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#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
EDITED BY SALVATORE PANE<br />
PROOFREAD BY THERESA BECKHUSEN<br />
EBOOK BY NAP<br />
NAPLITMAG.COM<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
GREGORY SHERL BARRY GRASS SALVATORE PANE<br />
IAN RIGGINS JOSHUA PATTON EVAN CHEN<br />
ROBERT HELFST MIKE ROSENTHAL<br />
#GOODLIT<br />
SWERVEAUTUMN<br />
KAIT BURRIER SAM MARTONE BRIAN OLIU<br />
THERESA BECKHUSEN REBECCA KING FRED PELZER<br />
SARAH BLAKE LILY HOANG COLIN RAFFERTY<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
KANYE WEST<br />
POEM<br />
FEATURING<br />
GREGORY SHERL<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
There are suns on my tongue & they all smell like France.<br />
Depending on my mood, I am every color of fall—<br />
the temperament, not the act, never the action in the before.<br />
Depending on depending, I am what you call basketball short.<br />
I am what you call teacher hot. My hair stays night<br />
when it’s still falling on more night. My face be storms,<br />
my face be standing rainforests. Your legs stay space shuttles<br />
while my therapist goes hypnosis.<br />
My heart stays a puff, puff, pass kind of feeling.<br />
Please know I only snort women, I only drink what comes<br />
out of them. The best weather is thigh weather.<br />
Hey, I’m digging on us. How we fuck like bounty hunters.<br />
How we fuck like Europeans on vacation. This here it goes:<br />
we fuck like all nations. I could say We fuck all nations,<br />
but we practice minimalism in bed.<br />
This should’ve been the refrain: You go over legs so well.<br />
I never lived longer because I opened a book.<br />
Someone start this poem over. Don’t publish my mother<br />
crying over the charcoal on my hospital gown.<br />
Exhume my sister, try the feeding tube again.<br />
I am good to have known you, so I keep myself<br />
only wilderness. When I grow up I’m going to be quicksand,<br />
lightning, that goddamn super fast shit. On TV a rocket<br />
launcher goes through a Kevlar vest, & now nobody stays<br />
safe even while inside. They got these drones now,<br />
so I’m hiding my children even though I don’t have children.<br />
Let me borrow yours. My favorite part of fucking is before<br />
your clothes are off & I already smell what you’ll taste like.<br />
Last night the wind left but the trees were still moving.<br />
I thought Love. I thought about growing<br />
into incredible monsters. I thought to think<br />
Thank God civilizations start with just a twitch.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
A PODIATRIC<br />
VIDEOGRAPHY OF<br />
KANYE WEST<br />
BARRY GRASS<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Let’s take it back to basics/ When shit gets worse<br />
we Converse/ How we need a New Balance/ before<br />
the lines get crossed like ASICS”<br />
– Kanye West, “Back to Basics (The Corner pt.3)”<br />
“Hold up, I ain’t tryin’ to stunt, man/ but these<br />
Yeezys just jumped over the Jumpman”<br />
– Kanye West, “New God Flow”<br />
“The only thing that I pray is that my feet don’t fail<br />
me now.”<br />
– Kanye West, “Jesus Walks”<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“All Falls Down,” The College Dropout (2004)<br />
Nike Air Jordan 7 “Raptors” (1992)<br />
When I think of Kanye West, it doesn’t take me long before<br />
I start thinking about his shoes. The man’s sneaker game is<br />
iconic. He’s single-handedly double-footedly raised the profile<br />
of certain retro sneakers, made entire genres of footwear hip<br />
to new audiences, and designed multiple high-end pairs for<br />
multiple brands. But it wasn’t until the video for “All Falls<br />
Down,” the third single off of his debut album, that we see<br />
Kanye’s feet at all. His shoes were clipped out of our sight by<br />
the borders of a Polaroid picture or by the pastor’s pulpit. A<br />
deliberate framing that now feels like fear, feels like Kanye<br />
holding back, feels like self-containment. And that feeling is<br />
largely present in the video for “All Falls Down,” a first-person<br />
narrative that sees Kanye escort his girl to Chicago O’Hare<br />
International Airport. Kanye is our avatar in this video, and we<br />
see glimpses of the black toebox of his sneakers whenever he<br />
looks down. For a brief moment towards the end of the video,<br />
Kanye lays down to run himself through an x-ray machine as<br />
if he were baggage – no doubt reflective of the song’s lyrical<br />
critiques of consumer culture (including namedrops of Nike’s<br />
Jordans and Air Force Ones). In this moment we can make out<br />
the tongue and accent piping of his sneakers. He’s wearing<br />
the True Red and Dark Charcoal colorway of the Air Jordan 7,<br />
which is commonly referred to as the “Raptors,” even though<br />
the similarly-colored Toronto Raptors NBA franchise wouldn’t<br />
exist until 3 years after the shoe came out. The sneaker<br />
was over a decade old when this video dropped, instantly<br />
establishing Kanye West as a serious sneakerhead. In a way, I<br />
see this choice of footwear as foreshadowing: as Kanye’s way<br />
of saying “the real Kanye West has existed long before you<br />
will recognize him.”<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” Late Registration (2005)<br />
Alife Everybody Low (2005)<br />
It’s a sunny day gone grayscale chill. Kanye West broods<br />
amidst the majesty of Prague’s architecture. In this, his<br />
first video for his sophomore album, Kanye finds himself at<br />
particular confluences. His fame and wealth have brought him<br />
to this point: he’s rapping about the brutality of the diamond<br />
trade in Sierra Leone while also rapping about how awesome<br />
his Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses are. His inner fury blazes<br />
when he’s in an empty, ornate church, but merely sizzles<br />
on Prague’s streets, where he wears designer peacoats and<br />
jeans. He’s no longer in his native Chicago, and he seems to<br />
have left his Jordans back home in the shadow of the United<br />
Center. And while he’s rapped about boutique sneakers from<br />
Yohji Yamamoto, he seems reluctant to wear them, let alone<br />
wear a pair of bespoke dress shoes from some elite illuminati<br />
cobbler in Paris, some Jacob the Jeweler of patent leather. His<br />
compromise is a simple black and white lowtop sneaker from<br />
start-up NYC brand Alife. Its buttery nubuck matches his<br />
peacoat, and the vulcanized midsole complements his bright<br />
white belt. Kanye may not see it yet, but he’s trying to be<br />
equally loved by pop music consumers and by music critics.<br />
He’s trying to love the excesses of the world and somehow<br />
show concern for it too.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Stronger,” Graduation (2007)<br />
Ato Matsumoto Cow Hide Boot (2008)<br />
Kanye is a changed man, this much is obvious now. Common<br />
must have lost his ear, because Kanye has abandoned that<br />
small part of the socially-conscious rap tradition that was<br />
in his music. He is engaged at this point: fiancé to designer<br />
Alexsis Phifer; engaged to the world of high fashion;<br />
engaged in his increasingly complicated mind. The more he<br />
looks inward, the greater danger he is in of alienating the<br />
streets. This song, built off of a Daft Punk sample, is full<br />
of references to various anime films. I am a white, middleclass<br />
nerd, so I catch these references. But others wouldn’t<br />
be blamed for seeing Kanye’s forward-thinking aesthetic as<br />
a kind of oddity. His shoes are from a designer that was put<br />
on the fashion map only because Kanye decided to wear them<br />
in this video. They’re fairly basic mid-cut sneakers, with an<br />
icy outsole design stolen from Nike Dunks. They stand out<br />
from their influences, however, because of four shiny patent<br />
leather flaps – two at the base of the toebox and two sort of<br />
aligned with the ankle. They are large, they widen out to a<br />
bulb, and they connect to each other with Velcro. What Kanye<br />
has done here is to marry designer fashion, musical content,<br />
and visual aesthetic. Only by updating his look and sound<br />
with elements of late childhood – Japanese cartoons, Velcro<br />
shoes – has Kanye become “harder, better, faster, stronger.”<br />
Only by tapping into the imagination has he found a way in to<br />
the fashion world. This video made Ato Matsumoto’s career.<br />
And it would mark the point in which Kanye loved his own<br />
imagination more than anything or anyone else.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Love Lockdown,” 808’s & Heartbreak (2008)<br />
Kanye West for Louis Vuitton Don’s (2009)<br />
It’s a low, off-white sneaker with an idiosyncratic mix of<br />
materials: premium leather body, nubuck toebox and accents,<br />
thick midsole ala Nike Air Force One, two connecting flaps<br />
(where have we seen those before?), a large, plush piece of<br />
cushioning on the heel, like a cupped hand, making this low<br />
shoe look like a mid. It’s unique, straddling a line between<br />
elegance and incoherence. It’s extraordinarily expensive. It’s<br />
made by Louis Vuitton. And Kanye West is the sneaker’s only<br />
designer. It was always coming to this: Kanye creating fashion<br />
instead of just influencing it. But this isn’t a triumphant<br />
moment for Mr. West. His engagement was broken off and he<br />
had released a break-up album. The songs are sad, ambient,<br />
electronic, cold. Far ahead of its time, his production on 808’s<br />
& Heartbreak would influence the world of pop music for the<br />
next many years. In the video for “Love Lockdown,” Kanye<br />
mopes around his house, a prisoner of his swollen heart. He<br />
wears this pair of LV Dons the whole time, casting pained<br />
glances down at them as if to ask “Are these shoes worth what<br />
was sacrificed for them?” As if to implicate his art and his<br />
genius as a sort of saboteur. After this album’s release, Kanye<br />
would find a new girlfriend, Amber Rose. They would attend<br />
fashion shows together. They were photographed laughing,<br />
enjoying life. Kanye would not make music for the next two<br />
years.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Power,” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)<br />
Nike Air Yeezy (2009)<br />
Kanye West’s return to music couldn’t have been more brash.<br />
A slow-motion music video that sees all manner of golden,<br />
perfect bodies performing various depictions taken from<br />
ancient pottery art. A video that sees Kanye West at the center<br />
of an ever-expanding zoom-out shot, dressed in all black except<br />
for this medallion of Horus, the king of Egyptian Gods, that<br />
is quite literally the size of a toddler. The amount of swagger<br />
on display here, from an artist whose last contribution to<br />
music was an album of tortuous self-doubt, is truly awesome.<br />
The song is built around a sample of progressive rock band<br />
King Crimson’s “Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man,” which<br />
plays as a knowing wink to Kanye’s eccentricity but also as<br />
another reference to kingship. When Kanye West is at his<br />
most confident, he is not to be trifled with. He came back to<br />
once again dominate the music industry after a year which<br />
saw him break up with Amber Rose and also dominate the<br />
sneaker industry. His Louis Vuitton sneakers were influential,<br />
sure, but it was his collaboration with Nike that inspired the<br />
average hip-hop fan. The shoe is as brash as the “Power”<br />
music video: extra-padded hightop ankle support; shoelaces<br />
that go through a plastic ‘Y’ emblem on the tongue; an Air Max<br />
cushioning unit in the heel, replete with window; a grooved,<br />
textured, elephant print flap that comes across the foot at the<br />
base of the ankle; a glow-in-the-dark outsole. They retailed<br />
for $215, but production numbers in the low thousands for<br />
each colorway meant that pairs were going for upwards of<br />
$1,000 on eBay. Such was the demand to wear what Kanye<br />
designed. Such was the demand to bask in the glory of a man<br />
at the height of his abilities.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“All of the Lights,” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)<br />
Nike Jordan 3 Retro (2001)<br />
In the video for a song that features over twenty guest<br />
musicians, Kanye wears an unassuming staple shoe of street<br />
fashion – the Black/Cement colorway of the Air Jordan 3. This<br />
can be seen as a play to his hometown of Chicago, or as a show<br />
of respect to the sneaker lineage that made the Air Yeezy<br />
possible some 25 years later. This choice of sneaker is easily<br />
the calmest, most stable element of the seizure-inducing<br />
menagerie of lighting effects that is this music video. As an<br />
artistic statement it is hard to read. Only in retrospect can I<br />
see it as a transitional shoe for him, its cement print design,<br />
excuse me here, paving the way for the years to come.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Mercy,” G.O.O.D. Music Cruel Summer (2012)<br />
Nike Air Yeezy 2 (2012)<br />
The last couple of years have been good to Kanye. He’s<br />
cultivated a thriving music label, G.O.O.D. Music, and has<br />
continued to rap guest verses for his artists. He’s started<br />
a straight-up women’s fashion line called DW Kanye West,<br />
which has held shows in London, Paris, and Milan. He’s dating<br />
Kim Kardashian and seems happy. But maybe that won’t last.<br />
Maybe things can never last because what we learned five<br />
years ago is just as true now: Kanye loves ideas and art and<br />
aesthetics. He really doesn’t love himself, and certainly not<br />
anyone else. Maybe we’re seeing Kanye at another in-between<br />
moment of his life. He’s put out the sequel to his Nike Air Yeezy,<br />
with such features as a range of spiky bumps above the heel<br />
that looks like a mountain range or a Stegosaurus, basketball<br />
netting draped over the tongue, and a material covering the<br />
shoe’s lower half that I can only describe as “hard mesh.” It<br />
sold out instantly at nearly $300 retail, and the secondary<br />
market prices have been predictably exorbitant. Feet have<br />
not failed Mr. West, no indeed. And yet the dominant use of<br />
mesh and netting on the Air Yeezy 2 suggests to me a desire<br />
to trap something inside of it. Perhaps Kanye is, in his own<br />
way, getting back to the podiatric point at which he started:<br />
