3Q93
black people, my age. trey ellis, chuck d, vernon ried, cree summer, some others. we are eclecticism.
All remind me of the Wizard of Oz.
We are the faces, in the womb of Dorothy in her dreary black and white existence. hounded by people and clothes that fit too tight. A whirlwind is our fury. Round and up we go clinging in fear but knowing we must go - until just outside the window strange new sights appear. We land with an Oooh! and thus is born our generation. Teens in the 70s a brave new post civil rights world - the swirl and crucible- that maddening joyride with all the comforts of a radical home. We were forged and happy and strong in our defiance. Let me have been a slave, Ha! we spat. And thus over the dead body of the Negro mentality we stepped into a technicolor utopia far from home with a brave welcome form strange people who by our birth trumpeted a new freedom.
We were free at last and seeking wisdom, with the ruby slipper of truth we faced the liberal god, a good witch - our superselves. I got your back she says, but now you've loosed a bigger evil.
All god's black children got ruby slippers and those were made for walkin. So we set off into the eclectic utopia which was full of a new spirit, new jeans and new government a new place for us and a mission. This was beauty. No more black and white simplicity. We were beyond all that. We lived over the rainbow, beyond the simple concept of color, but there ticks inside us the c.p.time of home. Just enough to make us more courageous than we ought to be, more bold with our concepts. Part youth and part inspiration.