GONE – Music Video by Love-Logiq

Watch our first music video by R&B artist Love-Logiq! #Love-Logiq #KindredSpiritENT #ShesGone

THE OTHER WOMAN: A Short Film

https://www.youtube.com/user/kindredspiritE

Subscribe to my production company YouTube channel! Tomorrow, THE OTHER WOMAN premieres at 6pm EST/9pm PST! Here’s a sneak peek…you don’t want to miss this. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram!! (Links are on the YouTube page!)

Black Fathers & Daughters: Our History, Our Words

Some 500 years ago, a man, woman, and child were forcibly removed from their homeland. They were the first family of millions to be taken from Africa, shackled, beaten, and stripped of their rituals, religions, and basic sense of humanity. Families were often arbitrarily torn apart for monetary gain. Children were sold away, not raised by their parents. This cycle would continue legally until 1865, subconsciously even to present day.

Throughout the institution of slavery, a man’s value was placed on his physical strength. The broader their shoulders, the bigger their muscles the better workers they would make. Many slave owners took their strongest and biggest enslaved male Africans and treated them as any owner of horses would treat their best stallion—put him in a room and hope that the mating would be successful.

Millions of African and African American men fathered children they never saw, never knew existed or even worse, interacted with daily and could not tell them that they were their fathers. The structure of the African American family unit was annihilated. This created a rift within the legacy of African American fatherhood. Marriage was not allowed between slaves, which helped many owners further the cause of using one man to create an army of slaves. African American studies scholars Delores P. Aldridge and Carlene Young state that the “imbalance, alienation and non-cohesion” within many African American homes presently can be identified as a “collective post-traumatic stress disorder” of the prolonged campaign of dehumanization within America.

According to a 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 63% of African-American households are spearheaded by single moms. Although popular forms of media have addressed the disappointment associated with the absentee African American father, they rarely depict the process by which a relationship is established, or can be established, between a father and child when the two reconcile.

Below are memoirs and personal accounts some daughters experienced with their fathers. Some famous, some not, some traumatic, some exhilarating but all, nonetheless, a part of our history.

Daughters of Men: Portraits of African American Women and Their Fathers

By: Rachel Vassel

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007

Pages: 192

Vassel compiles more than 40 personal essays from pop icon Beyonce Knowles, actresses Sanaa Lathan (Love and Basketball) and Malinda Williams (Soul Food, 2000-2004), entertainment moguls Cathy Hughes (TV ONE) and Tracey Edmonds (Edmonds Entertainment Group, Inc.), and Harlem’s Studio Museum curator Thelma Golden among others detailing the relationships they have (or had) with their loving fathers. Each intimate account showcases a present, supportive, and wise father figure. Each testimonial is accompanied by a photo of the specific father and daughter as tangible evidence that positive relationships can and do exist between African American women and their fathers.

 

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History

By: Danzy Senna

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009

Pages: 208

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History uses a child’s perspective to uncover the story of her father’s past. Senna honestly describes the events that created the dysfunctional relationship she and her father share and how her trip through the Deep South gave her a better understanding of her father. In order to paint a vivid picture of both of her parents, Senna also includes her mother’s familial history—a history that is well documented and intertwined with Boston’s industrialization. The daughter of two writers, an African American poet and Irish-American poet, and an accomplished writer in her own right, Senna relays each incident with just enough information to continuously engage the reader  and allows the reader to reach his or her own conclusions. She employs fragments as a powerful storytelling technique rather than listing her memories in chronological order which makes the book stand out from other memoirs and hard to follow at times. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History  describes one daughter’s journey to find the missing pieces of her father’s past and in many ways to find a piece of herself.

 

Jokes My Father Never Taught Me

By: Rain Pryor & Cathy Williams

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2006

Pages: 224

Pryor gives a loving, yet prosaic glimpse into her childhood with comedy icon and her father, Richard Pryor.  Pryor briefly examines the difference between her father’s African American heritage and her mother’s Jewish heritage throughout the memoir as a larger critique of racism within America. Pryor adds an intimate aspect to the memoir as she describes the challenges she faced trying to define herself between the two. Through humor and bitterness, Pryor describes her father’s periodic presence within her life, the evolution of their relationship and the ever-present entourage of Richard Pryor’s girlfriends, and other wives. Pryor uses this village of women and their interactions with her father as the foundation for the relationship she had with him. Pryor also addresses incidents of child abuse, sexual molestation, and self-esteem issues.