trying to contain himself. He plays a background role on the<br />
Cruel Summer crew album. And anyone who has seen his<br />
appearances with his girlfriend on her reality show, Keeping<br />
Up with the Kardashians, knows that Kanye’s presence on<br />
the show is tame. A supporting player. That is how I would<br />
characterize this in-between moment in his life: Kanye West is<br />
trying to figure out how large a role he should play in things.<br />
I suspect that when we see the design for the Nike Air Yeezy<br />
3 we will be able to tell exactly what Kanye decided.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
HOW HE ONCE<br />
MOVED THEM<br />
SALVATORE PANE<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
An excerpt from the novel Last Call in the City of Bridges<br />
We are on Mars, but we are no longer young. This is not<br />
the place for youth. It is where the elderly are shuttled off to,<br />
the assisted living ranches of outer space. We sit on Mars under<br />
big glass domes and tilt our wrinkly heads toward the sky.<br />
They have us lined up on an infinitely long porch, our bodies<br />
connected to hundreds of computers, impossible machines<br />
that shout “Beep!” and “Yip!” complete with nugget dials and<br />
sensors that make us nervous. We cannot move. The machines<br />
are too big, unruly, all hooked in intravenously through our<br />
mouths, noses, ears, belly buttons, anuses, genitals.<br />
We sway back and forth on the rocking chairs of our<br />
destruction.<br />
Some of us listen to music. We avoid the old crooners, the<br />
Frank Sinatras and Dean Martins and Sammy Davis Juniors<br />
and Peter Lawfords and Joey Bishops or anyone else associated<br />
with the Rat Pack. We prefer gangster rap. We sit on our death<br />
rockers and tentatively nod to “Juicy” by Notorious B.I.G. and<br />
“California Love” by Tupac Shakur. We have forgotten which<br />
one of these urban youths died first, but either way it’s a tragic<br />
shame perfectly suited for a group of people whose hormones<br />
first went ape shit during the 9/11 attacks.<br />
We are shocked at how old we have become. Liver spots!<br />
When we saw our grandparents’ hands as children it seemed<br />
like a sick joke. Saggy skin. Pale complexions. Baldness. We look<br />
like babies! And maybe that’s all aging is. The universe was<br />
born and then it expanded. After a period of time it began to<br />
rapidly compress. Maybe the aging process is the contraction<br />
of the human spirit.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
No one talks much anymore, but we do have Facebook on<br />
our machines. So we can make wall posts from time to time.<br />
We rarely do however. What is there to say really? Hi. I’m still<br />
on that porch on Mars. What up? So we sit and watch the dead<br />
sky and wait to die. Sometimes we play Nintendo games. Very<br />
few of us can even make it past 4-1 on Super Mario Brothers<br />
these days. The digital apparitions of our youth torment us so.<br />
Because the sky burned out so long ago, we no longer have<br />
Earthian conceptions of time. But He comes at what was once<br />
referred to as midnight. It begins as a speck in the distance,<br />
a reminder of our former planet. But the speck grows larger.<br />
Fast. Fast. Fast. Within seconds He is above the dome with His<br />
arms extended. He sits in a diamond encrusted chariot pulled<br />
by six stainless steel horses. They breathe fire.<br />
It is Kanye.<br />
He beams down Star Trek-style and folds his arms over his<br />
muscular chest. His glasses reflect the black hole sun. He has<br />
not aged a day. He is the same old Kanye we remember from<br />
our youth, hands outstretched to the heavens in a diamond<br />
shape. We want to shout and scream. We want to bask in the<br />
glory of this miracle, that Kanye West has returned from His<br />
adventure across the cosmos to learn how to cheat death, to<br />
end and potentially reverse the natural flow of time.<br />
Kanye West has come to save us from ourselves.<br />
Yet we are troubled. Why hasn’t He spoken? Why won’t He<br />
speak? We remember how He disappeared in the early 21st<br />
century, how He left in an Escalade rocket claiming He would<br />
only return when He’d discovered the meaning of life. Why are<br />
His hands above his head? Why won’t He speak?<br />
We lean forward in our rocking chairs. Our machines gasp<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
in agony. Our bodies have not experienced this much stress in<br />
centuries.<br />
Kanye opens His mouth. He booms.<br />
“The Kanye cometh! Ye have bequeathed your spiritual<br />
birthrights. I have naught come hither to save you. I have<br />
travelled the stars and have returned to tell you this: Ye have<br />
failed. The dearth of your anonymity astonishes. No one knows<br />
you. The world is not aware of your names. Thou art one in a<br />
crowd of billions. Because of that, thou doth not matter, thou<br />
doth not exist.”<br />
Electricity cackles between His open hands. Then a solid<br />
yellow light. An explosion that blows everything back for miles,<br />
the endless porch decimated, the machines caved in, the rocking<br />
chairs shattered. Bodies everywhere. The dome explodes. We<br />
are blown into the emptiness of Martian space. Kanye returns<br />
to His chariot and rides toward the burning black tentacles of<br />
the zombie sun.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
ERASE ONE<br />
ANOTHER<br />
IAN RIGGINS<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Not anywhere. Certainly not in Honolulu, certainly not on<br />
a night like this one. Kanye pushes though the glass door<br />
onto the studio deck. He leans against the railing over Kuapa<br />
Pond, its shores lined with palm trees and expensive homes,<br />
and checks his phone. Nothing, still. Rose usually gets back<br />
to him right away. He wonders if she’s still awake. Across the<br />
pond lies the highway, dotted with headlights, and beyond<br />
that the Pacific, black and still in the night. The sky thick with<br />
stars. In the sunlight, Honolulu is blue-green and white and<br />
slopes toward the ocean, toward the clouds that hang just<br />
above the hills. At night it’s another city.<br />
He’d sent the others—Cudi, No I.D., Jeezy—back to his<br />
house hours ago. Get some sleep, he’s said. You’ll need it<br />
for tomorrow. He’ll work as late as his eyes will let him, as<br />
long as he can hold his neck erect, keep his forehead from<br />
dropping to the console. He’ll sleep a few hours on the couch<br />
in the lobby, wake before the others arrive in the morning.<br />
He’ll have coffee ready, protein bars, weed. Whatever they<br />
need to perform.<br />
He’s frustrated with his collaborators. They’re hesitant<br />
about the new album. It’s different, they said, the sort of<br />
thing you say when you don’t know how to react. And it is<br />
different, though Kanye would say it’s fresh. Forward thinking.<br />
It’s all ghostly synths, drums like a marching band playing<br />
at half speed from two blocks away. And his voice—filtered<br />
through a machine, warbling like a recorded message. Jeezy,<br />
in his fitted hat and dark sunglasses and diamond-bedecked<br />
snowman chain, said it sounds lonely. He said it sounds like<br />
talking on the phone with no one on the other line.<br />
Maybe Kanye drank too much Hennessy after that. In the<br />
studio, seated at the console, he’d unzipped his jeans, pulled<br />
his dick through the opening in his boxers, taken the picture.<br />
He’d sent it off to Rose with a message: Got this for you if you<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
come to the studio. We’ll fuck until the sun rises. He hasn’t<br />
heard back, so he texts her again: Still awake?<br />
His phone goes off—The Jackson 5’s “One More Chance.”<br />
That means it’s his fiancé, Alexis. He lets it go through to his<br />
voicemail, wonders why she might call now. The song stops.<br />
A notion floats through his head, slowly, like a map<br />
unfolding, revealing unknown things. He clicks through his<br />
phone and confirms it—he’d accidentally sent the picture<br />
message to Alexis. His thumbs had flown across the screen<br />
blindly, by habit. He’d tapped the wrong name. Every part of<br />
him stands still. His blood stops pumping. He waits, imagines<br />
the voicemail: the curses, the tears, the demands that he call<br />
her back, that he never call again. The phone vibrates, the<br />
song starts up again.<br />
“Sick little man,” she says when he answers. Her tone is<br />
curious, teasing. No trace of betrayal. No sobs.<br />
Kanye realizes he’s holding the phone away from his ear.<br />
“Well,” he says.<br />
“I couldn’t figure out what that picture was at first,” she<br />
says. “It looked like a roided-out weasel with an afro.”<br />
“Is that a compliment?” he says.<br />
“What’s got you so turned up, all of a sudden?” she says.<br />
There’s something strange to her voice. It’s still filled with<br />
warmth and light, still husky in that way that used to drive him<br />
crazy. But there’s something distant, removed. He realizes,<br />
with sudden guilt, it’s just the way her voice sounds over the<br />
phone. He rarely speaks with her on the phone anymore. When<br />
they’re apart, they converse with texts, e-mails. Fingertips<br />
against keys. “It’s been awhile since you’ve done something<br />
like that,” she says.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
And she’s right, Kanye thinks. It’s been awhile since<br />
anything. He tours, shoots videos, appears on late-night<br />
shows. He can’t remember the last time they spent more than<br />
a day or two together. He can’t remember the last time they<br />
made love.<br />
“What time is it in New York?” he says.<br />
“Almost eight in the morning. I just finished my quinoa.”<br />
He pictures the view from her loft in the Upper East Side:<br />
the gray February sky. Blocks of high-rises like crooked spines.<br />
Snow hard and black in the gutters. Far below, at 77th and<br />
2nd, taxis and people in long coats and people on bicycles.<br />
Kanye and Alexis had stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows<br />
often, naked, unafraid. They were too far up for anyone to see<br />
them. Even if someone had, it didn’t matter much. They were<br />
beautiful, rich, living high above the city.<br />
“Hope you don’t throw up your breakfast,” he says.<br />
“Because of the picture and all.”<br />
“Trying to get me flustered before work?” she says.<br />
“Not intentionally.”<br />
“Trust me. I’d rather be in Honolulu than about to hop on<br />
the 6-train.”<br />
“Alexis—”<br />
“But back here,” she says, “in real life, the sun is already<br />
up. Some people have real jobs. Why don’t you go ahead and<br />
think about what I’d do to you if I was there?”<br />
“Why don’t you tell me what you’d do?” He holds his breath.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“What makes you think it’d be something good?” she says.<br />
And suddenly he wants her. He wants her with a fullness<br />
he hasn’t known since they first met, six years back. He’d<br />
been nobody then—a producer, a DJ. Fresh off some hits for<br />
Jay-Z, sure. But he’d been spinning at a New York fashion<br />
show for cash. And the woman who’d caught his eye wasn’t<br />
one of the models, wasn’t one of the women in underwear or<br />
furs or geometric dresses. She was the designer in the front<br />
row, the one with the straightened hair. The one with a mole<br />
on the bridge of her nose.<br />
“Come to Hawaii,” he says, before he can stop himself.<br />
“Like I said, I’d rather—”<br />
“No,” he says. “I mean really. Take a few days off and fly<br />
out here.”<br />
A pause. A sound like a briefcase being set down.<br />
“You always told me,” Alexis says, “you can’t work when<br />
I’m around.”<br />
“I know.”<br />
“You said you have to concentrate. You need solitude.<br />
Mister genius. Mister tortured artist.”<br />
“You want to come out here or not?” he says.<br />
This is what he imagines: Alexis bites her lip. She lowers<br />
herself into a chair at the kitchen table. Her leather pump<br />
brushes against her briefcase, knocking it on its side. She<br />
smiles.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“Buy me a ticket,” she says.<br />
So he does. When she arrives a few days later, they’ll be<br />
shy around each other, like they’ve only just met. They’ll paw,<br />
blush, stay in bed all night. Her breath will sour as morning<br />
draws near. He’ll remember that breath.<br />
But tonight, after he hangs up with Alexis, the phone<br />
vibrates again. A text from Rose: Awake. Why?<br />
Maybe he should have her over one last time. Maybe, after<br />
they’ve used each other, after they’ve worn each other out, he<br />
should tell her that Alexis is coming. That he can’t see Rose<br />
anymore. Maybe.<br />
Never mind, he replies.<br />
He erases Rose’s number. Erases all the blurred pictures,<br />
taken in the mirror, of her pale breasts, her stomach, the<br />
contrast in color at her bikini line. That’s how he’ll remember<br />
her, when he does. Her face half obscured by the camera’s<br />
flash, the mirror smudged, her body bare and curved.<br />
He considers the mysteries of life, the strangeness of it all.<br />
The palms lean over Kuapa Pond like outstretched hands.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
#TEAMYEEZY<br />
FIVE ESSAYS<br />
JOSHUA PATTON<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Beef It’s What’s for Business<br />
In the late summer of 2005, my Army unit and I listened<br />
as Shirley Bassey’s voice rang out across northern Iraq. The<br />
remix from Kanye West’s Late Registration used a haunting<br />
sample of the theme from the James Bond movie Diamonds Are<br />
Forever. We played it from the ridiculous, loud speakers one<br />
of the guys had in his room, and loud as it was, more people<br />
came over to listen with us than asked us to turn it down.<br />
The music flowed with Bassey, amplifying the melancholy in<br />
her voice and also the melancholy in us. Only, Ye didn’t let us<br />
feel sad for long. The music switched into a rapid, pulsating<br />
beat building a manic energy that made us want to fucking<br />
conquer something.<br />
Much like the protest music of the late sixties and early<br />
seventies serves as the soundtrack for Vietnam, the war on<br />
terror was fought in harmony with our generation’s music of<br />
rebellion: hip-hop. Of course, with hip-hop there are always<br />
battles waging amongst the ranks of rappers. As much as<br />
we depended on them, they gave very little thought to us.<br />
