On Star Wars, hip-hop, and still finding my way, part 1
This will be relatively messy for most of you, and I apologize for that, truly.
I don’t know how it couldn’t be, considering how powerfully connected I feel to Star Wars. Well, not truly all of Star Wars. Not all of the community of fans, if such a gathering exists. And, honestly, not connected to all of the various tribes of beings, star systems, droids, beasts, ideologies and ways of that universe. Certainly, I have watched all of the films, and read all of the works, and as I prepare to say goodbye to the Skywalker saga, I am living a full constellation of emotions, they swirl, and I attend to each.
Sometime after 8p.m. tomorrow evening, I will have seen the conclusion of this saga, and I will most certainly feel some sense of loss, and elation, overlapping. I will feel some sense of guilt at having escaped into the galaxy I love, and losing myself in it, while there is so much work to be done and so many problems of my tribe and nation family that need attending to. I will feel relieved at having finished the journey, and having read the books, and having argued the importance of the narrative over the quality of any one film in the saga. I will maintain that Nomi Sunrider is the greatest Jedi to have ever lived, and that Yoda and the Jedi are to blame for Vader, and I will blame and forgive Anakin in equal parts, obsess over every plot detail long after the credits have rolled, and will meet with my Nerd clan and perform my duties as an Otaku. I will know joy, but very little peace. This is as it has always been with me and Star Wars.
Star Wars found me at a time of great tumult. I had seen episodes IV, V and VI as a child, and enjoyed all three individually, and as a whole. I realized throughout, that these films were more than simple cinema and entertainment. There was struggle and dogma. Lucas was shouting something. I felt meditation in parts of each film, and rage at powerlessness, and resentment and structure. I wondered why those powerful space Samurai had been extinguished, and why the Force would will such a thing. I wondered what Vader felt behind that great mask and armor. He remained something of an enigma to me, right up until his end. I wondered aloud about why I struggled so with my feelings about Luke, and why something about the Emperor…
Even while epic and grand and profound, those episodes did not wash over and live with me. Not in my childhood. They were there, and I would regularly pull those files, bits of each, and examine them, but I would replace them on my cognitive shelf not long after.
Then, while in Atlanta, while working at the AMC at Phipps Plaza, episode 1 came. And, I pulled those files yet again, in anticipation.
And here was the first salvo into my emotional space. Here was Darth Maul. And Palpatine. And the Jedi, alive and thriving, and thrust headlong into the conflict that would bring them the Chosen One, and there was Mace, and Yariel Poof, and Oppo, and Plo Koon and…through three episodes which I viewed every chance I could get. From the midpoint in my college career on through the latter portion of my graduate school matriculation, I lived and grew with Anakin, and saw him becoming Vader, and felt…betrayed.
Not by Vader, and not even truly by Lucas, or my fellow fanatics. I didn’t feel betrayed by the countless books and compendiums, and graphic novels and the amazingly brilliant Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon (I do not acknowledge the Cartoon Network Clone Wars), and not by the ending or the various battles or subtle and flagrant shifts in ideology. No. I felt betrayed by what Star Wars said to me about the condition of being, and my own human condition, and on the maddeningly broad questions it was asking right in front of me, and us.
As a young adult, with the first three episodes before me, and with the next three already artifacts, what I found myself struggling with was the question of purpose and relatedness. I had decided that I needed to work in the service of others by then, but I watched on screen as those space Samurai, the heroes, with their laser swords, discovered the Chosen One, and then alienated him, and distrusted him, and refused him, and essentially chased him, insecure and young and bewildered, into the arms of the greatest villain who has ever lived.
The Emperor. Even with Palpatine, I began to struggle with my sense of whether he was truly a villain, learning what I learned of the cracked and toxic foundation of the Republic, and the Jedi’s inflexible view of their relationship to that Republic, and these great space Samurai reminded me so of the liberal, ineffectual SJWs I would see wandering about, addicted to their sense of moral superiority, while their vile, hate spewing opposite number appeared to be most concerned with power, and influence and doing and winning.
I thought of my upbringing, and feeling so very aware, and ready and talented enough to do something, but having so little access, and so few resources, and a broken father, and so many children around me marching toward any number of inevitabilities, and trying to do anything within reach to cope with the awful and shameful absurdity of it all. I thought of much of the resentment I felt some days, at being beaten and shouted into the shape of something resembling a “good person”, given a religion, and a supposed road map, and no guarantee of safety or respite.
That, all of it, is why Anakin sung to me. Here was this emerald child, made to abandon his mother, and told that he would do great things, rejected, loathed and loved in equal measure, made a warrior by a tribe of Samurai Monks, and fully misunderstood by every being who ever met him.
Vader was inevitable, given all of this. I was able to draw and pull my way through those threads of meaning. I was left with the question of whether to use the things I was learning, and my degrees and skills and training for myself, or toward the benefit of all those born into that vice grip, like myself. I was faced with the question posed to all Jedi, and all Sith, and all of those who scratch and claw toward something, some meaning, some purpose. Why should I do this for anyone but me?
