic, then each member of the NPG took her/his turn at the mic, as The Purple One emerged sporadically to bless the efforts of his hardworking clan with his magical guitar. He was wearing a funky red suit with a matching head band, I believe. But to be honest, Blue Eyed Soul and I were making out so furiously we barely registered that Prince was in the room. Much of the next day (my last in CPH) is also a blur. I remember clearly only the sweet, drunken Greenlander called Vistus we befriended in a shady Christainia saloon, and Blue Eyed Soul's flat. It was central and littered with boxes and the evidence of a man who liked transit. This was too fucking good. I had to pinch myself.

"Dude, did that happen? Did we see Prince last night? Wait--do you think he saw us??" Looking back, we were shockingly indiscreet.

"I think if he did see us," Blue Eyed Soul answered, "he'd approve."

B.E.S. was moving to Kathmandu for a course in Tibetan Buddhism in only a week. In a few hours, I'd be on a flight to NY for a month of family time. "You should come," he said for about the 3rd time since we'd met. The first time, we sat overlooking the harbor docking the Queen of Denmark's yacht. I said no. Yet here I am traveling the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal; om-ing, writing, and throwing dancehall/reggae parties in the Himalayas. "We're lucky." I tell him. "It's a blessing, he says back.

3.
As any personal blogger will tell you, it's difficult to maintain blogging when you're going through personal turmoil. Turmoil is not quite the word...perhaps...change. Your content is all wrapped up in musings about your everyday, which becomes impossible when events are happening too quickly, or even, too painfully for you to assimilate them properly before sending them out into the void of the Internets. Blogging demands a certain momentum and timeliness, while life change deserves stillness and time.

The main upheaval was my break up with the Serb*. I'm more clear now than I was in the months leading up to it that this was for the best. This sounds cliche, but once we actually pulled the trigger, which (not to pile on the platitudes) had been a long time coming, I had all kinds of energy. Energy to meet deadlines and get paying writing gigs, travel, date, and finally, admit to myself that it wasn't working. That's always been the hardest for me in relationships: admitting that it's time to fold.

But once I do accept that something (something I very much cherished) is over, I waste no time moving on. I'm swift and timely like the best of power bloggers. And it isn't about trying to replace what I've lost. I've learned not even to register it as a loss, but an opportunity. Everything has burned to the ground and it's about creating something entirely fresh. No harsh feelings or animosity. Just opportunity. Fertile ground. Then comes the tilling. Then, the harvest.

For those of you curious and caring enough to inquire by email, Twitter, tumblr message, blog comment and the like, things are just fine. Better than. Stay tuned. NAMASTE.

*The Serb is doing great, btw. On some real "theaters near you" shit. Super proud of him.
**This photo of Blue Eyed Soul was taken last week in the Himalayas.

Confronting a Legend: Guyana's Kaieteur Falls

2011-04-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

Kaieteur Falls from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

"[Poet AJ] Seymour's "Legend of Kaieteur" has it that Kai was the chief of the Patamoona Amerindian tribe. According to local legend, a neighboring tribe, the Caribisi, suddenly waged war on the Patamoona. When the destruction of his tribe seemed imminent, Kai went to Mokonaima Falls (also spelled Makanaima), to ask The Great Spirit to save his people. The Great Spirit's messenger-birds return to tell Kai that he must come "before His face for ever". Only in exchange for this will The Great Spirit make sure that no harm comes to the Patamoona. Thus Kai set off into the flood in a "frail boat", neither his body nor his boat seen again. It is said that Kai still sits today looking into the face of The Great Spirit of the Fall, listening to the siren-like voices of the fall's feminine spirits."

This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote it in 2001. I saw Kaieteur Falls for the first time in December 2010. According to another legend Kai was a miserable old man; so unbearable was his character that his own family put him in a boat and pushed him off the falls. In a far more probable tale, it's said that most Guyanese have never seen it.

*Kaieteur is misspelled in the beginning of the vid. Sincere apologies to the great spirits.

Blood On the Dancefloor

2011-04-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

A very wise filmmaker once told me, "Interracial relationships live and die on the dance floor". Or maybe it was, "The dance floor provides the true test of any interracial relationship." Either way, in the case of the Belgian Billionaire, this was almost literally true.

We met at a party hosted by a Jamaican couple in South Florida. He had a full head of silver and black slicked back hair. Tall, buttoned down and jacketed, looking like he came out of an Ocean's 11 remake, I liked him immediately. He acted like I didn't exist. Luckily it was New Year's Eve, my entire family was there, and we had all the makings of a classic night.

I won't apologize for being the stereotype* when it comes to black people, dancing and sangin'. Especially when I'm all euphoria and loved up and surrounded by other black people. That night I went buck wild like it was '94, and hip hop and dancehall were life. At one point I remember standing at the edge of the dance floor and turning to see my parents in the kitchen, bouncing in unison to some ignorant dirty south song or another. Luke or Lil John. We're not even drinkers. It's all natural crunk.

Bill and I ended up dancing with each other for most of the night, until on a slow roots reggae tune, he tried to kiss me. This was problematic. Yeah, I thought he was cute. And by that point I'd been officially grinding on him for the better part of 2007. But so? Where I come from, you can dance with someone, all night even, without there being meaning beyond the dance. Not so with European men, it seems. As far as they're concerned, you only dance with someone so intimately because you want to have sex with them. This is not as 'rapey' as it may sound. Not like normal guys will force you if you decline. But there isn't this idea that a dance is just a dance. It's normally the beginning of something, not an end in itself.

Barely a year after that night, we were living together in Belgium, being chauffeured to the party where I'd meet his friends for the first time. It was hosted by a couple who lived in a house separated from the street by a moat. A footbridge led you to the main structure; it wasn't really just a house, but something like a complex of small buildings. In the middle, they'd erected a party tent. Couches, candles and tables on one side, a dance floor on the other.

The first Real Housewife of Flemish Belgium I met, a pretty blonde in black cashmere who greeted me with her arms folded across her midsection, said, "You seem nice. I might like you. But I liked his ex-wife, too". The husbands brought me pink, girly drinks, talked to me about selling rare automobiles and drilling wells in West Africa. Others took turns tossing me around the dance floor. People in Belgium do the hustle, ballroom-style, like, at parties and in nightclubs. They were highly entertaining. All except for mine. He insisted I wasn't having a good time.

"Why aren't you dancing?"

"Did you not just see me dancing with Husband #5?"

"Yes, but you are not like you were on New Year's Eve."

We had our first real fight that night. Obviously, the spirits of dance are not likely to visit upon one in a house with a moat in Flemish Belgium (not even Brussels!) in the same way as they would at a Jamaican party in South Florida. Obviously. Either this man wasn't aware of the mysterious ways in which the spirits of dance move, or he didn't know who I was at all. Was it that he was afraid I wasn't enjoying myself unless I was bouncing off the walls? Or was he just craving gyrating exotic girl me? I waited until after we crossed back over the footbridge to ask.

*I don't want to get into any big thing about stereotypes, and "how dare you [I] suggest that all black people can dance!" Because most black people can dance. And if you are black and this doesn't describe you, then this isn't the post for you.

In Which A Korean Performance Artist Sets Out to Sell Snow on the Beach

2011-04-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

Korean artist Yva Jung had been slanging snow straight from New York City for almost an hour when the police came by. Without a permit, they said, selling on the beach was illegal. Yva, original from Seoul, but has been working and schooling first in Montreal, and currently in New York City, had no idea what was really being said. Her boyfriend, an up and coming Catalan photographer called Joel was doing all the talking. They seemed determined to make her leave. Then they thought about it. Snow. In an envelope on the beach in Barcelona. On a sunny day. She wasn't going to sell a damn thing. They let her stay where she was.

Amidst a range of reactions, responses, and feelings (yes, people had feelings about it all!), I tried to translate. But the truth was that I had no idea how Yva managed to put snow in an envelope. I witnessed...

Mistrust:
"But how is that snow from New York?"
"How do I know it's really from New York?"
"Is it authentic?"

Skepticism:
"How is snow in an envelope? Doesn't it melt?"
"So, you have some technology in the envelope to preserve the snow..."

Anger and annoyance:
"Well, what's the purpose of this? Why are you selling it?"
"What would I do wih snow?"

Amusement:
"Is this a hidden camera prank? Am I going to be on Zapping (like, a Catalan Punked) next week?"

Respect:
"Que guay!"
"How cool!"

Yva didn't even tell me what was in the envelopes until 3 hours after I'd been standing there. Suffice it to say, you just might buy it if you knew what was in it. She's a visual artist; then the sale of that art becomes a tableau that potential buyers enter. It's about the exchange. The show. The story, in the end, the story to tell, that's the ultimate creation.

The day before, Yva sold spoons in Plaza del Pi. Teaspoons she'd sent to artists she knows around the world. Some were international art hot shots like Lucio Pozzi, the Italian painter last seen at Art Basel, and Belgian Johan Grimonprez, the filmmaking Belgian who brought us 'Double Take', a meditation on Hitchcock and an accidental doppelganger. She asked them to create a sample of their work that fits in the spoon, and then set a price for it. Some artists requested as much as 200 euros for their spoon sample. Others wanted only a photo of the buyer, or requested the buyer hold hands with Yva for a few minutes as payment. One sample was set as priceless. The little boy who bought this one decided a hug and kiss, literally, fit the bill.

It's these stories, beyond the tangible art; what Yva, in her lilting English calls, "accidents" that she's in search of. Sparks. Magic. Curiosities. The sublime. That which, as Kant says, reveals something in excess of the object.

The best is to see it for yourself. Like that time she sold bags of artists' breath in Union Square, and that performance yeilded another.

Spring Sale on Saturdays from Yva Jung on Vimeo.

Photos via Joel Ventura

To Señora With Amor: TEFL Teachers, Should You Be Dating Your Students?

2011-03-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

Never dated any of them, but they were hi-larious! Suffered crying-laughing-gotta-leave-the-room jags every class.

I started dating Peter the Catalan on the last night of the year's final trimester. Up until he showed up at the summer staff party, we had just been exchanging heated, lingering glances in the school hallways and library. "My student likes you," one of my colleagues tattled one day. I knew exactly who he was talking about. Peter the Catalan with his perfect green eyes and blondish hair and starched shirts and pink ties. "Really? Which student?", I said like I hadn't been watching him too. "The guy with the blonde hair and ties," my colleague specified. "He likes you likes you". Peter the Catalan officially introduced himself on that [very scandalous] night and thus began my first summer amongst Barcelona's upper echelons. I spent St. Juan at a party in a mansion in Tibidabo and Sundays at the country club reading by the pool while he played tennis; date nights at this amazing Italian spot tucked away in Sarriá that I will never ever write about for fear of ruining it with travelers. That white hot summer culminated in a trip to the Hospital del Mar for the morning after pill. Can't say I regret that summer. Well, only for a brief moment at the beginning of the Fall semester, when it looked entirely possible that he might be in my class. It seems he left the school--I never saw him again after I ended it more than 2 years ago.

Browsing the magazine section at the huge FNAC in the city center last Thursday, I heard my name and turned to look right into a similar pair of gorgeous green eyes and dirty blonde hair. I hate seeing exes and prefer to think that after me, a part of them dies. Okay, that's not quite right. I like to think that they die.* Good thing this wasn't Peter the Catalan, but an equally "cutest boy in the band" type student from last semester. I gave him a big hug. Chatted with him in Spanish for the first time, genuinely happy to see him. "I was so mad at myself that I didn't get your phone number before the end of the trimester," he said. "Ieishah, I want to see you again..."

There's nothing more awkward than realizing your student has the hots for you. Like that time another suited up student asked, "Do you work out? I can see the muscles in your legs through your jeans," in front of the whole damn class. Adults get less and less teachable as the years go by. And that teachable quotient, paradoxically, drops when you add sex and emotions to it. I've even had to drop straight female students once we got too close. So how smart is it to become personally involved with students?

My TEFL course included a few sessions with a career counselor. The first session began with notes on how to write a TEFL friendly resume, and ended with the counselor telling us about how many people she knew who ended up marrying students. It was something like, "ALL of my co-workers ended up marrying former students!". If you're teaching grown ass men and women, it stands to reason that you'll encounter people worthy of your after-hours.

Dinner with Intensive course students in '08. Another great group I never dated.

Teaching adults can bring all kinds of characters into your life, savory and unsavory. Especially in a language class. Most students are professionals: I've taught (and summarily flirted with) a Michelin-starred chef, the CEO of a shoe company, writers, waiters, and ballers, all who've come to class to add English fluency to their list of resume skills. I don't think there's any other job you could have abroad where you'll meet locals from all over the social spectrum. Not to mention one where the groundwork for a friendship is laid by about halfway through the very first class. If you're the kind of teacher who believes in making learning personal and encouraging above all, conversation, you'll have all those soul-draining getting-to-know-you details out of the way well before the first date.

I say go for it, within limits. Never date a current student. Even if they ask. And even if they're hella funny and cute and offer to take you on motorcycle rides through Extremadura. (Not that that happened.) Also, I'd err on the side of caution in making the first move. Students know you're in a foreign country, building your life from scratch. In my experience they don't hesitate to invite you out for a coffee, under the guise of practicing their English, of course. You may want to make a habit of offering your email to all of your students at the end of a class. This mitigates the awkwardness of singling out the hot ones. Or if you live in a city as small and intimate as Barcelona, you could just wait to run into them in a random cafe some day.

*I don't really mean die. Perhaps 'cease to exist'.

Transcendence, Team RiRi y los 73 Retratos

2011-03-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

Our constant craving for evolution and transcendence, especially with regard to our personal circumstances and actions, is the most lucid evidence we have of ourselves as spiritual beings on a human, flesh and blood, brick and mortar journey. When we say we want to "just get past" or "move beyond" something we're not just talking temporally. Time continues it's monotonous march forward whether we fucking like it or not. There's a part of "getting past" something that's about memory and how it connects to emotion. For the most part, you ain't moved past something if the memory of it elicits an emotional response. A pain. A pang. A flip in the gut. A lump in the throat. A chair through a window. No one has gotten past Chris Brown's beating of Rihanna. Not even Chris Brown.

Naomi Williams, an acquaintance I'd met through my flatmate during my first year in Barcelona, approached me at a wedding reception and asked if I'd participate in her photo project on domestic violence, La Próxima Eres Tu. The twisted irony of where this conversation took place is not lost on me. No portent, there. The couple is beautiful. Nevertheless, Spain lost 73 women to domestic violence incidents in 2010. Naomi wanted to dedicate a portrait to each one. The idea came to her like so many of mine come to me: over coffee. "I don't know...I was just reading the newspaper one day--this is when the number was still at 60-something--and I just thought, this is ridiculous! I want to do something," the Dutch/Dutch Caribbean native says of her inspiration. Naomi told El Periodico, "The idea is to let people know that they have to act quickly, that if they see signs of domestic violence in a neighbor or loved one's home, they should ask about it, take action...", as there's no moving beyond without it.

In Spain, 68% of all murders are domestic violence-related. Whatever the numbers are for the States, in the end, we're still talking about the Chris Brown-Rihanna incident because people die at the hands of loved ones. And far too often.

The exhibit opened last Friday at Galeria Cosmo on Enric Granados, featuring 30 of the portraits taken. Each captured qualities that comprise relationship, ranging from conflict and rage to trust and bond. I appeared in two portraits and only regret that I didn't take a moment to dedicate the photo shoot to the two fallen women in whose honor those portraits were being taken, send up a prayer for the domestic violence survivors I've personally known across the 3 continents I've lived on, or at least play some Ri-Ri.

If you're in Barcelona, check out La Próxima Eres Tu at the Centro Cívico Guinardo from April 8th-19th.

Mala Rodriguez @ Cabaret Berlin

2011-03-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Mala Rodriguez in Barcelona from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Even Andalusian rapper Mala Rodriguez admits that when it comes to Spanish rap no hay mucho. Last year's Latin Grammy winner for Song of the year admitted as much last night at Cabaret Berlin in Barcelona. Still somehow La Mala managed to complete her 2-hour DJ set for Golfostar's Spanish Joint, a party dedicated exclusively to rap in español without the help of even one English language joint. Or any Pitbull!! (Also they've had this party more than once!!!) Immediately upon entering I started thinking to myself, what's that one Spanish language tune that's going to have everyone's hands in the air? That everyone's going to be losing their minds over and touching the sky? Turns out that as far as Spain's concerned, the closest thing Spanish rap has got to a you-must-know-the-words classic is La Niña, by Mala herself. Mala blessed us with a little impromptu performance last night even though she wasn't being paid. Genial.

Lunching With the Stars at the Guggenheim Bilbao

2011-03-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

Believe the hype about the Guggenheim Bilbao, built in 1997 by Frank Ghery. Well, believe the hype if you don't live in Spain. For 3 years, my Catalan friends (don't be offended, y'all!) have slandered that museum. I'd heard everything. "It's the only thing to see in the neighborhood," "They just plopped it in the middle of a slum," and the worst: "That building is disgusting!!". (Seriously. And if you can find a better translation for asqueroso, let me know. I'll amend.)

Frank Ghery famously sketched the design for the Guggenheim Bilbao on the back of an envelope in pencil, not lifting it until he was finished. The result is a playful, dancing creation that works even better from the inside. What look like random curves and awkward protrusions from the outside make for organically-formed installation nooks. Keep your contrived walls and square corners. Gimme the Guggenheim.

Our original plan was to sample executive chef Martín Berasategui's dinner menu at the Michelin starred restaurant housed in the museum, but upon hearing that the lunch menu was a quarter of the price, well....

To tell you the truth, overall, it looked better than it tasted. The eggplant stuffed with mushrooms and Bechamel I ordered for a starter had us singing such praises, the waitress ended up gifting us another. Though my little balls of bacalao in tomato sauce were a disappointment (no one does bacalao like in the Caribbean, Spanish and English speaking) Hollywood's mushroom filled tomatito over squid ink risotto was stellar. Good wine selection, great presentation, and an understated but scrumptious chocolate desert, I can't say that I wouldn't go back.

Go to the Guggenheim, however, for the art. The contemporary wing hosts a great mix of pop art and grand interactive installations that engage you as both viewer and participant. I'm gonna hope for your sake you make it while "Stillness (in 3 movements)", UK artist Tacita Dean's somber, brilliant multimedia tribute to late modern dance legend, Merce Cunningham, is still on.

In a word, the surrounding neighborhood is tony. Hotels, shoe shops, high end bakeries, and a short walk away from Gran Vía, where you can find the oldest cafés and more shopping. The Guggenheim is the what-to-see in Bilbao, but the entire city seems to have polished up to match the museum's titanium shine.

Michelin star, cafeteria-style at the Guggenheim Bilbao.

Mushroom and Bechamel-filled eggplant.

Bacalao balls.

Tomatito over squid ink risotto.

...filled with mushroom...so yummy.

Fuck if I know. Flan??

Chocolate bizcocho and honey ice cream.

I almost jacked this Almodóvar cup. Almost.

Tips:

* From the Guggenheim Bilbao, catch the nearby tram to the Casco Viejo (the oldest part of the city). It's a great way to get the lay of the land and make a full day of it.

* The six-course dinner is actually only 75 euros per person. But you can still say you've eaten at the Guggenheim for 20 euros at lunch. Make reservations in advance.

* Check the website for special events happening while you're in town. There are big monthly museum night parties at the Guggenheim showcasing famous DJ's from around the world. We missed it by a week, but it sounds like it could be a classic night out with cool locals!

Interview: M.O.P. in Barcelona

2011-03-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

Peace to BeatCN for making this possible!

Ashanti Does Georgetown

2011-03-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

Ashanti does Georgetown from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

I still don't know how I feel about Beyonce blackening up for L'Officiel's Fela tribute. Frankly, as someone who blackened up (digitally) once before, I do understand the impulse to do it for 'art'. What I can say, is that Beyonce has been moving towards Africa since the day she went solo.

First, she went islandista on us in "Baby Boy", featuring Sean Paul. Come to think of it, she was already in Africa in this video, via the Middle Eastern Belly Dance sequence. And it's not just about that single. Her whole style of movement, with the emphasis on the waistline, took on a Caribbean flavor. Vybez Kartel would pay homage to this in '08's Beyonce Wine. (If Beyonce were Jamaican, like Vybez Kartel, the issue of whether or not she bleaches her skin would be a non-issue. At the very least, a curiosity. She fair, eee? She ah bleach 'ar skin or som'm? Cho... Pass me some ackee...) And when Beyonce performed in Barcelona, "Baby Boy" segued into a not half bad cover of Sister Nancy's reggae classic, "No No No".

If B played at Caribbean on her first solo album, she went full on motherland on her second, B'Day. Remember the African dance sequence in "Deja Vu"? What was that dancing?, many thought. She look crazy!, others thought. Meanwhile, there's B, in a grass-like skirt, Josephine Baker-ing her peers right out of the game.

It's no accident that Rihanna, herself from Barbados, was one of the only songstresses to survive the slaughter.

Trace the trajectory, and it's not really a surprise, the whole blackening up and becoming African thing.

Then there's Ashanti. 'Foolish' put her in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most weeks spent at the top of chart for a female artist. She was major. Until Beyonce Josephine Baker'd her right out of the game.

Christmas night 2010. Georgetown, Guyana. I didn't know what to expect from Ashanti. What I never could have predicted, was her performing barefoot to soca music in a Guyana flag catsuit. But it happened. Got the video to prove it.

I say, if she's going to have any chance at a comeback, she should probably never take it off.