Eminem’s record that year was whack. His protégé 50 Cent<br />
began to distance himself from the Great White Hope-thatwas<br />
and after successfully battling Ja Rule into irrelevance<br />
(thereby doing every hip-hop fan a favor), his sights aimed at<br />
Kanye.<br />
Only, 50 lost that fight. The year I was in the desert, 50<br />
Cent released his sophomore album that didn’t live up to<br />
the promise of his debut. But Kanye’s album hit harder than<br />
the nightly mortar fire. The Rap Beef is a time-honored hiphop<br />
tradition, but in the late 2000s it was the last bastion of<br />
record profitability. Even a rapper with the thug bona fides of<br />
Fiddy, didn’t take it to Kanye on the streets or in the lyrics of<br />
his songs. Their contest was purely based on artistic merit,<br />
represented by record sales. Kanye won handily because he<br />
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is the gangsta hip-hop deserved. Street credibility meant<br />
nothing compared to SoundScan success. 50 Cent made his<br />
recording thinking about beating Kanye, but Kanye worries<br />
about topping himself every day of his life.<br />
No One Man Should Have All That Power<br />
In 1998, Ol’ Dirty Bastard bum-rushed the stage during<br />
Shawn Colvin’s Grammy win to decry the Wu’s loss of the<br />
Grammy that year to No Way Out. “Puffy is good, but Wu-<br />
Tang is the best,” he told a stunned crowd who applauded<br />
him because at those award shows there is only one state of<br />
emotion permissible, good-natured politeness. The audience<br />
applauded Kanye too, when he took the stage at the VMA’s in<br />
2009 and said that Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all<br />
time. The all-encompassing onslaught of outrage and vitriol<br />
that cascaded over Kanye did not start in the crowd. That<br />
wave broke the morning after.<br />
Later that week, President Obama—the homey of Ye’s Big<br />
Homey, Jay-Z—called Kanye “a jackass.” The remark wasn’t<br />
supposed to be on-record, but Kanye had the attention of<br />
his second American President. On the book tour for his<br />
memoirs, President George W. Bush was asked by Matt Lauer<br />
about Kanye’s accusation that Bush didn’t care about black<br />
people. Dubya became angry and called it “the most disgusting<br />
moment of my Presidency.” That’s the power of Kanye. A<br />
hundred other musicians with opinions formed more from<br />
anger than reading have said way worse shit (Dave Mustaine,<br />
I’m talking about you, psycho), and elected leaders brush<br />
it off like so much dirt off of a shoulder. That’s the power<br />
Kanye wields. An off-hand comment was the low point of the<br />
President who was in office when the World Trade Center<br />
crumbled to the ground, 2,996 people perished, and all hope<br />
was lost for peace in our time.<br />
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Kanye’s only mistake was trying to apologize at all. Sure,<br />
he’s probably wrong that Bush doesn’t care about black people,<br />
but it could have been one of those so-called “teachable<br />
moments,” had it happened in a time when our culture wasn’t<br />
so sensitive and politically correct that any harsh words are<br />
dubbed “bullying” and dismissed. Ye’s not a gangsta because<br />
he sags his pants or runs the streets. He’s a gangsta because<br />
he says what he wants, when he wants, and no fucks are given.<br />
Kanye West Doesn’t Care About White People<br />
The Today Show interview is analogous to the problem<br />
that the haters (as identified by President Bush) have with<br />
Kanye. When ODB stormed the Grammy stage, he didn’t<br />
receive nearly as much backlash as Ye. But Dirty got his<br />
own microphone. Yeezy is well known for his unadulterated<br />
dismay at being overlooked for awards, because he knows he’s<br />
the most deserving. There’s no denying his musical genius.<br />
Claire Tomko, a hilarious writer outta my clan, believes<br />
Kanye is the voice of her generation. “Kanye West is the only<br />
artist who deserves to have a big ego,” she said, “He’s Kanye<br />
fucking West.” It wasn’t even narcissism because Kanye was<br />
speaking on behalf of another artist. The problem with the<br />
VMA stunt was that he snatched the microphone away from<br />
lily-white Taylor Swift to extoll the virtue of his friend and Big<br />
Homey’s babymama Beyoncé. Entertainment anchors gleefully<br />
speculated that Kanye was racist himself.<br />
It’s not that Kanye doesn’t appreciate white culture.<br />
Musically, I was raised with one foot in hip-hop and the<br />
other in heavy metal. When I was listening to My Beautiful<br />
Dark Twisted Fantasy, the song “Hell of a Life,” came on. The<br />
opening melody is electronic, but sounds like a guitar being<br />
played with a lot of distortion. I was immediately reminded of<br />
the way Black Sabbath opened many of their songs. No sooner<br />
had I finished the thought than the chorus of the song mimics<br />
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Ozzy Osbourne’s singing style from Iron Man. White culture<br />
doesn’t get much whiter than Black Sabbath and Beavis &<br />
Butthead’s signature song.<br />
Matt Lauer, with his embarrassing hairline and milquetoast<br />
quasi-journalist demeanor, sought only to chastise Kanye<br />
during that interview as if he was speaking to an unruly<br />
thirteen-year-old and not the most significant hip-hop artist<br />
still making records that capture and keep the attention<br />
of America all the way up to its Presidents. An atypically<br />
reserved Kanye attempted to carefully phrase his answers<br />
with contrition and nuance. Lauer continuously interrupts,<br />
restating Kanye’s answers in a manner that both reduces their<br />
substance and better fits the soft-spoken narrative he was<br />
attempting to weave. Lauer didn’t want to hear Kanye’s side<br />
of the story; he wanted America to sit in judgment of Kanye<br />
with Lauer’s smugness as the proxy. Yeezy wasn’t having that<br />
shit from that glib motherfucker.<br />
N***** in Paris (for Fashion Week)<br />
Musicians increasingly become profitable earners for other<br />
industries and diversify their incomes and brands; Kanye is<br />
no different. Both Puffy and the Wu-Tang Clan have released<br />
fashion lines, Sean John and Wu-Wear respectively, but they<br />
had to fight for acceptance in fashion beyond the urban-retail<br />
market. Even the Big Homey himself, Jay-Z’s Rocawear earned<br />
their credibility in designer circles by first earning massive<br />
profits. Kanye wants to walk that path as well, but rather than<br />
hire professional and respected designers to attach his name<br />
to, Kanye wants to design the clothes himself.<br />
He’s traveled Paris, met with designers, and his successive<br />
collections debuted during fashion week in the city. One<br />
night my friend Sal Pane tweeted a video that inexplicably<br />
showed something like a dozen dandy designers sitting down<br />
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to dinner and, among them, Kanye. It boggled the mind, but<br />
he was winning them over. His 2011 premiere fashion show<br />
was panned by fashion critics. I know good music, but I have<br />
no goddamn clue what makes one goofy fashion collection<br />
better than another. I speculate, though, that a persona as big<br />
as Yeezy was doomed to have to fight for acceptance into this<br />
culture of big egos. His most recent collection, however, has<br />
been well-received by the fashion community. Regardless of<br />
how crazy the collection looks, Kanye West moves units, son.<br />
Cash rules…and all that.<br />
Kardashian Konsolation Prize<br />
Kanye West has never really had a high-profile celebrity<br />
relationship. The closest he came was with the most famous<br />
bald dimepiece since Star Trek: The Movie, Amber Rose, but<br />
that was most likely stagecraft. Because Kanye is a real G, he<br />
typically keeps his sexual shenanigans on the low, but the<br />
paparazzi-culture we live in used that to speculate about his<br />
sexuality. Yeezy always gives the public what it wants. Last<br />
autumn, a girl in poetry class I took for fun, showed off a<br />
picture of a pensive Kanye in a hotel room. She made her way<br />
backstage at a concert and then to the hotel after. She was coy<br />
about the details, saying only, “All I’ll say is he’s definitely not<br />
gay.”<br />
Now Kanye has found himself in the heart of it all by<br />
being publicly linked to the machine that is Kim Kardashian.<br />
Kardashian started out famous for her father and a stellar<br />
performance getting smashed on film by Brandy’s little brother<br />
but she has since become a juggernaut of money and vapidity<br />
that has burrowed into our culture like botfly larvae. Kanye is<br />
surely an equally large machine of publicists, managers, agents,<br />
and hangers-on. Perhaps their surreal worlds of film crews<br />
and yachts on foreign seas has created a kind of shared bond,<br />
much like those formed in the military or amongst astronauts<br />
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that have been to the Moon. Yet by entering Kardashian’s<br />
world, Kanye is now easily catalogued and monitored by a<br />
celebrity-obsessed media that conflictingly adores and seeks<br />
the utter destruction of their subjects.<br />
Kanye can have a place in her world, but there are no<br />
allowances for bum-rushing the stage, no getting gangsta on<br />
Presidents or beloved morning show hosts, there’s no place<br />
for reality. Unlike West, a genuine artist, Kardashian has a<br />
carefully crafted life that must be executed perfectly lest the<br />
public realize that she has no talent and is a complete boor.<br />
Can Kim K. cage Kanye? Would she even try? I might be wrong.<br />
Things might be okay. Summer was GOOD. Autumn is going<br />
well. And winter is coming. Where Kanye goes there but for<br />
the grace of God go us all.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
SIX FRAGMENTS<br />
FOR YEEZY<br />
EVAN CHEN<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
i.<br />
To write it at all to appropriate:<br />
ii.<br />
Yeah I roll with $alvateezy<br />
Before his novel published<br />
Before his jaw shattered<br />
Lit Swerve Autumn Crew reupholstered [my poetry?]<br />
*Poésie. This white boy<br />
Quarter-Chinese swag ain’t nothing on<br />
Albany the clouds gathers. The room<br />
Silence building Deleuze lays himself there<br />
iii.<br />
Yeezy got me through it.<br />
The room silent as he described<br />
iv.<br />
She comes carrying the rod. Flowers. I scuttle<br />
Beneath the Highland Park Bridge. Hilda:<br />
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v.<br />
I sang it through but my own cords distracting<br />
Chords through a Pro Co RAT past puddles of I.<br />
If I could interview him: I’d ask about the “Monster” video,<br />
Whether to be purposefully disgusting or just disgusting. That<br />
severing<br />
Yabba Dabba. It’s Happening<br />
vi.<br />
All the East Asian ladies in the Capital District say heeyy<br />
Huh! How gendered put it away<br />
To be purposefully disgusting take words out her mouth<br />
Nicki’s verse is the best on the record though<br />
Yeah I roll with Romney<br />
1K per credit-hour no first book out<br />
Does McNulty fuck anyone but himself<br />
Yes. Every one it poured out of me. Could we get much higher<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
ANTHEM<br />
OF ENVY<br />
ROBERT HELFST<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
You tell yourself that this is it – the chance you’ve been<br />
waiting for. That this is your first stepping stone. That a hashtag<br />
in the anthology title means nothing wrong and the Kanye West<br />
theme means less than that.<br />
You struggle for days to tackle your submission, staring at<br />
blank Word docs while Yeezy spits mad flow in the background,<br />
searching for some #inspiration. As fluidly and easily as his<br />
words spill forth, a dam blocks your creative reservoir. You<br />
come to hate his self-confident bravado. His swagger.<br />
“What sort of guy wears those shades?” His Ray-Bans glimmer<br />
in a video, catching the studio lights.<br />
“Good Life” becomes an anthem of envy for you. How he<br />
funds his life of celebrity luxury by bragging about it. His music<br />
awakens a Want in you that you’d not previously known. When<br />
he rattles off cities you’ve never seen, a wanderlust rages inside<br />
of you.<br />
Slowly, through hours of “research”—listening, watching,<br />
reading, and digging through bins of CDs at used DVD stores, but<br />
never writing—you feel that hateful envy grow into admiration.<br />
Sure, the hurt of jealousy remains, but the realization of Yeezy’s<br />
artistry summons a kindred spirit within.<br />
Where you once saw cookie-cutter swagger, you now see<br />
wordplay and a rhythm your own words lack. The beat to his<br />
thoughts and rants drive forward with an unrelenting pace your<br />
countless scribbled-in journals lack.<br />
When you talk on the phone to your dad about your week and<br />
continued unemployment, you try to brighten the conversation.<br />
“I think something of mine is going to be published.”<br />
“Really? What?”<br />
“A piece for an anthology about Kanye West.”<br />
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“Really?” He tries to disguise his chuckle as a throat-clearing<br />
cough.<br />
“Seriously. For real.”<br />
“Good for you. Just tell Mr. West to watch out for the underage<br />
girls.”<br />
You ignore the fact that Akon and R. Kelly are not the same<br />
as Kanye West and wrap up the conversation so you can return<br />
to Kanye’s VH1 Storytellers concert.<br />
How could you make him understand? How could you<br />
expect him to believe that where he saw Yeezy as an ignorant,<br />
chest-thumping thug you saw a man holding a mirror up to the<br />
culture that raised him by embracing its flaws and living its<br />
dreams. Where he heard offensive words and hurled aspersions<br />
were wordplay and lyricism pouring forth from a vulnerable<br />
man’s raw wounds and self-consciousness in a way not often<br />
seen in his world. Where he saw another common thug with a<br />
microphone you saw Yeezy the Artist.<br />
You realize what to do. The airwaves are Kanye’s blank Word<br />
doc that he fills with his own struggles and triumphs. That<br />
blinking cursor that had previously taunted you is actually your<br />
ally, a beacon to show you forward. “Tell me your story.”<br />
You turn on “Power” and feel Yeezy’s flow, how he frees<br />
