broken windows theory & the sale of "safety"

i'm trying to do a better job of recording my thoughts as i read, so hopefully this high traffic, much lusted after blog will return 2 some kind of wack fervor.  yesterday i spent a good chunk of time reading through the first portion of essays in Policing the Planet, a book that examines the broader impact of broken windows style policing.  i first came into contact with this methodology when i was a college writing tutor for a class that read malcolm gladwell's "broken windows theory." in the essay, gladwell, whose neoliberal pop sociology is legitimately shocking to read now, confidently asserts that broken windows policing accounts for the decrease in violent crime in 90s nyc.  i absolutely refuse to fully revisit this essay but i remember a particularly infuriating section where--using the logic of broken windows policing--the new head of the transit authority bucks the trend of going after "violent criminals" in favor of cracking down on fare jumpers.  in the process, countless young people enter into the criminal system for a simple act of poverty or teen rebellion.  the head of transit is celebrated for making the system of arresting young fare beaters at a faster rate than ever and contributing to the ceaseless proliferation & substantiation of transit policing.

to get a fuller picture of the reality of broken windows policing, i include Robin D.G. Kelley's definition in the first section of Policing the Planet.  he writes:

"First elaborated in a 1982 essay by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, "broken windows" placed the blame for urban decay on the social values and behaviors of poor, primarily Black people. It argued that criminals flourished in deteriorating, disorderly neighborhoods, and that disrespect for one's community led to disrespect for authority and the law. As long as ghetto residents lacked concern for the condition of their neighborhoods, crime would run rampant; small infractions would become gateways to violent crime. Ignoring the structural factors that suppressed home values, perpetuated health and environmental catastrophes, and divested neighborhoods of essential services, jobs, government programs, and legal protections, broken windows theory blamed culture and immorality for crime and, in turn, poverty." (25)

Kelley's essay "Thug Nation" had so many thought-provoking moments for me.  the first was the assertion that criminal justice system expansion was not just the product of "a sharp right wing turn" post WWII but also a part of a liberal wave of protecting African Americans from, "mob violence, to quell urban rebellions, and to address what were perceived as rising crime rates following the triumph of desegregation" (21).  we see this same relationship between myopic liberal "good will" and unintended (depending on how you look at it) carceral consequences in Christina B. Hanhardt's essay "Broken Windows at Blue's" where she outlines hate crime legislation intended to protect LGBTQ+ people, part of the same pre-packaged idea of safety sold to rich white NYCers (straight & gay alike) in gladwell's essay.  all fueled by development revenue, of course.  as long as safety is defined & implemented by the state, it remains something as fatal to marginalized people as the interpersonal violence it forces & inspires.  Hanhardt ends her essay on a similar note: "the promises of solidarity offer much more than those of safety, and provide a collective alternative to solutions defined within rather than against the market" (61). a beautiful reminder that solidarity is an active, engaged process that finds its pulse in the margins--that our power will flourish in the spaces capital has long since abandoned.

Kelley uses the phrase "broken bodies policing" to talk about the fundamentally antiBlack police state & the meager differences between the way police officers see Black & brown folks vs they way they see the more frequently marginalized & overpoliced communities they exist in.  marginalized/overpoliced people are seen as products of their communities & neighborhoods except when it comes to individual criminality. broken windows policing asserts that an environment creates crime but the culprit is an individual then it refuses to put money toward what could fundamentally improve the community writ large.  policing logic in these scenarios is such that it simply points to its own actions in communities as evidence of both "crime" (a creation of policing itself) and "efficacy" (departments monitor & create their own stats) & gives no consideration to the actual ripples these practices have.  everything is so overwhelmingly circuitous.  broken windows policing opens up a self-fulfilling prophecy, like any other targeted tactic of policing.  a concentration of poorly trained, armed agents of "safety" with quotas and militant mindset are themselves the thing ruining a community & their presence & its necessary "success" only calls in more--more officers, more armaments, more arrests & violence.

i am thinking through the way criminalizing the person results in the creation of queer identity, as Christina Hanhardt begins to parse out in her article and as i've long thought about in my ongoing attempts to understand the pathologization/criminalization of lesbian existence in the 50s.  the way lesbianism is made REAL first through the purview of the state--how it is made medically diagnosable & legally incriminating.  i think, too, perhaps the only identity category to move in & out of legality in such a clear-cut way is gay/lesbian.  or maybe this example is just more available to me as someone who begrudgingly holds (& drops?) it.  i love when Hanhardt cites Times Square being called a place of "sin & decay."  i hope 2 exist in this world as such, a grand site of sin & decay--to exist in & toward ruin.

