.: Contemplating Memorial Day 2007

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Contemplating Memorial Day 2007

"Freedom Never Cries"

I took a flag to a pawn shop
For a broken guitar
I took a flag to a pawn shop
How much is that guitar
I took a flag to a pawn shop
I Got me that guitar
What's a flag in a pawn shop to me?

I Saw a man on the TV
In a mask with a gun
A man on the TV
He had a ten-year old son
I Saw a man on the TV
His son had a gun
He says that he's coming for me

I never loved the soldier until there was a war
Or thought about tomorrow
'til my baby hit the floor
I only talk to God when somebody's about to die
I Never cherished Freedom

Freedom never cries.

I Wrote a song for a dead man
To settle my soul
A song for a dead man
Now I'll never grow old
I Wrote a song for a dead man
Now I'm out in the cold
What's a song to a dead man to me?

I never loved the soldier until there was a war
Or thought about tomorrow
'til my baby hit the floor
I Only talk to God when somebody's about to die
I Never cherished Freedom

Freedom never cries...

You can cry for her
Die for her
Lay down your life for her
Kiss and wave Goodbye to her
Anything at all

You can cry for her
Die for her
Make up your mind to her
Anything at all

There's a baby on the doorstep
Wailing away
There's a baby on the doorstep
Longing for the day
There's a baby on the doorstep
Who'd give his life to take
A flag to a pawn shop
A flag to a pawn shop

May he forget why he is crying some day

Only when you leave America for a length of time can you understand what it means to be an American.
In Canada I hear it all the time just what the world thinks of America and I will not use these words to debate other people impressions of my homeland. It's not perfect by any means and it never claimed to be. In fact America is a country made up of millions of people who have come to its shores to make a better life for themselves. Millions of people still want to come to America even with its history of slavery, even with its treatment of minorities they still want to come. Over the past few years there has been many reasons to question what is America about today. We prosecute a war in a land where we are not wanted while simultaneously asked not to leave. We have had a picture painted that this war is about preserving our higher ideals, that we are preserving our freedom, bringing freedom to their part of the world, regardless of their beliefs and culture and in return have put our people between a rock and a hard place. Most Americans recognize that we have no business in Iraq, that we have been manipulated into a war for reasons beyond our own comprehension. We want our soldiers to come home... We want them to come home with dignity. Some in Washington think this can only happen with a victory that the rest of us realize is way past possible. With all good intent we have lost this war, and its time to come home. For the men and Women who serve we should give nothing but thanks for their service as they have served with honor and dignity, they didn't go on their own they followed orders and can not be faulted for following those orders. Let us not do what we did when they came home from Vietnam. It is a time where our pride has and will be tested. I have suffered watching from the outside, but I still love my country, its many contributions to the world, and its people who for better or worse have made the idea of America work.

Note: All images and text (not specified) is copyrighted by Christopher Cushman. The images are from Memorial weekend 2003 in Washington DC with the exception of the Arlington photograph which was photographed for the Not Just Numbers Project. Lyrics are from the band Five For lighting's album Two Lights...2006

1 comment:

Morisset said...: Beautiful post Chris!

I was in the first gulf war, Operation Desert Storm. I know what it's like to be in a war you don't believe in. I feel for our troops. As much patriotism the government tries to force feed us, I know these brave young men and women want to be home with their families. I know that feeling, and it hurts. I can only pray that this war doesn't get worse, before it gets better.
Thanks for the post...

--Ocean; 10:13 PM

The Dance Through Life Project

Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

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Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

FIERCE! Being Black, Being Gay in America

"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

The importance of Fierce is paramount: all men are created equal, and share a space on earth. These portraits of men have to be recognized as God’s beauty and not His damnation. Time will thank those who were strong and dared enough to express themselves for all to see and appreciate in a manner that’s loving and creative. Time will also thank us for not living in a paranoid state of mind, and afraid of our own shadows. Remember, this cluster of work isn’t Robert Mappelthope’s approach to black imagery, but the approach of documenting men as they wanted to be seen: with and without sexual stimulation, for shock value."

Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com