.: A Final "Happy Birthday" For a Friend....

Thursday, March 09, 2006

A Final "Happy Birthday" For a Friend....

Turning 30 was pretty hard vs turning 40 which was actually quite a satisfying experience. 40 is the age when you have come to terms with who you are, and what your purpose in the world will be. There is a quiet confidence that comes over you, as you not only know what you want but you know just what needs to be done to get it. This weekend marks what would have been Montice's 40th Birthday and on saturday 20+ people will meet up at Pronto's in Royal Oak to celebrate the day that Montrice had so looked forward too. Just a couple of weeks before he passed this summer, Montrice and Corey had signed for their first home...

While they have always had fantastic apartments and homes...which Monty had fantastically decorated to perfection, this was going to be their first owned home and while Corey has done a great job decorating it, I can only imagine just what influence Monty would have brought to it!

Montrice, Corey, Marcus and Magic all at my 40th Birthday party. Compared to my 37th my 40th Birthday was a fun comfortable gathering of friends. I remember Montrice commenting to me that night that he was looking forward to his 40th, then 6 years in the future. "It was going to be a big ole party!"

Turning 37 with Ben and Montrice... and happier times.

Perhaps the penultimate birthday for me as an adult was my 37th. It had been a double celebration, not only my birthday but as I had come out at the age of 27...my tenth year in the life! Montrice and friends were all there and before the evening ended (around 5am) over 400 people had walked through our door! Turns out a good friend who had also been DJing on the radio that night had extended an invite over the air... But hey it was all good as I was to drunk to care...I was like wow look at all my new friends!

The months since Montrice's passing have not been easy for many of us and our circle of friends, infact people have had to deal with allot that they didn't think they would. It seems to be that Montrice was the glue that quietly held us all together and seemingly in his absence the tapestry of friendships/ relationships has become a little frayed. We owe it to Montrice to find away to come together and find new ways to carry on. A final present for a friend who has turned 40 in our hearts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: I really like what you are doing here.

good stuff!

kmj
www.getmad.ca; 5:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Chris,

This is beautiful. I miss my best friend so much sometimes. I hope all your readers never take any of their relationships for granted. Talk things out, even if you get mad at each during the talk. After it's all done, your relationship will survive and be better for it.

It was such an honor to be Monty's friend. He was truly a sweetheart.

be blessed my brother.

Lewis; 1:44 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.

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"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