QUICK: Who Was the First Man to Successfully Complete a Trip Around the World?

2011-03-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

No idea, huh? Most travelers think it's them. I found the answer, however, when I least expected it in the village of the old surfer outside my hotel in Bilbao: Getaria.

Take the EuskoTrain just 25-30 minutes outside of San Sebastian, and you're at Arautz, a pretty little beach town where the waves look "just like in California" according to some song, the name of which I've forgotten. There's very little to see in Arautz, itself, unless you're in the middle of the international surf competition the village hosts yearly. Hell, if you are a surfer, Arautz is the place in Spain to be, not Barcelona. The Atlantic Ocean trumps the Mediterranean sea for waves any day.

A short car ride, or long walk along the mountainside, and you'll end up in Getaria. Old Surfer Guy only scratched the surface of the incredible stories Getaria has to tell. Legendary clothing designer, Balenciaga was born there. A museum is in the process of being built in his honor as we speak. Also, it's the place Juan Sebastian Elkano called home, before he set off to become the first man to successfully complete a trip around the world---

Actually, what Elkano did was a 'circumnavigation' of the globe. Also, he became the first as Magellan's 2nd in command. When Magellan was killed in a clash with Filipinos, Elkano did the honors. Good story, and I really am trying to be as excited as the locals are about it. But colonialism looms here. Makes me wanna holler. I mean, why would they be fighting Filipinos? I'm just going to go ahead and talk about the food...

We had the pleasure of being accompanied by Daniel, who grew up in the area, moved to Barcelona as a youth, but recently moved back for work. So though I'm sure there are at least a handful of fab restaurants in Getaria, I'm confident we ate at the best, the Mayflower, perched right on a bluff overlooking the water. Servers of the freshest fish I've ever eaten. Ever.

Start with a bottle of txacoli, regional white wine. This one was made with Chardonnay grapes. Ask before you order, there are txacolis less sweet.

Even on a chilly Sunday, the fish is minimally spiced (a dash of salt, spritz of lemon, diced roasted onion and garlic) and cooked on an asador, an outdoor grill.

We shared octopus, prawns, a few whole fish, and a basket of fresh bread. Really, you can order any fish on the menu, and win, but we had this guy, the turbot. The flesh along the spine is the tastiest.

Here's what he looks like in the market. In case you were wondering.

Normally, I don't do shrimp with the head still on. But the food was just so good...

Built on mountainous terrain, you navigate Getaria via hidden staircases and sloping tunnels. Somehow, no matter how high we went or where we turned, the water was visible.

6 Things You Should Know Before Pintxo Bar Hopping in the Basque Country

2011-03-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Pintxos in the Basque Country. Sacred like communion in the temple. Even on a gray, rainy Saturday in Bilbao's Casco Viejo, or old town, groups of friends, couples, families, are hopping from tavern to tavern or, berria to berria, scarfing down a pintxo or two, swigging glasses of rioja or txacoli and moving on in the time it took me to take even one of the photographs in this post. Berria hopping would start daily at about 2, 2:30, lunchtime or la hora de comer, and consisted of running the streets, sampling new tastes and savoring old favorites until I felt my belly about to burst. Learning only later in the trip that on the weekend, the Euskal actually have pintxos and wine at 3 or 4 stops, THEN head to dinner afterwards!! Lunch often left me with a sense of satisfaction so palpable that dinner was unthinkable.

There's a science to berria hopping in the Basque Country. A way to do that shit. I wasn't really ready. But you can be. If you're going to the Basque Country, like so many do, to partake of pintxos, pintxos y más pintxos, here are six things you should know going in...

1. Forgo the bread. Bread's just going to fill you up (with empty calories I might add) and limit the amount of fish, prawns, blue cheese, olives, octopus, Iberian ham, and other goodies you can taste. Just lift the goodies up off those hunks of carb, knife...fork...attack! Leaving the bread behind may seem strange to some locals, but this way you can enjoy as many tapas as possible. Now like every rule, this one has it's exception. If the bread's been toasted in olive oil, eat the thing. Or if the pintxo itself leaks any type of yummy buttery, tomato or garlic juices on the your plate, well, you have no other choice but to sop it up.

2. One word: zurita. I'm a lightweight, and normally don't drink much alcohol. But when you're eating your way through the old town, surrounded by locals and centuries old churches, you cannot order a fucking Coke. Drinking wine all afternoon would have me snoozing on the bar in no time, so I went with beer. Except, I kept forgetting the word for 'small beer' in the Basque Country, having never heard this word used in Catalonia or Andalusia. So bartenders kept bringing me pints. If you're a drinker who can hit six bars in the space of two hours and have a pint in each one, bottoms up. For the rest of us non-alcoholics, the word for small beer is zurita. Say it with me: thu-rrrreeee-tah. Zurita. Otherwise, you'll be smashed before you hit the 3rd berria.

4. Ask the bartender. You're standing in front of the bar, every available space covered by a plate of something you have never seen before. What to choose? It's not about just asking, 'What is this?' A rundown of the ingredients won't necessarily tell you anything, especially if you're not accustomed to Spanish food. Ask the bartender, or really, anyone else who may be standing around: ¿Cual me recommiendas? ¿Cual es tu favorito? or What do you recommend? Which one is your favorite? The Basque take great pride in their gastronomic superiority, and will be happy to steer you in the right direction. If you're sweet, smiley and dare I say flirty enough, the bartender may even gift you their fave pintxo, as happened to us more than once!

5. Take a mornin' pintxo. Most places put out tapas at 10am, so the food you see at 2:30 is the food that's been there, juicy, FRESH, for hours. You may not want to be eating anchovies, or super fishy, vinegar-y things straight out the gate, but a just-made Spanish tortilla, smoked salmon, or Iberian ham pintxo with your cafe con leche is a veritable Basque breakfast of champions.

5. Don't be put off by all the crap on the floor. My very first Basque berria, El Huevo Berria, looks completely normal from the outside. Even sleek. Lots of glass and chrome. A jukebox. Specials scrawled on a chalkboard. Two dark-haired, pale-skinned, pierced women serving a just-after-lunch crew. The place looked so moderna, imagine my surprise to see a guy swallow a pintxo, wipe his mouth on a little white napkin, crumple it up, and drop it right where he stood. I looked down, the floor was covered with dirty little napkins. I put my feet up on the stool, resolved not to look down, and got to 'pinching'. Looked at it as a twist on the sawdust covered bar floor phenomenon. It's just the custom.

6. Eat fearlessly, but also don't be afraid to not eat shit you simply don't want to. I, for one, think it's lame to eat a cow's ear just to say you ate a cow's ear, and don't believe you can eat your way to being adventurous, exotic, or cool. You are adventurous, exotic, and cool or you're not. Nothing you eat is gonna change that. Eat what will please you. That's what this is about--pleasure. Decadence, even. Don't be afraid to try new things, but nothing cuts a berria crawl short quite like biting into something that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Eat what you like, like what you eat. Salud! And speaking of adventurous eating...

Behold morcilla! Pig's blood soaked rice, stuffed into pig intestine and boiled, if I can remember correctly. It's also made in Guyana. We call it Black Pudding. Sounds gross, but it's oh so tasty. Imagine my surprise to see it in Spain. Food and colonialism...

Bilbao! Men In Hats!

2011-03-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

As a young man, the very old man smiling at us and slurring his words surfed and waited tables in a little fishing village called Getaria, centuries ago, it seemed. Getaria is where Hollywood and I would end up lunching like kings only days later. But that morning, 10 or 11 am, fresh off the airplane, the former surfer-waiter sat drinking coffee and reminiscing with an old friend, a more lucid man wearing a txapela, his cane leaning against the silver metal table of our hotel's outdoor cafe. He knew the story his surfer-waiter friend was struggling to impart to us.

He'd heard it before. The one where General Franco came to Getaria on one of his dictatorial visits to the Basque Country. Sometime in the 40's or 50's.

"He is saying that he gave Franco the part of the fish with the most bones," the lucid one laughed, then said of his friend, under his breath, "He is hallucinating a bit, but it's true."

He continues, paraphrasing:

"And then, he put a teaspoon of salt in Franco's wine."

We laughed politely, wondering if they weren't exaggerating. Wincing when they referenced Guernica, the Basque village bombed all to hell by Franco during the Civil War that brought him to power and the subject of Picasso's famous painting. Until that moment, I didn't know that men in the Basque Country actually wore those hats.

Txapelas are those beret-type hats you always see ETA members rocking on Interpol "Wanted" posters in the airport...or Frenchmen in classic French films. Could've sworn there was a picture somewhere of Picasso wearing one, and find it fitting, the txapela's linguistic proximity to the French chapeau.

The rest of the trip was spent in search of the perfect "Man Wearing Txapela" shot. Loved this guy. He agreed to having his photo taken and was so cool about how damn cool it came out. When we showed it to him he said, "Well, it looks like me", which is even cooler in Spanish: "Bueno... como soy".

Imagine these men in 1975, nearly middle aged, taking their txapelas out of boxes hidden away in attics, dusting them off, and donning them proudly in the streets for the first time.

There is something about the attainment of freedom that's profoundly relatable, even if one simply gestures towards it, like with the tip of a hat.

There's lots to say about the Basque Country. The food, the architecture, the Guggenheim, which I'll unfold in a series of photo posts over the next few days.

HELP! Spaniards Think I'm a Prostitute!

2011-02-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

Catherine Deneuve in Belle du Jour

Currently loved up with her boyfriend in Málaga, here's a question from fellow expat, interracial dater and blogger, Nedra:

Well I wanted to ask your opinion (or advice) because I'm having a hard time with the fact that before (Study Abroad '08) when old men would give me lewd looks I just chalked it up to fetishism/being old. (Now living here till '08.) One day I told my boyfriend about one such brazen old man who actually invited me out for coffee so I simply turned him down, but nicely. My boyfriend was INFURIATED and explained that if someone approaches me like that on the street it's because they a. think I'm a prostitute, or, b. think I'm looking for Spanish citizenship (a passport prostitute). This was my first time ever hearing anything of the sort. After more convo he pretty much told me that most African women here are prostitutes and I a m having a REAL issue dealing wig that because obvi black=African here and it bothers the shit out of me that my friends (white) can be mistaken for bay and everything, including Spanish, and I AUTOMATICALLY have to be an African prostitute. Now this isn't the case ALL the time, when I go out and stuff--a prostitute isn't going to be in bars drinking and dancing it up like I am every Thursday-Sat). They mostly think I'm Dominican because I speak Spanish. But it bothers me a lot walking through the streets, being on the bus, and wondering if the guy next to me would like to pay me to blow him (graphic, I know, but I've read your blog and I know you'd appreciate it :-)). I guess my question. Is, how would you deal with it?

I know that I just have to kinda wander around and not worry about what people think but it's kinda lonely sometimes when all the Españoles may or may not think you're a prostitute and the Africans give you dirty looks, for one, that hair...get a perm! And two, "who does she think she is?" I know you have way more experience dealing with this than I do so I thought, why not reach out?

Nedra, I love you. And though it's taken me about 3 months to answer it, I love this question. Let's start with a true little ditty set in the South of Spain, cerca last year. Seville to be precise.

So, I'm walking from a dinner party to an Irish pub with a big group of artist friends. I've fallen into conversation with a rather famous artist; trained in France, works hanging in every major museum in Europe, residences in South of France and all over South America. He is major. And I've been trying to get next to him--for an interview!--for days. So we're walking through the city center, past this cathedral and that palace. And we do that dance groups in motion do, flowing in and out of conversation with one person or another, falling in and out of step with one person or another. Finally, I end up side-by-side with Brilliant Spanish Artist Man. He's short, bald, pot bellied and kinda liquored up, but his brilliance doesn't disappoint.

I should have known what was up when he said, "Stop. Look at the moon."

But what came next was the give away--

"This reminds me of that poem by Gabriel Garcia Lorca, where a little boy tells the moon, Si vinieran a los gitanos, harían con tu corazón collares y anillos blancos..."

I'm so geeked out by this point, I'm that kiss ass co-ed in the front of the class with her hand up, totally missing the signs--

"If the gypsies came they'd make white jewels of you, love... from Romance de La Luna, no?"

He slips his arm through mine. He's a little drunk so I let it slide, but soon realize that we've lost sight of the rest of the group. Just as we're nearing the hotel, he stops me again, stands directly in front of me and puts his hands on my face.

"What're you doing?"
"Just a kiss."
"I don't think so."

The next morning, at breakfast, I tell KK, a children's book author and good friend. "No he didn't!", she says. "Unfortunately, yes. He ruined everything. And now he's looking at me like I pissed on his paint set." Who did he think he was? Did he think just because I'm black that I'd be easier than, say, my friend?

A few nights later, we meet up with another artist woman. White, from the Basque region of Spain, and knows the whole crew. KK insists I tell Basque Artist Girl the story of Brilliant Spanish Artist Man.

"Girl, you know he tried to kiss me...", I venture.
Basque Artist Girl's response is one for the ages---
"Did he quote Lorca to you, too? I don't know why he thought that would work on me..."

Moral of the story: MEN ARE NASTY. Sometimes they try it on with you not because your black, but because THAT'S WHAT THEY DO.

Don't take this no kinda way, but your man's gonna have to mellow the fuck out.

You're living together, all up in the fam, and so far he has ante'd up. Seems like a good solid dude. But I'm confused... Why exactly he is infuriated? Because men approach you for coffee or because he thinks they think you're a prostitute? That's a long mental road to pissed off. Not to mention, it seems his reaction has triggered your anxieties. No bueno. When the shit hits the abanico, somebody's gotta keep a cool head. I mean, do his male relatives think you're a prostitute? Did he think you were a prostitute when you met? No? Then it's impossible that all Spanish men think this way. Tell him to save that fire for when something really happens, like in the Catskills 5 years ago with my ex, the Genovese, when the B&B owner refused to shake my hand...

As an interracial couple, you will be a target. And this race thing is janky enough without him being "infuriated!" about what he thinks men are thinking when they approach you when he isn't even around.

Furthermore, don't stifle yourself. You obviously already get that you do have to "sort of wander around and not worry about what other people think". But there's more to it. It's none of your business what they think. It only matters how you feel, then, what you do.

In case you missed it, that was your permission to react. Careful not to overreact, but if you're feeling belittled, offended, or insulted by an invitation to coffee, it's perfectly okay (even necessary) to let it out. Blow off some steam. I like to let folks know who they're dealing with.

For example, a street conversation with an undesirable could go like this:

"Quieres tomar algo?" (Wanna get a drink?)

"NO. NO I DON'T."

or like this..

"Quieres tomar algo?"

"I'M SORRY, WHAT? HOW CAN I HELP YOU?"

Take their African prostitute and raise them an Annoying American. Cool that you speak perfect Spanish, but that can work against you. The language you speak often says more than what you're actually saying...feel me?

Of course they're gonna holler. Can you blame 'em?

Lastly, Don't Go It Alone! Expat life can have you feeling like Tom Hanks in Castaway. In return, you get the chance to [re]build your life exactly how you want it, from scratch. Including your support network. So do it.

In Barcelona, I'm lucky to have my group of sisters. A nation of millions, we're not, but it's a great comfort to have people who can chop it up on it means to be black in Spain. Besides Madrid, the rest of Spain is not so mixed. You simply may not have the raw material to weave this type of net. Still, there are things you can do.

I say, don't underestimate your American friends. Maybe they don't have the same views or experiences as you do as an expat, but I find that my white American friends are more likely to talk about race abroad, than I imagine they'd be at home. Perhaps because racism in Spain doesn't implicate them, most at least lend a sympathetic ear. Perhaps it's because they, too, are misunderstood and stereotyped abroad. If you've got very close friends here, trust them. It may take your friendship to deeper level. Or they may hate you for making them uncomfortable. In which case, I'll accept full responsibility for being wrong as the day is long...

Are you absolutely sure you're the only black American woman living in Malaga? Maybe there are some Frenchies or black English girls living in Malaga? They may be alone, asking themselves the same questions, looking for the same type of solace. Find them. Check the Black Women In Europe Social Network. Send out an Internet APB. Something...

Let's start here: Anyone know a black woman who's not a prostitute living in or soon moving to, Malaga?

And for the record, because this post just isn't long enough, I wouldn't worry about what the actual prostitutes are thinking either. They've got much bigger issues to deal with than your hair.

Therrr-ochenta! Notes from Barcelona Fashion Week

2011-02-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

The Bread & Butter Tradeshow fled Barcelona for Berlin a few years ago, all but wiping Spain's "second capital" from the global fashion map. Not that it had ever amounted to more than a blip in the first place. Bread & Butter is a market institution; it used to flood the city with big brands and sexy foreign bodies. It's been "replaced" with The Brandery, which has already begun to lose favor with locals and outsiders alike, if the half empty convention hall, and the "official" Brandery party, for the first time since it's inception not hosted by the region's most recognizable brand, Custo Barcelona, are any indication. Just as I was about to write my current adopted city off as a flannel country beach town who couldn't even pay Garance Dore to help it draw a fashion crowd, I scored passes to 080 Barcelona Fashion, also known as Barcelona Fashion Week: 3 days of showrooms and catwalk presentations brought to you by the Generalitat de Catalunya and a powerhouse selection of designers using the city as their creative platform.

I was sure the odds of my catching two shows, and being impressed by two shows, were pretty darn low. But Barça, as per usual, rallied...

Models wore designer Manuel Bolaño's dark mood right on their faces, pouting down the runway through black lips, hollowed out cheeks, and errant tufts of fur in their slicked back hair. The monotoned lyric "I'm dead" may have soundtracked the collection, but I wouldn't call the mood suicidal, or even goth. Fur gloves peeking out from beneath the sleeves of an oversized, hunchbacked, menswear-inspired blazer, blackened elephant (bull? goat?) tusks protruding from the layered collar of a silk top--- Bolaño '11 was more Jack London than Dracula. Lace tights and the return of the high waisted pant notwithstanding, the craftsmanship was impressive and the collection, conceptually imposing. There wasn't much wearable therein, though. Not like wearable is Bolaño's thing. This is from his 2010 Fall collection.

I'm not kidding.

Here's video of Manuel Bolaño's Fall/Winter 2011 collection:

Manuel Bolaño Finale from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Greek born Yiorgos Eleftheriades literally shut 080 down with a presentation of clean, Japanese sportswear-inspired pieces I could've ripped straight off the runway and strutted down Joan de Borbo in. Mix and matched ethnic prints in exquisitely cut silks and some curious one-legged trousers were just LL Cool J circa 1997 enough to keep comparisons to Y3 at bay. Eleftheriades fall/winter '11 must-haves include a simply draped black off-the-shoulder dress, black silk screened mini dresses, a fitted black wool trench with leather panelling, and a too cool grey tweed coulotte with black leather detailing. And just in case you're Angelina Jolie in The Tourist, grabbing your morning coffee on a sidewalk cafe in Paris in couture, Eleftheriades kicked in the calf length, high waisted skirt version. (You might want to forgo the platforms if you're also running from Interpol.)

*Photo Courtesy of 080 Barcelona Fashion

The Brandery {A Spanglish Photo/Video Post}

2011-01-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

It's fashion week but everywhere. And because Barcelona's not quite cool enough? Fashionable enough? Not the damn capital of Spain enough? for a proper one, we have The Brandery, an Urban Fashion Trade Show where brands come from around the world to show their stuff to buyers and press over the course of a few days in a big ass convention hall. The parties are fun, though.

Opening Night.

Fashion people and their carne.

Sugar wall. De verdad.

"Coño. I knew I should have worn my red gloves..."

¡Ostras! Oysteeeerrrrrrrrrrssss!!

¡Ostras + tabasco + limón!

= una negra guapa + super contenta.

And then there were some shows. Check out the Custo Barcelona finale. What I saw of it anyway.

Custo Barcelona Finale from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

The Boxing Day Lime

2010-12-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

THE LIME

Georgetown celebrated the day after the alleged day of Jesus Christ's birth with a lime. Not lime for your Corona. Lime the verb.

Now "lime the verb" (to lime) is as close to a pan-Caribbean creole word as you can get. While Jamaicans don't use it, Guyanese and Trinidadians do. It means "to chill". Hang out. Drink beers. Listen music. Talk shit. Sunday afternoon shit.

As I was in the Caribbean, I thought I'd interview 10 people on the subject of "lime the verb's" origins. I needed only go as far as my mom.
"Well, limes hang from a tree. So you lime, you hang like a lime from a tree."
"Isn't that kind of arbitrary? Why lime as a metaphor for hanging and not orange, apple, or coconut?"
She doesn't miss a beat. "Because limes never fall off a tree. They hang until you pick them off the tree. Oranges and coconuts...comes a time when they fall off. Or a good breeze knocks them off. Not limes. They just, you know, hang there."

Genius. Then there's "the lime" (noun), an event purposefully created for the collective liming of Guyana's capital city; The Georgetown Boxing Day Lime on Main Street.

SOME MEN GOT LAZY TONGUES

At the top of Main Street, stands the antiquing but stately Bank of Guyana and dancehall artist, Konshens, singing about real friends to a big, girly, unpoppable human bubble from a small set of steel bleachers that appear to be suspended in mid air. The bubble is screaming, it seems, louder than the night before at the "Unforgettable" Christmas night concert he co-headlined with Jah Cure and Ashanti. He's surrounded by a council of bethren in shiny jewelry and fitted baseball caps nodding their heads to the bass.

