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HOME
04:50
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Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry
in the darkness.
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2. |
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Imagine a skate park in Long Beach,
and it’s about seven at night,
it’s just getting dark and everybody’s gone home
except this one lone guy wearing a flannel shirt tied around his waist,
kind of stringy, oily hair and acne, he’s about fifteen.
He’s the kid that gets bullied in school,
he has no friends,
he’s gonna go home,
have a quick dinner,
and then go down to the basement and play video games all night,
blowing up the rest of the world
That’s his daily routine.
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3. |
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Sad preacher,
cowboy with a frozen look.
I remember a professor
nostalgic for the days of high camp and the closet.
I think of my ancestors,
of the word inheritance.
I think of masculinity
and go back to my Catholic school Latin class.
Virtue. Honor.
I think of video game heroes,
how silent, how impossible they are.
I think of Humphrey Bogart’s stare.
A terrible power,
a terrible responsibility,
but only in the movies do these little moments make sense
All the silences.
How it feels to be shaped by hardness,
to have to grow to fit its shape
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4. |
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I should use my platform as the dominant gender
to uplift and support the movements of marginalized groups:
feminism, Black Lives Matter, anti-racism
I am confident in myself and my sexuality.
I am emotionally mature.
I respect boundaries.
I challenge gender roles
I am authentically myself.
I am allowed to cry.
I can be a caretaker.
I can be a homemaker.
I can be a high-heeled, tattooed, glitter bombed, wig wearing, defiance of Dads gone-by.
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5. |
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And into the skater park come these guys who are like awesome and scary.
And they start talking to him,
“Hey, how you doing, what’s up?”
And by the end of the conversation they say,
“You should hang with us.
You’re really cool.
You should hang with us.
We have awesome parties.
You should hang with us.
Everybody gets really drunk,
It’s really fun,
and there’s girls,
and then, after everybody’s drunk and stuff,
we all take painkillers
and we go out in the streets
and we look for immigrant groups and we have fights with them.
It’s fantastic.
Dude, you should definitely come with us.”
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6. |
Man Up / Man Down V. Jet
04:12
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Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
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7. |
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I should man up.
I should be stoic.
I should be strong.
I should be a protector.
I should be big and brave.
I should be competent.
I should have it all together.
I should pretend I don’t need any help.
I should be able to do it on my own.
I should be able to deal with everything on my own.
I should be able to handle anything.
I should be a great lover.
I shouldn’t express affection.
I should have an insatiable appetite for sex.
I shouldn’t be emotional.
I should have sex, money and power.
I shouldn’t be weak.
I shouldn’t break down.
I shouldn’t cry.
Emotions are scary, weak, and problematic.
I am ashamed about being seen doing therapy.
The thought of going to therapy and crying with another person is scary.
I am going to try other solutions first: isolation, substance use, aggression.
We all cheat.
We all want sex.
We are only nice to you so we can sleep with you.
We can’t express our feelings.
We have no feelings.
We are the opposite of women.
We cannot handle successful women.
We are mama’s boys.
We have it easy.
We don’t experience pressure.
We love fixing things.
We are sloppy.
We live for sports.
We like violence.
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8. |
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So he goes with them,
he goes to parties,
they go fight,
they do all these things,
and they’re telling him,
“’You’re one of us,
you’re a pal,
you’re a comrade.”
And so what he gets, at that moment, has nothing to do with ideology.
They haven’t even talked about it yet.
They talk about how he’s a cool dude,
how he hangs out with the guys,
how he’s one of them,
he’s part of the family,
he feels completely a sense of connection, community, camaraderie
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9. |
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I come from a family where generation after generation, we, for the sake of beauty, tended our houses, our land, our lawns, our flower beds. There were gardens in the backyard where you grew greens, beans, tomatoes, and potatoes, but in the front yard, you had a flower bed for no reason other than the fact that it was beautiful. Those are the kinds of things we don’t know or see about each other, particularly when we think about Black men.