Hanhardt posits that in striving to become a community of "normal" people, white rich gays defined themselves against other functionally criminalized minorities (Black/brown folks, the poor, those w/ health issues) to prove their inherent "goodness" & normalcy.  this, though, is a product of social order & organization & the fulfillment of the state's initial labelling of lgbtq+ folks as a criminal "other."  the project realizes its ultimate goal when queers are able to act w/ the best interests of the state--to become productive employees, to raise children, create legible family unites, produce capital, pay taxes, & bolster gentrification efforts.  Hanhardt writes, "in many of these campaigns in recent years, activists have shown how the regulation of behavior deemed to be non-normative can be tightly entwined with real estate interests," going on to highlight the deaths of Dontre Hamilton, Akai Gurley, and Eric Garner.  she continues, "the real threats are not those individuals whose lives are considered to be at a distance from dominant 'norms,'"  quoting Cara Page (Audre Lorde Project) and Krystal Portalatin (FIERCE):

"[they are] when banks are allowed to engage in predatory practices that target communities of color and force groups to remain in poverty; when Detroit can declare bankruptcy on a city of mostly black communities and then take away basic rights such as water; when corporations are allowed to abuse other countries and depress US economies; when the US military continues to back and support Israel's oppression of Palestinian people and land" (60)

in a punitive and carceral world, normalcy means violence. thinking alongside Hanhardt, i have so many questions about the way my queerness has been "sold" to me.  how my desire & position have been created outside of any desire & position i might hold within.  in thinking about broken windows policing, i still cannot get over the transparency its name offers in the priorities of policing.  when private property is held in such regard that its disrepair, its brokenness, is the only root cause the police state is willing to acknowledge for any of society's struggles.  & while we expect the police to deny the reality of their impact on communities, it is more perplexing then that folks like malcolm gladwell might actually buy into this logic as well.  that to some a broken window might be seen as more of a call for harmdoing than a police officer drawing their gun.  that the end of all harm could ever be a single arrest for a skipped fare instead of asking why there are monetary limitations on how we move through the world.  i am looking forward to continuing to move through this book & reading more by Hanhardt & Kelley.

my beautiful laundrette (1985) & love island (US, s2e1; 2020)

sometimes i get in a mood where i just wanna suck down a movie & have no thoughts about it & this mood might be labeled depression but it is a kind of wasteful luxury, too, to just pop in & out of a different world. a disassociative pleasure amidst everything that's been going on.  alas after many months of this exact approach to all things, i am back to my thinkin man's blog...may the sweet waters of my words touch your lips like the first rainfall after a ten year drought.

last night i marathoned two complementary masterpieces--my beautiful laundrette & the first episode of the newest season of love island.  yes, two sides of the same coin.  my beautiful laundrette is literally about a beautiful laundrette in a way that i could not have anticipated.  even the soundtrack is some sort of menacing sudsy synthpop thing that sounds like margaret thatcher peering out from behind an overflowing washer. a weird sinister subtext for a movie that presents moments of violence w/ a cavalier attitude & moments of joy as the most natural form of resolution. it's an out of touch optimism that wrenches itself out of reality 2 make room for bliss. viewers are moved between somewhat heavy handed scenes about race (South Asian diasporic tension meets fash 80s white nationalism & something very British at that) and heavier handed scenes about capitalism but ultimately, everything returns to the laundrette--its beauty, its grace, its huge and unnecessary neon sign. u can disappear in this perfect laundromat, it seems to say. 

the plot of this film at one point becomes that two gay men have spent too much money renovating a laundrette and have to figure out how to pay it back (lol! classic!! we love it).  this conflict resolves very quickly, however, and we return to the central tensions of difference--the three-pronged romeo & juliet scenario that is so impossible neither party looks to place the label "love" on what they're feeling. for both men, the laundrette is a ticket out of the middle class that requires 24/7 vigilance (& direct acts of violent oppression, too, we see in Johnny kicking the man asleep on one of the benches). it's like any other act of existing in a higher bracket of privilege than society is ready to afford you.  i guess the primary way of reading queerness in this film is that it's the only thing that refuses to reify the nation-state & all of its socioeconomic boundaries, but there's something to be said abt how the coupling inside of queerness creates a space to uphold and build upon these ideals anyway. but i'm not goin in to that folks im just here to talk about a movie

