Tag: news

Matthew Eilar1 Comment

Frank Ocean – We All Try

A couple of hours ago, I got completely blindsided by my emotional reaction to a piece of news, gossip really. The R&B and Hip Hop blogosphere has been buzzing over a Tumblr post by Frank Ocean in which he, in poetry and elipses, comes out as gay or bisexual (the Tumblr post is a screenshot of a TextEdit window, click here for a more readable version). And I was immediately flooded with such happiness.

I think it’s really hard to get a read of what a person is like from their music. It’s so much easier to convey an attitude, a pose, to name your opposites. To really convey what your soul is like… that’s more difficult and is possibly too revealing, too open for some artists. But when Frank Ocean sings, “i still believe in man/a wise one asked me why/cause i just don’t believe we’re wicked /i know that we sin but i do believe we try” in “We All Try,” I completely believe him. And his enjoyment of life, in as-is condition, permeates his best songs* (We All Try, Strawberry Swing, Song for Women, Novacane).

*Caveat: based on his one record that I’ve listened to, nostalgia,ULTA.

He is also a capital-R Romantic. And that comes through in his post:

4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. WE spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I’d see him, and his smile. I’d hear his conversation and his silence until it was time to sleep. Sleep I would often share with him. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was no escaping, no negotiation with the feeling. No choice. It was my first love, it changed my life.

and that too made me happy. Because as acceptance has grown, coming out has become increasingly a non-event, and you hear so many repeated ideas (I’m gay, but that’s only a part of who I am as a person; I’m proud, but don’t consider myself a spokesperson; I never really considered myself in the closet) that it’s really refreshing to see Frank Ocean cut right to the heart of what separates us: falling in love with a man.

I sometimes think about what a ridiculous idea it is, that people that share a sexual orientation are a community. I shouldn’t have anything in common with gay people than I have with brown eyed people, or 6’1″ tall people. But we’re linked together by our time and context, by other’s assumptions and by our journeys to know ourselves. So though I may have little else in common, Frank Ocean speaks for me too when he says:

Before writing this I’d told some people my story. I’m sure these people kept me alive, kept me safe. Sincerely. These are the folks I wanna thank from the floor of my heart. Everyone of you knows who you are. Great humans, probably angels. I don’t know what happens now, and that’s alright. I don’t have any secrets I need kept anymore… I feel like a free man.

Happy Independence Day, Frank.

 

update: apple

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

Quick update to the Mike Daisey/Foxconn/Apple story I wrote about last week: The New York Times has written a long article about conditions in the factory and about Apple’s efforts to reduce labor violations in their supply chain. Two things that I thought were particularly noteworthy:

First, I thought it was very interesting that the article chose as its central human figure one of the relatively high-paid, skilled workers in the plant. The fact that this worker had high wages and extra perks relative to most of the other workers in the plant highlights the failure to protect workers from hazardous conditions as well as the callous way that large manufacturers treat the lives of their workers.

Also deeply fascinating was this selection of reader comments on the article from Caixin, a Chinese business magazine that the Grey Lady partnered with to publish the article in China. Granted, these comments come from people that both have internet access and are on a business magazine side, but they show the same range of opinions on the labor abuses that you would find in the US, from

Even though Apple should be ethically condemned, the key point is: whether the working conditions inside the factories are supervised by law. This (supervision) is the duty of judicial officers and labor unions. Now everything is driven only by G.D.P., so which government official would dare supervise those companies? They (the governments) have long reduced themselves to the servant of the giant enterprises.

to 

 By the way, construction workers and farmers are also living a harsh life in China, shall we also boycott housing and grains?

The This American Life episode struggled with this ambivalence; it’s true that China’s mass manufacturing industry has raised more people out of poverty than any other endeavor/period in history, but its also true that this has come at a staggering human cost. The queasy discomfort that we feel at buying these products is also felt by the countries that sell them.