This Love Found Me Unconventionally
I patted my pink apron flat as I waited in line to present my person for Black History Month. My white collared shirt was pressed to perfection. Mama wanted me to look good. It was a rainy day in third grade and despite my shyness I was thrilled to share with the class who I “was.”
“I am Phyllis Wheatley [Peters].”
So proud, so loud. Louder than I’d ever spoken. There was something about this woman (1753–84), who was enslaved and the first Black woman to publish a book of poems (second woman, period, might I add), that undoubtedly entranced me. Nothing in the world made me feel more powerful at that age than “girl power” or seeing Black women do cool shit.
Somehow my mom and I found access to some of her poems and we read them. I didn’t know then, but I knew something about poetry was going to be my saving grace.
I tried my hand at my own poems on my dad’s beat up desktop. I was a mini Phyllis Wheatley Peters in my mind. Poetry was a medium where I could talk about secrets without talking about secrets. My tween “esoteric knowledge” was reminiscent of a Moesha journal entry, but I was so encouraged to write, no one would stop me from it.[1]
Soon after my embodiment of Phyllis Wheatley Peters, I was writing…songs, poems, over the soulful croons of Donny Hathaway and Mariah Carey falsettos. Another love had taken over for me, music.
Music wasn’t just a passing fancy. It was an escape. All the lonely parts of me that never felt accepted were safe with music.
Solace found its way to me through music and as my ears grew attuned to multiple voices, tones I would hear, I wrote about it all. History, instruments, people, you name it, I wrote about it and took hella notes. My notebooks remain on my bookshelf telling stories about me doing the shit I love, before I “did” what I love.
Writing about music was not my first career aspiration, hell not even writing. My own mom thought I would be a biology major in college (*cackles* jokes on her). After some detours from forensic scientist and opera singer to lawyer and architect, I landed on African American Studies and Anthropology.
Many if not all of the essays I wrote were about hip-hop music culture. Whether it was ethnographic or historical, didn’t matter, I was constructing stories about hip-hop music culture with attention to gender identity and expression. Then I thoughtlessly decided to attend graduate school for Musicology.
While these educational moments and pursuits made me love writing, interviewing people, and talking about music, this isn’t what sticks out in my journey as “thee moment.”
“Thee moment” I really understood how much I dug writing encompassed me…
Hurriedly skirting between venues and shows watching people perform poetry. These folks were MC’s, moving the crowd and holding them at the edge of their seats. I loved it so much.
The time had come for me to open mouth. Sitting on over 10 years of poems was doing me no good. So, I arrived at a talent show at the College of Charleston and decided to shed light on my depression, new found love, familial pain, and much more. My nerves were tap dancing. You can’t convince me I was not up their naked. In fact, sweat still collects under my armpits every time I have to publicly speak, but I read anyway.
Then, I see the crowd move. The Ooo’s, ahh’s, and uncertain silences leave my senses overwhelmed, teeming. I knew from that point on, I could never leave writing or writing poetry alone.
Knowing that what I write, I can share and that in sharing it, it can rile someone’s emotions (positive or otherwise) brings me joy. I love that sense of power. And while my realization of how much I love writing was not typical, every moment and mishap was worth the trouble.
What do you love to do? What’s the story behind it?
Current writing venture: my music Instagram AfroAtonality.
[1] Also, shout out to my grandma, Donna Jean. I didn’t know for a while that she was a writer and writing was DOPE AF. #BlackPride
