2018 Year End Review: The Year of Giving Birth, Transitions and Gratitude

I Am American

We have come to the end of the road.  Well at least the road that the Roman calendar leads us down year after year.  The longer I live the more I realize how false that road is cuz the wheel keeps turning. There really is no end, until it’s over if you know what I mean, but even then do we really know that that’s the end? This year came with these huge questions. Big beginnings, tragic transitions, continuous continuations and ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.  Twenty-eighteen felt so long and yet here we are at the last day of December once again looking out onto what 2019 will hold.  Daily it felt like a Space Odyssey or better yet a Space Oddity as our brother Bowie made so plain.  Now here we are at the end so that's where I will start. 

In October I was in one of the biggest pushes of my life, giving birth to my album, I Am American. The birth did not quite go as planned, but the baby is healthy and everyone is alive!  The labor was long. There were Braxton Hicks contractions that started years ago. Lot's of rushing to the water only to be sent back home, but in August the labor started for real and in October the pushing began in earnest.  I was on a roll, labor was going well and then things started happening around me.

On October 24th, I lost another (the first two in March & May respectively) dear sister friend, Sally Hyppolite, to cancer. Then on the same day one of my mentors, guitar legend Wah Wah Watson, also passed.  I hadn’t spoken to him in a while and that left me as devastated as losing my sister who I had recently seen.  

Side Note: As far as how I know Wah Wah Watson, let's just say if I had the loot at the time we met, he would have come to London to play with me.  He never played with the band, but we did stay in touch, I did visit him at his home, and he was a mentor.  It's a long story, but one I will share one day.

I couldn’t stay in that sad space because I was in labor and the contractions were coming faster and with more strength. 

In the midst of labor I had to take a trip to San Francisco with my Burnt Sugar Arkestra fam to play at San Francisco State University and to do a talk at Stanford. On October 27th, the day before we left for the Bay, Ntozake Shange passed. I had only met her once, but I have known her in my heart and spirit all my life.  Every colored girl who has ever touched the stage or written a poem or searched for the deeper meaning of what is to be and feel the joy and pain of being a dark girl, knows Ntozake. She was our virtual auntie, tia, sista girlfriend, lover, mother, she was everything and all things and she had moved on right as I was heading to the Bay where it all began for her. 

I reached the west side doing my best not to let my shock reach the surface and then on the 30th we lost vocal powerhouse/songwriter Beverly McClellen to cancer.  I had also only met Beverly once when we performed together at Michfest in 2015, but I was so inspired by her when she competed on the first season of The Voice and ripped the house down in the blind auditions singing Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” The bald, t-shirt, boots and jeans Amazon hit the stage with so much truth it was undeniable. When I saw that she was going to be playing at Fest I knew I had to sing with her and by some miracle we did.  We jammed out Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s classic “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around" and it was amazing! We had so much fun.  Big love hugs to my sister and drummer Jyn Yates who toured with Beverly and in losing her lost a best friend.  Beverly was a force! I stopped momentarily to breathe for Beverly, but I labored on.

We made it back from the Bay and then on Nov. 2nd I got my last bit of year end transition news; trumpeter, composer, Roy Hargrove had left the building.  I like so many others was not prepared for that.  Those who knew him, knew he struggled with health challenges and had been on dialysis for many years, but he was forever in our eyes that young lion who blasted on the scene in the 90's and took over the jazz world. Roy was a big part of my pre- and early- New York life.  

Side Note: How do I know Roy Hargrove? Well let's just say we first met in Columbus, OH when I was in college and then some years later he impromptu played piano (let that sink in) for me one night at Small's Jazz Club in the Village. I was shocked and humbled. I will share that story for you one day as well. Magic.

So all this was happening while I was in active labor. I couldn’t stop the momentum at that point and on Saturday, November 3rd I started crowning.  The little head started showing as we took the stage at the Brooklyn Museum for First Saturdays in celebration of the “Soul of Nation” exhibition.  The crowd was with us and it was a glorious night. I read from “For Colored Girls…” and called for “somebody/anybody, sing a black girls song.” So we sang a song for my sisters and we also premiered the music video for “Punanny Politixxx.” There was no stopping now. The labor continued.

November 4th, the head was out and the shoulders were trying to make their way though.  I held a listening gathering at Peace & Riot for a select few fam and friends. It was a wonderful time and I was so glad that more people got to hear my baby in the womb before she was all the way out.  We drank, ate, laughed and had an all-around good time.  It takes a village and give thanks that me and my baby have a huge community.  

November 5th, the shoulders were out so I made my way to Roulette to perform with Darius Jones and friends in “For the People,” an avant-garde, get out the vote performance.  It was beyond deep. Deeper than I even imagined it would be.  All the performers were given a set of cues that we had to musically interpret so to speak.  Sometimes I was called to make the sounds of a slave woman who was having her baby cut out of her  at she was tied upside down or...well... what else needs to be said after that?! I did two pieces with the latter being called “Law and Order.” After such a long labor this was the final push that I needed.

