Aim was to dare my arting into a section of town well known for its extreme [police and gang] violence and poverty and interact as one is solidarity with informal human beings beyond the pale of formal warfare, er, institutions of social control; with a special interest in "giving back" to a radical community there which had loved and aided me in my "developing" years as a kid.
Dressed in full self-arting regaliah with more signs than usual, including:
"Thought control is to society what violence is to tyranny" (red neon sign worn on my back)
"To mess with our internalized values..." (wore on right side of my chest) (lost this sign during walk, don't recall full text)
"Dare to Art Your Heart" (green neon sign worn on front of pants)
Lines art (lines which can mess with those coming up from behind with ill intent) (wore on my ass)
Holographic-type butterfly paper plate (wore on left arm) (wore in honor of hippie friends from the Western u.s.)
No shirt worn, but a polkadotted sash (front only)
Summary sub-heads of article:
Background and my solidarity
the action
Badass Central
youth gangmembers or daring champions?
Beyond the North Side
Background and my solidarity
For many years i had been wanting to "Give Back" some sort of gifting to a people who had given so much to me when i was growing up in this midsize midwestern town of about 100,000 or so. i had, up to junior high, been somewhat of an outcast until i began daring to dance to the disco and early rap music (i.e. Sugarhill Gang) that was becoming popular there at that time (late '70s).
Quite a few 'blackfolks' with hearts of gold had heard my heart (i guess) and had allowed me a kind of sanctuary amongst them at school and at several parties outside it. i didn't have much luck dancing with the girls i wanted to dance with (i was secretly winkte anyways), but in truth i didn't really care who i danced with just so long as i got a chance to dance! (i certainly wouldn't have danced alone at that time in my life)
Now, to be fair, as one middle-class-hailing whiteboy amongst many, i got what most of us middle-class-type whiteboys got--a lot of really intense reflective attacking from a few of our blackboy peers (i.e. necks getting slapped, psychological intimidation, and the always-threat that, no matter if we were the direct victims of aggression, all the blackboys would gang up on us divided-up middle-class whiteboys if we dared to defend ourselves by fighting back. Whiteboys from the rough 'hood were more organized, on the other hand, and *seemed* to have less troubles. Years later i saw value in seeking understanding and came up with the idea that those aggressive blackboys' ANGER was certainly not only an intense reflection of all the intense shit they were getting at the time from parents and other North Side peers, but as well, the politics of the time superficially promoted a kind of mobilization hype about racism--making white people 'open season' for frustrations suffered under centuries of official attack.
This time was, i suppose, a transitionary period, as i've since been inspired to see a lot of black and white kids hanging out together in apparent excellent harmony. But those years i experienced came just after *integrated busing* had been likely rightly pushed through the public schooling experience. That was also at a time just before the covert action of local political groups allowed for (?) and somehow encouraged (?) internecene gang warfare--such as gang "interests" from big cities. And just before the heavyshit violence of drive-by shootings and molotove-cocktail burnings (one longtime acquaintance of mine got killed in this, another beaten beyond recognition, tho survived; another, whom had paid me to do a sign for his barbershop got his place burned down, saving only my painting). Still, shootings were "regular occurances" according to a beautiful young lady i had dated a few times, especially on the street she lived on.
They all lived completely in another world from the one i had been raised up in and taken for granted.
Yet when i left this town i did not "forget" the excellence that some of these people had shared with me so beautifully. Such as the time i'll never forget when i was dancing with a Latina girl at a school dance and i went to and a bunch of the "in crowd" whiteboys began fucking with us so much that i left the dancefloor and went back to my black friends in open frustration, and one or two of them said to me that *we* should go back and kick their asses. i declined at the time; but the greatness of the idea that they would have backed me up, that stayed with me.
And even tho i haven't focused on hanging out with people once called 'Black folks' much these days, per se, i have hung out with "blacksheep" of many backgrounds. These fellow human beings called 'Blacks' did open up the world to me in ways i wouldn't have been inspired by otherwise, so that has been a sustaining and meaningful excellence that has stayed with me and inspired me to want to explore and move successfully through being a 'blacksheep' myself.
So it was with this spirit and background that brought me to wanting to return the excellence i had been gifted so many years before. But due to the open violence and threats of such i had experienced when visiting the North Side in more recent years (i.e. bikewheels smashed in less than 5 minutes when visiting a branch library once; being chased down the street, while i was on my bike, near an old acquaintance's home; getting threateningly challenged by a much younger, but quite tough kid--tho that ended up excellent when i refused to show fear and instead showed radical care), my vision had fallen short and i'd put off the dream preferring to remain outside that war-like zone up until now.
Only in this last daring did i finally go into the kind of depth i desired to art there!
the action
Passed out at least 250 flyers to people on the street, on stoops, and those who called me over. Here's a short summary of those i met along the way:
Coming into the 'hood on the west side, some family was having a birthday party and called me back and i threw an 'arted' flyer to them (crumpled up!); another guy was guffawing from his house and came outside and took a flyer; at least three people wanted to take photos. i made a point to go up to and give of my angle those who sometimes laughed derisively. One elder man enquired about what i do for work and then told me i should go back to work (he seemed ready to say something like that no matter what i said, not wanting to hear my speil--probably due to long years of poisoningly superficial experience with weird whitefolks. Kids were sometimes derisive but ultimately curious and interested and some tagged along for awhile surely reflecting the kinds of bullshit they get regularly--via various intensities. At one point when some of these kids were tagging along being derisive, i walked up and gave my flyer to some older guys who backed up my message, nodding their heads, one saying that this kind of thang "needs to be done", and the deriding kids took off. Met whole families whose only apparent cooling off was to be out on their 'stoop'.