himself by reveling in his words, his mic, and his fans. How he<br />
takes pride in his pride, how his living satire is equal to Proust<br />
or Pollock in his mind.<br />
As your fingers drum across the keys a similar pride ignites<br />
in you. This is it. Your chance. Your story.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
ALL KANYE<br />
ON THE<br />
WESTERN<br />
FRONT<br />
MIKE ROSENTHAL<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
SUFFERING<br />
FROM RÉALISME<br />
KAIT BURRIER<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Hustling freelance to escape the breadlines<br />
Muscling finance, signing 10-99s<br />
Now I’m running outta space, shuffling checks<br />
Called the bank, now my deposit’s direct<br />
Manuscripts piling to the skies, besides<br />
I’m like Peter Travers meets Bertie Brecht<br />
and Sharon Olds best protect her neck<br />
with these poems, criticisms, plays: March’s Ides<br />
can’t knock this, et tu, Jay? And you, Ye? Click<br />
goes the shutter behind me, just my man<br />
with his Annie Liebowitz shit. My clique?<br />
Just me and him, camera lens and pen<br />
media cred in hand, couple Moleskines<br />
If you’re lucky I might pencil you in<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
If you’re lucky, I might pencil you in<br />
Giving anglais lessons, hustling abroad<br />
If you’re wondering ‘bout my flow: New God<br />
Made in ‘merica, une Americaine<br />
beguiling, French, Belge, and Algerian<br />
red wining me up and down the damn Seine<br />
Got these boys talkin’ ‘bout my writing, awed<br />
Legs like Bolshoi walkin’, got brains and bod<br />
They’re beggin’ for a lesson de la langue<br />
I’m putting nouns and verbs where they belong<br />
Victoria Hugo in my own right<br />
my sonnets are loose but my rhymes are tight<br />
crowning ‘em, drowning ‘em in vers anglais<br />
Pardon me, sirs, Imma parlez vous some français<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Pardon me, sirs, Imma parlez vouz some français<br />
I’m steppin into the cipher, bit of blue eyed soul<br />
Another rust belt white girl, bit of green bill roll<br />
I hear my n***** up in Paris callin that shit cray<br />
I’m ballin hard in their theatres, 18th century<br />
I’m here on a scholarship, penning paroles<br />
Can’t afford this shit, kinda in the hole<br />
Scored some court-side tix, Comédie-Française<br />
Keep your Nets vs Knicks, gimme Beaumarchais<br />
Alors, boys: écoutez. Watch your own damn throne<br />
I’m crafting plays, all of these franglais poems<br />
Still tryna pay all of these student loans<br />
Garçons! Hé! Quit this carrying on<br />
Hova, Ye: Pass that tirer bouchon.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
TWICE MORE<br />
AGAIN<br />
FEATURING<br />
2 CHAINZ<br />
SAM MARTONE<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
TWO CHAINS<br />
Bike thieves thrive in Tempe, Arizona. In the past year alone,<br />
an estimated 1,500 bikes were stolen. 1 Nothing will stop a<br />
determined bike thief, but there are precautions you can take.<br />
Riding a cheap bike, for example. I ride a maroon beach cruiser. My<br />
bike has never been stolen, and I steel myself against the taunts<br />
launched from passenger windows, like “Hey, man, where’s the<br />
beach?” and “You have the smallest penis ever!” Another tip: the<br />
more locks around a bike, the more inconvenient it is to steal. I<br />
use a U-Lock, then wind a standard chain around it, through the<br />
frame and the wheels. The tools bike thieves use to bust locks<br />
and cut cables are different, and the chances a bike thief will<br />
have both tools, plus the time to use them, is low. They’ll go for<br />
the one next to mine instead. 2 Chainz wants to leave my bike<br />
out in the open, unlocked, not chained to anything, and then<br />
wait in the bushes for bike thieves to descend upon it. He wants<br />
to talk to them, interview them about their way of life. He says<br />
it’s an untapped subject, ripe for his raps.<br />
TWO TUNES<br />
2 Chainz and I are in a barbershop duo. Right now we know<br />
only two songs: “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie” and “Swanee,”<br />
but we’re trying to learn more. We’ve been hired to perform at<br />
birthday parties and weddings. I sing the bass parts, the bum<br />
bum bums and do do dos. 2 Chainz sings tenor. This limits our<br />
range a little bit, but 2 Chainz insists it makes us more dynamic,<br />
unpredictable. “At any minute, one of us could change octaves,<br />
shift our pitch,” he says. “We could drop to baritones or risk a<br />
falsetto.” We’ve been practicing a little less recently, because 2<br />
Chainz just released a couple mixtapes of home-recorded raps<br />
and they’re getting a lot of attention. In fact, 2 Chainz is a new<br />
name, one he picked just for these mixtapes. I’m still getting<br />
used to calling him that. I don’t even think he’s a very good<br />
1 “Bike Thefts Continue to Plague City,” The Arizona Republic, 21 July 2012, sec. 3, C5.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
apper, but I don’t say anything. I just remind him how good<br />
he is at carrying a tune. There are some people, out there in the<br />
world, whose voices can produce two distinct notes at once. 2<br />
Chainz believes he is one of those people. When we practice,<br />
2 Chainz won’t stop trying to sing two notes at once. I don’t<br />
ask him what will happen to me if he finds another voice in his<br />
throat, if he realizes he alone can sing for the both of us.<br />
TWO NAMES<br />
2 Chainz was once known as Tity Boy. He was a member of<br />
Playaz Circle, a rap duo. In old videos, the artist then known as<br />
Tity Boy wears only one chain, or sometimes nine. He does not<br />
say his name before he begins his verses, like he does now. 2<br />
Chainz gets mad if I bring up his days as Tity Boy. The name was<br />
more for the sake of symmetry than anything: the other half of<br />
Playaz Circle was a rapper named Dolla Boy. 2 Chainz explained<br />
it to me once like this: “All the best things come in twos: eyes,<br />
breasts, gift cards. We wanted to be the best, to be a pair, two<br />
Boys with different tastes.” 2 Chainz clarified that he also likes<br />
money, but Dolla Boy picked his name first. “I preferred picking<br />
second,” 2 Chainz said.<br />
FOUR WHEELS<br />
When 2 Chainz was a kid, he had a hard time learning to<br />
ride a bike. His father took him to the park every weekend, but<br />
without training wheels, 2 Chainz would only go a few feet before<br />
clattering to the ground. The other kids in the neighborhood<br />
called him Four Wheels, which was worse even than being called<br />
Four Eyes. The kid called Four Eyes had already left the training<br />
wheels behind. He zipped up and down the street like a zipper<br />
being zipped and unzipped by a kid who couldn’t decide if he<br />
was cold or not. Four Wheels would watch Four Eyes from the<br />
window and imagine himself on that bike, splitting the breeze.<br />
When he watched him, he could feel something inside of him<br />
opening up. Four Wheels never learned to ride a bike particularly<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
well. He learned instead to convince people he had—whenever<br />
he rolled up, something in his voice made people believe his slow<br />
weaving wobble was how he meant to ride, made them believe it<br />
was his style, superior to their own balanced trajectories.<br />
TWO WISHES<br />
I throw 2 Chainz a party for his birthday in the backyard. All<br />
his friends come. We grill burgers and have water balloon fights<br />
and break a piñata in the shape of a waxing moon, or maybe<br />
waning, it’s hard to tell. 2 Chainz insists that if he blows out all<br />
the candles, he gets two wishes. All the guests laugh, crowding<br />
around him as he leans over his chocolate cake. I’m standing<br />
toward the back of the group with Kanye West. “He’s going to<br />
be big,” Kanye says. I say, “He’s not even a good rapper.” This<br />
is the first time I’ve said this aloud, and I feel embarrassed<br />
saying it with my friend just out of earshot, cutting himself two<br />
slices of cake. “It doesn’t matter,” Kanye says, “because he’s<br />
convinced everyone that he is.” After cake has been eaten and<br />
presents have been opened, 2 Chainz announces that he’d like<br />
to perform a song with a very special friend of his. Excited, I<br />
start toward him, clearing my throat, but before I can get there,<br />
Kanye West has joined him and they are performing “Birthday<br />
Song” on top of one of the picnic tables. “Birthday Song” is<br />
largely characterized by stereotypical, generic rap lyrics like “All<br />
I want for my birthday is a big booty ho.” But harmonics theorist<br />
Peter Rodilla writes that the music, the dramatic synthesized<br />
string section, transforms lines like “If I die, bury me inside the<br />
Gucci store” from celebrations of wealth and decadence to real<br />
expressions of fear in the face of mortality. 2<br />
TWO-FACE<br />
2 Chainz says if he could be any Batman villain, he’d be<br />
2 Peter Rodilla, The Hidden Track: Layers of Meaning Illuminated by the Juxtaposition of<br />
Words and Sound (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 67.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Two-Face. I say I’d be the Riddler, but 2 Chainz tells me I can’t<br />
pick the Riddler, because he’s not really a villain anymore. “He<br />
helps Batman now. That’s not adequate villainy. That’s not<br />
even mischief.” I say, “No, no, he went insane again, I think he<br />
murdered his daughter,” but 2 Chainz won’t hear it, so instead<br />
I say I’d be Clayface, something the opposite of Two-Face: able<br />
to change shape at will, both malleable and solid, not limited by<br />
a finite number of faces. “Is that villainous enough for you?” I<br />
say. I try to transform my face into something like fury, but if I<br />
had a mirror, I’d see how pitiful I look. I leave the room before 2<br />
Chainz can say anything. I let the door slam behind me.<br />
TOO LATE<br />
Kanye invites 2 Chainz out to his studio. Nicki Minaj and<br />
Wiz Khalifa ask 2 Chainz to rap on some tracks. We practice our<br />
barbershop songs less and less. 2 Chainz forgets the words to<br />
“Swanee.” He’s driving to Los Angeles every other day, recording<br />
songs with Bon Iver and Elton John and Taylor Swift, recording<br />
the first single for his own upcoming album. I suggest we go to<br />
the park and leave my bike out in the open, unlocked, chained<br />
to nothing, but he says he doesn’t have time for that. While 2<br />
Chainz calls his manager, I hum “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie.”<br />
I wonder what it was he wished for, what wish came first, which<br />
was a second thought.<br />
DOUBLE TAKE<br />
On G.O.O.D. Music: Cruel Summer, there is a posse cut called<br />
“Higher.” Before every verse in the song, 2 Chainz says “yo,”<br />
and I keep expecting him to emerge from the stuttering snares<br />
and strings, from the baby-coo samples. I expect him to shout<br />
his name, declare his arrival before beginning his verse. Hiphop<br />
historian Linda Winterowd believes the preponderance of<br />
rappers “tagging” tracks—saying their name or a catchphrase<br />
before rapping—came about as a necessity: when radio DJs<br />
stopped telling listeners what songs were being played, artists<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
were forced to find other ways to get their names out there. 3<br />
But 2 Chainz does not shout “2 Chainz” on “Higher.” He doesn’t<br />
even appear on the song outside of his recurring yo, red herrings<br />
that fool me every time, for just a minute, making me believe he<br />
is there.<br />
TWO 2 CHAINZ<br />
2 Chainz is standing in front of the mirror in one of his new<br />
homes, practicing his new rap songs. He imagines there are two<br />
2 Chainz, wearing two chains each. He imagines he is a bike thief<br />
or a super villain or a barbershop singer singing. He is singing<br />
the bass parts, the bum bum bums and do do dos, a duet with<br />
his reflection, who truly shines at the rests, at the breaths, at the<br />
brief pauses between bars, but otherwise sings so quiet you’d<br />
think he was standing there silver and silent. Or maybe I am the<br />
one standing in front of the mirror, pretending I am two people,<br />
pretending I am 2 Chainz, waiting for 2 Chainz to call me. I will<br />
let the phone ring twice. I will ask who is there and he will yell<br />
his name in my ear. Project your voice. From the diaphragm.<br />
From the top, twice more. This time with gusto. This time with<br />
feeling. Again, again.<br />
3 Linda Winterowd, World Wide Rap: Hip-Hop in the Internet Era (New York: Oxford Uni-<br />
versity Press, 2010), 249.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
ALL OF THE<br />
LIGHTS (5:00)<br />
BRIAN OLIU<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
There is no time for introductions here—no room for a<br />
handshake in the form of an orchestra. Instead, you, cold,<br />
while the rain sticks to the fur around the hood of your<br />
coat. When the lights turn on, it is time for us to leave—all<br />
things brighter, the wetness from the bar darkening my shirt,<br />
the silver paint from a beer label under my fingernails. The<br />
calendar says it was cold, although you can never tell these<br />
days: the heat cracks the streets here, and ever since the storm<br />
there has been less shade—trees stripped bare and shipped<br />
east to pulp to paper. The street lights told us stay, and so<br />
we did: orange palm outward telling us to stop or telling us<br />
to place something in its hand—a key, a coin, something to<br />
give thanks, numbers clicking backwards and the shifting of<br />
colors. When I leave you—for just a moment, a small, small,<br />
moment—in the middle of the night I keep one eye closed. I<br />
cannot tell you why: you and I know that I cannot see in the<br />
dark, that with the lights extra bright I can’t see much beyond<br />
sweeps of hair and buildings on the back of your shirt. To be<br />
honest, I feel the patterns on my chest before I see them. I<br />
turn on the light and look at myself in the mirror—one-eyed,<br />
blurry, my nose to the glass so I can count every pore if I<br />
wanted to, I can see the direction of things. You do not see<br />
me like this and I am thankful: you, face to the wall though<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
not closest to the door, and I am sorry—though you can run if<br />