Finally, on November 6th at midnight my baby, I Am American, was born. Later that morning I got up from my laboring bed and took myself to vote.  I came home and rested for a bit because later that night I took myself to see Living Colour and Fishbone at Brooklyn Bowl. 

My brotha, producer, friend, Vernon Reid

November 7th, was my b’earthday. The baby was out and I was exhausted. My mom came to town and treated me to old lady dinner. I call it “old lady” cuz we ate at 4pm. It was the early, early bird special.  We went for dessert at what should have been dinner time, did some quick and I mean quick shopping cuz I was beat and then went home and talked and chilled for the rest of the night. It was a quiet b’earthday, but just what I needed after all of that.

The next day my mom went home and then I started to notice my body.  Not only was I exhausted, but I was having numbness or dull tingling in my left finger, shoulder and leg. Then sometimes it would move to the right side.  I just thought it would subside and sometimes it did. Some days were better than others, but it never really went away.

By Thanksgiving I was sort of in a panic because it wasn’t subsiding. My blood pressure was fine, but I found a community acupuncture spot near my mom, which helped me get through till I got back to New York.  I really didn’t know what was up.  Back in New York, I went to see my friend who is an acupuncturist and told her what was going on. After talking for a while she says, “It sounds like grief. Have you lost anyone lately?” I was quick to say, “No I haven’t lost…” and then I stopped. OMG, I had lost! What was I talking about? Because I was in labor I hadn’t had time to properly mourn any of those five losses that happened damn near in the span of less than two weeks. I couldn’t stop the push and now here I was in grief. The numbness and out of the blue sadness. Grief.  She needled me and I rested and I started to feel. I can’t quite say better, but I just started to feel…something. 

So here we are at the end and I’m trying to wrap my head around the beginning.  Earlier this month someone reminded me that I played at the Apollo Theater this year. That was THIS YEAR! I played Lincoln Center (two times!), I released the single “Punanny Politixxx,” I performed with Meshell N’dgeocello. I played at the Brooklyn Museum (two times!), I performed on B-Side on BRIC TV, I was on the Sweet Spot radio show (two times!), I sang with Climbing Poetree, I hosted the sweat lodge, was a featured artists with the Resistance Revival Chorus, I performed the Sparkle Soundtrack with my Black Rock Coalition fam and also…

…I lost my dear  brother Buddy Cooper and my dear sister and friend Dumeha Vernice Thompson, both to cancer. Breathe… Feel….Carry on…kinda…

We shot the video for “Punanny Politixxx,” co-hosted a yoga retreat in Carriacou, was featured guest again with the Resistance Revival Chorus and then…the Life Celebration for Dumeha…Dance…Breathe…Feel…Carry on…kinda…

…I started Momentum Education (ask me about it) and declared my album would be out on Nov. 6th, played TAMAfest, celebrated Black Women in Rock & Punk at Afropunk and shared the stage with Angela Davis and Nona Hendryx (sit with that), performed in the play, “The Dark Girl Chronicles” at Colgate University, beamed as my baby cousin got married on the Vineyard, Rocked Restoration in honor of Aretha Franklin and now we are back to where we first found our shero, at San Francisco State. What a year.  

Afropunk

2018 was so wonderful. I mean gosh, look at all that went down. I met and performed with Angela Davis for Christ sake! My year could have stopped right there and I would have been golden.  But it was also laced with sadness on many levels, some I have shared here and some I have not, but there have been things that have rocked me to my core and sometimes I find myself still rockin’, looking for answers, trying to understand. The older I get the more I know that every year is this way. Every year has its ups and downs. Some years have more ups than downs and vice versa, but this year for me felt wildly up and wildly down.  So many things that I thought I was done with came back to the surface and I had to work through the pieces that I had pushed to the recesses of my heart, mind and spirit.  “You can’t hide from yourself/everywhere you go/there you are.” That’s what Teddy P. said and he was 100% correct.  You can lie to get by, but the truth will all rear its head and you will have to face her one day, way, or another.

I refuse to take this junk with me into the next turn of the sun.  The winter is about dreaming in the dark so I am about this business of letting go and creating a big life for myself. One with so much LOVE, joy, fun, sex, laughter, cuddles, kisses, travel, health, food, wealth, friends and family that no matter what comes around the corner to try and rock me, I will be solid in love from the inside and out.

I kept a gratitude journal all year and I will continue that practice into the next and the next.  I am in deep gratitude for all the things and people that showed up in my life this year. Whether friend or frenemy, I thank you.  You came in for a reason, thank you, but in 2019 I’m gonna have to usher some of ya’ll out! Ha! But I know that the only way to move through is to understand that there are lessons in the challenging spaces. We just have to be open to receiving them so we can step into to our greatness.  I am stepping into mine and I see you stepping as well, into the light.  The past is gone just as quickly as you read this post.  The only thing we have is NOW and that's where the power is.  I dare you to be present in it. 

Happy New Year! Let’s get this _________________ !

(you fill in your dream)

Happy New Year!