We stop for beer once we turn onto Main Street proper, lined with little white tents on either side. Competing sound systems down the middle. I'm with Wayne, a family friend with some sort of car business, who's my exact age. He wants to hold my hand and lead me through the crowd. I decline that. I accept a beer. Banks. He gives the vendor who he seems to know, 500 Guyana dollars. That's $2.50 American. He waits for change. A man and woman in matching white aprons fumble around for a bit. Wayne watches with an outstretched hand. "Don' worry rob me, ya know? Whe' meh change?" They tell him they don't have it and to come back later. We wander past Timeka Marshall playing on one sound system. Mavado, a few yards further.

A large field off the main drag feels small because the crowd's so dense. We can't break the perimeter. There's a meters high brick ledge to my left, a dozen or so revelers dancing atop. My eyes keep going to a light skinned girl in a short, white, terrycloth jumper. She's whining till her whole back ah move. A man stands behind her, himself barely moving. I sip my Banks. A vendor passes with his merchandise stuffed in a small cardboard box and hanging from his neck, lit by a mobile. I sneak a peek inside. Cigarettes. gum. Condoms. Spanish Fly? I ask Wayne. "What's Spanish Fly?"
"It's a thing...like..."
He pauses so long, I wonder if perhaps he doesn't know.
"You know, some men tongue lazy."
I don't know what to say to this. Nor even how to interpret it.
"It's a thing," he ventures again, "It's a thing men use to have sex with women."
"Like Viagra." I already know this is wrong.
"No. Like they does put it in women's drink...so then they can have sex with them."

My middle finger plugs the beer bottle neck.

OVERHEARD

Four Chinese men in white uniforms with red trim and Nehru collars navigate the crowd single file, with bicycles. I can't hear what they're saying to clear a path, or if they're saying anything. When I see them come up beside me I move. So does everyone else. They're carrying bags of food.
"Watch everybody moving fa dem. Ya tink black man could move through a crowd a Chiney suh?"

SHOTS

The music has ended and it's quiet save the voices of hundreds rejoining their friends in the aftermath. Deciding where to go next.

The Jamaica Party at Wild Palm?

Something Bollywood at Buddy's?

The Miami Party at some such other club? The one with mirrored aviators and Latin looking girls on the flyer?

Or a nice, dark house party with food?

Wayne stops at the vendor that owes him change. Before he can order, people start running and screaming. Bottles are flying. I'm about to move. Run. Duck. Call a cop. "No. Don't move," Wayne says. I'm stock still but looking for a way out. Just in case Wayne's deer in the headlights approach gets me clocked.

It only took a second for my head to do the 180 from Wayne on the right to the vendor in the red shirt to my left. Straight ahead, a guy with corn rows and a white button down is running towards 5 uniformed officers. He looks behind him, dives to the ground covered in broken glass to dodge a flying bottle. The officers back up behind the gates of the youth ministry as.

Pap! Pap!

Directly to my left is a vendor with dark, cratered skin, a red T shirt and a gun in his hand. They do smoke after fire. He slowly pulls it down to his side. Waits. The running, falling and bottle throwing cease as quickly as they'd begun. He looks at me. I nod and he nods back. Wayne steps forward to get his beer. Doesn't pay for it.

Ashanti and Me

2010-12-28T18:21:00.000-08:00

I'd only requested a press pass to Unforgettable, the big Georgetown Christmas night show featuring reggae acts Tameka Marshall, Konshens, Jah Cure, and R&B singer, Ashanti. I called Shanghai, of Kashif and Shanghai International at about 11am on Christmas morning to check on the status of my request. Kashif and Shanghai handle marketing for events, mainly football matches, though they dabble in concerts, all over South America and the Caribbean. "Call back at noon", he said. At noon, I got more than I was expecting. "We're at the State House. Can you come now? Right now?" I had just finished dressing for lunch with family. "Yes, Ashanti is here with the President, having breakfast. Come." It took about 5 minutes of reasoning with the armed gatekeepers to on New Market St. to gain entrance. I didn't notice that President Bharat Jagdeo was even in the room until he answered, "Yeah?", to an aide's, "Mr. President?". He was just so casual in a white linen shirt and khakis. I only snapped this photo, which I made Ashanti's manager take. He was not happy, but he did it anyway. There was no way I could leave Guyana's State House without a photo. We only spoke for a few minutes about being from Queens before she declared, "I love the pepper pot!" (traditional Guyanese dish of meat and casrip), and left for sound check. From there I shadowed Shanghai to a television station, where I watched Konshens do a live spot before snagging my 3 VIP bands. Took my mom to the show. I'll post video on my Vimeo channel in the next few days.

Christmas In A Georgetown Minute

2010-12-24T21:07:00.000-08:00

A GT Minute from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Georgetown is smelly, dirty, and congested. It's also chaotic, energetic, and totally charming. By Christmas Eve, my family and I had been in Guyana for 4 full days. And I found myself not noticing the smell or the dirt. I found myself ignoring the few sidewalks the city does have in favor of risking death by crazy dollar van, walking in the road with the nonchalance of a true Caribbean. And also today, no one called us yankees. Did I mention we're driving on the left side of the road? On Christmas Eve Eve we took a plane ride to the interior, traipsed through the rain forest, and actually touched Kaietur Falls, 5 times taller than Niagara, and about 2 times taller than Zambia/Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls. I flew over only a few thousand of Guyana's millions of acres of rain forest in the co-pilot's chair of a 10-seater aircraft. With each minute that passed, each mile of plush green carpeting the earth below, like so much broccoli over-stocked in a massive supermarket, I became more certain that Guyana's been minimized on world maps. If not on maps, certainly in the global imagination. So in the spirit of full warts and all disclosure (and, you know, the season) I'm gonna give you ONE bustling Georgetown minute. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Guyana, Upon Arrival.

2010-12-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

I'm in Guyana for the Christmas holiday. Thanks to a man called Choke Fish. Both my parents were born and raised right here in the capital city of Georgetown. They left for America in the 60's and made it. Like two miracles. The last time I was here, I was a mouthy, downright offensive 3 year old, telling folks off in my conspicuously American accent (including both my maternal and paternal grandmothers), like I knew my privilege, even then. They welcomed my weight on their shoulders. Laughed. Over the years I'd pressure my parents, on and off, to bring me back. It was too dangerous, they said. "People does follow you to ya hotel, stab ya and tek 'way ya ting." Or, "The Colombians and dey drugs runnin' Guyana. Dey does kidnap you before you even reach Georgetown". My dad hunted Choke Fish down in January of 2010, surely with some vague feeling that after 40 years the time had come to reunite with the quirky, expressive guy he'd partied with in adolescence. Drunk beers and rode in a "gang" with. Raided birthday parties for the cook up rice and cake. Approached young ladies in the street with. The latter is how Choke Fish got his name. "We used to call girls 'Binis'. We used to say, like, 'Look at duh bini, man!'. But Choke Fish had his own thing. He used to say, 'Look at duh choke fish bini!', when it was a real pretty girl. The name 'Choke Fish' just stuck. And we always used to ask him what that meant. He never told us."In February, my father came back to Guyana for the first time in 30 years for the funeral of Choke Fish, who took the origins of his name to the grave. Finally, finally, I'm here, too, where this and other mysteries of my lineage lie. Guyana welcomed me lovingly.
Guyana. Arrival. from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

The Gospel According to Touranthroposaurus

2010-12-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Mississippi Mass Choir in Barcelona from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Who dat taking a bus tour through a favela in Rio? Hanging out on some obscure beach in Thailand that even Thai people wouldn't live on for a month and considering himself a "local"? Who is that flying to New York, taking the A train to Harlem and sitting in the pews of a "real black church", fat lens Nikon on hand, treating the Lord's house like a zoo?

Introducing the "tour-anthropo-saurus"!

More than a tourist (at least in his own head) and a lot fucking less than an anthropologist (than he is in his own head). Obsessed with "authentic" or "exotic" cultural experiences. Not relaxed enough to just be a damned tourist and approach travel from their particular perspective. On the other hand, far too clueless to go through what real anthropologists do while trying to get "inside" a culture. You know, the little things like getting a degree, learning a language, and asking the hard questions: Is getting inside a culture even possible for an outsider? And if it is, doesn't my very presence alter the nature of the community I'm studying? Doesn't observance of people's behavior, change their behavior? Touranthroposaurus isn't so into questions as he is into annoying the fuck out of less pretentious travelers.

Glory be for the Mississippi Mass Choir spreading nectar from the core of African American culture throughout Spain every other year. Whose efforts, surely, reduce the number of Spanish folk flocking to service at Abyssinian Baptist on any given Sunday.

The great Mississippi Mass Choir made its way to Barcelona's Palau de la Musica last Thursday, and played to an almost sold out crowd. One of the altos had lived in Madrid for a few months in 2007, performing with flamenco soul fusion singer, Pitingo.

In the end, Mississippi had Barcelona dancing in the aisles, then crowding around for photos and autographs in the lobby, as the singers indulged bad English and personal-space-invasive double kisses with appreciation. "This is the best audience we've had," Pitingo's former soloist confides. Mississippi will always hold in their hearts the moment when 2 Catalans broke into song in the lobby of the Palau. The choir members surrounded them, clapped and cheered them on, iPhone 4's out, taking video. Like tourists. And all of a sudden I was looking at a cross cultural engagement that was somehow more ethical. The cultural gap shrunk. It wasn't about observing the animal in his natural habitat. But still it was totally authentic.

Dreads and Skinheads

2010-12-12T13:08:00.000-08:00

In real life, skinheads are never this hot. Just f.y.i.

French Celia calls just as I emerge from the metro at Paseo de Gracia, where we're to meet then transfer to another line that will take us to Barcelona's 2nd Annual Dancehall Queen Contest. "Wait for me at the yellow line, I'm coming down now," she says. I hear a gaggle of rough, liquored up male voices as I walk through the tunnel, towards the platform. I'm posted up against the wall nearest the platform entrance, listening for the voices to pass. I expect a group of drunk young laddish Spaniards. But these are skinheads. Black lace boots. Confederate flags patched to their black nylon jackets. Bald heads. Skinheads. They pass and don't seem to notice me. French Celia (black like me) is close behind them. So is our train.Though they are scrawny and unimpressive as far as skinheads go, there's no measuring rage and stupidity.

"Let's go in the other door. I think they're skinheads," I tell Celia.

We make it to the second door down just as it's closing and stand facing them. The metro's full of Friday night partygoers. One skinhead, the one with the beer, walks around two groups of people (Spaniards always travel in packs, "like antelope" according to Celia) and stands where we can see him. He glares at us. Spits on the metro floor.

"Okay. Let's walk back a bit more, shall we?"

We're about to move when two 6 foot plus Africans with dreadlocks enter the train. We stay where we are, sat comfortably, glancing towards our hateful friends. Smiling at the symmetry. "Yeah, spit now motherfuckers." They can't hear me. We're now so relaxed the skinheads exit without us noticing.

The brothers, however, get off the train when we do and are standing on the corner, lighting up when we get out onto the street. They're headed to the Dancehall Queen contest, too. "Are you Americans?", they ask. Roll call.
"New York," I say.
"Paris," Celia follows.
One immediately starts chatting her up in French. The other dips low to speak closer to my ear. He's kind of cute.
"I am trying to learn English now, because I'm a musician in Manresa. We talk to a lot of English people."
"Cool. Where are you from?"
"Senegal. Do you know Senegal?"
"Are you asking if I know that Senegal exists?"
"Yes, I think maybe you don't know Senegal."
I stop walking. "Seriously?" Celia turns around. "I know, honey," she says. "Breathe." I start walking again. He starts talking again.
"And you? Where are you from?"
"New York."
"Yes, but your family?"
"Guyana. South America."
"But your grandparents?"
"South America."
"But...don't you know your history?"
History? Protection is at the heart of the origins of the state. And it always comes at a price.

In Defense of Small Things

2010-12-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Ever read that children's book, The Carrot Seed, where the little boy plants his seed, and no one thinks anything will come of it. Not even his own momma. But we waters it and pulls the weeds, even while nothing is happening and the ground seems as barren as that land Ethiopia and Eritrea are fighting over. When the carrot finally does sprout, it's so big the boy's wheelbarrow can barely carry it. All from that little seed.

Maybe it's all just a coincidence, but check out this collage about relationships I made in the late 90's, (probably after a break up or something). I found it in my old bedroom on my trip home to NYC last summer. Notice Michael Jordan's Nike logo, and the words 'art' and 'film'.

Notice the words 'film', 'art', and the Michael Jordan insignia. Though the collage has all white guys in it, I went on to have my longest relationship (before the Serb, that is) with a black Londoner of Trinidadian origin. I'm not sure why I cut out the word 'film'. I just went through magazines and found words that spoke to me. I pasted them on a page, went on with my life and forgot about it until recently.

How creepy that I'm now in a relationship with a former pro ball player and actor (with the same size shoe as MJ). Coincidence that one of my best friends is a manager for actors and now manages him? Coincidence? Or did I plant that seed?

I know how it sounds. All woo-woo and new age. However, the proof is there. Seed, water, faith---> big ass carrot. Or whatever the equivalent of a big ass carrot is for you.

The great thing about a seed is that it is a small thing. The smallest of things. Even a crappy collage.

The great life coaches and personal development gurus (and I mean that in the strictest sense of the word, 'teacher') agree on the power of seeds and small things and the great big results they yield.

Chris Guillebeau's gonna visit every single country on earth by 2012, I think. He runs the popular site The Art of NonConformity. In his book of the same name, subtitled, "Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want and Change the World", Chris tells the story of Allan, a regular office working guy with a wife, 3 frickin daughters and a mortgage who decides to experiment with his life. Make time and space in his stable life for a little adventure. First he picks up wife, kids, zero French language skills, and move to Paris for a year. The family returns to the States after a year, and Allan finds a way to keep his benefits and stability with the same company, but arranging it so he can work part time and out of the office. Did I mention he has a wife and 3 frickin daughters? Guillebeau writes,

"Allan traces the root cause of the transition to his "Life Experiments," even the simple things like visiting art museums or taking up photography on the weekends. In his words, the impact of the experiments was "way out of proportion" to the experiments themselves."

John Demartini was featured in The Secret, but really, his genius goes way beyond anything that film has to offer. He teaches that it only takes 7 seconds of holding a picture in your mind to start yourself on the course to achieving something.

Marie Forleo, author of Make Every Man Want You (How to Become So Irresistible You Can Barely Keep From Dating Yourself), dancer, fitness coach turned serious business coach, teaches that just a walk can get you unstuck, and reap new energy and ideas.

We are all sick to death of the Eat, Pray, Love references when it comes to this kind of thing, but damn it, Elizabeth Gilbert filled the tub and sat in there reading an Italian dictionary for months before her tri-country get my groove back plan hatched. Millions upon millions of women bought into it because it was effective. There was a kernel of truth in there. A seed.

What's your seed? Your tiny you-directed, you-generated action that you'll water with faith until it sprouts?

Update** The Chris Guillebeau commented on this post! Totally geeking out right now.

From Brick Lane to BCN

2010-12-07T01:55:00.000-08:00

Brick Lane BCN debuted last weekend, a nascent monthly quasi-pop-up company that sells vintage accessories imported straight from London warehouses. We're talking a diverse collection of bold 80's baubles, timeless snakeskin clutches and logo shoppers. And the shoes ranged from 7-inch red stilettos, to sensible heels in irresistibly counter-trend geometric shapes. In the run up to Sunday's sample sale, Brick Lane was ubiquitous, featured in Buxada, Barcelona Metropolitan, Barcelona Connect, Esencial, Barcelona Blog NL, and finally, the best of the best city happenings blogs, Le Cool. Paid off, too. The event started at noon. By 11:30am, the cue to get into the venue, El Borne's Vintage Restaurant, Lounge, and Bar, dipped clear down the block. By the time I arrived, fashionably late around 4pm, most of the bags and all of the jewelry were gone. Fashionistas arrived from as far as Russia, and you couldn't reach for a glass of cava without hitting a model or a stylist. And I always say Barcelona's a city for creatives, but not fashion. The response to Brick Lane was surprisingly kinetic. There's a market for true style here, it's just about tapping in. "I'm just trying to figure out what the formula is," Brick Lane founder, Krystal confided. "I walk around the city and see people with these beautiful shops, but no one's inside. Like, what works here?". I have a feeling if anyone can figure it all out, it's Krys. And I'm not just saying it because she's Guyanese. Barcelonense, stayed tuned for the next event, 6th February, when men's accessories join the fray.

The venue, El Borne's new "Vintage" restaurant. It's got the decor & the great house wine. We would know.

The mastermind...

The clientele....

DevWorld Chic. These are known all over the developing world as the preferred bag of the migrant worker. I've heard them called Guyanese bags, Ghana bags, and South Africans are familiar with them as well. What if we reworked them? Made 'em chic? Just an idea.

Krystal borrowed this mirror from the antique shop next door. Vintage should buy it.

I lost THIS bag to THIS crazy brasileña. Gutted.

This dude was my favorite. First person I've ever met from Western Sahara, a country I didn't know existed. He's wearing my coat. And giving me life.

The Buika Affair

2010-12-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Tomate esta botella conmigo/ En el ultimo trago nos vamos
Drink this bottle with me/ At the last sip, we go

It's been one year since genre-bending Spanish vocalist Concha Buika last performed at the Voll-Damm International Jazz Festival at Barcelona's Palau de la Musica. One year since I saw her perform live for the first time, and the God in her voice brought me to tears. Above are the opening lines of El Ultimo Trago, the title song of her tribute album to the great Chavela Vargas, herself a groundbreaking artist, whose reworking of the songs of Mexican rancheros, traditionally sung by men, will go down in history as a most clever musical gender-bending. Buika traveled the world performing Trago in the last year, then returned to the Palau de la Musica last week for an encore performance.

What a difference a year makes.

She donated the first hour of her concert to her tour band, The Ivan "Melón" Lewis Quintet, who used the time to seduce us with music from their forthcoming album, Traversia. Melón & Co. opened with a sublimely pretty "What a Wonderful World" and ended with an effervescent sax duel on some track whose name I didn't catch, but which brought the audience to its feet. It was 10:30pm by the time Concha took the stage, with long time collaborator (and genius) Javier Limon. As per usual, Buika began with a classic canto, the kind of summer second chance at romance song beckoning the listener: "Let's go on a date, chill in the park". The best of Buika is in her ability to sound like a native, wherever on the geo/ethno-musical map she may rome. From that first note, however, Buika sounded out of context, attacking the love song with such a lack of melody and romance that French Celia asked, "Is she drunk?"

Nothing seemed to fit. Not even her dress. The one shouldered frock stayed a heartbeat from exposing her boob. She seemed to have forgone concealer. She was sporting 3 huge blinged out rings and bare feet. Throughout the concert, Buika didn't/couldn't open her eyes. At one point, she started feeling around for the microphone like a blind woman. Once, she left the stage to request that someone refill her black and gold mini-pimp cup. And her multiple 15 minute ramblings (in Catalan) on success, church, and humanitarian work didn't help her appear any more present. No one goes to concerts to be lectured on beauty, but to witness it.

I went in search of reviews of last year's performance just to make sure I hadn't imagined her greatness. Indeed, I hadn't. Last year, Roan Clay for All About Jazz was at the same show as I was. He wrote:

"Buika...is awesomely fearless, ferociously infusing her voice with sass and rebellion, driving it at times into a resounding roar as she intimately dissected the lost love of rancheras.... [She] weaves Majorcan, African, and gypsy into a unique whole."

Buika wasn't keeping shit together the other night, certainly not Majorcans, Africans, and gypsies. What was once a "roar", sounded tinny and brassy like a child clanging pots together and nails down a chalkboard all at once. She called herself scatting, but not even Lewis's superior piano technique could make sense of her back alley cat fight screeches. The saxophonists and bassist didn't even try. "It's like abstract art," said French Celia, as Buika mimed sax-playing and "EEEEEEEE-ed" into the mic, "You wanna like it, but you just can't". I bumped into a few other friends after her concert, who were similarly unimpressed.

The love affair between Buika and me may be over. Or maybe it was just an off night.

Has anyone been to a Buika show lately? What did you think? She disappoint you too?

Check her out in one of the night's few good moments.

Concha Buika from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

The Shopping Night, Barcelona

2010-12-03T02:34:00.000-08:00

For such a small city Barcelona's got a mighty big ego. Last night Barcelona followed in the footsteps of Paris, London, New York and Madrid, launching their take on 'Fashion's Night Out'. The Shopping Night saw the city's shops open until midnight, accompanied by special events, mostly concentrated on Paseo de Gracia. Krys and I had big plans to hit every major event, but spent most of the night drinking one grape wine, and eating frog legs and Pop Rocks. (I'll explain in another post. And the story is gooooood.) When we finally stumbled into a cab with only half an hour left of the festivities, we found Paseo de Gracia hopping. Filled with shoppers and posers alike. Big party in the cold ass street. We headed into Hotel Majestic on Valencia for Metal Magazine's new Designer Showcase. Krys and this guy were the most fashionable people in that house.

Barcelona and grunge go together like Coco and Chanel.

Yes. This is a leather turban hat. It looks better on. Not that I tried it.

We left Majestic and came up upon the longest line ever outside of the Mandarin Oriental. Two lines, actually. One for the free churros and chocolate made by some celebrity Spanish chef. The other was to get into the Mandarin/Godiva/Tiffany's party inside. My student is Mandarin's head of security so Krys and I breezed right past those velvet ropes to side eyes, hissed teeth and "Por que ellas pueden entrar??" Haters. We arrived before the stores closed, grabbed two high back couch-lets near the DJ (cute, Swedish, and loved him some Micheal Jackson mash-ups), and drank lychee-tinis till 2.

