Archive | City Matters
The Church of Mark Morris & Noels Past
Yesterday morning I woke to a clean house. This may not be a big deal to some, but because I live and work and often cook at home, and because I was not raised to be Martha Stewart (or even Erma Bombeck), things can get fairly psychotic by Friday of every week. I used to loll around the apartment the whole weekend, too oppressed by the mess to address it. Only on Sunday night would I finally lumber to my feet and grab a sponge–and then just because I couldn’t face a new week with the detritus of the last one still holding me hostage.
There was nothing especially restful about the cycle.
Something shifted in me this year. I suppose I should say, “I shifted something in me” because overall I underwent an enormous growth spurt, and it is my observation that adults only experience growth when they pursue it rather than passively await it.
The upshot is that, no matter how tired I am on Fridays now, I straighten up my house before I go to bed. It’s the least I can do for Future Lisa, who deserves to exist unfettered by the squalor of Lisa Past. So now I clean the way you’d fold a beloved child’s clothing: with concentrated fondness and a profound patience. If I want an iteration of me to thrive in the soft, sweet order for which I clamored as a little girl, I’ve resolved that I must carve out that space. Continue Reading →
The Ragged Glory of ‘Chi-Raq’
Nobody crafts an opening credits sequence like Shelton “Spike” Lee. In “She’s Gotta Have It,” photo stills of old-school Brooklyn are accompanied by his father, the legendary jazz composer Bill Lee. BK local Rosie Perez busts out her hip hop-boxing moves to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” at the start of “Do the Right Thing.” “Clockers” starts with a montage of taped-off Gowanus crime scenes as Marc Dorsey sings “People in Search of a Life.” Kids run through the Crayola-hued streets of 1970s Fort Greene as The Stylistics sing “People Make the World Go Round” in “Crooklyn.” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” begins with the gorgeously fluid dancing of Charles “Lil Buck” Riley set against the Red Hook waterfront. It’s one of the auteur’s many signatures: that big, beautiful heart worn proudly on his sleeve from the moment he fires each film’s starting pistol.
Relatively speaking, the opening credits sequence of “Chi-Raq” is pretty straight-up. I suspect this is not just because it is set in Chicago but because Spike is grinding his biggest axe since 2006’s very fine “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” which channeled the righteous anger of New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. In bold, primary hues, the lyrics of “Pray for My City” – It’s Chi-Raq and my city’s lost/ I can’t fall victim to Satanflash – flash across the screen as they’re rapped by Nick Cannon, who plays the film’s titular character, the head of a fictional gang known as the Spartans. His street moniker stems from Chicago’s insidious nickname, which references that the number of the city’s homicides surpasses the number of American soldiers dead in Iraq. Continue Reading →