That’s who my dad was. He was also a lot of awful, but I have to remember that he taught me that. I can share that feeling with him now because I have a yard; I didn’t understand it before. I remember turning the corner to our house when I was a kid, entering the driveway, and hearing him say, “Ooh that’s pretty.” I got to see something in him that isn’t what people automatically think about him when they simply think of his image.
This is why I’m interested in this thing called masculinity. I’m interested in the fact that it could exist, but in our minds, in our perceptions, we keep leaving stuff out of it. People have to fall in love. People have to take care of their kids. I want to make sure men know it’s possible for them to have feelings and that those feelings are okay to have. I think our world would have us believe they’re not okay to have.
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“I will work my ass off at a job that I hate
for a boss that I hate,
who’s an idiot,
but I will work hard,
I will pay my taxes.
And in return for that,
like my daddy before me and my grandfather before him,
I will be able to support a family by myself,
and I will be able to buy a house by myself.”
So this is the bargain they feel like they wanted,
and it’s gone;
they can’t do it.
And they feel like they’ve been betrayed.
And now they have to talk about gender-neutral bathrooms?
And now they have to talk about same-sex marriage?
Their heads are exploding.
It’s not that they’re against these reforms;
they’re completely bewildered.
They don’t know what to do
I think we do ourselves a great disservice
if we don’t pay attention,
not to the opposition
but to the anguish that comes
from being so bewildered by the extent and the rapidity of this change.
If we don’t pay attention to that,
we will lose them.
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11. |
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And they say,
“You’re a real man, you’re awesome.
And then, and only then,
do they start saying,
“You have a sacred mission.
You have to preserve the white race.
You, as a man, have to do this.
You have to preserve the white race.
We have to do this together.
You’re one of us,
you’re a pal,
you’re a comrade.”
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12. |
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(Hail, Alma Mater, dear!
To us be ever near…)
I was at West Point,
an auditorium full of cadets,
(Help us thy motto bear,
Thru all the years.)
and I asked them,
“What does it mean to be a good man?
(Let Duty be well performed.
Honor be e’er untarn’d.)
You wake up in the morning,
you look in the mirror, and you say to yourself,
‘You’re a good man.
(Country be ever armed,
West Point, by thee!)
You’re a good man.
What does that mean?”
Here’s what they said (now this is West Point):
“Honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice,
do the right thing,
stand up for the little guy,
be a provider,
be a protector.
l asked, “Where did you learn that?”
And they said,
“Well, it’s everywhere.
It’s our culture, it’s Homeric, it’s Shakespearean,
it’s the Judeo-Christian heritage.
“So, that’s what it means to be a good man.
tell me if those show up for you when I say this:
‘Man up, be a real man.’”
“Oh no, that’s completely different.
And they said,
“Tough, strong, never show weakness,
win at all costs, suck it up,
play through pain, be competitive,
get rich, get laid.
I said. “Where did you learn that?”
And they said, in order,
“My father, my coach, my guy friends, my older brother.”
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13. |
manifesto
04:08
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I want to be with someone
who won’t get tired of me
who wants to be with me for who I am
who will never leave me
I want to be with someone
who is actually afraid to lose me
who values open communication
who really knows me
I want to be with someone
who cares about me, supports me, encourages me
who makes my heart jump when I hear their key in the door
who wants to be with me
who is exactly what I’ve said I always wanted
who accepts me for who I am
who I find so interesting and exciting and understands my thinking
who’s going to be healthy for the long haul
who is smarter than that, with more depth and more soul
who feels the same way
who won’t clip my wings
who laughs at my jokes
who won’t leave
who likes to have fun
who will want to be with me
who is very comfortable
who respects all the other aspects of me
who gets me
who can see a future with me
who is comfortable
who wants to work
I want to be with someone
who matches me
who teaches me
who wants to be
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Sono Luminus Boyce, Virginia
We’re a classical record label and acoustic music recording studio located 70 miles west of Washington, DC.
We specialize in ultra-high fidelity stereo and surround recordings.
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