So pretty inside. I'd stay here.

UnMastering Your Expat Life: How to Quit While You're Ahead

2010-11-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

Aldous Huxley once said, "To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries". But what does he know? He was just another overrated dead white guy paranoid about "the future" and it's trillion and one imagined ways of alienating us from ourselves. Why waste time and money actually going places and feeling things out, when a quick google search can tell you anything you need to know about anything? So you want to move abroad. Or at least, travel more. Forget all that bullshit about jumping. Forget about learning by doing. Forget about educating yourself on great travel deals, saving up and planning a series of small trips to places you might be interested in so that you can see, hear and feel for yourself. You can cross so many places off your list, keep yourself from countless amazing adventures, keep the world from surprising and amazing you, by following these 5 basic rules for failing at expat life.

1. Believe everything you hear. The traveler's tale, in which a story of being stung by a jellyfish in Rockaway turns into a mad swimming dash to elude the jaws of a real life Jaws, is a myth. Not only should you buy everything you hear wholesale, you should apply it directly to your experience (or lack thereof). I was reading the comments section of a popular interracial dating site the other day, when one woman decided to play "expert on Europe". "The Spanish and the Portuguese have the same mentality. Their languages are similar so they understand each other and you know, neither place is good for black women," she said, spoken like someone who speaks neither language nor has any real connection to either culture. Now that's a reliable source.

2. Believe everything you read. Look, people don't lie or exaggerate or extrapolate but especially not in print. Whatever you read, in a book, in a magazine, on a blog, MUST be true. It's not like Jayson Blair ever happened.

3. Race first. Those horror stories, and every other horror story you've ever heard about racism abroad? They are all 100% true! You'd be a fool not to heed the warnings. Better safe than sorry. Racism is serious business. A well place 'nigger' or anything that even sounds close will break you. Why risk it?

Get down With OPP. Other people's perceptions.

4. Think in absolutes. Thinking about the people you'll meet on any terms other than the most obvious and superficial is a waste of your precious time. The city you choose to live in, (or town or village or commune), the community into which you integrate, or the crew you rock with is certainly not going to influence the type of Swede, South African, Japanese, Brazilian, you encounter. Fuck--Swedes are Swedes! Absolutes are like anchors keeping you earthbound, keeping you from flying. I mean, really, who flies?

5. Live vicariously. I just need to reiterate how pointless it is to actually go places and do stuff, when you can just listen to people jabber about it. As you see about the world filtered through someone else's lense, whether they're wearing rose colored glasses or...whatever the opposite of those would be, you've got to decide whether you'll let it guide or replace your own vision for yourself and your life. "I've ex-ed France off the list because I heard French men don't date women who are over a size 0" is the latter. Enough of this kind of thinking eventually exes you out of the game, which is always the desired goal, right?

The good news is, you are right. Whatever you think, you're right. Your race, your gender, your social class (whatever the fuck that means these days), the size of your ass, the mole on your left cheek--they are all liabilities. They are all, big or small, there to X you out of the game. You in fact can't make it in the wider world. Best to know your limitations. Socrates ain't say "Know thy place". He said "Know thyself".

World Music Wednesday: Why Mala Trumps Minaj

2010-11-23T17:07:00.000-08:00

Hip hop is not a democracy. I'll be damned if misogyny hasn't morphed some of the world's greatest lyrical thoroughbreds into whiny little kittens scratching and meowing at the genre's back door. Apparently the CNN of the streets only hires anchors with penises. The bad news is it's not just a gender thing with hip hop. As an international artist you haven't a chance in hell of hitting the big time if you ain't rapping in English. You're confined to your linguistic market, which, be it Spanish or Mandarin, keeps you at a distance from the real taste makers of the game, if not the real money and the almost tangible global cache. Outside of the odd Sean Paul, Pitbull, or Tego Calderon collabo with one of hip hop's finest, there's very little cross cultural pollination between American hip hop and the music generated in local hip hop markets. France's MC Solaar was one of the few non-English speaking rappers to achieve even a modicum of mainstream recognition. For the most part, if it ain't male, English-speaking and American, it does not exist.

Case in point: Sunday before last at the Method Man-Redman show here in Barcelona. Fresh off a win for Best Urban Song at the Latin Grammy's for "No Pidas Perdón" Cadiz-born, Barcelona-based rapper, La Mala Rodriguez was posted backstage left, rocking "Chinese bangs" (in the words of Nicki Minaj) and the shortest blue and yellow striped dress I've ever seen in my life. She was dancing with an attachment, inhibition, and zest you only really see in nonblack hip hop fans. So when one of the promoters pointed her out to me, I said something like, "Ah. Cool.", and turned my attention back to Red and Meth. Ice cold and fresh to death, I didn't even bother getting a photo, much less an interview.

Turns out, La Mala is, for all intents and purposes, Nicki Minaj's Spanish equivalent: she holds the weight of women in [Spanish] hip hop on her shoulders. On a whim this weekend, I downloaded her most recent album, Dirty Bailarina and immediately regretted not approaching her last week. Dirty Bailarina is stellar!! So stellar that Nicki Minaj is hereby relinquished of her sole savior duties forthwith. Minaj's debut album, Pink Friday, drops this week, but you should all consider buying Dirty Bailarina, too. Why? First, there's the fact that in La Mala, we have the chance to promote a dope woman MC while simultaneously undermining the strangehold the English language has on the genre. Two birds, one stone. But also, there's the fact that I believe La Mala is genuinely a better artist than Nicki Minaj. (Yeah. I said it.) Here's how they match up:

On Aesthetics:

Minaj's ass is legendary. No question. La Mala's is not. But ass does not an MC make. Furthermore, while Minaj's sense of style revolves around Harajuku and Barbie (she stays with 2 sticks in her bun), la Mala tends to be a bit more of a fashion peripatetic. She indulges in a little Chinese straw hat action in the video for Bajo Otra Luz with Nelly Furtado, but she also plays Swedish milk maid in 2007's anti-domestic violence anthem, Nanai (the chorus? Mírame los ojos si me quieres matar/ Look me in the eye if you want to kill me... WOW), then time travels to futuristic frau in Toca Toca, only to land in an in unidentified beyond as a Tim Burton-inspired doyenne in 2010's Un Corazón off Dirty Bailarina.

On Vocals:

Though Mala's voice doesn't have the emotional heft of an L-Boogie (claro), she riffs some jazzy, unconventional paths up and down the scale, especially on joints like Por Eso Mato and Un Corazón. Most importantly, she does not use autotune. Don't need to say any more.

La Mala, too, rocks famous collabos:

Minaj has got three fewer albums than Mala, but she's already been anointed by the likes of Lil Wayne and Will.I.Am (who seems to be on a quest to pump the most pointlessly catchy music into the atmosphere as BillBoard will allow). Mala, however, is no wallflower. She's been featured on a remix of Akon's Locked Up, multiple tracks with Calle 13, Puerto Rican godfather of rap and reggaeton, Tego Calderon, and most recently Massive Attack, for una combinación mágica. Bajo Otra Luz with Nelly Furtado is also light, poppy, and so different to most of her other work in terms of content that it's not only a cute song, but a testament to the Mala's range.

Social Responsibility:

In Minaj's world (like much of American hip hop), dope girls are cool. On her remake of Lil Kim's Jump Off: "Where my girls that'll transport bricks? You could get it". In just one line she cosigns drug dealing and co-opts bisexuality in order to male-identify.

La Mala's La Niña is the tragic story of a woman who grows up to deal, just like her daddy. She makes buckets of money and wears clothes she once only dreamed of, but her life's a nightmare. The video was banned in Spain for it's depiction of a little girl selling drugs. Drug dealing? Mal.

The biggest difference is that Nicki rides solely for the Game, while La Mala Rides for us all. To her credit, Nicki is conscious of the fact that she is the projected savior of women in hip hop. On Still I Rise, Minaj addresses her female haters, "If Nicki wins, all y'all bitches getting meetings". That is, the future of women in hip hop rides on her success. But thus far, she hasn't gotten much deeper than that. (Yes, I heard her autobiographical song about her mom's murder. Yes, it was kinda good). Nicki's commitment to the game is admirable and unshakeable, and the best of it comes to us via her early mixtapes, in clever remakes of BIG's 'Warning' and the aforementioned 'Jump Off'. Nicki understands her place in the game. But in the world beyond it????

Mala's bird's eye view is as evident in the song and video for which she won a Latin Grammy just weeks ago, as ever. Check out'No Pidas Perdón'.

La Mala comes to an increasingly international stage, inasmuch as shipping yards represent borders. She's some corsetted, Tarantino/Robert Roqriguez badass glamazon, wielding big guns (but not actually shooting them) and dousing fools with gasoline (but not actually lighting them on fire). The lyrics have much more bite. Check the chorus-

Mi madre va a llorar, tu madre va a llorar
No pidas perdón si no lo vas a lamentar
Es, asi la ciudad todo cambia
Cógelo con calma
El amor no desaparece, oye

My mother's going to cry, your mother gonna cry
Don't ask forgiveness unless you regret what you've done
It be's like that. The city changes everything
Take it in stride. Love doesn't disappear. Listen.

Is it me, or is that 'oye'(listen) drawn out suspiciously to sound like 'Oh yeah'? Making it a catchy point of entry for non Spanish speakers? It's like, 'listen anyway.' Listen despite what you see, even when what you see is a shameless flaunting of capitalist markers: the unprotected shipping yard; containers marked 'Gold', 'Capital' and Hyundai. Though things have changed (definitely in terms of her current image) and we may be such a disappointment that our mothers would cry to see us, it's the natural order of things to be worse before they're better. It's what modern life ('the city') has done. It changes people, changes priorities. But love is indestructible. For my money, in a year when La Mala crosses the Atlantic to accept a major award, Mala's 'city' is the globe. And her words are for every one in it. Indeed, "humanidad"--

Estoy tejiendo una tela
Humanidad en vela la cosa encandela
Y ahora te pones en pie

I'm weaving a tapestry
Humankind watching, moved*
Stand up

'Humanidad en vela' could mean so many things. 'Vela' as in candle? Humanity lit like a candle? 'En vela' as in vigilant, watching? Everyone's watching? If her Grammy's any indication, that lyric is not just impressively dense, but prescient. The world, or at least a wider audience than has been available to her thus far, is watching. We should all be watching. And listening, regardless of native tongue. As Mala says in Ama, Liberate del 4 por 4, or come out the box, free yourself of linear thinking... or does 4-by-4 refer to your gas guzzler? The woman is mean, I tell you.

*encandelar is 'to irritate' but I'm gonna interpret it to mean 'to move' or 'to itch'; to inspire to action, like standing up.

The Most Unofficial Guide to the Upcoming Catalonia Elections Humanly Possible

2010-11-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

It's election time, Cataluña!!! You got the Partits dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC) on the left. The Partido Popular (PP) on the right. And the nationalist parties, Convergencia i Unio (CIU) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) somewhere in the clusterfuck. Catalan politics sits (and spins) on dual axis--liberal/conservative and separatists/one-Spanish-nation-under-a-flamenco-guitar's-groove-ists. When you first move to Cataluña you think of the separatist thing as a tad indulgent. Like, 'Gimme a break. This is Spain.' But then you live here a while and Catalonia's distinctiveness chips away at your skepticism. You start saying 'Adéu' instead of 'Adiós'. The customs of other parts of Spain seem weird to you (In Sevilla I found myself saying, Why they playin' dominoes in the middle of the day? and Oh yeah! Flamenco!!)... and you start to... get it. Even if you don't support it, you get it. The separatist element complicates the political scene. Perhaps it's for this reason that the Generalitat's posted cute lil kindergarten easels all over the city as designated spaces for campaign propaganda.

Thaaaat's it. Keep it simple, stupid.

So, it works here like it does in the UK, the people vote for members of Parliament, the Parliament then chooses the President from their ranks. For an American, this is whaaaa? Like, we can barely abide the electoral college. Imagine a President from a party other than the party that won the majority of the popular vote? (Hi Bush!) Happens all the time. Current President José Montilla (who everyone makes sure to tell you is not really Catalan, but Córdoban) is a member of PSC. I always wondered why they'd vote in a non-Catalan Catalan Prez. I understand now. They didn't. Though CIU (ERC?) won the majority of the popular vote, it was not enough to mount their own President without the help of PSC and ERC (CIU?). Will of the people be damned. Deals were made. PSC took the presidency. Some people are so fed up, they're just not gonna vote. I have to say I'd prefer this to Catalans being fed up and voting for the opposition. Let's take a look at the opposition, shall we? Behold Alicia Sanchez Camacho.

Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?

Young. Sexy. Puts the 'P' in PP. Doesn't mind kissing strange Senegalese men for the cameras. No, for real. In a shrewd 'this is not coming from a racist place' move, she kissed his cheeks after answering his question about unemployment by telling him he should have never fucking left where he fucking came from. It's her image and likeness that appears in a campaign commissioned video game as Lara Croft, bombing migrants "whilst riding a seagull named Pepe". Angelina Jolie is pouting right now. More than usual. People seem to not be feeling Montilla too heavy, which... okay... I see the appeal of ERC or CIU. As does former PSC Prez Pascual Maragall, who took a moment out from battling Alzheimer's to throw some lucid support CIU's way. (Or was it lucid? A debate rages as to whether he's being taken advantage of by scoop gluttons and power whores.) Not that anyone gives a goddamn about my ignorant immigrant opinion, but for me to really get on board, the separatists are going to have to beat the PSC youth branch's campaign T&A...I mean, PSA that links the pleasure of having voted with pleasure. Si señor. It's getting hot in here.

A[nother] Night With Red & Meth

2010-11-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

Meth & Red 3 from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Wu-Tang Clan member, Streetlife, nailed it. "We've been here before, haven't we?". Um, well, yes, as a matter of fact, just months ago, he and Method Man performed in Barcelona. And he then, as last night, he was trying to... get to know me. I was flattered that he remembered. Impressed that he could joke about it. But unlike last year, Redman came with and the duo packed (and summarily ROCKED) Barcelona's Sala Razzmatazz.

Also unlike last year, I actually got to talk to Method Man. Quite by accident, actually, our first conversation began as Meth looked at DJ Allah Mathematics and said, "Nigga you got pink eye!". Math of course tried to deny this, in the hopes of not becoming the tour bus outbreak guy. Meth overruled him: "Nope. I seen it too many times with my daughter. You got pink eye. Did you put your head on the pillow? See? Never put your head on a pillow at a hotel. Niggas be farting on the pillow and it be fecal matter and shit on it..." I normally keep my mouth shut in dressing rooms with rappers who have nuff groupies, lest they mistake me for one. Unless I have my journalist hat on. I didn't. I looked up from my Blackberry anyway.

Me: Dude, what the fuck? Thank you. Thank you for fucking ruining hotels for me forever.
Meth: [Chuckles. Rolls blunt.] I never sleep on no hotel pillow. You know what I do, I wear my hoodie up over my face to sleep...
Me: Okay, but...fecal matter? Really?
Meth: Yuuuup. Niggas be fartin' on the pillows. [He looks up at me from rolling his blunt.] You heard about that bed bug shit in NY??
Me: I was in NY all summer ain't see one fucking movie, fucking with them bed bugs...
Meth: Word! That shit is nasty...

I never could clearly chalk that line out between writer-about-the-arts and friend-to-artists. Later, after about 10 groupies had found their way backstage, and one particularly lusty young lady in a bad weave and next to no clothing drew a side eye from Meth, he decided to further piss all over that line by taking bets as to which women in the room were wearing underwear. According to Meth, out of about 15 women, I was the only one. I took it as a compliment of the highest order. "You DEFINITELY got on drawers," he told me. The lusty lady, he surmised, "DEFINITELY don't".

On the other hand, it's really some shit when Redman calls you crazy. Like, literally dude looked at me and said, "Yo, you crazy!". Really? Of the two of us, I'm crazy? And after I spent most of the after party acting as translator between him and a particularly determined groupie who'd driven all the way from Valencia (4 hours) to meet him. Said groupie is purportedly "known" to the crew, but as the man known alternately as "Doc" and "Reg" wasn't in Spain with them last time, she had some unfinished business.

Redman to me: "Tell her I don't have a phone and to write her number down."
Me to groupie: "Es que el no vive aqui y no tiene teléfono. Ponte el tuyo. El te llamara."
Groupie to me: "Bueno, pero, no hablo ingles...como vamos a hablar?"
Me: Errrr....
Me to Redman: "So here's her number but she speaks no English, homie. Like, none. You're gonna need a translator."
Redman: [Eyebrows lift]
Me to Redman: "Okay, I wasn't offering..."

I mean, can I put "Global Rapper-Groupie Relations Coordinator/Translator" on my resumé? How you a rap fan and don't know any English?

As per usual, I was onstage, so all video is taken from the back. More video on tumblr.

BCNoche [A Spanglish Photo Post]

2010-11-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

Inauguración del taller Sislay. Arte obsession totál.

La chica con el bigote.

Krystal y las cerámicas.

Pissing vino. ¿Cómo lo hace?

Todo neoyorquino.

Todo.

Tranqui, tio. No te robaremos.

Stroke. Blow.

2010-11-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

He threatened to punch me. If you can consider a threat, "Do you want to get punched?" And he was just some guy at a dinner party. Some guy, and not a boyfriend or friend. The absence of familiarity made it all the more galling. Perverse, but it's how I felt.

What to do if a man threatens to punch you at a dinner party? A dinner party with great wine and grilled steaks, on a rooftop on par with one your favorite skylines in the world. With his wife there. Amidst a table full of civilized people. None of them challenging him. None of them saying, "You should go." No one saying this with dignity, righteousness, and a sweep of the arm. In fact, no one even hears it. No one hears it except you and the wife. Even though she's sitting across the table in a (presumably) nonviolent conversation, she's heard. She knows what he's up to. It's what he's always up to.

I laughed. I laughed and said, "I wish you would try". Which wasn't at all true, but what do you say to someone who says, "Do you want to get punched?" because you challenged their recognition of a Zadie Smith novel? Since fucking when does a simple "Are you sure that was in On Beauty?", a featherweight challenge that no one else has even heard, result in a male ego bruised enough to incur physical punishment? Just how fucking often does he threaten random women?

Libby's flat, visited so many times since, never reminds me of him. Definitely not Sunday night, where an hour's worth of classical guitar began with the music of Domenico Scarlatti, born the same day as both Handel and Bach. We tracked the evolution of classical music in Spain through Joaquin Rodrigo and the inclusion, reflection, and imitation of the "sounds of flamenco", "the sounds of the street" at the beginning of the 20th century. I heard a "pure" Fandango for the very first time; a piece I'd previously only known as a dancer. Then there was Mallorca, a plaintive, hauntingly romantic serenade, which the famous Catalan pianist, Enrique Granados (after whom one of Barcelona's most perfect-for-people-watching streets is named), played at the deathbed of composer, Isaac Albéniz. It was more conversation over music than concert. A conversation I'd have enjoyed more, had I not been watching his fingers pluck the chords and imagining them curled into a fist. Contrast and cliché.

I didn't know until after the introductions and applause; until after he sat down on a stool and propped the guitar on his knee, that this man was that man. The man who, just last year, threatened to punch me.

Lost in Translation 24

2010-11-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

The immigrant and integration conversation is all the rage in Europe. Ragin enough that there's some loon sniping off Muslims in Sweden. He's at 16 thus far. Ragin enough that somehow Sarkozy's getting away with offering Roma families about 300 euros and a plane ticket to go back to "their country". Ragin enough that Germany's offering integration classes, and a man called Seehofer screaming about the failure of multiculturalism on every TV station, Bill O'Reilly style. Ragin' enough that I talk about it in almost every single class these days. It doesn't always go so well.

Me: Where are you from in France? Are you Parisian?

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: No, I'm from Marseille.

Me: No way! I've never been and anything I know about Marseille I learned from French rap songs.

BlondeCatalanGuyStudent: There are a lot of immigrants there?

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: Marseille is the port, the first stop in France from Africa, so there are a lot of people from Maghreb--Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco--in Paris there are more people from Africa Africa...

Me: Right, you mean from sub-Saharan Africa.

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: Yes. Perhaps there are more people from Algeria than the rest of Maghreb in Marseille. Not like in Spain where most immigrants from just Morocco.

BlondeCatalanGuyStudent: (Laughs) What's the difference?

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: No... Among the people from Maghreb there is a lot of difference and they don't really like eacho--

BlondeCatalanGuyStudent: Maybe but they are all the same.

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: No...

[He cannot tell that both she and I are losing patience. He presses on.]

BlondeCatalanGuyStudent: You can tell the difference between them?

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: Yes.

BlondeCatalanGuyStudent: How?? Maybe they can tell the difference between each other. Like, an Algerian knows another Algerian and can distinguish from a Moroccan. But for us? They are all the same. How can you tell the difference?

CuteBlondeFrenchStudent: My father is from Morocco.

Dating & Travel: Beware the Don Juan

2010-10-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm trouble. No damn good. So when a spiky haired Sevillano in a pink polo and gafas de pasta* asked me out to coffee, I said yes. Within minutes he was on to sex.

-I don't know anyone who doesn't have some kind of thing outside of their relationship.
-Uh huh... And do you have a girlfriend?
-More or less.
-More more or more less?
-More more.
-And you cheat on her.
-Well, I never do this, but with you... We can just have a great time while you're here. I can take you to Cadiz or Malaga or wherever you want. No pressure. And what happens, happens. We don't have to make love but if it happens....