love in this film--like a lot of its other crimes--is casual, uncommented upon. the desire is a little muted. it was strange to watch both this and the handmaiden this week--two movies w/ queer characters that don't depend on the push & pull of will-they-wont-they touches & glances. there are a few great moments of stolen kisses--when Johnny licks Omar's neck secretly in front of his skinhead friends or when the two hold hands before departing a party under the guise of bro-y connection. there's a lot of queer proximity throughout the film, part of it being all of the masculine posturing in Omar's father & uncles taking the form of sexual bragging.  but ultimately there is a loudness to everything but the sex in this movie. the first kiss is sudden and confusing for viewers but so is desire, i suppose, especially when it operates against all of the boundaries of the world

we're told Omar's father is a socialist but he's mostly just an asshole with ptsd and alcoholism.  the politics of characters are all over the place--pretty indecipherable.  everyone's doped out--all bombast & out of character one second and quiet the next.  tonally, it's hard to know what this movie wanted me to feel and maybe that's the point.  it's a world w/ no good options.  we learn that love is either impossible or, simply put, transactional financial security.  that hate is a more vibrant unifier and agent of change.  that homosexuality isn't even enough of a consideration to be named or spoken of.  that laundrettes are hard to run and seem like low return financial ventures yet Omar's trying to get more of them???  the more Omar works on the laundromat, the more he becomes entrenched in and indebted to the ideals of his family.  & as the laundromat is the thin veneer under which he may reasonably spend time w/ his lover (all sex becoming workplace tangential), these modes & ideals dictate how he speaks to Johnny.  the movie closes abruptly (only 90 minutes), with another tonal shift letting us know everything will be ok but as long as the joy Johnny & Omar experience together happens inside the fucked microcosm of the laundrette, Margaret Thatcher wins.  may my 2 cents reign w/ the same ignorant authority.

i finished my beautiful laundrette thirsty for more TV & thought it finally time to put on the newest season of love island.  my beloved friend sondy's coworker will be appearing at some point during the season, so i am committed to supporting her in this trying endeavor of keeping up w/ love island--a show that airs 5x a week (a part time job if u will).  if u thought the microcosm of a launderette loaded w/ all the chaos of 80s British politics provided a stressful & wild underpinning for complicated love, u r really gonna blow ur top when u hear 2020 COVID fash implosion USA's love island is in fact a Vegas rooftop, overlooking our nation's stalled miniempire of expensive deflated thrills.  as devoted readers of my blog know, i recently went to vegas to experience a little love island of my own (a couple thousand ppl vying for the love being exuded from mariah carey's distinguished vocal chords) and since have received about 1400 emails from The Venetian Hotel aggressively advertising their great rates while the world around them burns.  temptation island? certainly. but love island no.

in its first episode, love island is a show where people are expected to look at each other and know instantly they have found love. five women stand in a pool of shallow water on a vegas rooftop--a doomsday scenario of sorts--awaiting their five suitors' arrival.  women are told to step forward if a man emerges from the "tunnel" (from where? we ask, looking at the bounds of the roof) who they'd like to couple up with, but no one ever does.  both parties stand mostly in silence.  sometimes the women take a pity step but the men are easily able to choose which woman they find the hottest without their guidance. perhaps the boldest takeaway of the first 20 minutes of love island is that all men--no matter how reality show perfect--are duds. repeatedly the host asks woman contestants why they didn't step forward.  small excuses like "he doesn't have facial hair" or "i don't like tattoos" are given in moments of dire panic by a group of women, who, even for how shallow the show wants them to be, join the rest of the world in being unable to picture the perfect or even a lovable man.  who are you waiting for?  the host asks again and one woman answers "a greek god." 

the host gives each man the opportunity to steal someone else's already-claimed girl while the disappointed women's eyes fill w/ panic as the men scan the crowd.  no one is safe on love island.  i can't help imagining myself--ME--on love island.  5 perfectly chiseled and outgoing men, 5 women w/ disney eyes who can't stop giggling, & me, a cartoon character of a human who has the vivacity of a comfort shoe.  one day i will make my reality tv debut, but in the meantime i crawl ever-closer to age 28--a kiss of death 2 my real(ity) youth.