At one point, while engaging a family like this, i met one lady who i thought looked familiar and it turned out i had gone to highschool with her (she was a year or so my junior and i knew one of her brothers). She knew a list of people i recalled and that was *especially* great to hear!
Badass central Much later, i met and drank beer with (i was *so* thirsty on that hot eve) a bunch of wildass ladies about my age, maybe a little younger. One challenged me at first with words about them all kicking my ass when i first walked up, but then quickly changed their tune, saying "i was just playing with you" (uh-huh, a resistance consciousness style!). Two of them ended up giving me money so i could pay for more flyers! One invited me to walk with her and we spoke for a curious while, her telling me that people 'our age' hung out a lot at a certain park nearby.
So i headed over there and found a bunch of people carrying on quite drunk. And as i approached them, one older lady challenged me and fucked with me and i gave her space, but still wanted to give people there my flyer (which i said evenly to her); so she said to lay my flyer down on the ground and step away, and after that, apparently imagining i was American Indian (she didn't ask me, but told me), she welcomed me and even gave me a hug, and i had no more challenges with these badasses, tho one warned me that i might get shot in those parts of town...
Might, yes. But i didn't see that happening. My street experience says that a lot of things have to be in *the air before* that kind of shit would come down. And since i was *completely* outside of everyone's expectations, i knew/know that there are openings. It's similar to what Noam Chomsky says when he talks about "knowing where the openings are" when thinking about encountering institutions with radical challenge. The street people are a kind of "institution" of mind-set in themselves (i.e. their generally poisoned beliefs reflecting so much experience with true bullshit), and so i felt that the time of day, the holiday itself, and the vibe was an opportune situation for inserting a kind of challenge they had probably not experienced.
During the walk in that specific part of town--quite near the *border* with Where White Folks Control--people had already sometimes warned me of the heavy shit still going down there, and some said i was liable to get my 'ass kicked' or worse; but i felt, as i said above, in my heart, that most of that was *in their head*, their stuff, similar to those people (including friends of mine who live in 'privileged' areas) who feared i'd be arrested. Curious how all of these people have immobilized themselves with fears from doing anything beyond officially Given norms.
Youthgang or champion darers?
Well, i walked BACK into that scary-ass spirited place, back up the main street, continuing to pass out my info depth charges, up to where i met up with a three-some of young teens who were obviously doing the kind of vibe of gangmember-types. They were wearing light clothes, but had their hands in places that streetwise people know weapons can be found. The leading kid pranced up to me and openly challenged me verbally and as i responded, he showed that he wasn't really interested in what i said and proceeded to slap a bunch of flyers out of my hand. As i bent down to retrieve them, the thought passed by that they might begin attacking me, in my prone position, but that didn't happen (again, i attribute such to the power of my arting and regaliah; the weird-ass art derailing the Usual Expectation, giving me enough time to ju-jitsu the mindset trap they cannot help but to be stuck in, and drop in my possibly liberating depth charge).
The young dude walking just behind the slapper took one of the flyers i handed him and told me, in a style feeling like the ol' Good Cop, Bad Cop routine--which we *both* were familiar with, no doubt, that i was getting "too hyped up" and that i should take it "easy". He seemed actually interested in reading the flyer, which, if he had, i told him he'd probably be surprised about.
A big angle for me, intuitively, was to *go towards those people who i feared* or whom appeared to be derogatory. It's kind of a streetwise way of doing and being. And when cars full of people who fit the stereotype of gang-types drove by, from behind or whatever, i made it a point of showing my sign "WE ARE KEPT HYPED-UP AND DIVIDED AGAINST EACH OTHER".
Inadverdantly, the masque most assuredly messed with my being simply another whiteman who could otherwise be easily de-individualized and scapegoated via the context of persons being kept rigidly angry for the interests of topical reform games; that is, masses as 'soldiers' for vanguards to mobilize at their whim. So the masque gave me just enough cammoflauge to mess with that racial-reduction-hype and get my radical's radical depth inside their conditioned armor. (Used in this instance, the American Indian idea of this kind of arting myself like i did--complete with my dog-like masque--being a kind of "trickster" might have excellence to gift) (Question: When is this allegedly "always bad" thing called Trickster? What if indigenous traditionals really mean something doing with the ways colonized people perceive reality? What if the idea is really a puzzle with much more inside it than meets the conditioned eye?!)
The only other time that i even got close to anything that might've turned heavier was after i didn't notice two guys on the other side of the street, by a church who were walking the opposite direction (right near where an old 'childhood' friend had lived). Usually i make eye contact and bow down (in a kind of respectfully intended heralding of others' spirit; especially enjoying doing such towards the ladies, who would never expect such things!) to such people doing a spirited streetwise walk style. i actually did this to many, not in a "punkass" way, but in a royal way! These two cats were either older teens or young adults, and they started yelling out and unloading reflections of their life experience or what have you towards me, tho still walking in the other direction. i just remained silent once i realized taht they were only being provocative for provacative's sake.
Saw only two cop cars (both rooflightless), and they were driving together on a lonely street quite away from the North Side's epicenter.
Beyond the North Side
Got water at the bus depot and proceeded through the almost dead atmosphere of downtown after 5pm. Found some young folks hanging in the main downtown park (one who'd taken a flyer earlier up in da 'hood) and i joined them in the excellently cool fountain pool. Also spoke a short while with some uppity whiteguys who were getting orneryer and orneryer as they drank booze. They invited me to drink with them but i was exhausted by that time and still had about 4 miles to walk back to my parents' house where i was visiting.