there is something wrong. You, beautiful. I see us as if I were<br />
watching a film: the back of shoulders overhead. I can cut<br />
though the darkness: the lights are on, dim so they do not wake<br />
you, all things blurred yet perfect, the wind generated by the<br />
fan, by the soft blow of air from the vent. You fall asleep first:<br />
feet frozen, eyes closed. I try to match your breathing: you,<br />
fast-breathed, you, smaller. I breathe deep and the cadence<br />
is off: exhaling when I should inhale, muscles tense to the<br />
five-count. I pull air from my navel like I am about to shout,<br />
to sing you the best song you’ve ever heard, listen up, I want<br />
you to hear this. I told you about the paper before: how things<br />
break and become new: things to write down, notes to leave.<br />
And still, we are warm, our arms exposed, our hearts slowed.<br />
I tried to tell you this before you fell asleep but you are so<br />
tired, I know, I know. I tried to tell you, but I hope you know<br />
what I mean. I tried to tell you that I hold my breath to find<br />
yours. I tried to tell you but all I could say was<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
I KNOW WHY<br />
THE CAGED<br />
TRILLA<br />
SINGS<br />
THERESA BECKHUSEN<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Maya Angelou knows in that moment she’d better watch<br />
her back. She glares at her computer screen, glares lasers at<br />
the words I Know Why the Caged Trilla Sings. “Hasn’t the man<br />
any respect?” she intones to her Welsh corgi that has waddled<br />
in. Maya Angelou keeps her old Dell desktop in an elbowsscraping-the-walls<br />
back room. No one should know she has<br />
a computer. In her kitchen, she stacks notebooks and loose<br />
papers, scatters pens and pencil shavings when the rare friend<br />
or family member comes over for tea or dinner—which isn’t<br />
often, Maya Angelou has outlived many of them. But “Let me<br />
move this mess out of the way,” she says when they reach<br />
the kitchen. “I mustn’t let work get in the way of company.”<br />
She wants people to know she’s working, still working, always<br />
working. She does not consider this prideful. Only honest.<br />
But now she will have to redouble her efforts, fully commit<br />
herself to the thirty-seventh volume of her autobiography,<br />
even though popular demand has dwindled over the years. She<br />
knows this volume will be her last. Will she have to mention<br />
this latest hiccup? Hasn’t she gone through enough for oneand-a-half<br />
lifetimes? Maya Angelou purses her lips and reads<br />
advance praise of this braggart’s (probably ghostwritten) book:<br />
Kanye West has brought the world joy and inspired reflection and<br />
introspection with his internationally acclaimed music and home<br />
goods. Now, West brings us a tale of childhood and sacrifice, struggle<br />
and compromise, and, ultimately, joy and redemption. I Know Why the<br />
Caged Trilla Sings is set to change the literary landscape and become<br />
a household fixture.<br />
– W.E.B. DuBois<br />
Those rat-bastard publicists time-traveled back to get a blurb<br />
from DuBois! Time travel had initially shown such promise:<br />
historically accurate field trips, avenues for empathy and<br />
understanding, a way to erase regret by splashing a well-aimed<br />
martini in an unfaithful lover’s face. Now it was cheapened into<br />
marketing ploys and publicity stunts. Maya Angelou shakes her<br />
head and keeps reading.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Like his music, Kanye West’s book combines complex and undulating<br />
layers. Reading his prose is akin to listening to the greatest vocal and<br />
spiritual rhythms. An absolute triumph.<br />
– Alice Walker.<br />
“She’s going off the speed dial,” Maya Angelou tells her<br />
corgi. The dumb dog looks up at her, smiling, or appearing to<br />
smile. But the dog has only opened its mouth to pant in the<br />
summer heat; it only looks like it’s smiling. The illusion of its<br />
smiling has endeared it to generations of people. And, those<br />
time travelers say, always will.<br />
I can safely say this is and will be one of my lifelong favorite things.<br />
– Oprah<br />
Maya Angelou slams her open palms onto the dusty keyboard.<br />
The ever-loose End key flies off, and Maya Angelou nods. There<br />
will never be an end to this, there’s no way to reach it. Kanye<br />
West’s slow takeover of every facet of life had begun slowly,<br />
worming its way into the ears of the people of the world. Then<br />
the shoe and clothing lines; the high-end pocket squares; then<br />
the housewares: hand-painted Tunisian dishware, Turkish<br />
rugs, faucets, end tables, soap caddies, desk set organizers,<br />
finials made from Venetian glass, even toilet brushes all bear<br />
his initials. For the rich folks, he breeds Arabian horses. For<br />
the kids, he created Cheesy Yeezy Curls and then produced,<br />
directed, wrote, and starred in the ensuing and inevitable<br />
Cheesy Yeezy Children’s Play Hour on television, and on and<br />
on and on and on.<br />
Maya Angelou knows this latest encroachment could erase<br />
any contribution she has made to this world, could undo any<br />
good she has done in telling her story and living her life. She<br />
runs her fingers over her face: wide mouth, deep wrinkles<br />
between brows, cheeks full, chin strong. Maya Angelou likes<br />
her weatherbeaten face: it’s a privilege to grow old. No one<br />
knows who she is anymore, but she is still here, still writing,<br />
cooking, creating, living, doing. There was a time in her life<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
when she didn’t speak, but when she regained her voice, she<br />
put it to use. Her voice adds flavor to the world, but a world<br />
dominated by one voice is no world at all.<br />
“When will it end, Pookie?” Maya Angelou asks her corgi.<br />
Pookie cocks his head and keeps that dumb dog smile plastered<br />
on his face. “It must end.”<br />
###<br />
Maya Angelou walks between the football-goal-post-tall<br />
golden statues of Kanye West and Jay-Z that flank the entrance<br />
to Yeezy & Hova Booksellers. The store is cavernous, literally.<br />
It is carved into the side of a mountain, and the smooth stone<br />
walls drip, forming knife-sharp stalactites that look like they<br />
may fall any second. Recessed lighting glitters from the ceiling<br />
many yards above. It’s dark up there, and Maya Angelou feels<br />
as though everyone in the store is buying books in the middle<br />
of the night, in secret, hiding from watchful eyes. And there are<br />
plenty of places to hide. Terraces and balconies overlook the<br />
main floor, and Maya Angelou knows the paths to those aeries<br />
are dark, twisting, switchbacking, designed to confuse. When<br />
he’s not staying in one of his other 497 homes, Kanye West<br />
takes up residence somewhere in the heart of the mountain.<br />
Maya Angelou pictures that windowless maze of rooms and<br />
corridors that is his home here in this book-cave. You can<br />
decorate stone all you want, she thinks, but living underground<br />
is living underground, and living underground is death.<br />
Kanye West will emerge from that sanctum this very<br />
evening to read from his autobiography, and Maya Angelou<br />
will be there. She will sit in the event space, which looks much<br />
like an altar, sit under the mosaic of Kanye West’s face that<br />
covers the ceiling and looks down on them all, the lenses of his<br />
tiled sunglasses gleaming: ebony and onyx and jet, glittering<br />
like forbidding stars. In the meantime, Maya Angelou browses.<br />
There’s nowhere else to buy books these days.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
In an hour, chimes sound. The faithful assemble beneath<br />
that mosaic, and the music in the store—which up until that<br />
point had pulsed and vibrated, had had Kanye whispering<br />
“books” at various intervals—changes now. Lush strings swell<br />
from nowhere anyone can see, as if Kanye West had gathered<br />
the finest quartets in the world, imprisoned them in a secret<br />
cave chamber, and engineered audio equipment to pipe their<br />
music into the cavern at the perfect balance. Maya Angelou<br />
closes her eyes to find the deep, mournful voice of the cello.<br />
When she sang, people said her voice was like a cello, delicate<br />
and strong.<br />
“Oh! Look!” someone in the crowd gasps. Maya Angelou<br />
keeps her eyes screwed shut but feels the hot press of bodies<br />
around her, feels the change in the air the way she does before<br />
a thunderstorm: the air electric, thrumming, waiting. She<br />
opens her eyes when something brushes against her cheek.<br />
Rose petals. Golden confetti. The soft rain continues, and Maya<br />
Angelou shifts her shoulders and looks up as the vibrato of the<br />
strings needles into her.<br />
Through a haze of multi-colored parrots flapping against<br />
the ceiling, she can just see the speck above the crowd that is<br />
Kanye West. The mouth of the mosaic has opened, revealing<br />
straight, white mosaic teeth, and now he descends in a personal<br />
hot air balloon, no doubt designed by the man himself. The<br />
crimson of the balloon flares against the sedate tones of the<br />
mountain walls around them, and the parrots squawk away<br />
into the mosaic’s mouth, back to whatever subterranean pit<br />
they call home. As Kanye West lowers further, the crowd shoves<br />
to reach his landing pad, penknives and ink at the ready for<br />
him to—they hope—tattoo his name into their quivering arms,<br />
bared chests, proffered babies.<br />
Kanye West’s face might be carved from stone, another<br />
part of the store’s walls. He does not smile, he does not frown,<br />
he may not even blink. No one has seen Kanye West without<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
his sunglasses for over a decade. Every press release and<br />
staged paparazzi photo depicts Kanye West as stoic and besunglassed,<br />
whether it’s eating a hamburger, leaving a spa,<br />
or test-flying a fighter jet he’d designed one day. Kanye West<br />
lives alongside every person on the planet in the form of his<br />
products and music—he makes toilet paper, for God’s sake—<br />
but no one knows which flavor lollipop he likes best, or if he<br />
still struggles with his mother’s early death, or what he’d name<br />
a gerbil if he had one. Those little private things. He used to<br />
broadcast all of his feelings and communicate every single one<br />
of his personal thoughts, but increasing busyness and devotion<br />
to his designing and music-mixing left him little time for such<br />
luxuries.<br />
The hot air balloon touches down, its gilded basket shining<br />
in the candlelight that has emerged from openings in the<br />
cave walls, and the strings quiver, bows sawing at strings.<br />
Maya Angelou wishes she could feel the blind devotion and<br />
excitement of the people around her, wishes she could believe<br />
in this man that promises to save everyone from poor taste<br />
and low quality goods. She wants to let go and float in the<br />
welcoming tide of his loving followers. To chant along:<br />
At the end of the day goddamn it he’s killin’ this shit.<br />
At the end of the day goddamn it he’s killin’ this shit.<br />
At the end of the day goddamn it he’s killin’ this shit.<br />
They say it like a rosary, like so many beads strung together<br />
that are supposed to mean something but in repetition don’t.<br />
The crowd stops its chanting and falls silent as a diamondencrusted<br />
podium rises from the floor. Kanye West steps up<br />
to it. Roman candles explode behind him. People jostle around<br />
her, and when Maya Angelou tries to stay in the podium’s<br />
line of vision, someone behind her jabs a finger into her side,<br />
hissing, “Watch it, lady.”<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
When Kanye West grasps the podium’s edges, light pulses<br />
within it, and it continues to pulse with him as he drums his<br />
fingers and prepares for the reading. “I wanna thank everyone<br />
for coming out tonight,” Kanye West says. He doesn’t need a<br />
microphone. Surgery has amplified his voice to flow out at<br />
the perfect decibel, so everyone can hear him whenever he<br />
speaks. “This book has taken a lotta work, a lotta struggle,<br />
a lotta heart, and I owe a lotta people for it. Some of them<br />
in this crowd tonight.” Maya Angelou’s eyes narrow on Kanye<br />
West’s face. What’s behind those sunglasses of his? Are his<br />
eyes honest, will they tell the crowd that a component of his<br />
inspiration is standing in their midst? That that component<br />
wears a headscarf, has traveled the world, and can whip up a<br />
French dinner like they wouldn’t believe? “My main man, Hova,<br />
over there. Don’t be shy, wave your hand so the folks can see<br />
you.” The crowd turns as one to glimpse their demi-god. “And I<br />
can’t forget WEBby,” Kanye West continues, pointing to another<br />
figure that the crowd cranes its collective neck to see. They<br />
even brought DuBois to the reading. Maya Angelou locks her<br />
eyes on Kanye’s sunglasses. Now.<br />
“You, Mr. West, are a thief. There is still such a thing as<br />
intellectual property in this day and age, and I demand<br />
restitution for your use of my title for your book.” Maya<br />
Angelou’s body hums. Crackles of tiny lightning skid through<br />
her veins, and she feels as glittering as Kanye West’s podium.<br />
Light growing, warming her from within.<br />
Kanye West leans over the podium, diamond-light thrown<br />
onto his face. “What do you want?”<br />
“The title of your book, Mr. West, is more than eerily similar<br />
to the title of one of my books. One of my most famous books.”<br />
The crowd’s eyes dart back and forth between the impeccablysuited<br />
man at the diamond altar and the stocky old woman with<br />
fabric on her head. Who is she? whispers reach Maya Angelou’s<br />
ears, but she does not care. Kanye West doesn’t control the<br />
Library of Congress, and she will take this that far if she needs<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
to. “I Know Why the Caged Trilla Sings is my book’s title with<br />
the difference of one word, Mr. West, and all I’m asking is for<br />
a little recognition.”<br />
“Listen, I’m not saying your book isn’t good. I just don’t<br />
know what it is. And if I did…Isn’t art about building off of<br />
what’s come before? This book, my book, is about my life, but<br />
my life is built off of the lives of many people.” Here, Kanye<br />