the easiest way to make someone lose their mind might be to lock them in some kind of confined space and then repeatedly change the rules that govern their confinement.  love island producers know this and have perfected the craft.  contestants are immediately made insecure with the addition of a sixth man once everyone has paired up.  it is announced that he will steal someone's girl at the end of the next 24 hours.  psychotically, love island is equipped only with enough beds for couples to share.  our sixth man, alone in his bed, stares sadly into the distance as night falls. the other couples all sleep as far away from each other as possible on opposite ends of the beds.  somehow i am still watching this tv show even though the announcer is like a radio dj without any of the softening measures of airhorn blasts or fake crowd sound effects and i can't find distinguishing enough characteristics to remember anyone's names or faces.  two women who look exactly alike hug each other & tell each other how beautiful they are.  some men confess they've been spending more time getting to know each other than the ladies.  one couple is immediately friendzoned and there's a blatant racism underpinning everyone's choices that i am not prepared to unpack.  yes, even love island replicates the violent flaws of the world.

whether laundrette or rooftop, no space is truly a sanctuary for perfect love.  what we do know, however, is that hardship is the true breeding ground  for its escapist whims & distracting feelings.  perhaps it is no better time than covid to be locked on a roof with six sexy potential suitors.  i leave u with these thoughts as i attempt 2 cleanse love island from my mind.  have a lovely sunday.

mariah thoughts

Mariah telling us "no."

i dont know how 2 properly describe my love for mariah carey & have struggled for years.  folks,  when i listen 2 her sing, i am suspended in the spacetimecontinuum...an astronaut peacefully separated from the spacecraft, floatin away in the impossibility of octave jumps & whistled trills, high on hearing.  every note is a feeling 2 roll around in, in utero once again or strangled by what clda been. when u follow a diva, too, u feel electrified by the highs & lows of her career.  every moment operates at the precipice of comeback or defeat.  mariah's music has always had a bit of triumph embedded w/in which is maybe the easiest way 2 obtain me as eternal fan--underdog narrative.

the story goes as follows:  when mariah carey the album was released in 1990, the teenaged mariah was touted as both a new standard in the industry and a girl of questionable ability hiding behind the safety of studio recordings.  backed by a 1.5 million recording budget for the s/t, carey was championed by SONY head tommy motolla who assured the then-18-year-old he'd make her the next madonna or MJ.  for carey, whose childhood had been rough but filled w/ desire for this exact kind of success, this was too good 2 b true.  the world found this same kind of impossibility in carey's five-octave voice (especially when coupled w/ inexhaustible songwriting talents that have kept mariah in the billboard 100) & critics didn't believe that she was more than a studio artist.  after her second album dropped, mariah booked an appearance on mtv unplugged to assuage the haters.  until then, carey had insisted that the stress of touring would strain her voice, making only small appearances at award shows.  carey's unplugged episode led to a #1 single and became the most replayed unplugged episode on mtv for good reason--she had the pipes.

in the background, carey wed to motolla (twenty years her senior) whose emotional abuse would come to light years later.  fans have pieced together clues from more personal tracks--especially those on butterfly, carey's sixth album & the one she's deemed her magnum opus.  butterfly's strong venture into r&b, which motolla had kept carey from pursuing in the past, continues threads from daydream and pushes carey further into a genre-bending hybridization which revolutionized pop charts and provided her with the underpinnings of her biggest comeback--still to come.  one could say without this reinvention, carey would have been left in the 90s.

flash forward to 2001 and carey's soundtrack for her film glitter has released on 9/11, completely eclipsed by the tragedy of the day.  glitter's throwback flourishes were genius but ahead of their time & rumors of revenge by motolla, the general political/emotional climate, and carey's own mental health struggles, coupled with a movie that's basically a star is born set in 1983 (though isn't that terrible), resulted in a record that would drag carey's career down to its lowest depths.  i used to say "if mariah can get through glitter, we can make it through anything."

my extremely correct opinion is that glitter is full of fantastic vocal performances from mariah and a real treat for fans who wanted to hear mariah experiment a little, especially in the styles she grew up listening to/singing.  i think "didn't mean to turn you on" slaps & "lead the way" makes me cry--the ending man!!  i love mariah's lifelong friendship w/ da brat & i think they've always had great chemistry, so the loverboy remix is one of my all-time bops.  it's crazy when you listen to "if we" & know about the rumors that motolla manufactured jlo's "i'm real" to co-opt its initial backing sample.  heinous!!!  if you watch the infamous video of mariah showing up to TRL on the brink of breakdown, she walks onstage right after carson daily finishes airing "i'm real" w/ a "loverboy" tshirt & cart full of ice cream.  a few minutes in she says "all i want is one day off."  in 2018, carey would explain that during this period she was diagnosed with bipolar 2.  her hospitalization immediately following the TRL incident further tarnished her reputation as a "viable" pop star