This was our first conversation. The first 5 minutes of our first conversation. I knew nothing about him when we walked out of the English pub 25 minutes later. I knew both nothing and everything. And by everything I mean that he thought I was the easy American Girl Gone Wild looking for my Javier Bardem. He was counting on my giving him "The Latin Pass" wherein I'd be satisfied enough with his approximation of the Don Juan that I'd forget to look at the actual guy before taking my panties off. So, yeah. I turned down a free trip to Cadiz.

Not long ago I sat at a table of recent Latin American immigrants to Spain. I have no clue how we got onto the subject, but it isn't important. Just note that it was they who took it there.

You know, we Latinos, we are very romantic. We're the most romantic men in the world.

Now imagine if I just randomly started marketing myself and the exceedingly dubious "gifts" stereotypically associated with my race/culture/gender, at a goddamn dinner party, no less. (Channeling Eartha Kitt in Boomerang)

You know what they say about black women, dahling. We're tigresses in bed! RRRRRR..."

But it's not just men from Latin America who've absorbed the whole Don Juan DeMarco thing. Many ball-bearing speakers of Latin-derived languages (Spanish, Italian) have co-opted this legend to get a leg up in the dating game. So important is this legend for Italians they've got a translation: Don Giovanni. Besides language, it's perhaps the only other characteristic the average Spaniard will freely admit to sharing with a Latin American. Even a Catalan, a 50 -something numbers guy with this glasses, a receding hairline, and if he wasn't wearing a bow tie, he should have been, recently got in on the action. You know us Latin men, he said, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, we are very passionate. And he wasn't talking numbers.

I knew a slick talkin' Italian (in a non-biblical sense, but just barely as this man was MOTIVATED) a few years ago whose sole purpose in life was to have sexual relations with every single woman. In the world. Our very first conversation took place in Puerto Rico. It went something like this:

-I think you are the best dancer in the world.
-Mmmmm... You're just saying that because you wanna sleep with me, Francesco.
-It's true I want to sleep with you but also I think you are the best dancer.

Everything, from his clothes to the way he spoke to you and looked at you was calculated to appeal to the legend of the Latin lover in you. Kind of like this. But all these years later, I still have no clue who that dude really is. A Swede who did fall prey to his charm(s) (?) shared, Francesco has A LOT of sex. And it's not even that good! She was surprised, like she didn't know all that I'm a hot Latin dude and I hafta have ya hyperactivity is often cover for something. Could be anything, but normally, it's simply about skirting the messiness of real person to person heart to heart contact. You don't share the same language, culture, or history. Real intercultural communication is tricky. The legend is much easier. More expedient.

I've seen many a good woman get took by the Sexy Latin Guy sideshow. Take my good friend, Mikaela, who came to Spain on a monthlong voyage last summer. He just put it out there, she said. Incredulous. He was like, 'Well, why don't you just stay here with me? We could have babies. Yes. You, him and his brown front teeth living in a veritable tree house. So accustomed to the perpetually noncommittal nature of dating in NYC, this was amazing for her.She fell for every declaration of culturally co-dependence hook, line, and sinker. Falling in love just a little bit every time. Not with the guys, but with the legend. The otherworldliness of it all had her ready to wipe her ass with her standards.

The worst part is, your Don Juan, is not similarly swept away. Trust. He's thinking practically. Strategically. Once he knows you're from foreign, you often become, by definition easy, noncommittal fun. If that's what you're looking for, do you. But if you're looking for a mate, don't get distracted by the Sexy Latin Guy Don Juan DeMarco side show. That's the myth. On to the man.

*Spanish parlance for "expensive glasses". Not, like, paella with noodles or anything.

Confessions: Helpless

2010-10-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

The Guyana Race Riots of the 60's

I remember being in my house with a friend, we were only about 16 or 17 years old. There was this man, a heavy-set guy, and he had a woman on the ground, hitting her and tearing at her sari. We were yelling from the window, "Leave her alone! Come on man!" but he ain't hear us. He just kept tearing at her clothes and she was crying and screaming. There was a policeman across the street just watching. He wouldn't say anything to the guy; would NOT stop him. He told us to shut up and move from the window. We were just kids, man. Nothing we could do. I felt so bad. - My dad.

It's Called "Hebephile"

I've lived in Barcelona basically all my adult life. My first husband was a doctor. He was Catalan actually, but we met in England. He was doing a residency at the hospital I worked at as an x-ray technician. When we met I was dating his good friend, another doctor. Oh, we fell in love soooo quickly! He was an amazing, very charismatic guy. When he was leaving England, I left too, and have been living here ever since. I didn't realize he was a pedophile until after we had our second child. I knew something was going on but I thought he was just messing around. Then a 14 year old neighbor tried to tell me that he had abused her, but he was so charming and so... such a good man, I just never thought... A few years later I caught him--I caught him!-- with the babysitter. She was about 15. I divorced him after that. I mean, it took a lot of back and forth, but eventually we divorced. I never told anyo-- well, I told a few close friends of his and mine. None of them believed me. They took his side and just called me bitter and a liar, because through all this he was cheating with other women. I never went to the police. Never reported it. -50 something English woman I befriended at the airport.

Migrancy and Music

2010-10-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

Untitled from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

This woman. She sang in the pyramids of the Mayans, Aztecs and the Inca; through the rapids that connect the islands off the Panama coast, up and down the rivers of the Amazon and the Bermejo. A voice infused with the quetzal and the coatl (the bird and the serpent) it's a call to arms in the Chiapas and a warning in Babylon. Even when she's just singing 'La Bamba'.

This Ain't Cancun

2010-10-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Europe as seen by Americans from Frank Jacobs' blog at
Big Think

And Barcelona's not even really Spain. I realize that that's not saying much, because most people have no clue what Spain is in the first place. Even for Spaniards, Spanishness is fractured and always in contention. The country's comprised of 17 autonomous communities, and 7 official/ recognized languages. There are customs in the north that are foreign to the south and vice versa. When I told a friend from the island of Tenerife about a certain Catalan Christmas tradition, she admitted to never having heard of it before. "It's like a different country," she said, without a hint of irony. Breaking down Spain beyond saying, Spain isn't Mexico, is harder than you'd think. I can, however, shed some light on the question sharing a bit about Barcelona. More specifically, 3 things Barcelona is NOT.

Sombreros and Mojitos. Yes, sombrero simply means hat in Spanish. But I know that when non Spanish speakers use the word sombrero, they are not using it to reference a Yankee cap and a cowboy democratically. Y'all mean this shit right here:

You mean sombrero of the type made popular by Mexican peasant culture and drinking games on spring break. You mean big wide brims, and colorful ass colors. So you come to Spain, where they speak Spanish and you think they mean what you mean by sombrero. And BCN often helps feed the beast of cultural mistranslation by selling sombreros in the cheap souvenir shops on the Ramblas. First of all, never buy anything on the Ramblas. Not food, not t-shirts, and definitely not those poor parrots being sold alongside goldfish, roses and key chains at the kiosks on the center strip. Most of all, do not buy a goddamn sombrero. You will look crazy. The word sombrero is Spanish. Sombreros are not. Also be careful of mojitos. Those are Cuban. Unless a Spanish bar specializes in making them, steer clear.

Flamenco. My first night in Sevilla, I sat at an outdoor bar with a fellow american, two Ecuadorans and an Argentine, eating cheese, chorizo, and some strange little cracker thing that I'd come to find out typically accompanied tapas in Andalucia, but I'd never seen it in the north of Spain. At about 3am, we heard the strains of a Spanish guitar. Flamenco guitar. In the days following, I would see this twice more: once in a park, and again in another bar. People just whipping out guitars and launching into cantos.
If anyone's carrying a guitar in hippy town Barcelona, it's a safe bet they're about to play some Bob Marley or something.

Any flamenco shows in Barcelona, like the ones for which they are always handing out flyers on the Ramblas and Calle Ferran, are probably not the best of flamenco that Spain has to offer. Remember that Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, an autonomous region with its own language, culture, and history. The national dance is Sardanas, essentially, the anti-flamenco. The music, Rumba Catalana, is some strange fusion whose origins are impossible to suss out upon hearing. No. Correction. I'd suss it thus: cumbia that may or may not have lost its way. If you want flamenco, go south, or plan your trip during one of Barcelona's many flamenco festivals, to which artists nationwide flock. The genre was born in Spain, but it's become the very embodiment of the country's fractured nature.

Now, Salsa is also not at all Spanish. Don't go anywhere in Spain specifically for this. Unless it's Club Mojito on a Sunday night, which is filled with Cubans. And no, I've never tried their mojito.

Perpetual Sun. King Felipe II famously blubbered about "the empire on which the sun never sets". But that was in the 16th century, and he was co-opting South American and Caribbean heat (and gold and oil and labor and sexy latin guy image*) for the Iberian peninsula's gain. While it may be appropriate to show up in Cadiz or the Canary Islands in short shorts and a tank at almost any time of the year, when I see you boarding the plane to Madrid or getting off the Aerobus at Plaza Catalunya in short shorts and a tank and it's NOT July or August, I just feel bad. Cause you've been had by Felipe. The sun totally sets in Spain. It's the most mixed of bags when it comes to the environment. North of the center, you've got chilly fall, cold, rainy and sometimes snowy winters, transitional springs and scorching summers.

Perhaps before global warming, winters were shorter and less wintery and the summers, longer and more summery. But it goes beyond that. You'd no more wear your bathing suit and snuggie (I've seen this!!) on Paseo de Gracia than you would on New York's 5th avenue or Chicago's Michigan Ave. In a city where young, urbane parents are worrying about school enrollment when their children are 2 and English speaking nannies are all the rage, you should at the very least, wear a fucking shirt on public transportation.

Indeed there's a beach and everyone speaks Spanish, but this does not mean that anything goes. That said, even Mexico is more than just your sun-sombreros-sangria Mexico and I, for one, wish we'd stop treating it and its touristic cousins throughout the Americas like anything goes too. But we gotta start somewhere.

*Stay tuned. This is Friday's post.

The New York Times Doesn't Care About Spanish People

2010-10-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Last year Spanish President Jose Luis Zapatero accused the anglophone press (that's British and American) of exaggerating the dire state of the Spanish economy. I don't remember him giving a reason for why they would do this; a student of mine later suggested that it was in American and British interest that the euro fail. Right or wrong, when I see the British press referring to the poorer member states as The PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) I can't help but feel like there's some kind of agenda attached.

And so, today the New York Times hits us with A Casualty of War and the Spanish Economy; through the story of fallen Columbian soldier, Belly Meneses Diaz, Rachel Donadio and Dale Fuchs contend that the sad state of the Spanish economy is to blame for the MASSES of immigrants joining the war, and consequently, dying in Afghanistan. I presented this article to my Tuesday, Thursday Advanced Convo class, who ripped the article apart in one observation. "But doesn't that always happen? People without job options join the army all of the time, in every country," said my super rich Mrs. Robinson lady, rocking brown leather patches at the elbows of her navy blue cashmere cardi. Yep. Why hadn't I thought of that?

Donadio & Fuchs allege that since "abolishing the draft" and opening up its doors in 2002, immigrants comprise "about 7 percent of Spain's 88,500 troops". In '02, indeed, up to about '07, the Spanish economy was flying high. There is no question that Spain is facing a 20% unemployment rate. But it's a number that I'm sure does not account for people likely to be paid under the table. And the article provides ZERO evidence that the percentage of immigrants joining the Spanish army has spiked in proportion with the big dip in its economy. Major Donadio and Fuch-ing fail.

The real story lies where the military and immigration reform meet. Meneses Diaz died in Afghanistan. But for the ones who make it safely back to the peninsula, should they be granted automatic (or at least more easily attained) citizenship for risking their lives in war? Immigrants are only allowed serve for a maximum of 6 years. 7 years of residence in Spain qualifies you for citizenship regardless of your status, even if you're completely undocumented. See what they did right there? Slick. I only got a little heated when one student, a high level stock exchange guy, suggested that serving for 7 years in order to achieve citizenship would be the "easy way out" and that all illegals would do it if given the chance. I assured him that was not true.

We offshot to many other, even more interesting topics. Like, what makes military work different from other dangerous work, asked a high level stock exchange guy. "More people die per year in construction related accidents in Spain, than in the military. And many illegals work in construction." Should they, too, be offered citizenship?

Another student, a Barclay's executive, added, "If this is a sensitive topic among the general population, imagine with the military, which historically in Spain is very, very, very conservative. Can you imagine a guy from Colombia being a general and ordering around Spanish soldiers?" Thus, the other advantage to the 6 year limit- the protection of Spanish identity. A matter of national security in the highest order.

So the NY Times could give a shit about Spanish people. Clearly. But do Spanish people care about immigrants? Hm.

Cacique Banana Columbus

2010-10-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Though Italian, Christopher Columbus found funds for his grand FIND INDIA! plan in the reborn Spanish crown, just out from under that tea party they called colonization at the hands of the Moors. Columbus wrecked shop on the Spanish moneda. Lest we forget.

While I was in Sevilla for Arte Para Todos, the making of Europe's largest outdoor exhibit, I had the pleasure of accompanying the group of 40 visual artists from around the world on a special, guided midnight tour of Andalusia's Parliament building. We sat in the plenary session hall where the lawmakers of southern Spain work their legislative magic. We walked through the courtyards laid with stone hand delivered from surrounding mountains and doorways ribboned with gold from the Americas. "This was built during an age of great prosperity for Spain. After discovering the Americas, we had a lot of gold and resources flowing through the south of Spain in particular. Much of Sevilla was built then..." Spain's gotten quite a return on that moneda, I thought.*

Participating artist and friend, Katie, couldn't stop remarking on how much Sevilla looked like Havana. Except with money. Technically, gold from the Americas. It all felt strangely macabre. The lightness with which our tour guide relayed the origins of the building's bling. The casual nature of Katie's observations. It surprises me that I'd ever really wondered thought about what would have happened had, say, the Tainos "discovered" Europe. What that encounter may have even looked like...

Behold, Ecuadoran artist Nelson Román's contribution to Arte Para Todos, Cacique Banana... more accurately Sevilla Wakes Up Every Morning to a Banana. Discovering it.

I love this mural. Whimsical, surreal bordering on grotesque, like try as we might, we could never really wrap our heads round the reverse.

Happy Columbus Day to you, too.

*I tweeted that Spain doesn't celebrate Columbus day. They do, just on the 12th of October.

UPDATED: Reader Remi has posted the link to a fantastic article on Columbus Day in Spain by one Ada the Raider. Please find the link in the comments. An excerpt:

If you come to Madrid, you'll probably head to the famous Plaza Mayor that is popular with tourists, street performers, and everyday Madrileños. The reality is that in the past it was a bustling slave market. Fast forward to 2010 and a new slavery can be seen on the streets of the Plaza mayor, the many young African and Eastern European girls whose dreams of a better life have led them to be coerced into prostitution, and Spain is its first port of call.

PLEASE click the link in the comments section!!

FC Regal beats the Lakers??

2010-10-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

My Blackberry started vibrating exactly one hour before the Lakers vs. FC Regal Barcelona tip off, October 7th at Palau St. Jordi. I was curled up on the couch with a cup of tea and the latest episode of America's Next Top Model streaming from my laptop. I had emailed Hollywood on Monday simply asking, 'Did you know the Lakers are playing here on Thursday?"She replied a super laid back, "I didn't know! I'll make some calls!". Needless to say, after hearing crickets for 4 days from her end, I did NOT expect her to be calling with VIP tickets!! I was downstairs and in a taxi within 10 mins.

The last time I was scarred by went to a European basketball experience, it was the Brighton Bears versus some other team that took a few hours out from sucking ass in some other butt fuck European shithole to hurl some smelly balls at a backboard. I remember having a conversation with some [actually, cute] black American college graduate (which, these days, is almost a testament to how much skills you don't have as a ball player) about sucking, I guess, which ended in me promising to go to his practice the next week, and then promptly forgetting it. Or perhaps regretting it. European basketball, up until this year has been one big YAWN for me.

Alas, FC Regal Barcelona does not suck. They are not the goddamn Brighton Bears. Now I wouldn't exactly call October 7th a clash of the titans, but FC Barcelona are 2010 EuroLeague champions. So it was a contest.

Hollywood's boys tried to dominate early. No doubt to rest up for the NBA regular season set to begin in 2 weeks. The fast break game didn't work. And it especially doesn't work, when you can't hit a damn lay up. Pau Gasol hit the hardwood with lots of fire, but by the fourth quarter both he and Odom had been rejected by Regal no-namers multiple times, and took to either encouraging or straight miming, the foul. Not a bad strategy, seeing as how the refs were calling love taps (Reeeeeef!! Era un abrazo!!!*).

Still the golden boys managed to scrounge up a 1-point lead by the halfway mark. Former Laker James Worthy showed up in a grey suit, surrounded by the Laker Girls B squad to... I don't know what exactly... smile with some kids, but it was great to see him. Pau Gasol, son of Catalonia, former Regal player, made a nice showing, scoring about 8 points in the first 8 minutes, dominating in the paint (to the polite applause of his countrymen) but ended up shooting only 7/21!! Despite this, he was honored with a plaque from the Spanish Basketball Federation and a standing O, right between a performance from the cast of Hair (or, Pelo! as the case may be), and the Laker Girls B team dancing to a song about Italy.

In Spain.

Remember that number in Nine, Cinema Italiano, with Kate Hudson belting out, "Guido, guido, guido, guido!!!" THAT.

In the end, the Lakers' early nonchalance, cost them the game. The starting 5 had all been filtered out of the game by the end of the first quarter, not to return until FC Regal went on a 9-0 run in the middle of the 2nd quarter. Regal barely runs with the LA starter squad. But the Regal starter squad walks all over the Laker bench. For the Lakers to win, Phil Jackson would have had to distribute minutes between the 1st and 2nd teams with strategic precision. Odom, (the only player, I heard, who's actually in fighting form at the moment) played 41 minutes. And while the Dash hubby looked downright spritely, Kobe seemed a step behind Regal point guard, Ricky Rubio. Suffice it to say, no such balancing act went down. And with Regal launching and hitting all kinds of 3's, well...

By the time La La Land decided to invest the full force of it's star power somewhere around minute 8 of the 4th quarter, it was too late. Regal was playing like a band of brothers. They'd gained momentum, Kobe couldn't touch the ball without the sound and fury of the entire city reining down upon him. And so unlike Hollywood, the LA Lakers did NOT pull through in the end. Final score: 92-88 FC Regal.

Still, Kobe, Pau and all of Barcelona seemed to have left Palau St. Jordi smiling. But who doesn't smile here? It was like '93 all over again. When basketball was inspiring, and I was a year away from traveling coming here for the very first time.

*Ref! That was a hug!!
Photo Manu Fernandez, Associated Press

Art! For All!

2010-10-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Behold the sacred arithmetic of Art + Activism + Commerce.

Dutchman Peter Claesson gathered 40 painters and sculptors from 22 countries to create Europe's largest outdoor exhibition in the Polígono de San Pablo neighborhood of Sevilla in the South of Spain. Claesson asked each artist to contribute a large scale piece that speaks to a different aspect of the United Nation's Millenium Development Goals. The themes of the work range from women's rights, peace, education, clean water for all and disarmament to consumerism and globalization. Besides having pumped some money into San Pablo through partnerships with local caterers, bus companies, construction companies for equipment, and art supply stores, Claesson plans to work with Seville's Tourism Office to train guides for the exhibition. "Not only have the artists brought their point of view to this neighborhood from their own corners of the world, but we'll have stimulated tourism in the neighborhood, and given tourists a reason to come here. I think it will be easier to do this project in other places once people see the good it's doing," said Claesson. Indeed, he's made a life's work of weaving art and travel in a tapestry of progress, most notably in Honduras in '04 with both Art for All Honduras and Honduras 24, an exhibit of about 30 grand photos taken all over the country, none of which depicted a murder (for which Honduras is known). Thus many of the artists in Sevilla had already met one another in Honduras. Needless to say, there's also a party going on in San Pablo.

And so it's been a glorious time. I've accompanied the artists on private tours and cocktail parties through the Parliament Building, and the Royal Palacio. I've enjoyed the finest of 5-course Spanish fare, complete with unlimited bottles of red and white wines. But the greatest has been the time spent talking to this global mish mosh of artists. I've shared cañas and great conversations with great young artists including, Ash, out of Portugal, Ise and Finok, the graffiti wunderkinds behind murals both in Coney Island and Bowery in NYC, and Eric Okdeh, who's just completed a mural inside Philadelphia's City Hall. When it comes to street art, and I would venture to say, socially integrated art, this group is comprised of the best of the best. Seriously, some travel the world charging several thousand a week for their pieces. Here's a look at what I've seen thus far....

Eva, day one.

Eva, day 2

What's been most interesting is to watch San Pablo participate. Working on the ground, Eva (pictured above) is constantly besieged by folks with... concerns. She's worried that Catholic Seville is not ready for her HIV/AIDS prevention, safe sex message, complete with big colorful condoms. I think other artists may rub the conservative south the wrong way as well, but because unlike Eva, they're not Spanish, so they have no idea. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Vicky Camacho at work

One of the highlights for me was welding in a skirt and lace top with the great Vicky Camacho out of Ecuador. Working with fire and iron made me feel even more feminine, somehow. Perhaps by contrast to the environment: a big industrial plant just outside of the city where the only other woman was a tiny blonde administrator. Camacho, renowned for the movement, flow, and softness of her iron sculptures, taught me how to use angles and body weight to bend the iron with minimal force. The plan was to interview her and bounce, but when an indigenous woman says, 'Hold this. Close your eyes. I won't burn you', you do it.

