COOL IS A FOUR LETTER WORD - PART 2

Second part of an essay on the seductive destruction this aesthetic can create

 

When people tell stories of Miles Davis it tends to paint him as an inscrutable genesis with a raspy voice and intimidating manner, a figure not easy to get close to or understand. Yet the man who would sometimes play with his back to the audience, which many interpreted as an act of contempt, embraced his listeners with performance of aching romanticism, suggesting a profound gentleness behind the cool pose. The recordings that made Miles an icon – “My Funny Valentine,” ‘Kind of Blue,’ ‘Sketches of Spain’ – all reveal a vulnerability that seduced souls and spoke to a soft interior his bespoke suits worked like armor to protect.

Vulnerability has been a fraught concept among black males in America, because being perceived as vulnerable is not the optimal condition to confront life in a country where access to resources is difficult, predatory behavior is rewarded, and the threat of violence, both government sanctioned and from your “brothers,” is a constant.

To toughen each other up back in the day men used “the dozens,” a form of verbal attack on friends that callused your emotions and sharpened your wit. In the hip hop era that has been replaced by ciphers or rap battles where you slice up other MCS with your tongue. There are few things seemingly less about being vulnerable that entering a circle and talking trash about someone standing just a few feet away from you.

But, to me, the underneath all the bravado is the soul of the fearful. By rhyming aggressively, you bury your weaknesses, insecurities, and fears under a layer of beats and boasts. Behind every threatening rhyme is a man fearful of others. Behind every “bitch” or “hoe” a man speaking his resentment at how much desire for women overwhelms him. Dissin’ a rival crew disguises the sneaking suspicion that your crew isn’t an tough as your rivals. Hip hop, like many expressions of masculinity, is often a vehicle for camouflaging fear. It’s a place where claims of invincibility are a cloak for a tenderness that could, you fear, could make you prey. There’s something profoundly animal in all this, like a dog growling at another canine circling the same bone.

I don’t blame people for these acts of verbal self-protection. It’s as mode that’s been employed by boxers, dictators, and demi-Gods for centuries. Maybe it’s just in our DNA. However, it is the redundancy of the boasts that reveals the hollowness of the claims. If you can talk the world into fearing you, then you can certainly convince yourself.

But this tacit can backfire violently. Every African-American neighborhood has too many tragic stories of words leading to destructive action. The man who feels he or his woman or family is disrespected runs out to his car at the basketball court or barbecue to grab his gun out of the glove compartment to confront his tormentor is a tale too often told. The violence that ensues scares too many lives. All in the name of a fear of being emasculated the shooter can’t accept. 

The fact is the very vulnerability that this act strives to protect is, in fact, the thing keeping his soul alive. The healthiest men I know can pull down that mask of self-protection and willful delusion to express the totally of their humanity. That mask only protects you for so long.