Vader, the Force, the Emperor, all became a focus. The black suit and red lightsaber became a haunting avatar for me. I had to exhaust myself to keep from deciding that my long neglected community cared nothing about me, and that I was not singularly appreciated enough as some version of a hero able to save something, someone, somewhere. I had to decide, actively, how to make meaning of my life, given the anger and estrangement I often felt. I wanted more sex, more attention, more access, and knew a laughing Emperor, and so many who echoed his dogma here, near me, who had an answer. They offered answers. I felt the pull. Resisted. Allowed the temptation, and its opiates, to wash over me.
I determined, unequivocally, that Vader was a victim, and that I was a victim. And that countless gifted Black boys and girls, those fit to save us all, this whole world, those most able and knowing, were being undernourished by both the heroes, so called, and the villains, so called. These buzzing thoughts, these obsessions, remained with me. Fueled me. I crafted my own personal bible based on what all meaning I took from the universe. I had, somewhere in the corner of my person, a Black suit ready. I feared it but could not bring myself to discard it. I can’t see it now, but still wonder if I simply came ot hide it from myself, knowing myself.
At some point I started watching the films, while playing a diversity of hip-hop albums. It didn’t seem odd to me, it was the same thing me and the bros used to do with martial arts films when we were kids.
“Illmatic” was always my choice on repeat for Episode 3. Both were loud, messy, bombastic classics, works of art, and the protagonist in each was young, misunderstood, promising, angry. There was a poetry to the fall of Jedi Skywalker that kept time with the traumatic awakening of Nasir. Neither were quite ready for what either of their Order’s was asking of them. Each presented, on screen and on wax, remarkably flawed children, precocious, beautifully so, but you feared doom, for each. For Nas, how could he ever replicate this masterpiece again? For Anakin, how could he save the galaxy? For Nas, how could he be the Chosen One and carry hip-hop forward toward evolution? One Love is playing nearly every time the battle between Dooku and Anakin commences. The one where he beheads him, where he is manipulated by a Sith, and gives in to his anger, and kills a former Jedi, and saves another…there is a symmetry to that sequence and that song.
I listen to a combination of Jay Electronica and old Tribe Called Quest to the Force Awakens, and play “The Symphony” at the start of Episode 4. Dr. Dre’s Chronic typically rides along with Episode 2, as each the film and the sounds, feel foreign to me in ways, but neighbors with one another. There is bass and war, and hubris and conflict. They appear made for one another half way through each.
Hip-hop came to mean so much to me as it was the most refined means of speaking to the experience I was growing with. It is the rumbling megaphone of our lives, and is within reach. I could tap in to it, and its sound, very like the Force. At some point, hip-hop became fully self aware, and tethered much of itself to commerce and the theater of masculinity and a packaging of our suffering and neglect, that I found distasteful. The culture, had become the Republic. Many of my favorite MCs, some form of Jedi.
I couldn’t remove myself or transform any of the love I felt, however. There were still so many Yodas (KRS-One), and Obi Wans (Tribe Called Quest)and Agen Kolars (Wu Tang Clan) and Sasee Tiins (Kendrick Lamar) that I valued, and who demonstrated a continued understanding of us, and how many of us were fighting, and drowning, but believing, through them, in that higher self waiting, that Force, and the ability to do good, even while struggling with the prospect.
As this latest trilogy winds down, and I prepare my own emotional goodbye, I will search myself for that suit. I hope that I lost it somewhere along the way. I hope that I have forgiven and made peace with all of my own traumatic past, and can affirm that all of the good I do for others is all of the grounding that I need.
I fully believe that there are Force sensitives, of which I am one. You don’t emerge from the chrysalis formed around me in my life without a certain something, and I am not alone in having it.
I will remind myself that Vader ultimately is a choice. It is a choice driven by human need and failing, and anxiety, and displacement, but it is a choice, nonetheless. I will not promise that I won’t form a new suit someday, and that I won’t build a dual sided saber fitted with red crystals, and that I wont produce lightning ( I already write that fire, so…), but I can promise that I will keep these grand tales in mind. And I will balance what I have learned against what I will do. The greatest lesson in all of these first 8 chapters, quite simply, is to always try, then do, and I shall.
What the films taught me, was to look again. To see that my community, and girls, then women, and our elders, mean in no way to neglect any one of us. We are all working from near deficit every day trying to survive and process our own version of the Empire or First Order. I had to refuse the ease with which I could personalize the life happenings that I had conceived of as failures and rejection. I looked many more times and saw that many in my tribe, brothers nearest me, and sister friends, and family systems began to move closer to me, and my words, and effort and energy, to be understood and healed. I had to see past the self toward something greater, I am grateful for Star Wars for that. I am grateful for the journal that is hip-hop. I have obligations, and pieces of art that help me to ground myself as I see to those.
Most importantly, as I saw younger and younger brothers moving toward my spaces to find peace, and purpose, and understanding, I had to ask, out loud, if I were Anakin, then where was my Palpatine. And in seeing how many elder brothers and sisters had given me their blessing and teachings and granted me equal status, I had to see that there was no Palpatine, no Emperor, no shadow in a cloak. I had to examine that I was, and am, fully self aware of my motives and voice, and impact on the young of my tribe, so the potential Palpatine, should I not stay the course and examine my steps, would be me.
In part 2, let’s talk a bit about these lies we tell around good and evil, and how much we project, and Mos Def is quite clearly Sith, so…I hope that you all enjoy the closing act of the saga. Walk Good.