Ash, day 2

AEC & Waone, Ukraine

There's a crazy story involving the Ukranians and the Seville police force, but I'm saving that for the article. Along with Victor Ash (a Portuguese with a French accent), and Finok, they've got a highly visible wall facing a main road. As a writer blank pages terrify me. Can't imagine having to face a huge blank wall. Speaking of faces....

Stephan & Tseluyko, Russia

Notice how Soviet Bloc artists specialize in larger than life visages. You could say that all murals are larger than life, but there is something in the scale of faces in East Bloc street art that imposes itself on its surroundings, creepy and captivating at a glance.

Regardless of origin, street artists almost always have common roots in graffiti. Paris '85, where Ash remembers attending an Africa Bambata show. South America in the late 80's, where street art as subversive practice preceded the fall of one dictatorship after another. This was neither so different, nor disconnected from Eastern Europe, early 90's, as walls were falling and unions dissolving. These days they're all traveling the world, painting, sculpting, and trying not to let freedom pilfer the edge that made them interesting in the first place.

I'm headed back to do interviews with latecomers I missed, as well as to get feedback from the residents.

Exception Proves the Rule?

2010-10-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

I don't want to write a post about the online initiative started by my girl Christelyn at Beyond Black and White called, No Wedding No Womb, which calls for women to get married before having children, and barring that being "wedded" to the two-parent raising of the child. But here goes...

I can get down with this in spirit. However, I come from a world where language, energy, and autonomy matter. I never wanna be talking about anybody's womb, and really, a lot of the children in the photo above, taken during an animal exhibition at the school my family owns in Queens (there are live chinchillas in subsequent photos), are fatherless. Calling them bastards (as some NWNW supporters have taken to doing, NOT Chris) because in the dictionary bastard is a neutral term for fatherless is no better than calling a woman a bitch because in the dictionary it just means female dog. Ridiculous. While 2 parent homes are ideal for some, calling children deprived of that bastards is not okay. Language matters. People who don't know that obviously have limited experience working with shorties. I'm NOT one of those people.

Furthermore, in the 20 years my fam has worked with kids, I've seen fathers fuck up a life, I've seen education change the course of many, and not a Sunday goes by when some grown ass man or woman isn't ringing my parents' doorbell after 20 years to thank them for all they've done. Yes, this is a singular experience. Some of the people shouting the loudest in favor of NWNW (which, let me make clear again, I'm not entirely against) will never touch this many hearts. Reaching people, one by one, as Al Gore says at the end of An Inconvenient Truth, is how you change the world. Singular stories matter. Denying that they do, or that they are subordinate to the statistic, is just a tactic to "derail the conversation". More insidiously, it keeps a conversation superficial and distanced from real work, real solutions.

Derailing for Dummies explains,

"It works to suggest that [your opponent's] experience is worthless because it doesn't align with everyone's - particularly those that you've decided to favour. That is, experiences that, to your mind, back up your prejudices. This is belittling and offensive in the extreme as you are essentially denying their reality. People's personal experiences are important to them, so it's likely they will, whilst getting increasingly hurt and upset, continue to try and defend and "prove" them to your exacting measures while you can bask in the satisfaction of knowing you have caused them distress."

While NWNW proponents base their opinions on a statistic and a bunch of personal stories about their own daddies, others who say, "I was born into a single parent home and I'm dope" are dismissed as "exceptions" whose stories have no place in the conversation. Their realities are denied, human experience minimized, even as the proponents continue to tell stories about bouncing on their daddies' knees as "proof" that daddies are indispensable. Intellectually, this stance is hypocritical, and just plain makes no sense.

I was an early supporter of #NWNW. I have a dad who is, sorry to inform you, more amazing than any other daddy in creation. I can't imagine being preggers at 23, and feeling such shame that I had to buy myself a wedding ring to stave off judgement, as happened to Christelyn who also grew up in a 2-parent home. My parents would have closed ranks and bitten off the head of anyone who tried talking shit. I know this because I've fucked up many times in life, and the 'rents have been right there for me. I would never dispute that two parent homes are the business. I had one, and am better off for it. However, there are so many people who grew up in dysfunctional two parent homes. And instead of self righteously chastising folks for not being perfect and capable of making irreproachable decisions, let's look deeper into what it means to be an "exception", in the hopes of creating strategies for life changes, self love, and survival.

As true as any statistic is the fact that there are kids that grow up in one parent homes and thrive. Instead of dismissing these cases, let's ask why. What, specifically, did their upbringing have in common with people who were raised in functional two parent homes? Was it a focus on education? The instilling of a particular kind of confidence? Expectations? Why not do the work of figuring out how the single-parented unicorn babies became that way? Statistics are aggregates of singular stories. I say we go back, loot the root and start looking at those singular stories. Both of my parents grew up without fathers. Yet they grew up to create a loving two parent home. How? Why? Luck? Did they just drop out of the sky?This is what's called looking at causes and solutions to social problems holistically, on macro and the micro levels in tandem.

What I like about No Wedding No Womb is the focus on personal responsibility. I believe structural domination exists, but also that it doesn't absolve you of personal responsibility. In order to make better choices though, education is key. But there's a conservative, self righteous tone to NWNW that ain't cool. Especially among folks who I'd bet my Burberry bag have never held a crack baby and watched him grow into a happy, smart kid. Some people value statistics; if you've been reading this blog long enough, you'll notice, I don't. I don't care about numbers. I care about people. I believe the exceptions have something to tell us. The second girl from the right of the above photo was born to a drug addict mom AND dad, adopted by a lesbian couple, and is headed to the United Nations School on a full ride. Hands up, #NWNW supporters who believe in calling kids bastards, and valuing stats over stories, how many of your kids are thriving so?

Home Away from Home

2010-09-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

What's the first thing you do when you get to a foreign country? Stick your head in the guidebook and head to the first 'must-see' monument? Find the nearest Starbucks? (Don't be ashamed! That's my second thing!) Perhaps hit up friends or friends of friends? Exhale??

First and foremost, it's salsa. I've talked many times on this blog about how I first found salsa. Every time I move or travel, I find it again and again. My first night in Madrid 3 years ago, I wandered the streets unsure of what I was doing there, how long I'd stay, if I'd be able to make a life there. A door opened and the sounds of salsa wafted into the street. Following my ear, I approached the door and asked the bouncer if there was a cover. He let me in. I sat with a drink and just watched for the first hour (patience is key), but after the first dance, I was home again. Rhythm. Laughter. New friends. Also, comfort. Refuge. An anchor. For the dance and the people who love it are the same everywhere.

Except in New York. It's better. The dancers are more crisp and on clave. There was only one way for me to spend my last night here in NY til the holidays. We are in silhouette, me and my dread in a big ball on top of my head (salsa was lots of fun with baby dreads, I could spin faster!), and my partner in a Red Sox cap...

Untitled from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

What's the first and last thing you do in a new country? When everything else if foreign, where's home?

I'm In TRACE MAG!!

2010-09-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well, not me exactly, but my writing. The idea was hatched during my first trip to Serbia's Exit Festival in July of '09. I found myself standing in the Dance Arena's VIP section next to one of the organizers, Ivan Milivojev. He was smoking and looking real relaxed, so I decided to shit-start. What followed was about the coolest story I'd ever heard: Youth. War. Rebellion. Survival. Politics. Music. I asked if he'd give me an interview for a magazine I was associated with. A year later, 'Sons of the Morning: The Making of Serbia's Exit Festival' is published in Trace magazine's newest Styles Ahead issue. Not that Exit hasn't been written about before. But I don't think anyone's captured the high stakes freshness of the art scene in Serbia. This is only the beginning. See that list of countries on the cover? Serbia, after Beirut, before Mali next to Kelis? The world as it should be.

Kelis says, Click pic for the link, right now.... aaaaaaaaaah!

Mastering your expat life: Barcelona, the Starter's Kit

2010-09-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

I don'tknow if it's me, or Lori Tharpswho's inspiring a nation of young women to come to Spain. Alright. Not exactlya nation, but these days few days go by without an email from another youngsister asking me for advice about moving to Spain. So instead of letting thesecorrespondences languish in my inbox, I've decided to resurrect the MasteringYour Expat Life series, partially as a space for answering these queries. Firstup, Kendall Carter:

DearIeishah,

I'm a 20year old black girl from the northwestern part of North America who is planningto attend the University of Barcelona in the fall. I have been doing a lot ofresearch about Spain including crime rates and prices. I came across your blogand knew I had to find you. I'd love any information, hints, tips etc. youhave! For example, how bad's the culture shock and how do I learn to fit intotheir way of life without losing myself? I've never been to Spain before and Idon't know any Spanish so I know it's going to be difficult. I'll also beliving in an apartment with other students from the program but I'd reallyappreciate any advice that you'd like to share about settling into BCN as aperson who is living there. Thank you! I hope I haven't taken up too much ofyour time!

Yeah.Never too much. I live for this shit.

First, I want to say congratulations for takingthis step! You haven't revealed enough of yourself for me to know why you'restudying abroad in Spain or what you expect to gain from this experience. I saythis because of course, your expectations can shape youractual experience. All the sweet little things that comprise living in Barcelona could fill a Trick-or-Treat coffer to overflowing. It's like closing your eyes, sticking your hand in, and being ready to savour whatever the hell comes out, be it trick or treat.

I'm gonna bless you with 7 shiny golden nuggets stuffed with starter info. Let'sstart with one of your first questions: the crime rate.

Accordingto Monocle Barcelona is #17 on a list of theworld's 20 best cities to live in. However at press time, crime rates were notavailable. There's a reason for this: crime rates are probably very high. Don'tget alarmed, you'll be safe. Your bag, however, is in mortal danger. Thechances that it'll be stolen, emptied of its contents, and die an ingloriouslittle death in a nearby garbage bin, are astronomically high. I don't know anyforeigners (and as a black woman, you are obviously a foreigner, thus atarget) who haven't been robbed, INCLUDING ME!! TWICE!! Pickpocketing and pursesnatching is as much of a Barcelona institution as the Ramblas. There's evena Facebook group to testify to the fact.Check out How Not To Get Robbed in Barcelona on theMatador Network. It's got a pretty comprehensive list of do's and don'ts to avoid becoming a statistic that doesn't exist. But I'll add one more: Walk around withyour screw face on (it's been a pretty effective deterrent since) and if you'regoing out at night, carry a teeny tiny purse with the strap underneath yourjacket.

CultureShock. I didn't really experience much culture shock.Homesickness for sure, but never culture shock. Spain (and especially the'north' of Spain) is still a Western country. The style of life isn't soradically different. If you approach your time abroad as an emergentexperience, you'll be focused on learning, adjusting, soaking everything in,and you'll be too busy experiencing to be shocked.

On [African] American Privilege. As a black person abroad, your American-ness is an asset. It serves you. Youneed it, and you don't want to lose it. Just being American can net you anything from basic customer service (basic is good for Spain!), to ajob (like in my case!). There is a cross section of people who "hate" America in Europe. Iput it in quotes, because that rabid anti-Americanism does not actually extendto the fun shit-- films, hip hop, and anything manufactured by Apple. That hateexists in equal balance to privilege. It's not something to feel guilty about,as we are wont to do as black people not accustomed to privilege. Not thatyou walk around being obnoxious about it, like so many other Americans do, butalways keep it in mind.

Ditchyour friends. Asa student, you'll feel tempted to take refuge in your fellow non-Spanishfriends. This is okay to some degree. Even necessary to your sanity. But don'tlet it keep you from really experiencing Barcelona. Make sure you don't onlyspend time in places like the Travel Bar, which is in the dead center of thecity and full of Anglophones. Because Barcelona has a large, wellestablished expat community (remember most Nordic peoples speak English aswell), so it's easy to be living there for years, even, without ever reallylearning the language. You can live in Barcelona fairly well without speaking anymore than the basic "I can order from a menu" Spanish. But you don'twant that. You've got to ask yourself, almost daily,

What am Idoing here?

Why am Ihere?

When I gohome, what do I want to remember most?

What willI have learned?

And in aperfect world, how will I have changed?

Let theanswers to these questions be your anchor.

OnLanguage. It'salmost impossible to move your language skills ahead at a faster pace withoutan intercambio or language exchange. You simply have a conversation that alternates between English and Spanish, with aSpanish-speaking person, in a casual setting. Make sure it's someone you like,but not too much. Why sacrifice the fruit of a great language exchange partnership for forbidden fruit that'll rot, more likely than not? Also, make sure you do it at least once weekly, if you want it to work. You've got tobe able to connect a language to your own life, using it to tell your stories,and understand the stories of others. I believe that you don't know a languageuntil you can tell a story in it. An intercambio is a foolproof way ofachieving this level of fluency.

NB: Iwouldn't worry to much about learning Catalan, especially if you're only goingto be in Barcelona for a few months. Everyone speaks both languages.

Streetharassment is anational pastime, but normally goes no further than a stage-whispered commentto which you can always reply, Yo no hablo Español. They will call you 'Negra'and 'Morena'. Choose not to be offended. Choose not to let it ruin your day.

Spain isracist. Thoughpeople can be a bit more ignorant than in the States, I've never found Spain tobe so racist as to keep me from doing my thing. Remember: Youdon't want adventure if you don't venture out fully prepared to meet ignorant,racist people. Black people, globally, are not at the top of social hierarchy. Understood. Totally sucks. Now let's talk about your life.Whatchu gonna do?

Limón,Costa Rica. 1998. In a small club that looked almost like a treehouse, a man threw hisdrink on me, snarling 'nigger', because I wouldn't dance with him. My friendsclosed in, shielding me from his wrath. At that moment I had a decision tomake: go home and sulk? Or suck it up and stay? What was I gonna do next? I wiped mydress and stayed. About an hour later I had a dance with a one-armed man thatsparked a lifelong love affair with salsa. Two years after that I won aEuropean salsa championship, that allowed me to travel around the continent asa performer and teacher. The point? Racist shit will happen. Or maybe it won't.But just know that if it does, you don't have to let it curb your enthusiasmfor travel! You don't have to let the abyss devour your experience. How youhandle horrible situations is all on you.

There areall kinds of details, like: Don't spend all your nights out in those clubs bythe beach. Stay away from men who like foreigners (a.k.a guiri hunters).You don't have to tip as much as you do in the States. Always make brunch athome. Really, Spain does many things right. Brunch is NOT one of them. The artscene is amazing. If you're there during museum night, don't miss it!! Makesure you see at least one concert at Palau de la Música. It's the most amazingvenue....

I couldgo on, but you'll soon see, taste, hear, smell, and feel all of this foryourself! Except for this one thing: Don't listen to what anyone says. Pim Pam Burger is the best fucking burger inthe city of Barcelona. Quote me.

Just a Pretty Face? My Take On 'My Mic'

2010-09-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

In the aftermath of BET’s My Mic Sound Nice: The Truth About Women in Hip Hop, itoccurred to me that I haven’t witnessed this kind of collective dick riding of adocumentary since Fahrenheit 911. I mean, I only follow about 300 people, but via retweets I’m privy to the fuckery of at least thousands. So imagine the following commentary repeated thousands of times.

"Congrats to @FormerSourceWriter!! I'm so proud of you girl!"

"Yay! Watching my girl @MagazineMagazine on My Mic! Love you girl!"

"I miss Lauryn Hill."

"Lauryn Hill is dead."

"I miss Lauryn Hill."

"This is shot so well."

"This is shot so well!"

"This is shot sooooo welllll!!"

"I like Nicki Minaj."

"I don't like Nicki Minaj"

"I miss Lauryn Hill."

"THIS. IS. SHOT. SO. WELL!!"

Look, I like hip-hop. I usedto love her, which inevitably makes me sound like a rap song, but my tasteswidened and we grew apart. That’snot to say I don’t care about hip-hop. It’s integrity. It’s future. It’s legacy.So I’m not gonna front, I was watching My Mic as it premiered like everyoneelse in my twit-stream. Apparently, said stream is overpopulated with friends of Ava DuVernay, the documentary’s director, featured commenters, and all of their friends and fam. Thus in allthat was said about how beautifully it was shot, how great this or that journalist looked, and how much we all miss Lauryn Hill, the documentary seems tohave sparked zero criticism, zero discussion about what it revealed about where hip hop's going, especially with regards to women mc's. Correction. There wassome discussion about whether or not Nicki Minaj is ‘the truth’. (We're screwed yo.)

Some of the commentary was right. It was shot so well. The lighting was making sisters look positively radiant. Content-wise, it was righteous to hear mc's talk about the first time they'd heard a woman on a rap track. I appreciated both Chuck D's science about Lyte and Lyte's science about Lyte ("I studied the craft... I got my voice up to where it was coming from my diaphragm.") And of course there was the general consensus that Latifah and Lauryn are better than every-fucking-body else. But then it all got so... high-fiving at the pep rally. Troublesome moments like these got lost amongst the pom poms:

“We’regoing to see what happens with [Minaj] and if it’s worth it to open the doorsup a little bit…” -Some Music Exec Dude

“If male rappers arespending so much time dissing African American women, there’s not much to besaid for male listeners wanting to hear what’s on in an African American woman’smind,’ - Lyte (paraphrased).

“You’re a female. I’m a dude… I’m not gonna learn nothingfrom you… I just wanna look at you.” -Trina reading the minds of her male fans.

But my absolute favorite commentary, and by favorite I mean I was screaming at the screen like it was the first 5 minutes of a scary movie and the black character was going outside "just to see what that noise was", comes to us courtesy of Kevin Liles, former president of Def Jam:

"There was no meeting where [all the record labels?] got together and said, "We're not going to empower females..."

I was immediately reminded of when "we" as a multicultural, fashion-buying public, were taking the industry's insiders to task about the absence of models of color on runways, in campaigns, and in magazines. I remember personally asking the editor of Marie Claire back in the earlier noughties at a women in media panel I attended, about the dearth of models of color. Know what she said? Something very much like, There was no meeting where the industry got together and said, We're not going to empower black models. She went on to explain that the nature of the industry requires certain physical attributes and if a black girl happens to meet those requirements, perfect! If not... well... it certainly isn't intentional. I answered to her what I screamed to my television (and later, tweeted). Discrimination, or the disempowerment of certain groups, does not need the empowered to have a damn meeting. The empowered are the meeting. Their decisions are their consent. By not actively looking to include women in hip hop, you collude in their marginalization.

Only once did I see a tweet where someone noticed that the rappers featured started to justify their own marginalization, their own bench-ification, by saying, 'Well, we need weaves and make up and stylists and things... It gets to be too much money for labels!' Fuckery knows no bounds. Has anyone ever really noticed how many people the average male rapper travels with? Most of whom ain't doing shit? How much does it cost to feed all of those extraneous negroes? Surely less than a weave and some lipstick? (I tweeted that, too.)

When asked why they thought there was such an absence of women rappers the answers were truly diverse. Truly. Like a catwalk.

“I really can’t explain why...”

“I wish I knew..”

"I don't understand why.."

“It’s just not easy..”

Finally Shante, looking at the camera all sage, eyebrows raised and everything, is like “It takes a very special woman to be a female rapper”. This, by way of analysis, from one of the best chicks to ever do it, was the best DuVernay could get on tape. This, when the market is saturated with rappers (with penises) that we'll never remember. Rappers for whom we are not going to be damn near battle rapping 'I remember when' anecdotes, like we did when Guru passed.

It seems it's way too much to ask for people to pause in puckering up for RT's (because every single fucking Girl you looked so good!! was RT'd) to really discuss what My Mic may (or may not) have revealed about hip hop's legacy. About women's legacy in hip hop. Perhaps that's this very beautiful documentary's failing: it's inability to really spark a debate. Looking good. Contending nothing.

Allow me to Reintroduce Myself

2010-08-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

I'm guesting today at Beyond Black & White, Christelyn Karazin's tour de force of an interracial dating and black women's empowerment blog, on the subject of none other than dating abroad. If you've been here (as in, oyster) before, don't worry, I'm around. Moving and shifting things. (In all honesty, feenin' for a blog redesign. So if you know a guy...). For anyone here by way of Beyond Black & White, I've compiled an annotated list of some of the posts I like best as an intro. Browse. Enjoy. Leave comments. Welcome!!

1. Notes from a Young Serb is one of my absolute fave posts, because it was culled from one of my favorite nights in life: the first time I met the Serb's actor friends during my first holiday trip to Serbia. Also, this post got Belgraded.
2. The Tuscan Son, about the wrong kinda guy.
3. Noblesse Obligé, where I give you a list of some random shit you didn't know about me, and probably never cared to know, but whatevs, that's what people do when they win 'awards', right?
4. Expat Dating: For Black Women, wherein I talk rules for dating as an expat. I meant it to be for sisters, but when women who weren't black started responding, I widened the scope for the follow up... Expat Dating: It's all about momentum.
5. Mastering Your Expat Life: The Brainstorm, is the one where we, well, brainstorm different ways to move abroad, which subsequently moves me to I say, 'Fuck all that' and just Jump.
6. Any Lost In Translation post is a safe bet (if I do say so myself). LiT features verbatim slices of my life and proof that truth really is if not stranger, definitely more bizarre than fiction. My faves, though, have to do with The Serb, naturally. Check out Lost in Translation 12 and Lost in Translation 15 part 2

7. The Serb's Born Day is me multitasking; I simultaneously celebrate my honey's birthday and rail against folks who use 'structural' readings to reinforce the perceived inferiority of black women even when the historical and/or cultural beams that support that structure aren't there... don't worry. Just read this one. I like it.