West gestures to the crowd, sweeping his arms, pointing at a<br />
few people who promptly faint. “I couldn’t be what I am without<br />
these people.”<br />
“You’ve made your fame by putting other people down, Mr.<br />
West! You are a discredit to the nature of humanity!”<br />
“The nature of humanity? And what is that?” His voice<br />
tightens, squeezed like a wrench around a rusty bolt. “People<br />
are out for one thing: their safety, their well-being—” The<br />
crowd gets into it, shouts of “yes!” rise up and float to Kanye<br />
West’s mosaic above. “Comfort, food, home, love. Is this not<br />
the dream? Huh? Is this not the dream? I am living the dream! I<br />
have it! Do you have it?” Members of the crowd yell, “I have it!”<br />
But Kanye West and Maya Angelou are locked, bound together.<br />
Maya Angelou has come up against some tough, unpleasant,<br />
and downright nasty characters in her life, but she knew where<br />
she stood with them. Most of the time. But Kanye West lives<br />
shrouded, a life wrapped in dark velvet, tucked away in a handcarved<br />
hutch of walnut with inlaid woodwork. Polished smooth.<br />
Waxed. Without dust. He is a public man and a private man,<br />
leading simultaneous separate linked lives. Maya Angelou runs<br />
her eyes over Kanye West’s lapels, his fingernails, his closecropped<br />
hair, all those details that make a man. She cannot<br />
stop gazing at his sunglasses.<br />
“I’ve lived a hard life, Mr. West. Plenty of obstacles in my<br />
path. But I danced by them, and I traveled around them, wrote<br />
about them, told about them, sang about them, poemed about<br />
them—”<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
“That’s it! That’s all I’m doing with my life, ma’am.” Maya<br />
Angelou raises her chin. He has some manners. “I consider it<br />
a challenge for an artist like me to branch out and make more<br />
than music.” His voice rings against the dark vault above and<br />
reverberates around the miles of bookcases and winds its way<br />
into the five-story café transferred from sidewalks in Venice,<br />
Paris, Rome. “You left the world a book? Some songs? This is<br />
what I leave you.” He opens his arms. Twenty more Roman<br />
candles pop toward the ceiling. Rose petals still rain behind<br />
him, and in the candlelight they glow. Everything is aglow in<br />
that deep womb of a cave. “I have led my life to share my unique<br />
vision of the world. If it weren’t for me, all of you would still<br />
be wearing hoodies with sport coats. Or khaki cargo shorts.”<br />
All of the men in the crowd nod. “All I’m trying to do is make<br />
a difference. All I’m trying to do is create. Because creating is<br />
the closest thing to being God. To immortality.” Kanye West’s<br />
hands rise to his sunglasses and remove them from his face.<br />
The crowd cannot believe it.<br />
Wait ‘til we go home and tell the babysitter!<br />
Wait ‘til Marv at work hears how he missed this!<br />
This is the story I’m telling our children, honey.<br />
I want to remember this moment forever.<br />
And his eyes are warm, dark, kind. Tired. “Can we be quiet<br />
for a second?” Silence. “Honestly,” he says, folding the arms<br />
of his sunglasses back and forth, “my child-like creativity,<br />
purity, honesty, they’re being crowded by these accusations,<br />
your finger-pointing.” And he pinches the bridge of his nose<br />
between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture Maya Angelou<br />
knows, a gesture every adult in that crowd knows, a gesture<br />
someone knows when they can’t pay rent that month or can’t<br />
meet the deadline or can’t work with the boss or can’t calm the<br />
baby. “Folks,” and he turns those eyes on each person there,<br />
“my book is in these boxes here.” He waves an arm toward a<br />
Mayan pyramid of teak boxes to his right. “I want to express<br />
where I am and what I’m doing now when I write my music, but<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
this book is about everything that’s come before. Maybe it’s the<br />
same title as the book by that woman there, maybe it’s not. I<br />
don’t know. Ask her. I’m going.” He slides the sunglasses back<br />
into place. The podium descends into the floor. Kanye West<br />
climbs into the hot air balloon’s basket and fires it up. Maya<br />
Angelou watches the crimson silk glow, watches the balloon<br />
rise and rise. When he floats into the darkness beyond the<br />
ceiling, the mosaic mouth glides closed. But the crowd doesn’t<br />
move, doesn’t tear its eyes from the tiled face. Maya Angelou<br />
imagines Kanye West stepping up of his balloon, returning to<br />
his stony chambers, and pouring himself a finger of whiskey,<br />
alone. She turns and weaves her way through the crowd. Maya<br />
Angelou can hear the guttering candles flicker.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
KANYE WEST<br />
AS TOLD BY<br />
KANYE WEST<br />
OR A COMPILATION OF FIFTY<br />
KANYE WEST<br />
QUOTES ARRANGED AND REMIXED<br />
REBECCA KING<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Purpose<br />
Kanye West’s greatest disappointment in life is that he will<br />
never be able to see himself perform on stage. He is, after all,<br />
one of his own favorite rappers. In fact, he is the number one<br />
human being in music right now. We are all in the presence of<br />
a champion.<br />
He is the first to admit that he is a flawed man—he’s real,<br />
he’s a human, he bleeds—but, like Orpheus before him, his<br />
music is perfect.<br />
He likes the spotlight; he likes to stand alone on the stage,<br />
likes to get all the shine. He already knows it will be his words<br />
that spark a generation of thinkers to discover the ultimate<br />
truth. For verily, Kanye West is the voice of the people. He<br />
lives within the shared wavelength of the world. He is the<br />
voice of the creative dream come true, and he refuses to let<br />
the rest of us wake up.<br />
Kanye wasn’t put on the earth to make money; he’s here to<br />
make magic.<br />
Paparazzi and Interviews<br />
Kanye feels limited when people classify him as a musician<br />
because he is so much more than that. He’s not just some<br />
celebrity asshole; he’s the pinnacle of celebrity assholes. He<br />
doesn’t aim for the middle of anything. No one wants to be<br />
the middle asshole.<br />
Kanye already knows his place in history. He will be the<br />
voice of this generation, and if not, at least he’ll be the loudest.<br />
He’s already decided to become the best rapper of all time.<br />
It’s on his life’s to-do list, so this shit is real.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
If the Bible were set in modern times, Kanye West would<br />
totally be in it. The original Bible had, what, 40, 50 characters<br />
in it? Yeah, he’d be one of them.<br />
How is Kanye supposed to talk when you keep interrupting<br />
him with video clips of himself?<br />
Kanye only takes life pass or fail. But who are you? Fuck<br />
you for imposing this rubric. Whenever people ask him about<br />
his greatest accomplishments, he tells them it’s whatever he’s<br />
going to work on next. The cup isn’t half-empty or half-full.<br />
From his view, it’s overflowing.<br />
What kind of car is Kanye? He’s not. He’s an airplane. He<br />
wants to take up all the lanes.<br />
The Times and Trials of Kanye West<br />
Kanye likes to rap. Before he recorded his own, he produced<br />
others, playing and replaying their tracks in the studio until<br />
it sounded ill. But he won’t listen to it in his apartment now.<br />
His apartment is too nice for rap music. It’s so dope, he<br />
requires all of his Persian rugs to have cherub imagery. At<br />
night in his luxury apartment, he has trouble sleeping on his<br />
fur pillows. Often, in those midnight hours when sleep won’t<br />
come, he’ll turn on porn. Who is he kidding? He always turns<br />
on porn. Sometimes he can’t sleep for wondering if he has a<br />
sex addiction.<br />
When he flies, the stewardesses are always waking him<br />
up to ask him if he wants some juice. Even when he’s clearly<br />
pressed the do-not-disturb button. He enjoys the in-flight<br />
movies with mind-blowing special effects, but Kanye doesn’t<br />
like watching dramas. He doesn’t like to reflect, he reflects. If<br />
only the airline had porn.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
The best hotel Kanye ever stayed at was so dope. They let<br />
him lay out on the beach while they brought him popsicles<br />
and shit. However, he hates room service. Every place he goes,<br />
they always cut everything with the same knife. His sensitive<br />
palate detects everything the blade touched. Beer flavored<br />
pineapple. Kanye’s misery is our pleasure.<br />
Truly, the bane of Kanye’s existence is when people bring<br />
him a bottle of water. Now he’s gotta be responsible for that<br />
bottle of water. And that’s a lot of responsibility. Like a kid.<br />
Abortions cost 50gs, and those gold digging bitches always<br />
be getting pregnant. Strap up, Kanye says. Strap up.<br />
Award Show Remix<br />
Kanye knows he can say anything he wants in an email<br />
or a text as long—as it ends with LOL or a smiley emoticon.<br />
Too bad he didn’t try that on the Hurricane Katrina special.<br />
“George Bush hates black people. LOL”<br />
Or at the VMA Awards. “I’m really happy for you, and I’m<br />
gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best music<br />
videos of all time. �”<br />
Kanye is sorry, Taylor. He empathizes with George Bush. He<br />
has apologized for acting like a bitch at the award show, but,<br />
come on, it’s not like he killed anybody. People look at him<br />
like he’s a monster, like he’s insane, like he’s fucking Hitler.<br />
Kanye wants you to give him a break. He doesn’t understand<br />
who he hurt so bad that we want to destroy him. Just two<br />
days ago he was talking to the President, and now this.<br />
Seriously though, if Kanye doesn’t win, then the award<br />
show loses credibility.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Kanye, the Man, the Machine<br />
Kanye identifies with Braveheart. He, too, is a warrior king.<br />
He’s a bright red in a world of grey. He’s a nuclear energy.<br />
He has no time for reading. He’s too busy making history<br />
to read it. Besides, novels are wordy and self-absorbed. And<br />
who would ever want a book’s autograph? Sometimes, he gets<br />
emotional over fonts. Gothic or Helvetica fonts only. None of<br />
that serif shit for Kanye.<br />
From time to time, Kanye closes the elevator doors even<br />
when he sees people running toward them, wanting to go<br />
somewhere. He just needs his own space, you know?<br />
He won’t assume the devil is a man; Kanye’d hate to be<br />
sexist. And he could never do stand-up comedy. He’s much<br />
funnier when he’s sitting down. He’s been trying out some<br />
new things. He’s designed Louis Vuitton shoes and his own<br />
clothing line. When Kanye feels uncertain at an art or fashion<br />
show, he uses profanity so it sounds like he knows what he’s<br />
talking about. Profanity equals knowledge, motherfucker. Or<br />
at least confidence.<br />
And Kanye is all ego. Ego is his shield. With his ego, he’s<br />
indestructible.<br />
Kanye is a machine, a robot, and he’s been programmed to<br />
make music. Nothing you do or say will sway his robot heart.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
THREE<br />
STORIES<br />
FRED PELZER<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
The Man They Called West<br />
They called him West, as in the setting sun, as in the end<br />
of empire. They called him Ye, and Louis Vuitton Don, and<br />
Young Yeezy, and later Old Yeezy, and then they called him<br />
nothing. His golden pyramid consumes the Loop. That is<br />
where you are. You have come to get your brother’s body.<br />
You descend from the bitter remains of the L, disintegrating<br />
wood shimmering down upon you, coating your skin, filling<br />
your taste. The last time you were here you watched your<br />
brother walk away. Since then you’ve stayed to the small town<br />
where you grew up, a few hundred survivors, pressed together<br />
for the warmth of civilization in the chilled atmosphere that<br />
came after the collapse.<br />
The far side of the pyramid contains the way in, a small<br />
crack to offer purchase in this monument to ego. Between the<br />
pyramid and the long crater of what used to be a lake rise the<br />
skeletal remains of skyscrapers, tips clawing at the passing<br />
clouds, doing as their name demands, the fingers of some<br />
buried god waking once more. This is where you stopped, last<br />
time, while your brother continued on. Where you waved and<br />
you cried but he would not stop for you. “I’ll be back,” the last<br />
words he ever said, the worst sort to leave behind. Years later<br />
you now stand where he stood, on the cusp.<br />
The entrance is carved into a grinning face. A reflective<br />
mask covers his eyes and diamonds dot his teeth beneath<br />
your feet. You enter through the mouth, where once his<br />
genius flowed, or so the stories go. Above his head the words<br />
“WHAT IS A KING TO A GOD?” carved into the rough incline,<br />
barely worn by the intervening years. As you pass through<br />
you glance behind and see on the inside the answer: “WHAT<br />
IS A GOD TO AN UNBELIEVER?”<br />
You imagine your brother walking these halls, reading the<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
words of the man they called West, his Twitter feed scrawling<br />
across the walls, looping over and over so that his words never<br />
end. Your brother who came here looking for his fortune,<br />
to prove himself. You wish that you could have told him it<br />
wasn’t necessary. He didn’t have to compare to the myths of<br />
men long dead. He just had to be your brother.<br />
At the end of the meandering hallway, the last door,<br />
emblazoned with the face of a man who supposedly once<br />
lived, above it written in the same angular letters, “No One<br />
Man Should Have All That Power.” You open the doors.<br />
Inside there is nothing. No gold, no jewels, no body of<br />
West interred. A barren brick room. There are footprints in<br />
the dust, your brother’s Timberlands, size infinity. Your own<br />
boots cover them up and erase their passage. Your brother<br />
came and found nothing and then could not come home. He<br />
could not face a world without Ye, without the possibility of<br />
a man called West existing. Such a man, with his gold and<br />
diamond teeth, his genius, his ego, no, it is safer to believe<br />