 

Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer

By: E. Ethelbert Miller & E.E. Miller

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, 2001

Pages: 192

In this riveting account of loss and triumph, E. Ethelbert Miller chronicles his life following the death of his father and older brother. Miller focuses on the internal and external factors which help to create an African American writer and more importantly, the influence parents have in their children’s lives. Miller employs unwavering love and profound bitterness to describe this coming of age story. A poet, Miller, uses vivid imagery and figurative language to depict his experiences without getting bogged down in elaboration.

 

Angela’s Ashes

By: Frank McCourt

Publisher: Scribner, 1999

Pages: 364

In this enthralling masterpiece, McCourt tells the story of his childhood, beginning when his family is forced to relocate back to their homeland of Ireland due to family struggles brought on by his father’s alcoholism and financial challenges. McCourt writes from the perspective of an adolescent examining the world unfold around him instead of an adult remembering past experiences which makes the memoir unique. McCourt does not sugar coat any experience nor does he shy away from graphic details. McCourt beautifully depicts his alcoholic father’s unresponsiveness to his family’s suffering and his mother’s heroic, yet feeble attempts to bring stability to their family and his financial struggle to return to America—the land where his dreams can become reality. The book was a New York Times Bestseller and the film adaptation was released in the same year as its publication.

 

The Tender Bar: A Memoir

By: J.R. Moehringer

Publisher: Hyperion, 2005

Pages: 368

Pulitzer Prize winning author J.R. Moehringer recounts his childhood in Manhasset, Long Island in this touching memoir. Moehringer describes needing an escape from his grandparent’s abusive marriage and dysfunctional household and his need for a substitute father since his own father abandoned him shortly following his birth. He finds comfort and a slew of father figures at the corner bar, Dickens. Moehringer moves through his initial overwhelmed state to a “regular” visitor at the bar. He employs vivid, elaborate descriptions of the bar’s patrons, which capture the reader and cause them to become emotionally attached to the patron’s dreams and aspirations.  The Tender Bar: A Memoir tells of the creation of a surrogate family and how that family guided the future of its youngest member through rituals and kind gestures.

(*2011) 

Here’s to a better experience for the next generation:

 

 

 

The Track: Lost Dialect

Summer is here! While you’re changing out your playlists and updating your iTunes library for the parties, bonfires, and BBQs, be sure to add Inglewood natives Lost Dialect to your “Must Have” list!

True Hip-Hop heads, ActRight, J. Qwest, and Mistah Redd bring consciousness and humor back to a genre that’s saturated with violence, degrading of women, and over-indulgence.  Their accounts of self-development, triumphs, financial and emotional struggles, and their love of Hip-Hop are evident on each track. Their lyrics are memorable and refreshing and their beats range from hard-hitting to light-hearted. If you enjoy listening to great music that’s entertaining and poignant, you’ll start rockin’ with Lost Dialect, just like I did!

Don’t trust me? That’s fine. Rap giant Snoop Lion, formerly Snoop Dogg, made their video “10×10” #1 on his “Underground Heat” countdown and B.Real of Cypress Hill listed them on his Taste Makers website! That’s a feat by any standard, but has a deeper meaning when you take into account that Lost Dialect  is also from the Westside. Epic!

One of my favorites from the new EP that’s been on repeat is “Faith in You”. If you’ve ever been in a relationship or just loved someone and it just didn’t work out, you’ll love this song! Check out the video, shot in famed Ladera Park in Inglewood, CA, here: http://lostdialect.com/2013/06/11/lost-dialect-faith-in-you-official-video/ .

To download their latest EP “Baggage Claim” and to find out more information about this group, visit http://lostdialect.com. Follow them on Twitter @Lost_Dialect and on Instagram @LostDialectTribe.

how to become a raisin

As a grape, you are sought after.
Raisins envy you because you are full of life.
You are bright, round and gorgeous.
They are dried up and in need of love.
You could never be friends with a raisin.
They are ill equipped to love you because they inherently hate themselves.
The only way for you to be friends with a raisin is to become one of them:
Void of sunshine and peace,
Depleted of love and joy,
Absent of greatness and laughter,
Filled with anger and agony.
Remember when you befriended a raisin? There you were, a beautiful grape who saw a lonely raisin and only wanted to care for him.
You wanted to make him happy, see him smile more

so you opened your arms and your heart to him.
You shared your joys and your loves with him in an attempt to make him feel some of what you felt as a grape.
His nature, as a raisin, kept him from appreciating these sacrifices. Instead, he pushed and sucked and pinched you until you were no longer the beautiful round grape of old. He beat you into a raisin. Made you feel just as inferior and just as lacking as him.

Weeks and weeks went by. Your grape friends finally found you among the heaps and droves of other destitute raisins. They carried your limp and lifeless body and nursed you back into the gorgeous grape you once were with doses of love, shots of joy, hours of peace, and a large prescription of happiness. In time, you eventually returned to your joyous plump state.
While on a journey, you ran across the raisin and remembered the good times you spent together. Your memories made you feel love and guilt simultaneously. The raisin, now filled with hate and resentment, because you left him wanted nothing to do with you. He barely acknowledged your existence. You wanted to be angry, too. You wanted to yell at him and make him remember all of the things you’d given up for him but you soon realized that he would never understand. He couldn’t.

He’s a raisin.

12 Things You Should Know About ’42’ Before You See It

1. Wear your Dodger gear. You’ll get extra brownie points if you wear your authentic Jackie Robinson jersey. You can also wear Kemp’s if you must.

2. Sit near the elderly woman who remembers life before Jackie. She won’t ruin your experience by texting the whole time.

3. Prepare yourself for one of the most powerful scenes surrounding the n-word and bigotry that you’ve ever seen in your life.

4. Get comfortable. That means turn your phone off. The constant vibrating of new texts and Instagram posts will only distract you.

5. Stare at the characters longer if you need to. Kudos to the Casting Director and Costume Designer because some of your most beloved TV actors make this movie. Yes, that is T.R. Knight.

6. Pay attention. The history lesson is grandiose but the movie makers do a nice job of incorporating the details.

7. Don’t expect to hear Jay-Z’s voice at any point during the movie. His song, “Brooklyn (Go Hard)” was used on the trailer to entice you into the seat, not to play part to the period piece. Come on, the movie is set in 1947. Billie Holliday is a much better choice.

8. No drinks. You don’t have time for a bathroom break. The movie progresses at a steady pace and you don’t want to miss anything.

9. Relax. The movie is non baseball fan friendly, meaning it’s not bogged down in terminology and references that the average person wouldn’t know. Remember, it’s about a man who played baseball more than the game itself.

10. Stay with the message of the movie, the dialogue won’t necessarily move you. There are no poignant quotes that need to be tweeted or posted following the movie but the message is remarkable and the movie’s progression makes it an achievement.

11. Don’t succumb to the ‘Scary Movie’ pressure of believing you will enjoy that movie more than you will ’42’. Yes, there are derogatory phrases used repeatedly and yes there are other moments in the film that will make you uncomfortable but it’s a part of our legacy as a country. Deal with it. Not to mention, there are comedic moments and other heartfelt areas that will touch you in a way the cameo-filled and ridiculously cliched ‘scary movie’ cannot. If you must, it will still be in theaters next weekend.

12. Finally, appreciate the legend. Jackie Robinson not only changed the game of baseball, he helped change our culture as a nation.

42 – Official Trailer

when morpheus came to visit..a short story

When Morpheus Came To Visit

You couldn’t talk.

The tube protruding from your mouth wouldn’t let you. Its steady rhythm added to the orchestra of sounds preserving life in your hospital room. The machine on the right output the readings from your pacemaker and made a sound similar to that of a pulsing piano; the one next to that was more interrupted, only beeping every three minutes or so. Your nurse’s hurried gait sped up the tempo. Even the liquid in your IV bag dropped on a beat.

The television was muted, oddly enough. Before you got sick, you turned the television up as loud as it could go for your favorite show, The Price is Right. You watched Bob Barker and his troop of United Nations beauties make showcases reality for an hour. You’d yell at the contestant, calling them fools and “sap suckas” if you felt they underbid.

(I found your ticket stubs from the show you went to in 1987 in the

nightstand when mom and I cleaned out your room the next week. I

wondered why we didn’t talk about the taping  during one of our mornings

together.)

This time, you just watched in silence.

No yelling, no cursing.

You blinked. Slowly, like a baby fighting sleep. You tried to motion something to me with your right hand but the pain from the IV quickly made you lower it back to the bed. I patted your hand and rubbed your forehead. I had remembered you doing the same when I had the chicken pox.

Your face was swollen from the medicine. The nurse would come every few hours to administer another dose but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into that first month, they upgraded you to a morphine drip. It seemed that even with that, you were still in pain. The drip wasn’t enough to dull the memories you had because you were in a bed in the same hospital that your wife died in; a few rooms over from the memory of your last kiss.

(Mom told me that Auntie collapsed before she got to the door the day Grams

died and you should know that she did the same thing with you. Theo and I

crowded around your hospital bed. You were our first real dead body. They

had removed all of the tubes, turned off all of the machines, and closed your

eyes. They forgot to close your mouth, though. To us, you were just sleeping.