carey's next album is one of my favorites, though many seem to hold it in even worse regards than glitter.  charmbracelet was released in 2002 to little fanfare & it's lead single "through the rain" a ballad about perserverence had very little chart presence.  i found charmbracelet during a time where i just wanted music 2 lull (suffocate?) me in2 some other sphere.  i used 2 listen to "my saving grace" as loud as i could while lying on the carpeted floor of the otherwise unstaffed office building i worked at, interrupted only by the ding of a UPS guy opening the front door.  "giving me strength when i / almost lost it all / catching my every fall"  charmbracelets r like nostalgia arsenals & this one is filled w/ the usual heartbreak, coping, redemption, diss tracks that mariah is known for--lush, luxurious even in its pain & always in its pleasure.  charmbracelet feels a little too safe at times, the act of someone really needing to have an album that erases the wild desires of glitter.  but it's not a bad album--not at all.  (it's worth mentioning, too, that the 00s occurred during mariah's 30s perhaps one of the trickiest transitional periods for female singers who have been "sexy" at any point--further complicating all matters.)

where does this lead us?  mariah of course returns to the billboard charts with a string of hits in the mid-00s, including 2005's "we belong together" which spent 14 weeks at number one.  she gets married, has kids, eventually faces a high profile divorce.  later in the decade, people begin to criticize her voice.  after years of overperforming--what carey had originally been afraid of--she gives some bad performances, mostly after insane back-to-back scheduling or while singing outside in east coast December weather, wearing the sexy outfits she can't seem to shirk.  justice for mariah carey might be that she gets to perform in her sweats after 30 years of hot but uncomfortable stage wear.  but she is a diva, she will wear a gown until she dies.

when i listen 2 a mariah track, it somehow feels underpinned by all i have written here.  what does it mean that this voice can still hit the high notes, has a record of what it's done before that can't be erased in spite of all of the nitpicking & vitriol from critics?  when you love a diva, u live to see her redeemed.  u wonder if each new single will have the potential to work against time--to chart in spite of the way that pop charts thirst for youth while mining the trends & sounds of the past.

seeing mariah in vegas had been a dream for a few years, not only because vegas seemed like the only reasonable place for me to allow this completely inane obsession to flourish but because i'd never gotten the chance to see mariah live.  we sat in our seats 30 rows back, which each cost more than i make in a day and a half of work, & waited breathlessly for mariah to arrive.  she was an hour late after a mild dress snafu.  a tailor had been attempting to rehem it.  everything that went wrong was a crime done to mariah by cesar's palace, including the too ornate crystal-studded glass of water ("they can't just get me a regular glass") and the too hot tea ("cesar's palace is trying to burn me").  our diva had arrived. we blame cesar for everything!!!

where do i start?  after that extremely gay remix of "butterfly" that appears at the end of butterfly, mariah walked out singing "emotions," an opener that refuses the haters a single moment of vindication.  "emotions" ends with an unfurling crescendo of whistle register, a sound finally--after all the anticipatory description--given to the titular emotion.  mariah seemed to hit these notes effortlessly, though from far away it was difficult to tell if anything was being lipsynced.  at this point in the concert, an usher came to tell us that standing was not allowed in our section of the theater.  we boldly headed to the first section of seats to scope out a place we could properly enjoy ourselves.

what came next?  my brain is addled, but the one-two punch of "can't let go" & "make it happen" arrived soon after & i absolutely lost it.  mariah teased "underneath the stars" saying "the lambs might know this one" & me & all the gay men in the front row shrieked until hoarse.  at every mariah show, a given--a gay man in the front row, a dyke in the 15th.  at some point an usher approached us to ask to see our tickets, & i told him that i needed to be somewhere we could dance.  i had traveled all the way from kansas.  channeling my inner mariah paid off & we were allowed 2 remain in the illicit $200+ seat section.  god blessed the lambily that night, my dear readers.