that your brother will come back one day than to believe in<br />
the man they called West.<br />
Who Does Not Fear the Avalanche<br />
It is a cold and desolate peak. Every exhaled breath is<br />
doomed to freeze. Ye chops another log of wood. Sweat pours<br />
from his topknot, across his broad back, over the scars of<br />
a thousand fights. The soaked kimono clings to his heaving<br />
sides. The wood cracks open. The sound echoes down the<br />
mountainside. Ye laughs. He does not fear the avalanche. He<br />
is alone here on the peak surrounded by snows, the nearest<br />
hamlet three days’ journey down. Apprentices and challengers<br />
used to travel to speak to him but they have learned to leave<br />
him be. He spends his time crafting furniture: jewel chests,<br />
scholar desks, tanso, tsukue. His samurai sword is hung up<br />
for good.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Ye has heard of writers who burned their pages on their<br />
death bed, or locked them away far from others. As a young man<br />
he did not understand. But now that he is broad-shouldered<br />
and graying at the temples, he follows in their steps. Better to<br />
be in a forgotten corner of the world and true than live such<br />
lies.<br />
Another log of wood splits apart. An answering rumble<br />
from above. Further up the mountain something is changing.<br />
Storm clouds flung from the incline. It is coming for him. Like<br />
time itself coming to eat him up. Ye smiles again. He puts<br />
down the ax and faces the mountain. Since leaving the world<br />
he has waited for this. He is ready for fate, to be measured<br />
against others and found either a good man or else wanting.<br />
His gold-and-diamond laced teeth glint in the cold air, lips<br />
spread far apart. The snow hurtles down the mountain and Ye<br />
spreads his arms. He who does not fear the avalanche, does<br />
not fear eternity.<br />
A G.O.O.D. Man Hard Found<br />
Kanye hit play on the video for a thousandth time. Nothing<br />
changed. Kim took another man’s dick in her mouth, eyes<br />
wide, fingers moving. Small moans from her mouth, louder<br />
ones from Ray-J, the dumbass almost ruining the whole thing.<br />
A year ago Kanye would have forgiven the so-called singer but<br />
now the sounds just distracted further.<br />
Once upon a time Kanye would watch Kim Kardashian’s<br />
sex tape before going to town on any woman, the sight of her<br />
curves, those hips, that ass, and he was ready to go again.<br />
No need for any stimulant with that video on hand. But since<br />
they’d begun dating, since he’d had access to that Eden body<br />
every night, the video no longer did its job, did the opposite,<br />
killed every erotic impulse in his body.<br />
Many women had climbed out of his bed, beautiful women,<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
models and fashionistas. Occasionally Kanye had been in love,<br />
or thought he was. They’d all since gone on to date other<br />
people. But if he was all right occasionally thinking of them<br />
having sex with other men, with other celebrities or mere<br />
mortals, a thought that could arrive and then be shrugged<br />
off, it was a different thing to watch another man put his dick<br />
inside your woman.<br />
Kanye shut the laptop, but this didn’t mean much. His<br />
computer familiar could summon the images on any of a<br />
thousand screens in his penthouse, the curving ass, the<br />
endless “baby”s. Or he could simply close his eyes and drag<br />
every memorized frame across his thoughts, now a constant<br />
torment. Instead he stalked to the windows, pressed his<br />
hands against the glass, and took in the city. Somewhere<br />
within view, someone listened to his music. Simple statistics.<br />
He was everywhere. He did not have to be here. But he could<br />
not escape the tape.<br />
Too much bragging. Too many times calling women bitches.<br />
Too proud, ego always the solution. He shouted to the world<br />
he was happy to be with the woman everyone had seen fucking<br />
Ray-J, what else could be said? And now he must live with it.<br />
Her body was a secret that everyone knew. When they were out<br />
other men did not have to imagine her naked, they had seen it<br />
for themselves, jacked off to it, pictured it while fucking their<br />
wives girlfriends women. And after everything he’s said, no<br />
one would listen to him if he ripped off the sunglasses and<br />
shouted, “This has gone too far, we do not treat women right,<br />
like the mothers sisters daughters they are!” They would<br />
laugh in his face as they took away his money and his music<br />
and his legacy. And so Kanye must smile and say that he is<br />
glad everyone knows well the body that he enjoys every night.<br />
Sometimes he’s glad his mother did not live to see this.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
FOUR<br />
POEMS<br />
SARAH BLAKE<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
On November 10th, 2007, Donda West Died<br />
On November 10th, 2008, you were between shows. November<br />
9th, Dublin, Ireland. November 11th, London, England.<br />
By ferry and car, the journey from Dublin to London takes about<br />
eight hours.<br />
By plane, about an hour.<br />
I have to imagine you flew. But maybe not. Maybe you spent two<br />
hours, three hours, on a ferry.<br />
The journey between two points is such a straight line.<br />
Maybe you needed to be on the Irish Sea. The blue of it. The blue<br />
looks miserable.<br />
The very shape of the sea is like a face, mourning, gagging on a<br />
moan.<br />
And it must be salty. Like all seas.<br />
Though for a sea to leave cliffs instead of beaches.<br />
That tells me it’s killed its fair share of mothers.<br />
The Irish stop clocks at the time of death. They stay with the<br />
body day and night until the burial. They recite poems. They<br />
sing. They cry and drink. They kiss the dead body.<br />
Given the autopsy, at least some of these, you were unable to<br />
do.<br />
But the first anniversary of a death. I know it.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
We sometimes burn a yahrzeit candle. It burns for 24 hours, or<br />
26, or 3 days, more. It’s white and burns in a tall glass so you<br />
don’t have to worry about leaving an open flame over night.<br />
Do you worry about your house burning down?<br />
You spent the nights around the anniversary of your mother’s<br />
death on a stage that looked like the universe.<br />
Planets. Shooting stars. A Galaxy—pink and perfect.<br />
You were glowing in the dark. And you were black in the dark.<br />
And a monster came on stage to eat you.<br />
To gobble you up. As mothers say.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
In Song<br />
After the accident, Kanye West wrote, produced, and recorded<br />
a song.<br />
“Through the Wire.”<br />
As the title suggests, Kanye rapped every word through his<br />
wired-shut jaw.<br />
The first verse begins:<br />
I drink a boost for breakfast, and ensure for dizzert<br />
Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp<br />
That right there could drive a sane man bizzerk<br />
Not to worry y’ll Mr. H 2 the Izzo’s back to wizzerk<br />
How do you console my mom or give her light support<br />
When you telling her your son’s on life support<br />
And just imagine how my girl feel<br />
On the plane scared as hell that her guy look like Emmett Till<br />
Recently, Kanye compared himself to Emmett Till again.<br />
On one website, they explain: “discussing the VMA incident... he<br />
compared the backlash he faced to the murder of Emmett Till,<br />
the Chicago teenager who was killed for whistling at a white<br />
woman in Money, Mississippi.”<br />
People have been outraged, but Kanye must<br />
feel a connection to this boy. And because of Kanye,<br />
Emmett’s story is on the internet again and again. 65 years later.<br />
Kanye knows what appropriation is.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Con Moto<br />
While swallowing a prenatal vitamin before bed, I’m watching an<br />
MTV interview<br />
with Rick Ross about how<br />
you taught him to see music in colors.<br />
He calls you Ye, pronounced yay, dropping Kan.<br />
Musical terms, held onto from Italian, found on printed music,<br />
begin with con<br />
because they begin with<br />
with.<br />
Con espressione, con moto, become, informally,<br />
espressione, moto, spirito, affetto, dolore, forza, gran, molto,<br />
fuoco,<br />
larghezza, slancio, sordino, anima, brio, amore. Shook free.<br />
And we should love our own sounds.<br />
Feeling, movement, spirit, affect, sadness, force, great feeling,<br />
much feeling, fire,<br />
broadness, enthusiasm, muted tone, feeling again, and vigour,<br />
and tenderness<br />
or love.<br />
Another connection between you and Italy, between you and<br />
music. Another<br />
way to say beautiful things that I have learned tonight.<br />
If bellies stirred before babies were big enough, mine’d be<br />
kicking.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
God’s Face Over Gold<br />
Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.<br />
But his eyes are like man’s. His voice overflows.<br />
So it must be his mouth, his tongue unrolled.<br />
Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.<br />
I think he hears prayers when nights are cold.<br />
He can’t be a man when his heart’s a rose.<br />
Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.<br />
But his eyes are like man’s. His voice overflows.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
HOTNESS:<br />
HERE’S A TOAST TO THE<br />
DOUCHEBAGS!<br />
HERE’S A TOAST TO THE<br />
VAIN!<br />
LILY HOANG<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Last night, as I walking home in -9 without wind chill<br />
temperatures (Celsius) and foot upon feet of snow, I heard<br />
the most fantastic (ironic) thing. Granted, I was mad at the<br />
weather, and because my anger would be futile against snow<br />
and cold, I steered my aggression onto three darling little<br />
assholes.<br />
Here is the conversation I overheard:<br />
Guy 1: You know, dudes, I only have one problem.<br />
Guy 2: Not enough pussy?<br />
Guy 1: Yeah.<br />
Guy 3: (With a hint of jealousy and maybe irony) Fuck you.<br />
Guy 1: Nah, really, dudes, my only problem is that I fucking<br />
hate fat. Like I can’t stand it if a girl’s fat.<br />
Guy 3: Fuck, dude, like who likes fat chicks?<br />
Then, they turned onto Princess Street (our main “drag”)<br />
and I had to turn a different way to go home. Needless to say,<br />
I wanted to hear more! But given only the brief bit of friendly<br />
banter I witnessed, I dedicate Kanye West’s “Runaway” to<br />
them.<br />
There was something profound in what they were saying<br />
though. In the many conversations about gender and race<br />
we’ve had here and the once ground-breaking theory on<br />
intersectionality, what people fail to acknowledge—time and<br />
time again—is the power of attractiveness.<br />
We talk about gender and publishing or race and publishing,<br />
but we just don’t talk about hotness, unless it’s a flippant<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
kind of “what writer would you most like to fuck?” post.<br />
And yet, it’s impossible to separate the degree to which the<br />
attractiveness of a writer relates to his/her success.<br />
Yes, this is a conversation about superficialities. But it<br />
is one that has relevance. With AWP around the corner, be<br />
honest: As an editor, if you met a hot writer you wanted to<br />
bed, wouldn’t you be more likely to read his/her writing with<br />
a kinder eye? (I’m not saying you’d publish, but you’d likely<br />
be more generous, no? Or maybe I’m the only superficial one.<br />
Hey, I can admit it.)<br />
All of this ignores the inherent privilege that comes with<br />
being attractive. In my grad student/young professor milieu,<br />
the buzzword—almost to a fault—is positionality. Jesus,<br />
everyone wants to talk about the position they occupy, as<br />
a “white settler” (another hot buzzword here in Canada) or<br />
woman of color or whatever. People pay attention to their<br />
positionality. It changes the way they speak, depending on<br />
who their audience is. I don’t know. It’s like a hyper-politicalcorrectness,<br />
a hyper-self-awareness, which is not to say<br />
racism/sexism/etc. does not exist. (Canadians are notoriously<br />
polite. Their politeness, in my opinion, obscures an obvious<br />
prejudice. In many ways, I would rather experience the blatant<br />
racism/sexism I’ve endured in places like Texas or Indiana<br />
than be greeted with a plastic smile hiding something far more<br />
sinister. Or, maybe Canadians are truly more enlightened<br />
than Americans, and because of my unwavering disaffection,<br />
I assume the worst about people.) We talk about positionality,<br />
eagerly, too eagerly maybe. We ignore attractiveness.<br />
I mean, I get it. Attractiveness isn’t discussed in feminist<br />
academic writing because it’s so “subjective.” Yes, obviously,<br />
we have a Western standard of beauty: “fair” skin, thin, etc.<br />
(All this ignores the “exotic.” Asian women, after all, occupy a<br />
stunning #11 on Stuff White People Like. I remember having a<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
conversation with some writer—I can’t remember who—who<br />
said that all the male writers he knows living in Brooklyn have<br />
Asian girlfriends, except for the Asian male writers, who have<br />
white girlfriends.) Nonetheless, the subjectivity of whom or<br />
what is deemed attractive shouldn’t detract from its obvious<br />
impact on our daily interactions with people. It is as much<br />
a form of discrimination or privilege—depending—as race,<br />
class, gender, able-bodiedness, weight, etc.<br />
A brief detour: This past summer, I did research for a<br />
professor on Citizenship and Disability. I read a jarring<br />
article on fatness and disability by Nathan Kai-Cheong Chan<br />
and Allison Gillick based on a series of interviews. In each<br />
circumstance, the respondent—all morbidly obese by medical<br />
standards—made the argument that they were on the cusp<br />
of being fat enough to have a disability, but they were a few<br />
pounds shy. That is, if the respondent was 350 pounds, she’d<br />
say disability meant 360 pounds. What remains is the obvious<br />
truth that all these people who experience discrimination<br />
based on their weight, which is to say, they experience<br />
discrimination based on their attractiveness. This takes me<br />
back to the dear little undergrads gleefully talking about<br />
