catching up with things i loved and left…
Saw Meshell Sunday. She was one of the featured performers with the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble at the JazzReggae Festival at UCLA. She did Love Song#2 from Comfort Woman as well as a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron. I haven’t been able to get her out of my head since.
I’ve been feeling out of sorts since Thursday. The death of Gil Scott-Heron, Friday, deepened whatever funk I’d wandered into. Then, she played and I wanted more.
At some point this morning I figured out how to shake the ache. It was Bitter. Her meditations on desire, fault, blame, longing and pain that seductively and beautifully paint the dull persistent ache of melancholy louder than any all-out wail of loss.
She lets me be in my sadness without sinking further into the grips of despair. She doesn’t tell me it’ll be better. She just quietly lures me away, toward a bit of honesty, vulnerability and hope.
Somehow, I’d forgotten what Bitter does for me. Maybe on purpose.
N♥
The words aren’t flowing well today . . .
I’ve avoided Me’shell for a very long time. I don’t know that I can handle her evolutions as an artist. I turn away from a variety of sources because I fear that they will break my heart. Mommy issues, I guess.
I did have the record she put out around ’02. I bought it in Cleveland, when I was feeling especially isolated and misunderstood. I remember that listening to “Dead Nigga Boulevard” one afternoon sparked a tense discussion of the Biggie-Tupac feud between my then-boyfriend and me.
Maybe I’m worried about how the Me’shell of my mind would respond to my evolution as an artist.
On a happier note, it occurred to me, while I was eating chocolate lava cake, that “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” could be the most perfect song I’ve ever heard. It’s difficult for me to articulate this, but the vocals and lyrics overpower the groove in a delightfully subversive way; I need that funk, but I tend to just sit in awe, trying to catch every line he spits. It’s more potent to me than mere hip-hop. It exists outside the realm of any other music I know.
See. The words seemed to flow quite well to me. ♥