8. Roots is about black people, Zora Neale Hurston, and hurricanes.

9. A WTF Moment In World Music. Pitingo. All I gotta say.
10. Last but not least is Confessions. There will be more of these.

The Magic of Belgrade

2010-07-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sultry summer night in the Serbian capital. We start the evening shopping at Supermarket, a design concept depot in downtown Belgrade. We intend to end up in one of the sexier parts of town, the Bohemian quarter maybe, but nostalgia and familiarity lead The Serb, his best friend from boyhood, Sasha, Sasha's wife, Billi, and me to a square near the Science Faculty on the University of Belgrade campus. Near where on the walls students scrawl neat homages to Tesla. The Serb, Sasha and Billi surely spent many a youthful, angst-filled night talking Balkan politics, love and fear in this very square. Tonight we're sipping beers and Macedonian red. Munching on feta crumbled over green salad. A formidable proscuitto. Potato.

Sasha: You know, the onlything that scares me is Black magic. In some parts of Serbia, they practicethat….

He shudders.

Sasha: I have a friend whohad a very good business, buying and selling cars. He was so successful. Thenall of a sudden everything went bad.. he lost all of his customers, all of his money...

Billi: Even his house, whichis almost impossible in Serbia.

Me: Yeah??

Billi: Yes, it's not so common to get so bad that you lose your home in Serbia. It's not like the States.

Sasha: Anyway, he went to, like, a medicine woman and she told him thatin his front yard, were buried two locks.

Me: Locks? Like a lockwith a combination?

Sasha: No, you can open itwith a key… How do you call it in English?

He shows me with hisfingers.

Me: A padlock!

Sasha: Yes, okay, twopadlocks, she said they had been buried in his yard years ago…, maybe decades ago.And she said that they were part of a... a....

Me: A curse? He was cursed, we say...

Sasha: Okay, a curse... and it was the reason why he was experiencing so many difficulties. Soshe told him exactly where to dig for the locks, and he found them. Twopadlocks buried in his front yard exactly where she said.

Me: That’s creepy!!

Sasha: But she told him to onlyremove one, because if he removed the other, then the curse would transfer tohis daughter as well.

It occurs to mebriefly: children suffer when parents suffer. This is absolute. Mathematical in its precision.

The Serb: Are you sure that shedidn’t call someone and tell themto bury the locks while he wasn’t home??

Billi: Yes, but you wouldknow the difference between when something was buried yesterday and when it’sbeen buried for years…

The Serb: True.

Sasha: I mean, poor guy! He lost everything because he was with a....

Me: ... curse.

Sasha: Yes, that's it... So he removed one of the locks, like the woman said.

The Serb: And how’s his businessnow?

Sasha: Still terrible.

*This author, the late Momo Kapor, was The Serb's second cousin. The book's ultimately, kind of inspiring.

Confessions

2010-06-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

First, I have one. In my life traveling and living abroad, I could give a fuck about taking photos. Seeing buildings and monuments and things are an afterthought. Or at least, second to the real reason I travel: to talk to people. I decided a long time ago, as a young UN intern, that policy can only do so much. As a scholar with a fancy grant at a fancy ivy-covered institution amongst career smarties with elbow-patched jackets, i learned that theory had its limits too. But human contact, meeting people, talking to them, sharing something--a dinner, a dance, or just a cool conversation--well, those things worked every time. Not only did contact put me within the highest probability of changing a heart/mind, but I continue to be irrevocably changed, influenced, and moved by the shit I hear on a daily basis. Here's a little taste, from this week alone...

History's Pull
"Actually when I was a child, I thought of myself only as German. Both of my parents are from Uzice, the heart of Serbia, but I was born in Germany. I grew up and went to school in Munich, and I still live there. Every girlfriend I've ever had was German. I hadn't been to Serbia in 8 years before last January. And I would never move back there. But something happened when I was a teenager. I became Serbian. I started speaking the language, and meeting more Serbians in Germany and thinking about it more. And now it's the opposite of when I was a child. I used to be only German. Now, I'm only Serbian." - Cute, 30something on the beach

Race y Los Reyes
"I remember being on the metro with my grandfather and seeing a black man sitting across from me. I was 6 or 7... When I saw him I sat up straight, I didn't move, I didn't talk. Back then there were no black people here, compared to today: you can see all kinds of people everywhere. But back then, the only other black person I'd ever seen was Rey Baltasar, one of the 3 Kings. I thought he was a helper or a friend of the black king, riding the metro and checking to see if the little kids were behaving. I was afraid that if I did anything wrong that he would go back and tell the reyes, and I wouldn't get any gifts. It seems so stupid now, but back then, the 1980's, it was the only reference I had for black people.... Don't tell anyone." - Spanish Woman, 30-something

Dictators Ain't No Joke

"It was terrible. It was terrible. After the [Spanish Civil] War, my mother...she has two sisters. So there were 3 of them. My mother and her younger sister were taken away to one place; her older sister was taken somewhere else. The winners, the fascists, piled women from the village onto a little... cómo es díu áixo? cameon? A truck! And took them out. They were kept for 3 years. No one knows what happened because she didn't say anything... You couldn't say anything in small villages during the dictatorship. The teachers, the administrators, mayors, they were all fascist. If you said anything, the police would show up at your house. So for 70 years my mother never talked about what happened to her. Even AFTER Franco died, she said nothing. I found out about this only 2 months ago." - Student, works at La Bolsa, (the Spanish Stock Market); 50something.

World Style Wednesday: Swedish HasBeens

2010-06-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Blame it on Steig Larsson and his pierced up, potty mouthed hacker of a heroine. Or those Nordic design shops that take up more square feet of commercial real estate than Starbucks round these parts, challenging my credit card reflexes with slick ink pens and coffee table tomes. Perhaps it's the boys: tall, blond, and more interestingly, entrepreneurial. All signs point to a sort of "movido sueco"--culture-wise, Swedes are on the move.

Now, I was on the look out for espadrilles for summer, when I spotted these super cute do's at my fave place to shop in Gracia, the airy Swedish boutique, Snö. Snö was opened 5 years ago by platinum blonde Swede called Camilla. "Our idea was to stock the whole store with brands from Sweden," she says, including Filippa K, Acne, and the makers of the badass shoes in question, Swedish HasBeens. These leather and wooden cork platforms are based on Swedish tradition: the clog. Don't you just love when what goes around comes back around? "We grew up wearing them," Camilla remembers. "It's something that was so normal for us when we were young. Then these Swedish girls decided to reinvent them in a modern style with cool colors. We've tried to order more, because they sell so quickly, but there aren't anymore in stock!" And that's why I'm online now, ordering a pair of the Braided Sky Highs in pink. Camilla & co. gave me a preview of the styles they'll stock at Snö in the fall, including a Doc Martin-inspired platformed boot in in pink, orange, yellow, and lime tones so sugary that when lined up I get a Skittle craving. Equal parts femme and comfortable, handmade with natural grain leather, these pop-referential friends of the environment were spotted on Sarah Jessica Parker as early as Fall 2009. I'm already late to the party. Won't make that mistake again.

Sex On the Beach. Sort of.

2010-06-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

We started the day in swimsuit bottoms and sunglasses, watching Serbia vs. Ghana on a flat screen in a Barceloneta chiringuito*. Four frothy iced coffees, a tortilla sandwich, a plate of french fries, and mojitos in the double digits, between us, Hollywood and I. It was all so innocent at first. She got a foot massage from the Thai ladies. I bought a turquoise wrap dress from a Venezuelan vendor, and two rings carved from bone by a brother from Senegal. The Barcelona beach is global capitalist hustle at its very shiny best. And then I don't know what happened. Was the alcohol, the heat, the sugar, or World Cup fever? By 8pm, every guy within a mile radius had taken up residence at our little table. I saw grown men try to slaughter a pigeon, and a drunk Guatemalan singing/hollering "Ale-mania Dee dee dee!!" when Germany slaughtered Australia, 4-nil. Some random Yorkie's (a person from Yorkshire, UK, not a dog) penis made an appearance at around 9, unfortunately, just before sundown. And I was bitten and proposed to by a Serb from Munich, to whom, cute as he was, I had to say no. He did teach me more dirty Serbian, including the phrase, 'Yugo moze dugo", something like, 'Yugoslavs do it longer', and a particularly classy analogy involving female anatomy and airplanes. To think of it, even I blush. The photos are more of an excuse to separate myself from the straight madness, than a chronicle of it. Not to mention, it was an excuse to put my new iphone photog app, Hipstamatic, to use. The sun left. The boys gathered round like it was story time and we were librarians. The alcohol flowed, and then the laughter rang out, until 2am.

*The bars lining the beach are called 'chiringuitos'. Not sure there's an English translation.

Happy Loving Day!!

2010-06-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

Check out last year's Loving Day post!

World Music Wednesday: Flamenco Feminista

2010-06-09T01:49:00.000-07:00

Flamenco Feminista from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.
Os presento popular Barcelona-born flamenco cantaora*, Mayte Martin, and pint-sized powerhouse of a dancer, Rocío Molina, at the Cuitat Vella Flamenco Festival a fortnight back. At the end of their joint encore, Martin plants a kiss on Rocío's hand. A tiny gesture with a big statement. She possesses none of the feminine flourishes typical of flamenco singers: flowers in the hair, flowing dresses, dancing. Martin writes her own script for what a woman in flamenco should look and act like. Beyond the melodiousness, the subdued passion in her voice, there's her individualist take on a musical form steeped in tradition and rigid gender roles. According to one critic: Her image is closer to that of [male flamenco legends] Camarón and José Mercé than that of a typical woman cantaora. I'll admit, it took me an hour to even notice that Martin was, indeed, a woman... What do you see?
*Singer songwriter

Lost in Translation 23

2010-06-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

Three businessmen,working for a big American tech company here in Spain. They are the newhighlights of my work week. Notonly do they fall into what seems to be my demographic when it comes tomen—European, 30plus 3plus, hetero, breathing—but they are just so much damn fun. Daredevils. Ourconversations always revolve around motorcycles and mountain climbing. One had his motorcycle license confiscated after an accident in which he crashed into a Spanish military police vehicle and split his Suzuki in two. And we talk about women. Though two are in steady relationships, the third has player written allover him. He used to date some famous Catalan actress. He calls his BMW bike, his "black girl". And though I try to spread love and instruction equally, he’s my fave. Not cause he’s aplayer. But cause he’s hilarious.

Me: Ok, let’s make alist of different types of friends…

[Blank stares.]

Me: For instance whatdo you call a friend you don’t know so well??

Guy 1: An acquaintanceor something like this?

Me: Exactly. And afriend you work with?

Guy2: Workmate. Orcolleague.

FaveGuy: Or jerk.

Me: I’m sorry?

FaveGuy: Isn’t ‘jerk’another word for ‘colleague’?

Me: Uhm, could be... depends onwhat the co-worker is like. What do you mean?

FaveGuy: I mean,‘jerk’… I thought it meant someone you work with…

[A serious, incurable-by-deep-breaths case of the giggles sets in.]

Me: Did someone callyou a jerk? Because that doesn’t mean…

FaveGuy: No, I used itin an interview.

[Now I’ve completelylost it.]

Me: What??

FaveGuy: Well theinterviewer, he was from Vancouver, and he asked me how I’d heard about thecompany. And I said, ‘Oh, from this jerk I used to work with’…. Wait! No! I should say clerk not jerk, right??

Me: Dude, I don’t thinkyou got the job.

And they've invited me to a BBQ this weekend. Down crumbles the wall between student and teacher.

World Style Wednesday: Prints!

2010-06-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

Aunty Lynn is my mother's best friend from high school in Georgetown, Guyana. The refrigerator at her riverside home in Miami is covered with souvenir magnets bought while traveling the world. Name the city. Name the country. Name the continent. She's been there. She allowed me into her closet on Christmas Day 3 years ago, where these print dresses hung. Dresses she made using fabrics collected on her jaunts across Africa. While every glossy worth her print's showing... prints for the summer season, like we never seen a kente before, sitting under headlines like 'Afrika!' and 'tribal!', I'll wrap myself in these, as full frocks, skirts with tanks, and tees, strappy leather sandals, sky high Michael Kors platforms, and shiny gold accessories.

Dilpo + Yo

2010-05-31T00:41:00.000-07:00

I met Diplo through M.I.A. Not personally, rather, musically. I came to know his sound and his music through M.I.A. Diplo was the DJ to give her that first break; to give her hip hopping South Asian punk stylings context. That context would be his own sonically peripatetic M.O. Apparently, he'd mixed her first single, "Galang", into his DJ set the night she introduced herself in a London club. I got a taste (of the music, people, minds out the gutter!) friday night at the Primavera Sound Music Festival here in Barcelona, where Diplo performed two full sets. One dancehall reggae set as Major Lazer featuring tiny-ball-of-fire hype man, Switch, and two thick choco sisters doing dances I ain't seen in a minute, like the Bad Man Forward, Bad Man Pull UP, and generally juss' a oscillate dem waist like it deh goin outta style*. Switch, pulled a blonde up on stage to simulate sex with, putting her face down on the stage, grabbing her legs, wrapping them around his waist, and spinning her around like a ceiling fan. He finally put her down, (to the collective sigh and relief of the crowd), only to climb on top of the 2.5 meters high speaker, drop trousers to ankles, fly off it and onto her.

His last set, and the last set of the night at Primavera Sound's popular Pitchfork stage, was vintage Diplo. A raucous, tribal mix of Euro-digital slick and every genre under the sun. Solid freaking gold was that moment when he took a remix of Jay Z's "On to the Next One" into Crash Test Dummies' "Mmmm"... laid over an afro-beat.

Funk Carioca enthusiast. Passa Passa practitioner. Friend, producer and collaborator to two of my most major music finds in the last few years: Bonde do Rôle and Buraka Som Sistema. It ain't hard to tell why Diplo and M.IA. swiftly set about making love and music together after meeting in a London club. And though the love's now gone, the music has remained. So it was with great, great pleasure that I actually met Diplo, the man** friday night past, kicking my 2010 music festival season off with a B.A.N.G.

*Sorry. I been feeling very Caribbean these days.
**Yes. That's actually him in the photo.
***Passa Passa? Major Lazer? Likkle taste? Check out THIS.

The Tuscan Son

2010-05-24T21:59:00.000-07:00

I knew there was a reason I didn't care about our losing contact, me and the Tuscan, I just couldn't quite recall what it was. In the two years since we had last seen each other, I would see his name and photo pop up in my timeline on Facebook. Some cryptic correspondence in Italian or Spanish. The hyper-stylized profile pic, taken no doubt by some female admirer slash photographer. Luminous photos of him frolicking on the Costa Brava or through the caves along the shore. And I'd think, just for a second: 'I wonder what he's like now', or 'Wonder if he's with anyone?' Then last night, under the stars and seduction of the annual Ciutat Vella Flamenco Festival, I ran into him. Or he into me. Big hugs. Big smiles. He was as cute, and tall and cool as I'd remembered. Then he opened his mouth.

'So, I saw pics of you in India on Facebook... You've been doing some traveling,' I venture, after the long time no see's are dispensed with. 'Yes, it was beautiful!! It was a very traditional wedding with the dresses and the painting on the hands...'

'Yes! Saris! And henna! I know!'

'What do you mean you know? How could you?'

'Ummmm, half my country is Hindu. I'm Caribbean.'

'You're from New York. What are you talking about?'

Sigh. Okay. Moving on.

'I didn't like how they would run after me in the airport,' he complained. 'Like, 'Sir, Sir! Can I take your bag!??' And I'm like, No! I'll take my own bag!' I don't like how they just accept the caste system, that some people are higher than others.... Why don't they fight?'

Sigh. If there's one thing I hate, it's a fake activist. Saying fight, talking revolution, is not, in fact, revolution. Activism takes courage in the understanding that any action you can take will only shift things a bit. I don't even understand 'Fight!'. I'm thinking this when he hits me with--

'I was also in Brazil! It was amazing!'

So I'd heard. He went on to wax poetic about how warm and smiley the people are in Brazil. About how he'd survived the favela, with the favela drug lord granting him a sort of princely, protected status. And the music and the weather and how one day, he'd like to move there. I was waiting for him to trot out the pics of little negro children that Europeans love to take on holiday. I always have to fight the urge to inform that they ain't have to fly all the way to Africa or wherever, to take photos. That I would have posed for a small, small, fee.

'Yes, it's not like India and Africa, you know,' he schools. 'It can be very hard in those places... and as Westerners, you and I... you know... we always feel like outsiders. '

'Erm, you mean 'we' as in white Europeans?'

'Yes, we! You and me! You are probably more western than me.'

I laughed. 'Honey, I didn't grow up on the set of Sex and the City. Everything you're describing I grew up with. With my mom lighting candles and preparing special baths to ward off spirits. Sometimes herbs instead of medicines. You played with toys or learned piano after school. I danced with my cousins in the garage. Favelas are called garrisons in Jamaica, closed off communities where drug lords rule.'

I stop short of asking him to give me a fucking break. The charm of the 3rd world native is only amazing to him because he doesn't see himself as one. He was the protagonist of some 19th century adventurer's tale; so deep in his role he wasn't hearing me.

'I even stayed with the medicine man and he gave me a talisman.'

Now he sounded like the dude version of Eat, Pray, Love.

This is a very specific type of European man. Initially, he seems to know so much about hip hop or reggae or African politics or Spike Lee films, that he lulls you into believing he's the best of both worlds. A hot Italian that makes pasta from scratch AND quotes Cypress Hill. He gets you. But no. No, he doesn't. He's constantly in search of some authentic experience of otherness. Always craving the consumption of blackness.... ideal, nonthreatening but ultimately earthy, exciting and affirming of his whiteness and superiority. This kind of guy I can't date. This kind of guy is at the top of my 'Not With A Ten Foot Pole' list. He looks disappointed that I'm going home. Pouting just a bit. I'm all smiles. I made the right decision letting this one go.

EuroThings.

2010-05-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

Hollywood: You know, with all this marble, you could turn your bathroom into a steam room.

Apparently, that's what her ex did. But he makes beats for hip hip royalty. I ignore her.

Me: And I have a bidet! I've never even used it!

Hollywood: How's that possible? I mean, so, what do you do when you have anal sex?

****I used to think it was a dread and tattoo thing. A few conversations like this one, and the one last Sunday, where an Angela Davis-afro'd diva of a sister from the BX exclaimed, "I have a Bidet!! And I use it!', and I now believe casual conversating about Bidets and backdoor love to be EuroThings.

Lost in Translation 22

2010-05-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

"In China, there is a symbol," he says and draws what looks to be a "T" off kilter. I scribble it in my notebook. "It means that human beings have to live in relation. You cannot live alone." The other four students are young, Spanish girls. The type, by now, used to marrying only "for the childs". Only because things like government help and enrolling in school, not to mention traveling as a family with the same last name, are easier. But for these in/conveniences, Catalunya churches would host precious few wedding ceremonies. The difference in opinion, between my middle aged Korean student, and, well, all the rest of us, is not only generational, but cultural. We just couldn't see marriage as necessary. I am about to say this as he takes off his glasses. Wipes them. The girl to his right interrupts. "Oh my God! You look like Jackie Chan!!!"

From My Last Photo Shoot...

2010-05-03T02:44:00.000-07:00

I traveled to the loft and warehouse artsy-ness of Poble Nou early on a Friday morning for this shoot. It lasted all of one hour, because Joel, the photographer, runs with the current; when he's inspired, he rides the wave, clicking until the magic's crested. Then he rests his camera on its stand and we go for coffee. My hands were dancing as this photo was captured; snaking round my face, weaving in and around one another. I was conscious of the rings, provided by my German, jewelry-making sister, Julia (for whom I'd last modeled). Alas, Joel used photoshop to darken my skin. Literally, blacken me up. Though I like the photo, I'm not sure how I feel, on principle, about being blackened up. Anything for art, right? Is that not a bit hypocritical?

On Moors and Soccer-Football

2010-04-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

Let's get one thing straight: I don't fucking watch soccer, or, football, as Europeans call the sport with checkered ball. Okay, I did watch once, last year when Barcelona beat Manchester United in Rome, and Berlusconi was spotted snoozing in the damn stadium. I don't like soccer-football, but come on! How are you going to be the President of the host country and nap in the stadium, surrounded by dignitaries and watched by millions around the world?

But I totally digress. We were talking soccer-football. I don't watch it. But living as I do in the center of the city of Barcelona, but not just in the center, INSIDE the center, (meaning in an interior apartment whose big ass balcony faces the big ass balconies of a full four other buildings), I hear everything. I see everything. I could do a documentary on the secret lives of Catalonians with all I see and hear. I know when people wake up, when they go to sleep, I see them working, TV nights, noches de amor. At least the foreplay of it. And so even though I never (only once) watch soccer-football, I know what's happening at any given moment, in any given match. When Barça's winning, everyone comes out onto their balcony to celebrate by throwing shit. (Brutos!!) When the ref makes an unacceptable call, there's lots of groaning and fussing and cussing. And when they lose, silence.