fat chicks, who certainly can’t come close to the obese line.<br />
Chances are, they were talking about girls who have a little<br />
belly, stress on the little.<br />
But weight matters. Attractiveness matters. Size matters.<br />
I hate to admit this. I feel like I ought to be more enlightened<br />
than to care. I used to be a gender studies professor for gawd’s<br />
sake! But it does. When I visited my family for winter break, I<br />
got some new pants. They used a different sizing system, one<br />
I was unfamiliar with, and so, being vain, I looked it up on the<br />
internet. And I’m ashamed about how happy I was that they<br />
translated to a size zero, a size I haven’t been in a very long<br />
time. What should size matter? What should attractiveness<br />
matter? But, but, it does! It does!<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Size zero: the non-existent size. Website after website with<br />
women harking on each other about how they want to be a<br />
size zero. You skinny little bitch, they say, with humour, with<br />
rage.<br />
I don’t know where I’m going with this. Mostly, I am<br />
disappointed with those boys last night, almost as much as I’m<br />
disappointed in myself for buying into a system that rewards<br />
attractiveness and thinness. If I can be a critical feminist and<br />
anti-racist, how can I simultaneously place so much value and<br />
weight (pun intended) in attractiveness and thinness?<br />
First Appeared on HTMLGIANT<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
WAKE UP<br />
DOCTOR WEST:<br />
AN ESSAYISTIC<br />
EXPLORATION OF A POSSIBLE<br />
ALTERNATE HISTORY OF<br />
KANYE WEST<br />
AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN<br />
MUSICOLOGY<br />
(IN THREE ACTS)<br />
COLIN RAFFERTY<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Act One: “this being his first adventure into Negro Opera”<br />
Say he didn’t drop out. Say he didn’t almost pay the cost.<br />
Say that nothing was lost because nothing was ever found.<br />
Instead:<br />
Say he stayed in school. Say he kept those books rolling.<br />
Say he got his associate’s, then his master’s, then his master’s<br />
master’s, then his doctorate. Say that he specializes in that<br />
black music, that crack music, his life the quiet opposite of<br />
the braggadocio, where the self-doubt goes is not into rugs<br />
with cherubs but dissertations, conference presentations. A<br />
GTA instead of Kim K.<br />
What does he want most now? To find the missing. And<br />
what is missing? Black history. The idea lost that in the 20th<br />
century, their music was always the music that drove (white)<br />
culture. Go back, Dr. West. Go back from papers like “Goal-<br />
Directed Soul? Analyzing Rhythmic Teleology in African<br />
American Popular Music” and “No Boundary Line to Art:<br />
‘Bebop’ as Afro-Modernist Discourse” to the past. Go back<br />
past the samplers and turntables to piano rolls, the original<br />
digital format, punching holes to make sound. Go back to the<br />
stage, the opera house, the whitest place you know.<br />
Go back to Scott Joplin, Dr. West.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Act Two: “entirely his original composition”<br />
How quickly this happens for an age before file sharing: the<br />
President, Theodore Roosevelt, invites Booker T. Washington<br />
to dinner at the White House. No black man has ever dined<br />
there before as guest of the Chief Executive. It’s a scandal<br />
for Roosevelt’s enemies. “Our Coon-Flavored President” and<br />
“Roosevelt Dines a Darkie” are the headlines in the South. “The<br />
most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by<br />
any citizen of the United States,” says the Memphis Scimitar.<br />
That’s the 16th of October, 1901. Within two years,<br />
Scott Joplin is touring his opera A Guest of Honor around<br />
the country. In August of 1903, the company is in Sedalia,<br />
Missouri, performing at Crawford’s Theater. Joplin files a<br />
letter with the Library of Congress announcing his intention<br />
to apply for copyright on the work—a copy of the score will<br />
follow soon.<br />
But then: somewhere in the Midwest (Kansas? Illinois?)<br />
someone makes off with the box office proceeds. Joplin can’t<br />
pay the bills, so his possessions, including, likely, the score<br />
for A Guest of Honor, are seized. Gone. Vanished. Joplin moves<br />
on, writes other works, dies insane and unknown, buried in a<br />
pauper’s grave.<br />
It’s tragic, right, Dr. West? You could undo it.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Act Three: “he has just received the book of the play<br />
from the publisher’s hand”<br />
The impossible 2012: Dr. Kanye Omari West, Ph.D., opens,<br />
say, a box in the Library of Congress, or, say, the locked drawer<br />
of a rolltop desk in Warrensburg, Missouri, or, say, the justdiscovered<br />
wall safe of a closed-up theater in East Saint Louis,<br />
Illinois.<br />
Say he opens up whatever you would like him to open up,<br />
and there it is, once lost but now found: A Guest of Honor, an<br />
Opera by Scott Joplin, curled yellow pages, black ink faded to<br />
brown. Score and libretto. It’s all there.<br />
What changes in our lives? Already, we’ve established a<br />
universe in which the College Dropout is summa cum laude,<br />
where Taylor Swift speaks her piece, where Jay-Z makes<br />
“Watch the Throne” with someone else (Nas? Lil Wayne?). How<br />
much does the world shift because an academic has found<br />
a missing manuscript? How exciting could it be, beyond a<br />
few revival performances, beyond extra chapters in Joplin<br />
biographies, beyond Dr. West getting tenure, a nice article in<br />
the Chronicle of Higher Education, if he’s lucky? It won’t even<br />
bring in enough to get another Camry, much less his other<br />
other Camry.<br />
America, and America’s Kanye West, are the ideals of selfreinvention.<br />
You can be someone new here. You are not bound<br />
by the old ideals. You can stay in school. You can drop out of<br />
school. You can be Kanye. You can be Mr. West. You can be<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Yeezy, Ye, Dr. West, the Louis Vuitton Don, Martin Louis the<br />
King, Jr. Speak it into existence from the stage. Everything is<br />
the stage.<br />
In America, a white man invites a black man to dinner,<br />
and another black man writes an opera about it, which is<br />
in turn produced by a white man (“his first adventure into<br />
Negro Opera,” reports the Sedalia Weekly Conservator). The<br />
score is seized and lost, and our imaginary Dr. West, finds it/<br />
does not find it. Nothing changes. We still have no cherubs on<br />
these Persian rugs. We still have no goblets. We still do not<br />
understand exactly the scope of 200,000 thousand trillion,<br />
which is technically two hundred quintillion, a number we<br />
still cannot understand.<br />
Wake up, Dr. West. The missing opera is your own guest<br />
of honor, your missing self the opera recited from the stages<br />
of the Midwest. It is lonely to pretend. It is better to speak it<br />
into existence.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES<br />
Theresa J. Beckhusen is the Artistic Fellow at the<br />
Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her work<br />
has previously appeared in Plain China and RiverCraft. She<br />
knows “Monster” by heart as well as one of Constance’s<br />
monologues from The Life and Death of King John.<br />
Sarah Blake is at work on a collection of poetry about<br />
Kanye West. Some of the poems appear in Boston Review, The<br />
Awl, Sentence, Witness, and soon in Drunken Boat. Blake lives<br />
outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son.<br />
Kait Burrier writes poetry, drama, and music journalism.<br />
Her poetry appears in the anthologies Voices from the Attic<br />
and Dionne’s Story. Recent productions include her ten-minute<br />
Patient/Fx at the Jason Miller Playwrights Project Invitational<br />
and site-specific monologues at Scranton’s Bonfire at the Iron<br />
Furnaces. Kait is currently a candidate in Wilkes University’s<br />
Creative Writing M.F.A. program. She is a member of the<br />
Dramatists Guild, AWP, and NWA.<br />
Evan Robert Chen studies creative writing and literature<br />
in the PhD program at SUNY Albany. His work has appeared.<br />
You can listen to his poems and drones at www.soundcloud.<br />
com/evan-robert-chen.<br />
Barry Grass earned his MFA from that Ghetto University.<br />
He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he is the current<br />
Nonfiction Editor of Black Warrior Review. Recent work<br />
appears/is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Hobart, Annalemma,<br />
and Stymie, among others. Send leads on where to find Kanye’s<br />
peacoat from the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” video to<br />
barrygrass@gmail.com.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Robert Helfst is an aspiring author and bad karaoke singer.<br />
The University of Indianapolis graduate lives and writes in<br />
Indianapolis, where he spends too much time thinking and not<br />
enough writing. His work has previously appeared in Etchings.<br />
He enjoys telling stories, just not about himself. This is his<br />
fourteenth attempt at writing his contributor’s biography.<br />
Lily Hoang is the author of the books Unfinished, The<br />
Evolutionary Revolution, Changing (recipient of a PEN Beyond<br />
Margins Award), and Parabola (winner of the 2006 Chiasmus<br />
Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest). She serves as an Associate<br />
Editor at Starcherone Books and Editor at Tarpaulin Sky. With<br />
Blake Butler, she co-edited the anthology 30 under 30.<br />
Sam Martone lives in Tempe, Arizona, but he spent his<br />
high school years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. During ninth and<br />
tenth grade, while beats were beaten out of lunch tables, he<br />
freestyled under the rap moniker 2can Sam. In later years, he<br />
and his crew beefed with a group of Danish rappers on a hiphop<br />
message board. Sam Martone is no longer much of an ill<br />
rhyme-sayer. Now, when he comes up with a clever couplet,<br />
he copies it down in a notebook. He imagines running into the<br />
targets of these punchlines. He imagines the battles that will<br />
begin when he flips to the right page and points: this diss, it<br />
was meant for you.<br />
Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey & currently lives<br />
in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His collection of Missed Connections,<br />
So You Know It’s Me, was released in 2011 by Tiny Hardcore<br />
Press. His series of lyric essays based on video game boss<br />
battles, Level End, was released in 2012 by Origami Zoo Press.<br />
He is working on a series of lyric essays about dance songs.<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Salvatore Pane is the author of the novel, Last Call in the City<br />
of Bridges, and the chapbook, #KanyeWestSavedFromDrowning.<br />
His work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Hobart, The<br />
American Book Review, The Rumpus, and many other venues.<br />
His graphic novel, The Black List, is forthcoming in 2013.<br />
He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of<br />
Indianapolis and can be reached at www.salvatore-pane.com.<br />
Joshua M. Patton was a finalist for Illest White-Boy Alive<br />
in 2000 by some trill cats from the US Army while serving<br />
in Bosnia and again in 2005 while serving in Iraq. If he<br />
doesn’t know how you’re stepping to him, he will take that as<br />
disrespect. He will tell you about yourself and he’ll punctuate<br />
it with a roundhouse kick to your domepiece. Since you don’t<br />
need that kind of drama, check out Veteran Journal, where he<br />
is a regular contributor. Or you could peep his articles for<br />
AND Magazine, where he lays his game down quite flat. Like<br />
the RZA, who brought the world Bobby Digitial, JMPimpin’s<br />
science fiction series Singularity War gets all up in your mindguts.<br />
Ebook installments are available on Amazon, Barnes &<br />
Noble, and Smashwords. The Sci-Fi Podcast Smoke and Mirrors’<br />
episode 89 features the audiobook version of the first two<br />
installments. If you pass him in the streets, give a player a<br />
nod and let him know you’re down for cause. Or you might<br />
get dealt with.<br />
Fred Pelzer (@fredpelzer): Margarita bright, meanin’<br />
limelight / Readers losin’ their shit like prom night / Words<br />
like my budget- it can never be too tight / Let me guess, you<br />
know a better writer - you, right?<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn
Colin Rafferty lives in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches<br />
nonfiction writing at the University of Mary Washington.<br />
The article titles in “Wake Up, Doctor West” are real, and he<br />
apologizes to the authors of those articles for pulling them<br />
into this whole sorry mess. He wishes that Kanye and Jay-Z<br />
would produce an animated Saturday morning cartoon that<br />
featured them solving crimes in a time traveling car called<br />
“The Waybach Machine.”<br />
Ian Riggins is a fictioneer and teaching fellow at Chatham<br />
University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. His work has<br />
appeared in Collision and Places to do Business, a blog of men’s<br />
public restroom reviews. He teaches at Earth INK, an afterschool<br />
nature writing program, and Words Without Walls,<br />
a writing program at the Allegheny County Jail. He lives in<br />
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.<br />
Mike Rosenthal is the swell cartoonist behind VectorBelly.<br />
com. When he isn’t drawing Adventure Time fan art or being<br />
sued by French playwrights, Mike’s generally not doing<br />
anything because people don’t invite him to parties. His first<br />
animated cartoon Our New Electrical Morals premiers early<br />
2013 on Cartoon Hangover.<br />
Gregory Sherl just wants an easy life, not a Yeezy life.<br />
He just wants to write books you like. His newest collection,<br />
Monogamy Songs, is out now (or will be soon) from Future<br />
Tense Books. He is also the author of The Oregon Trail is the<br />
Oregon Trail (Mud Luscious Press, 2012) and Heavy Petting<br />
(YesYes Books, 2011). If Yeezy reupholstered this contributor<br />
bio, he’d be like MIDDLE FINGER TO MY OLD LIFE, you know?<br />
Go here: http://gregorysherlisgregorysherl.com/<br />
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn