When I was 14 or 15 years old, I’d spend restless nights listening to music on Pandora and scrolling through photography blogs. Considering myself a student of the burgeoning Lomography movement, I would bum around the Lomo store on Santa Monica Blvd after summer school, renting cameras I couldn’t afford, flipping through their photo books and even participating in their learning courses and community activities. The experimental nature of analogue photography was fascinating to me, and eventually, I bought a cheap Holga medium format camera to learn more.
I recently developed this mysterious roll of 120mm film, and although I was initially unsatisfied with the blurry outcomes, I now appreciate that these square exposures encapsulate some of the soft saturations and hazy texture of early teenage memories. They depict abstract vignettes of playful moments: two sisters sharing an Arizona iced tea, swimming in the pool, playing soccer in the yard, sticking my tongue out, lying on the grass and staring up at the trees.
These exposures remind me of how young I was when I first started playing around with photography, and why I loved doing it in the first place. They remind me how there is beauty in the mistakes we make while learning a new craft. I’m still learning.
Wow it’s been almost four years since I published my last blog post. I started this blog 10 years ago, when I was 19 years young, but now that I’m on the edge of 30, I feel like it’s my duty to recommit myself to my expression in this space. Too often I get swept up in the instagram tide and think that it’s the only avenue of expressing myself, my art, my story. There are many avenues of expression and this is one cruising lane that always reconnects me with my inner child. That wide eyed romantic that taped pictures all over her bedroom walls and devoted herself to film photography blogs.
So in honor of her, and the 19-year-old that started this blog and said she’ll “do [her] best not to make it a tumblr; or, even worse, forget about posting” (pulled from my about me page), this year I’m recommitting myself to publishing more entries of my expression. And when better to (re)start than now, the night before I take the 6am flight to New York City. Here’s a fun look back at my last two trips to New York City, captured on film using my LOMO L-CA.
My husband and I said farewell to an apartment that’s been in his family since the 1950s.
One night, I passed the time waiting for the subway by light painting, and then I followed Michael and Benji up the stairway into their family apartment.
We took some groovy double exposures.
Various landscapes.
And captured special moments with family and friends before, during and after feasting.
“I’ll say goodbye to all my sorrows and by tomorrow, I’ll be on my way….”
Jean Toomer’s Cane is his poet song of the American South. Written in 1923, it’s like a Harlem Renaissance painting speckled with colorful Black characters decorated in the glow of a Georgia sunset.
Told through a series of vignettes, Cane lurches the reader through the window of time and uses its descriptive portraits to summon the sweet breeze of the cane fields. It squeezes through tropes and stereotypes to authentically portray Black life, lust, joy and sorrow, in all of its beauty and cadence.
I first found out about Cane from Langston Hughes, who praised it as a “beautiful book of prose and verse” in his autobiography The Big Sea. Alice Walker also sang its praises throughout her transformative book, In Search of Our Mothers Gardens. With Alice Walker and Langston Hughes, my literary mother and father, both celebrating the power of Cane, I knew I had to read it. (I picked up a copy when it found me meandering the rows of a bookstore in Seattle.)
Although Cane was published to critical acclaim as one of the fine examples of the “Negro Renaissance” (as Hughes liked to call it), its success as such, combined with Toomer’s controversial attitudes on race and refusal to identify as a Negro writer, complicated the legacies of both the book and the author.
Jean Toomer (Alfred Stiglitz, 1925)
Toomer had fair skin, was of mixed-race background and spent his childhood growing up as a Black aristocrat in Washington D.C. According to public documents, he went back and forth identifying as white or Black and would often be mistaken for Native American. As he began to grow into his artistry in Harlem during the Negro Renaissance, he championed the notion of being referred to simply as “American” instead of Black. He believed America was heading towards being a mixed-race society and that by rejecting the pigeonholed notion of race, the problems of Black vs white would soon be solved.
When you compare Jean Toomer’s wishy-washy sometimes Black/sometimes white-passing attitude, with his contemporary Zora Neale Hurston’s unapologetic Blackness, it makes sense why Toomer’s book isn’t in the mainstream of Black literature. However, when you separate the art from the artist, Jean Toomer’s Cane represents Blackness just as dynamically as Zora Neale Hurston is most famous for.
In fact, you wouldn’t think that Toomer wasn’t proud to be Black when you read Cane. Its portrayal of Black Southern pride is what was so groundbreaking about the novel when it first came out in 1923, and even today, almost a hundred years later in 2020. The trials and tribulations his characters endured weren’t written in a way to instill pity, they were accurate portrayals that revealed their humanity. Many critics compliment Cane as laying the foundation for how Black folks were represented in literature.
I can see why. Toomer masterfully utilized literary devices, such as symbolism, imagery, diction, and unconventional structure, and overall, Cane is an educational lesson in experimental writing.
Because the point of view changes with each passing story, he uses language as a way to distinguish his characters and narrators. The syntax and diction will vary as well, giving each story its own expression. Toomer encapsulates the Black vernacular of the times, in using dialogue like, “Youalls” “ahelpin’” or “I enjoys t hear y talk.” (Kabnis, 137).
Even the fine details of the scenes’ locations, the “nigger alleys” (Theater, 65) or the cane fields themselves, help transfer the gravity of the full picture. It’s a book you’ll want to read through the notes to get the proper context and engaging background details.
The pace of the book sways from prose, poetry and play-like dialogue, letting the stories flow naturally, like peering into your neighbor’s lives as you walk by on a neighborhood stroll.
His use of imagery is one of his strongest tools. Lines like “the full moon sank upward into the deep purple of the cloud bank” (Blood Burning Moon, 41) or “like her face, the whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes” (Fern, 21) draw such a clear yet avant-garde vision.
The overarching symbolism of the cane permeates throughout the feeling of the entire book. “Cradled in dream-flute cane” (Calling Jesus, 73), “time and space have no meaning in a cane field” (Carma, 14), “settled with a purple haze about the cane” (Fern, 23)…
The parts of Cane that really spoke to me were the poems Georgia Dusk, Storm Ending and Evening Song, which rolled into the heart like a song, and the prose portraits of Black women, like Carma and Karintha.
Despite Toomer’s complex racial philosophies, reading Cane was an insightful journey into my ancestor’s way of life. I only visited the South once as a child, so for me as a first-generation Californian, his stories drew a feeling I have yet to experience fully in my adult life. They invoked a sort of nostalgic, native longing to return to my American bloodland and hear the wind in the cane-fields.
After Cane was published, Toomer’s quest for wholeness led him to seek enlightenment in the Russian mysticism of spiritual teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Cane ended up being Toomer’s last literary contribution and in reflecting on Toomer’s decision to stop writing altogether, Hughes said, “Harlem is sorry he stopped writing. He was a fine American writer.”
I agree.
All in all, Cane is a modernist masterpiece. As author Zinzi Clemmons wrote in the foreword to the 2019 re-release of Cane, the novel “gestures towards the heavens, allow[ing] us to look beyond what lies before us here on Earth.” Toomer was a brilliant writer and his experimental twist of storytelling is inspiring to those willing to learn from it.
When I landed at the Pittsburgh airport earlier this spring, my phone glowed with paragraphs of notifications.
The first was Twitter saying Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The second was that the NBA had cancelled its 2020 in-person game season due to coronavirus fears. The rest were all reactions to my job implementing a work from home mandate.
The storm of the COVID-19 pandemic had come to America, and here I was, stepping off of a plane in the City of Bridges the day it touched ground – March 11.
Even though I was filled with joy to visit my best friend Joey, who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years and had promised to visit for much longer, the guilt riddled inside my belly. It was a cold and crisp night outside the car windows. The mountains and the naked winter trees looked familiar, yet foreign, and as they brushed by on the way into the city, I felt further and further from home.
While Los Angeles was sold out of toilet paper, the panic from the virus hadn’t yet revealed itself widely in Pittsburgh. And still, the warehouse art parties I was longing to indulge in, the Twin Peaks rock show I was aching to let loose at, all cancelled. Joey’s presence comforted me, but I still found myself constantly tripping over the fact that the country was on the verge of a shutdown, and I was on vacation across the country.
After the initial shock somewhat settled when we landed in his old-fashioned Pittsburgh house, we ate some dinner, called it a night, and I spent the rest of my waking hours scrolling through headlines on Twitter.
The weekend would bring plenty of new memories and plenty of last pre-pandemic memories. It feels strange when I think of how I spent the rest of the trip meandering around eccentric art museums, like The Mattress Factory and The Andy Warhol museum, or that I drank and ate in restaurants without a mask in sight. In many ways, it still felt normal romping about town with Joey, shooting film and making each other laugh. On my last night, we sat inside a dark dive bar and ordered four pitchers, gulping the cheap beer down like it was the last round. And it was.
Everything changed when I landed back in Los Angeles and braced for the March 2020 shutdown. But in that brief moment before shit hit the fan, I enjoyed exploring Pittsburgh and soaking in the fascinations of its vibrant neighborhoods, decadent bridges, rusty steel mills, and groovy people.
– Tyler
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Joshua Tree
If you’ve ever been to Joshua Tree, you know the beauty. You’ve experienced the strange sensation of looking out into the distance and seeing Joshua Trees of all sizes and shapes as far as the eye can see. You’ve felt the chaotic stillness emanating from the rock formations, the eeriness of human presence in contrast to the display of nature’s grandeur. You’ve seen the glow of the cholla cacti.
If you’ve been once, many times or have only heard stories, I don’t have to tell you how Joshua Tree is truly one of the most unique places on Earth. Instead, I’ll show you my point of view.
THE JOSHUA TREES AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.
THE CHAOTIC STILLNESS EMANATING FROM THE ROCKS.
THE EERINESS OF HUMAN PRESENCE IN CONTRAST TO THE DISPLAY OF NATURE’S GRANDEUR.
THE GLOWING CHOLLAS.
US IN ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE PLACES ON EARTH.
I find it special that Joshua Tree is where the Mojave and Colorado Desert meet — one of the many distinct spots in the world where two different ecosystems diverge. Maybe it’s love.
His name was Steve, but everyone in the family called him Lil. To some he was Lil Stevie.
The baby boy of eight siblings in Lake Providence, Louisiana, Lil was the skinny, airy, neat as a pin brother that kept you laughing. When he got a couple swigs of jockey juice in him, he transformed into the family’s crooner.
The whole family rejoiced in his sweet voice. They’d come round close together as he’d be strummin’ and pickin’ those guitar strings and howlin’ and rowlin’ his smooth voice in a deep croon. It was beautiful.
He mimicked Mavis Staples so well, that when he sang The Staple Singers’ “Uncloudy Day,” the whole house trembled. Sometimes his sisters Wilma and Gal would join him in the song and the house would fill with harmony magic. The kind of magic that leaves you in chills.
One Christmas night, Lil’s father Jasper was standing on the road looking through the trunk of his car, when a truck with no lights raced out of the darkness and struck both the car and Jasper with brute force. Highway 65. Gas leaked from the car and then a great big burst exploded. Lil was devastated.
Lil wanted to see his father one last time and asked the people working at the funeral home to open the casket. They refused. It was a closed casket and no one wanted Lil to see his father in that condition. He asked again and again until finally, they could not refuse.
Despite everyone’s concern, he looked anyway. He loved his father so much that perhaps he thought he would never have closure without that one last look. That one last moment.
Well that moment, when he saw what he saw and felt what he felt, it changed his life forever. He was never the same. Devastation gripped him so tightly that he needed alcohol to shake it loose. He started drinking more than singing.
One day as Lil walked down the road with his girlfriend, a car sped out of nowhere and hit him across the highway. The impact broke every bone in his body, and while he was lying there in the road, his mom swore to her grave that she heard him call her name from the house. He died young and another roadside tragedy forced the family to have a closed casket.
It’s now five decades later, and “Uncloudy Day” still strikes a deep and solemn chord in anyone that had the lucky chance to hear Lil singing it. His voice sent a chill that imprinted itself deep in the soul. It resonates warmly today within the last living sibling of his family, his older sister, the Phil to his Lil, my Grandmother Reola.
She shared this song and these memories of my Great-Uncle Lil and my Great-Grandfather Jasper with me, her Grandbaby. Now everytime I hear it, I think of the Great-Uncle I never knew, and the song he and his sisters loved to sing. I get the same chills.
Having this story, and this song to summon the spirit of my family members, shows me how music truly is one of the everlasting gifts of love.
– TB
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The air was thick and sweet when we walked outside of the Santiago de Cali airport. Kristie and her divine mother Claudia, embraced us weary travelers with hugs, welcoming us to their homeland. After years of seeing, hearing, and feeling Colombia through Kristie, here I was — cradled in her country and experiencing it with my own senses.
The vast fields of Cali filled my eyes with green. Lush hillsides surrounded us everywhere, and the trees and weeds that cropped along them, flourished with the rainforest humidity. Although we were in the urban city, the houseplants breathed easy at Mami’s apartment in the Normandia neighborhood. Large Birds of Paradise blossomed in the living room.
The vibrancy of the surrounding green was a stark contrast to the wildfire-scape of Southern California.
One day, we followed the Rio Ponce outside of the city, towards the jungle below the mountain.
We hiked along the river’s edge, foraging flowers and staring at bending bamboo trunks. Out of the thick greens, a school emerged. When a staff member saw us curious travelers and answered our question about a certain plant, he asked us —Kristie translated— if we’d like a tour of the school. We agreed and entered a spectacular haven of Native Colombian history.
The teacher showed us the grounds where they take local kids affected by hard situations like drug violence and poverty, and educate them on native ways of nurturing and living off the land. Many of the students are of the Nasa people, indigenous Colombians of Valle del Cauca. Signs were translated in both Spanish and the Nasa language, classes were held in a bamboo structure, and gardens were enclosed all over the grounds. The teacher took us to one caged garden where orchids grew wild and rampant from bamboo bases.
I admired Kristie for her beautiful and effortless translations in the teacher’s storytelling of this community’s purpose.
We thanked him, hiked back to catch the last light, and at the end of the day, we hopped along the smooth stones and let the river slip between our fingers.
Every morning tasted like arepas con huevo and every day was filled with fresh coconut rice, plantains, and warm beans. We drank tropical cocktails over long dinners filled with laughter. While strolling down the cobblestoned streets of Cartagena we tried fruits that I had never heard of and don’t exist in the English language.
I tasted the Colombian climate in all of the produce I ate; in a salad it trickled out of the crisp of the lettuce, the juicy bite of the tomato, and the giant avocados. That salad, along with the refreshing crunch of a dressing made of diced onions and lime juice, with a side of tostones, rice cooked with a fresh coconut, and a freshly fried fish was my favorite meal (see below).
I saw a rainbow of Afro-Latinxs in Colombia. I gazed at their beauty, their familiarity, their purity.
In the jungle cafe alongside the Rio Ponce, the Afro-Colombian lady who made us fresh empanadas reminded me of my cousin Sherry who braids my hair. Her round face and bubbly brown eyes carried her identical expressions.
I found another cousin on the beach in Cartagena. He was peddling cocktails while the older teenager with him was pushing a makeshift bar cart behind in the sand. The younger boy was in his early teens, and while he poured half a bottle of rum into a pineapple for us, I noticed he had the same face as my little cousin Junior.
Here I was, 3,500 miles away from home, running into cousins along the way. That’s the African Diaspora.
I learned that Cartagena was Spanish America’s biggest slave port; The New Orleans of South America. We came from the same boats, but landed in different harbors.
Down the streets of The Walled City, groups of large Black women swayed their large hips down the cobblestone streets, balancing baskets of fruit on top of their heads. Their hair was wrapped in colorful garments that matched their dresses. One of these ladies parked on the side of the horse-and-buggy road, gave us a mamoncillo to try for the first time. She smiled as our eyes lit with delight at the grape-like fruit. Before we walked away, she looked Kristie in the eyes and in Spanish, told her to take care of us.
There was so much untouched African beauty in some Afro-Colombians, they looked like my ancestors preserved in a time capsule. I saw their rich dark skin and felt something akin to whitewashed, American-ized, and far removed from my deepest roots. But, like any moment of self-doubt, I’d catch myself in that mindset and shake it off.
Whenever I walked by the Afro-Colombian women, we exchanged a silent greeting that acknowledged each other’s presence. It felt like The Nod, but on a deeper level beyond language.
After some time living a continent away from Kristie, my soul sister from college, and months without seeing my other soul babes too, I was in their warmth. We drank wine into the late night, sharing our dreams, planning future ideal communes, discussing everything from the universe to the bean and laughing until the laughter squeezed our bellies.
I was at peace with my babes, and I was at peace traveling somewhere that already felt like home.
Nipsey, when the balloons popped and people panicked that it was gunshots, it felt like a wave hit and everyone fell. The barricade for your memorial was down and some folks next to me got cut from shattered candles or burned from flame or blue wax. I got up quickly from the people I fell on top of, only hearing the adrenaline pump my heartbeat. While a few people started screaming that they were balloons, others were scrambling to find their belongings, and some were picking up candles.
When I got up from the ground and realized we were safe, I saw this lady and son were on the ground still positioned in duck-and-cover. I reached for their arm and lifted them up to not get trampled, assuring them everything was okay. I’ll never forget the fear of death spilling from their eyes.
Nipsey, when your hearse rolled through Crenshaw & Slauson, the sun came out of the clouds. Beams of our warm star bellowed throughout the sky, touching every soul there to say goodbye to you. People screamed and shouted and celebrated. The young man in front of me looked to the right and told the stranger next to him, “You can’t tell me God don’t exist. Look at that, that’s a miracle right there.”
Nipsey, on the night that Los Angeles said goodbye, I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking of everything and thinking of nothing at all. As I sank in the depths of these dense thoughts, an earthquake rattled the apartment. I imagined it was you telling me to shake those thoughts and get some rest, for the Marathon continues…
Tyler Nicole Boudreaux 