Silence it was when Barça won only 1-0 against Milan International on Wednesday night, disqualifying themselves from the Champions League finals. Football Club Barcelona is more than a football team. It's an expression of nationalist pride amongst autonomous regions all over Spain, and for some regions, like Catalonia, the football club is a receptacle for lingering separatist ambitions. While teams around Europe splurge the equivalent of a tiny African country's GNP on the best talent from around the world, the Basque Country, for instance, decrees that a certain percentage of it's players must be Basque, thereby keeping the team, Basque. The rivalry is so hot between Madrid and Barça, Barça fans have reified Spanish Civil War songs as soccer-football chants. Remember, 'Burn, Madrid, Burn'? In Catalonia, homegrown soccer-footballers like Lionel Messi and Coach Pep Guardiola are like gods, despite the fact that both are highly unattractive. I've had to break up fights between Madridistas and Barça fans in class... which team you like is a reflection of your very politics. And as many crazy things as I've seen, yesterday was the most intense.

Catalan Student 1: If it was Madrid in the place of Barça and they lost, I would be sad. If they won, I'd be happy, because I'm Spanish, and it's my countr---

Catalan Student 2: MIERDA! I prefer to be Arab than to be Spanish!! Yo preferería ser un morito* que ser Español!!

And speaking of colored folks, 2 goals were scored in last year's Champs match. The second was by the revered Messi. The first, was courtesy of Samuel Eto'o, originally from the Cameroons. At the beginning of the season, Eto'o was [voluntarily] traded... to Milan International.

*Moor

world blackgirlsrule wednesday

2010-04-28T02:43:00.000-07:00

BIBS, Barcelona International Black Sisters, was founded about 7 years ago by Judy Oshowole, a Nigerian-British journalist who's been living in Barcelona for about 20 years. Judy is a virtual institution here: in my first 2 months, almost every new person I met would ask, "Do you know Judy?" Don't believe me? Ask Nelson George, who must've been asked the exact same question, because he ended up featuring her on his travel site, Black Atlas. Check out his interview with her here.

I've been a part of the group for almost my whole 2 years here; up to now, it's been pretty informal. We potluck, talk, and dance. We dance a lot (especially in the emotional get together we held after Obama was elected!). We did play at getting serious once, after our sister Kene was arrested and held on drug smuggling charges in Panama. (Kene, as far as I can see, was set up, and will finally get her day in a Panamanian court this May). The subject of using BIBS for more than just sisterhood and community, but making a difference for black women in the larger Spanish community, never came up again until our last meeting 2 Sundays ago. To consider our purpose, we also had to define ourselves as black women. BIBS consists of women from all over the globe-the UK, the US, the Caribbean and South America, German, Sweden, the Netherlands... The first woman to speak, is the famous Judy. The last had said earlier that in her native Panama, she's not considered black. In Barcelona, she is. More than mere skin color, what we have in common is this fluid sense of identity. Check us out.

Untitled from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Cool People Doing Cool Sh*t: St. Jordi's Day '10

2010-04-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

They say the 3rd time's a charm. I was not expecting this to apply to La Diada St. Jordi; or the Day of St. George, which I've been celebrating in side-by-side with the Catalan since '08. The first years I was just happy to get a rose (in '08, my ex-flatmate's boyfriend bestowed one upon me, and in '09 a... grateful student).

St. Jordi's day (St. George) is hands down the biggest holiday in Catalunya. Last year, I let my Juniors class educate the masses about the legend of St. Jordi. The dragon, the prince, the rose and all that. Watch it again here.

The gist? George slayed a dragon, saved a princess and gave her a rose made of dragon blood. So every year on his day, guys give girls roses and girls give guys books. It's the book part I'm most interested in, naturally. And not only because I love them. Diada St. Jordi works out to 24 hours of CASHCASHCASH for the Catalan book industry, as books are bought not just for the men in every woman's life. Many women both give and receive books. One college student, Silvia, said, "I gave my boyfriend me a rose and copy of George Orwell's 1984-- in Spanish," she offers, before I can grill her about reading in original versions! According to El Diario Publico, "Catalan authors make more money on St. Jordi's than some of the biggest international bestsellers'. Books and the book industry seem to be at the day's very core.

The most successful authors spend the day signing books, attending special writerly shindigs, and giving television interviews. I decided to follow them. Or one of them...

Care Santos is a Catalan-born, novelist who's turned out over 50 books in the last 15 years. Her career spans from Young Adult literature to award-winning fiction for grown folks, children's books, short stories, and even non fiction. I met Care quite by accident in New York over the summer. Since I've returned to Spain, she's been a very good friend and an encouraging colleague. Roses and romance are nice. But St. Jordi's day is about more than this legend. Care explains,

"Well it's kind of an invented holiday. The 23rd of April is the day Cervantes died, so it's national book day all over Spain. Then a group of editors in the 1960's decided to put it together with Día St. Jordi, and the romance of the story (watch my students perform it here) and the giving of the rose. It's the most important holiday in Catalunya."

So as an author, Care must remember every detail of the first time she experienced St. Jordi as a successful, book-signing author?

"It was 10 years ago. I won 'El Premio Ateneo Joven de Sevilla de Novela' (or a really BIG book prize) for Trigall con Cuervos, in 1999. So they asked me to do a book signing. But I remember more being a writer and NOT being invited to sign on St. Jordi's. I'd wake up early and walk around Barcelona watching my friends sign books and give interviews. I was so jealous!"

So when finally it was Care's turn in the sun, it felt glorious. She does admit there've been years when her St. Jordi's day was so busy, that she'd start feeling the careful-what-you-wish-for's. However this year, turned out to be perfect!

I started the day at popular bookshop Laie. Even at 11am it was crammed with people either patronizing its fab café, or buying last minute books for a beloved. Care and Angeles took a meeting with a publisher. Actually, it's Care's publisher, and Angeles was just in Barcelona to visit her old friend. "This is my first St. Jordi's day! I came to see and support Care." Care had something else in store: she'd given her publisher a copy of Angeles's recently completed, unsigned YA novel. The meeting was also for Angeles.

This is the spirit of St. Jordi's day. This is also the beauty of Spain. Every region has its own character. It's own customs, that are as foreign to people from other regions as they are to me, a guiri. Spain is relatively small, but covers expansive ground culturally. Angeles confirms, "In Sevilla, it's St. Valentine's day that's important. People give chocolate and flowers and things like this. But for National Book Day, there's a famous prize that's given on this day in Madrid, and some people give books as gifts. It's nothing like this."

Indeed, it's quite singular. Everyone's in the city center, which is lined with stands selling books and peddling roses. Though it isn't a national holiday (as in, everyone has the day off), Catalans still find the time to wander the streets en masse, browsing books in their springtime best. Come to think of it, ST. Jordi's is the unofficial beginning of spring. St. Jordi's romance and revelry makes people look happier, taller, more beautiful... like, in bloom!

We walked through the crowds, leisurely. Chatting, greeting other famous writers, and oddly, window-shopping.

At the jewelry shop, Thomas Saba, Angeles suggests Care buy the snake and apple charms with black and red crystals. I realize it fits, given Care's preference for dark novels about death, the afterlife, secret societies and vampires. Her most recent novel is Bel: Mas Alla Que La Muerte. Or Bel: Love After Death, a young adult novel based on a 16 year old girl who dies in a suspicious accident. Her soul can't leave earth until she finds out what happens to her, and makes someone pay.

Care would sign this, and other books at a stand later in the afternoon. But next up was a rooftop pica pica (that is, a cocktail party with tapas) hosted by Catalan publishing house, Grup 62.

Wait! Not before I'm stopped by two young journalists wielding a pad, a ballpoint pen, and a mean Nikon. "Can we interview you? We're from El Diario Publico." They ask where I'm from, what I do, and what book I'd be buying my man for St. Jordi's. When I explain that my boyfriend isn't Catalan and so we don't share this holiday, they ask me to answer hypothetically. I say, "Well, since he doesn't live here it would probably be something that could connect him to Barcelona, Like Carlos Ruiz Zafón, La Sombra Del Viento. But in English!" They take my photo and inform me that I'll be in a section called, "Las Preferécias de los Lectores". Here it is!!!

Ahead to the Hotel Condes de Barcelona, for the Grup 62 party. Yummy tapas. Open bar. TV crews. Views of both Gaudi's Pedrera and the Sagrada Familia. At this point, I haven't received a rose. And I don't care. This. Is. Heaven.

A stunning silver-haired editor wearing the only heels higher than mine recalled, "In the past, each branch had its own little party. So writers and editors would be running around to book signings, and then to 5 different pica pica's if they wanted to see anyone. Journalists, too. Now they decided to put everyone together, so it's really nice. It's a luxury."

So what do the best of the best Catalan writers, talk about when they get together. I got a chance to meet the editors of the arts and culture section of Avuí. Their answer was unexpected-

"We were just talking about you, actually!"

Umm, aren't I supposed to be the one asking questions? I ask them what they want to know.

"Where you're from, what you do for work, what you're doing here... everything!"

As I'm leaving, a journalist approaches to introduce himself. He's the man about town, t.v. personality and writer of popular La Vanguardia column, La Contra. Seems impressed that I've read it. Six hours later, I meet him and television film director friend for drinks and dancing at the legendary Luz de Gas. Though there's little talk of Proust, there's much more talk of New York, Paris, and passions. And in between The Journalist's signing autographs and kissing the flushed cheeks of young sequined female fans, there's dancing.

Can I get a question in, now? Cool. Where's my rose??

world music wednesday: guru, rap legend. transcultural icon.

2010-04-21T03:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine: July 15th, 2001, living in the UK. I travel with a group of friends to the famed Hackney Music Festival in London. big white tents and muddy floors. Veggie hot dogs and boiling hot sun. Performers ranging from budding boy bands to rap legends. Biz Markie sat on the edge of the stage and did 'Vapors' right in front of me. Guru, Solaar, N'dea Davenport, a DJ and full jazz band rounded out what was for me, my first memorable European birthday, as well as my first proper European music festival.

Today world wednesday honors GURU, fallen legend whose acronymic name works out to mean "gifted unlimited rhymes universal". The 'universal' was not just for show.

See, there's the Guru of my high school and college days. Ex Girl to the Next Girl. DWYCK. You Know my Steez...

Then there's the Guru of my awakening. The time during university when I started traveling, discovering the world. Started noticing that there wasn't anywhere on God's green earth that I couldn't flourish. This is the Guru of Jazzmatazz.

In creating the Jazzmatazz series, Guru not only fused art forms, thereby becoming the father of 'hip hop jazz'. he brought together artists from hoods across the globe.

As a young woman, 'The Good The Bad/Le Bien, Le Mal' by Guru featuring MC Solaar (Senegal/France) was my dream world. The idea that there was, at least conceptually speaking, just a train ride between new york and paris, southside chicago and south africa. literally, that there IS no us and them, that idea was just edging its way from my consciousness to my lived reality. Guru's Jazzmatazz articulated this for me. Was part of that moment's soundtrack. I bumped the groovy solemnity of 'Un Ange En Danger', Solaar and bassist Ron Carter over and again in this era when I was becoming certain of my ability to create this transcultural life.

For all this, I salute you, Guru. Rest In Peace. And if you see my Grandma D, kiss her for me.

lost in translation 21

2010-04-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

class of 9 year olds. we're covering modal verbs of obligation and prohibition, like 'must' and 'have to'. i ask them to look at a list of sentences using these words and tell me where they might encounter them in their every day lives.

me: 'you must drive 65 kph.'

student 1: on the... como es?

student 2: the highway!!

me: excellent! and... 'you must turn off your mobile phone'? where do you see this rule?

student 3: ummmm... theeeeeeee cinema!

student 4: in the classroom!

me: cool. how about, 'you must be 18 or older to enter'?

student 1: a pub!

student 2: a disco!

student 3: sometimes the cinema!

student 4: bueno.... pues... the.... pootie kloob...

i decided it would be inappropriate to teach him 'strip club'. besides, i couldn't correct him even if i wanted to, BECAUSE I WAS ON THE FLOOR. had to leave the room to collect myself. how did i not see that one coming? exercise over.

the ramblas redux

2010-04-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

i returned to barcelona in october of '09 after 3 months traveling to find that all of the prostitutes, largely very young and african, had been removed. after el pais published those infamously porn-caliber photos, the mossos d'esquadra (catalonia's po-po squad) deigned to acknowledge the 'problem' and do something about it. they cleaned up the ramblas. thing is, people are not garbage. so you can't make them disappear, short of, well, killing them. assuming that didn't happen, i was left with the question, where did they go? not seeing them on the ramblas was proving to be more disturbing than seeing them!! so i went searching, which is another post entirely (tribes! witchcraft! canal tres!). suffice it to say that the women have been moved, (instead of removed) some of them taken as far out of the city as mataró. and so with europe's bachelor-partying northern menfolk safe from nubian marauders, a new slew of sisters popped up on barcelona sidewalks, this time on celluloid and on rambla catalunya.

the photographer, one angélè etoundi essamba, born in the cameroons, grown in france, and higher educated in the netherlands, is my kind of global cosmopolite. and not just because she lines spanish city streets with photos of gorgeous sisters. from her site:

"essamba's work demonstrates an abiding confidence that visual images can still communicate powerful emotional and spiritual values, in addition to formal aesthetic quality. Her images show us the dialogue between men and women, shape and content, body and soul, africa and the world."

while it can be argued that the photos don't do much to upend the practice of putting black women's bodies on display, it creates a most elegant juxtaposition to the black women prostituting themselves on the ramblas. if the ramblas are times square (42nd and broadway in all it's garish splendor), rambla catalunya is it's tony uptown alter ego, the more discreet broadway on which lincoln center sits, perhaps.

the women of the ramblas sell sex. the women of rambla catalunya push glamour and exoticism. the women of the ramblas are ignored by the law. the women of rambla catalunya are funded by the generalitat. the women of the ramblas are exploited by traffickers and groped in the shadows by johns. the women of rambla catalunya are adorned, styled, and given a place in the sun.

i can't help but wonder if these images aren't meant to be some kind of visual salve for those that came before? (careful, NSFW)

etoundi's exhibit will be up until april 22nd. it'll hit madrid in mid-may, and bilbao in mid-june. it's not that you shouldn't miss it. more like, if you're in spain, you can't miss it.

world music wednesday: badu and the bandwagon

2010-03-31T06:52:00.000-07:00

i hate bandwagons. they make me cranky. they make me wanna throw a stone in front of the wheel and send everybody flying right off that motherfucker. so it's with buckets o'reluctance that erykah badu's window seat is my world wednesday pick.

never could co-sign the whole head wraps, bare feet, and incense onstage. too much artifice. i come from a line of women who have incense, a colored candle, and a psalm for every situation imaginable. i come from a line of damn near sorceresses. i don't feel the need to wear it on my person. more often than not, i keep my person as simple as poss. form fitting. earthy tones and jewel tones. lots of jewels, depending on the day. but i want you to see me when you look at me. not kente cloth and pretense.

and then badu got caught out there with fake dreads, and we all felt a little deceived. what's saved her in my opinion, has been the fact that her music has steadily improved. her voice started to show more versatility by mama's gun. musicality more and more complex, and message more clear by new amerykah. in 'the healer' she's like, 'we been programmed. wake up. we miss you.' it's rhythmically programmed, technologically metaphorized, punctuated by, like, wind chimes. it's an inspiring, funkdified album. and i'd not felt that from her ever. because it was always so difficult to see past the artifice.

immediately after erykah badu went live with her new video for the single 'window seat', everyone came out the woodwork with it. the number of people likening her to a venus hottentot in reverse were uncountable. flooded my twitter feed all weekend. it's like saartje bartman. erykah's ass. saartje bartman in reverse. did you see her ass??

hottentot venus, saartje baartman was a khoisan from south africa. was a regular on the freak show circuit in europe. i heard tell she was tricked into coming to europe under the guise of earning dough. instead she was paraded through the streets naked, her ass and labia studied by 'curious' onlookers and scientists alike. she died broke and alone. we all know the story.

so, on erykah badu as a reclaiming of little sarah, i've gotta point out some critical differences and posit an alternative scenario. hottentot, though co-opted by black america as our story, is not (quite). hottentot is all europe.

'venus' connotes ultimate sexual objectification. the american story of black women is not this. it's not this twisted romanticism scripted in greek mythology. black woman as venus is not part of american lore. especially not in the 19 century. in the co-opting, we've ignored cultural difference.

not to mention, there's nothing, for me, 'sexual' about badu's disrobing in 'window seat'.

she's finally how i'd have her. how i can best understand her. without artifice. no fake dreads. no incense or bullshit. just fiercely individual. *lays stone down on the side of the rode. won't upend the bandwagon.

now for the alternative scenario-- imagine erykah, naked in the streets of a major european metropolis, shedding her clothes. barcelona, for example: EEEIIIIII!!! GUAPA!!! TE AYUDO DESNUDAR!! NEGRITA DE MI VIDA!!!!!

yeah. there would be no polite picking up of her clothes, pretending not to notice, or threats of pressing charges. word life.

method man in barcelona

2010-03-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

when hollywood and i arrive in method man's dressing room, he's laying down on a couch, his shorty (light skinned, big ass, faux hawk, mean face) seen and not heard by his side. he's reciting lyrics at a rapid fire pace, pausing just to look me over and say, 'what's up.' i realize he's, in effect, rehearsing. which surprises me a bit. i didn't know rappers did that. on stage, method man is the definition of old school-inspired high energy. and by 'old school-inspired' i mean, back when it used to be cool to dance. he's all over the place: jumping, speaking spanish (he recites the spanish alphabet only getting stuck at 'y' and goes, "fuck it... ZETA!!"), on the speakers, atop a ledge to the left of the stage (making his manager, seven, real fucking nervous), 5 crowd surf attempts, and very, very slick footwork. hollywood's all, "he's the only one who can do a wu-tang show by himself."

later, outside the tour bus that will take them all over europe for the next few months (amsterdam next) i bring up the choreography to recent wu-tang add-on, streetlife.

'yo, who does your choreography?', his chest puffs out a little. 'you like our dancing?'

he actually blushed and smiled like a little school boy, which had seven, hollywood and me in stitches. and we were back on human ground again. because before that he just kept talking about how i lick my lips. it occurred to me that rappers are the most jaded men on the planet. they assume if you're around them, it's because you want to fuck them. not because you just really liked tical. reminds me of that time ol' dirty bastard stopped me outside of the hendrix electric lady studios on west 8th and asked me to have a baby for him. he said, verbatim,'i don't care if you got a man. i just wanna put some babies in you.' good memories.

okay. not all my dealings with the wu have been marred by hip hop's relentless masculinity show. dj allah mathematics was like a breath of fresh air. cool and green. perhaps because he's from my hood (jamaica, queens). used to play ball in the park on 233rd. used to be a 5 percenter. went pork-free in the 80's. fish and chicken- free in the 90's. and in the naughties, completely vegan. i open up to him about my relationship with food and the green life: "you know, i went veg briefly in '99. then i moved to england and it became too difficult to keep up with it. plus i'm anemic. plus you know, circle of life."

this is why you don't word box with a rapper:

"is it the circle of life or the circle of death?," he responds without missing a beat.

"gza showed me this video called 'eating'. google it. 'eating.' after i watched it i went vegan." if you happen to run into math, ask him to show you the video of how spain's got rabbits as delicacy, skinned and packaged in the supermarket. bump that. he'll probably offer to show you. he was so obsessed with that video, we had to force him to forget it, and go greet the fans that gave him a gold ring. yes. a gold ring. spanish hip hop fans are serios.

i stuck by seven mostly, method man's manager and a good friend of hollywood's. he made me laugh and gave me a free 'got blunt?' t-shirt. he's also the one who gave me expensive french red wine in a tall, cheap plastic cup and fucked me up for the whole next day. who needs blunts?

all footage was taken from our onstage post up, so you only really get meth from the back. at the end of this last one, method man crowd surfs on his feet. it's good stuff. my only complaint is that he didn't do release yo delf.

Untitled from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

books. covers. judgements.

2010-03-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

i met two women today who claimed they weren't black. they were both kind of mixed looking-- dark skin, one with light eyes, the other with silky black hair-- but still, as far as i was concerned, well... black. except not in their own eyes. 'i'm dutch,' insisted the silky haired one. 'i have indian in me,' insisted the cat-eyed one. i started to itch. then was like, 'i respect it'. although i'm not sure 'respect' is what i was feeling as it almost seemed like they thought something was wrong with being black.

'i prefer to mix things up,' said one. obviously she don't know me. so i told them about last week. at the book party for the well-known writer, who put on a ski mask and starting yelling about 'crack music, nigga!!' just as a test. they responded in chorus.

' i would have walked out!'

when i said that i was first, too shocked to move an inch, and second, really wanting a chance to articulate what i felt in a way that made sense, the cat-eyed one sucked her teeth. pursed her lips like i was some kind of punk.

worse, when i explained that i'd written an angry (understatement!!) letter to him, and that he'd responded, speedily and conscientiously, and that we've been dialoguing since. 'did he say anything that made sense?' she challenged.

'well, he said his intention wasn't to mirror america, but european stereotypes of america---'

'OH PLEASE!!'

no, actually, i argued, i can see after he explained what his intention might have been. but i think his effort was missing a few critical pieces to read as he'd intended. though i still think he was dead wrong, i argued, i also think he's not, like i'd assumed, an asshole. and his english is perfect. that counts for something in my multilingual world.

the cat-eyed one just walked away.

the silk-haired one launched into a diatribe about how he was full of shit, and probably just racist. this didn't quite jive with her subsequent explanation of why she didn't 'need' her blackness, and how the socialist movement in spain has made race relations 'worse'. 'we have to move more to the right!!' right.

so, in the midst of this crazy crazy week i've got 3 new friends: one who reads my long accusatory letters about race then sends me books, and two women who i'll try to remember, despite all appearances are not black.