02 09 08 Memoir Writing with Alf
Memory of the color red
I remember the frozen blood on the corner of 54th street, on the street side, and on the avenue side. I'd seen blood on the sidewalk before. I always wondered the story behind it, what tragedy, what violence. This was the blood of someone I know, I knew. I can't remember his real name, Orlando maybe. His street name I don't know how to write, DMO. I never feel comfortable with the street names because I'm not a street person. The real names feel too intimate, an invasion. Who was he, somebody in between those two names. He was a little scary because he was so big. One time he walked into my bedroom very drunk, confused, looking for the bathroom. I was told he had a beautiful singing voice and that Lucas had recorded him, or that it was sad because Lucas never had and now he was dead.
I remember the blood froze bright red but I don't know if that's true or just a dramatization of my memory. There was a ritual for him on the corner where a shrine was made from wood and glass to keep whoever killed him, or his other enemies, from trashing the flowers. The wooden box was set along the iron railing that protects the corner building's trash cans. The ritual involved washing off the blood. Lucas' friends brought hot water in a bucket from our house and poured it on the frozen blood. DMO's brother was kneeling by the melted watery blood streaming downhill, touching it. His brother's blood. He said he was going to get a mural on the brick wall but he never did it.
It was very cold, end of January, and some of the young men, Fred who was called Federal among them, who came to make music and record in the studio they dug up out of our basement, were sitting in a car playing one of their songs, an amazing song I'm pretty sure they later lost.
The lyrics of the song had to do with being a soldier, the beat in my memory was musical, melodic, haunting. The song was good enough to be on the radio and it was only later I found out they had made the song themselves. That, and the frozen blood, became emblems of human waste.
I remember another song they made, also lost. There was a beat I'd overhear through the wall between my bedroom and the room where the studio was first set up, right next door. Karim was learning to make beats and the same sound would go on over and over half the night, a snippet of melody that was heart breaking. The song Endless Rain, had a line where the young men sit on the stoop late at night watching the rain wash clean the world...I'd love to hear the song again.
There's one more lyric I remember from that period when Lucas and his friends were crashing in the house, sometimes it felt dozens of them lived there, cocooned on his bedroom floor on futons and airmattresses and nothing at all, and crashing in the studio in the basement. I bought a bunch of air mattresses and blankets and sheets for them. When I was a little girl after I read Little Men I fantasized having an orphanage for little boys. I'd spend long afternoons drawing the grounds, and buildings and bedrooms. The place had several hills and little houses on top and the rooms had rows of beds and each boy had his own box for his stuff. Part of my mind imagined I'd finally gotten my wish while part of my mind was getting completely lost. It wasn't easy seeing all the oppression that sat on those guys and watching the crazy shit they did to resist oppression, to medicate their pain, to feel powerful in a world that took all their power away.
DMO, for example, was strong as an ox and nobody could believe anybody could take him. The myth about him was that he was invulnerable.
He was stomped and stabbed to death on the street maybe over a woman. He had 22 stab wounds and a Timberland boot tread mark on his face you could still see under all the makeup when he was laid out in the coffin.
The other lyric I remember would pop up in the background of a complicated song with many parts. "Be right back, gotta go sell some crack."
Alf comments
So many songs that should be heard Lucas can't handle it emotionally The studio isn't there
Soldier is amazing, especially the selection that BooBoo made that he thought to get it and then they could do a tribute. He has such depth. These men have such depth. It makes me so angry.