We poked you, not really understanding that you wouldn’t ever play “sleep”

again. We looked inside of your mouth. The doctor told us to move away

from you. Something about decomposing, but we ignored him until Mom told

us to move. You were sleeping and we wanted to watch you sleep the same

way we did when we were toddlers—right under your chin. )

You closed your eyes and gingerly nodded your head. I examined your body for marks that weren’t there the day before. I remembered reading a news report about elder abuse and wanted to make sure the nurses weren’t beating you after visiting hours. Not that I actually suspected Betty, June, or Elena but who really thinks with an open and clear mind when their loved one is dying? I was seventeen and you were the only father I knew.

The sores on your forearm had grown. The doctor, the short balding one who spoke softly and compassionately to us the morning you died, said that they formed because your body retained excess water.

I couldn’t look at them for long. They scared me. Huge water-filled sacs all over your arms and legs. They looked like small candles were imbedded in your arm. You didn’t look like my grandfather with those sacs; you looked like a sick man, an old man. A stranger. Sorry for running out of your room every time we pulled the covers back. A few weeks after I ran out for the last time, away from your sacs and the ointment and the pills and the family fasting for your recovery, you were back in the hospital. I came home from work and knew something had changed. Your room was clean and smelled like it did before you got sick—cinnamon and Old Spice.

The last day you were alive, you were in so much pain. The skin under your eyes was swollen, the pillow damp from collecting your tears.

“We’ll make him as comfortable as possible,” I heard the doctor tell Mom. He was using dye to mask his onset graying. The discoloration between his side burns and scalp reminded me of the black dye kits you used for the same reason. She held her emotions, like she always did. Her weight never shifted and her eyes never fluttered. Focused attention, steady body, just like you taught her. I walked into your room and sat in the chair next to your bed. I held your hand. You squinted in pain as soon as I touched you.

“I’m sorry, Gramps.” You blinked away the tears that you could control, the others slid down into the pillow.

Your tears didn’t frighten me. You were a man’s man, so they weren’t seen often. The eldest of nine, the responsible one, the father who served two terms when his daughter returned after a broken marriage. I think the time you had an allergic reaction was the first time I saw you cry. I was five and we were home alone. I knew how to dial 9-1-1 but called Auntie instead, remember? The firefighters carried me into the living room and talked to me about Minnie Mouse while others resuscitated you. When you came home from the hospital a few days later, I was in the bed, falling asleep. I tried to get up and come with you but you kissed me on my forehead and told me that it was okay to go to sleep.

Just then, I leaned down to you and whispered in your ear. I didn’t know how we were going to make it without you but seeing you cry that day, I knew you had to hear the words from me. Mom would never say them, Auntie couldn’t say them, and Theo wasn’t allowed inside of the ICU.

I whispered the same words you told me that night as I kissed your forehead. When I closed my eyes, I remembered every night you read to me about the princesses and princes living happily ever after. I remembered you carrying me on your back at Disneyland, the days we played goldfish and checkers. I remembered the night my first boyfriend came to watch a movie. You pushed your sofa chair around so that you could watch us and She’s All That at the same time. I still have the bat you used to threaten his life. I remembered you in those scenes, so full of vigor, strength, and life. You closed your eyes, as if remembering the same.

(We wore black and red to your service. They dressed you in the

same. With your favorite red tie. The Reverend told us to kiss you

goodnight before they closed the casket but you weren’t there. Your

body was pale (too much make-up); shriveled up  (no more life). You

would have hated being positioned like that, with your hands crossed

over you. When you slept, they were by your sides. )

In June, it’ll be [ten] years. I try to remember your voice; steady, deep and oozing with the Southern twang you passed down to us but only recall your infamous sayings—“that ain’t worth two blood nickels”, “don’t give a damn,” and my personal favorite, “sap sucka.” The truth is that, for the majority everything you said would happen came true. My first boyfriend turned out to be a “son of a seacock”; I crashed the El Camino you gave me three times; Mom and Auntie still yell at each other and end up laughing in the same breath; and my father and I started over. In my dreams of you, you said it would be easier, that the time would mend my aching heart. In some ways, you were right. I don’t cry at the mention of your name anymore but there are some wounds time cannot heal.

I’m still uncomfortable in hospitals. Something about the smell, maybe it’s the image of your body absent of you and the thought that I was responsible for your death because I told you it was okay for you to leave. Maybe it’s because I needed something to blame for how I felt and why not blame the structure that I’ll forever associate with the last time I saw you breathing? You’d probably say that it’s foolish to blame the hospital and that God has a plan for everything.

“Ain’t no use in questioning it,” you’d say.

(Amaree turns eight in June. His birth certificate reads,

“Baby boy…born 08:00.”)

You flew away a minute before, but you already knew that part.