the only track mariah pulled out from caution, her newest, was "a no no," which is the inevitable result of having so many #1 hits you can't even perform them all in concert.  we love watching mariah wag her finger at us!  tell us no one more time!!!  the list of things we say no to has already turned into a scroll--the authority of the ushers, those who don't know all the words, Las Vegas (in general), $140 tickets, men who glare at their wives having fun, the lack of time for more outfit changes, mariah not singing "the roof" even though we need it.  a duet with her keyboardist of "#beautiful" caused me to literally die & a paramedic in the form of mariah's angelic whistling intertwined w/ the savory vox of the piano man revived me at the track's end.  i was glad to be back alive in time to witness a medley of songs--crybaby, honey, i'm that chick, say something, breakdown.  i am certainly missing something.  heartbreaker?  we were given lines or melodies--30 second snippets.  cean & i had an absolute meltdown when she did not finish "crybaby" to the end--one of the best cacophonies of sound i've ever lived inside--yet we understood.  she can only sing so much--a voice, a person.  when we force mariah carey to sing, we tap into a natural resource which is not easily replenished & can never return to its original form.  guiltily i wonder what a 3 hour mariah concert would look like.  what kind of gems would be unearthed.  after hearing the rest of the setlist i felt truly blessed to have witnessed "can't let go"--a sappy ballad that starts off "there you are [choir cuts in] HOLDING HER HAND" that only reached #2.  she favors newer tracks that engage with a hip hop/r&b sound.  she doesn't do "vision of love" & i weep because "vanishing" would have sounded so good solo w/ the pianist.

alas, there is so much to enjoy, we cannot dwell in the what-ifs.  everything is beautiful--genuinely.  the gown turned in2 a leotard which lingered until it was hidden by a long coat made of boa, swapped eventually for another gown.  was there a third gown?  mariah closed out her set singing "hero" in an undeniably pink dress, its color one i've only ever seen in lipstick.  she was always flanked by 4 male dancers, who first adorned the stage in baggy white suits with white top hats and later dressed down into a vest and pants combo that looked a little Waiter at an Italian Restaurant.  at one point, the men enter the audience & grab four superfans to dance in front of--no one grabs me because i don't look like i want one of these vested men to give me a lapdance to "touch my body."  fair enough.  a gay man who earlier had his YASS hand-painted fan snatched by the elusive chanteuse herself is plucked to the stage & cannot believe it.  we all live vicariously through his spiraling joy.  for all of the comic & corny glitz of arena background videos, especially after observing miranda lambert's a few weeks before, mariah's set mostly looked strikingly classy.  everything was velvet & diamonds.  timeless, just like mariah.

in vegas, people have this zombielike stupor, desperately wandering the streets looking for fun.  everyone's tired and sweaty, corralled by the insanity of the authoritative sidewalks.  some wind up at these concert residencies, ready 2 experience the greatest pop hits of the past--aerosmith, shania twain, cher, something familiar.  most members of the crowd are not mariah superfans, in fact they'd likely forgotten many of these songs had been mariah-penned or maybe forgotten the songs altogether.  fandom is a kind of insidious thing, certain people's brains & hearts better poised for an infection of undying & all-consuming love.  a stupid passion.  inevitably the audience was mostly those who wound up at the concert as one might walk into jimmy buffet's margaritaville.  for these fans, the artifice, the skill, the history--it's not there; mariah could just as well be a movie, the circus, the wax museum, a fountain that starts on fire (?).  for the rest of us, we have found some kind of absolutely braindead solace in our worship of a woman we can never know appearing before us.  we are here to watch her prove she still has a voice, can draw a crowd.  mariah leaves the stage and returns walking through the aisle next to us--only a few feet away.  for a minute, i see her real face, the real way her body moves, the way her cheeks do kind of have this natural glisten, even if it's half facial filler and half $1k concealer.  it's too uncanny valley.  i scream when she returns to the stage, right where she belongs.

miranda lambert at the sprint center

miranda lambert at the sprint center was a grand display of the finest boots in kansas city.  my friend grace & i were no exception.  pic of our boots forthcoming...  we arrived fairly early after ambling around kc's ever-changing downtown where vacant old factory buildings r becoming high rises hidden behind billboards advertising techn9ne concerts in the blink of a very steady & slow midwestern eye.  much like me, kc's downtown glows with the promise of all-night fun but mostly shuts down around 10pm.  u cannot deny its (our) charm.

the last concert i wrote about on my fantastic pulitzer award-winning blog was mary j. blige & truly sometimes it seems miranda's music follows mary's like god's fingers touching adam's on the sistine chapel ceiling (most of the music i listen 2).  where mary j's songs dwell in the reflection stage, looking ever ahead in triumph and dignity, miranda gives a little look back to the past w/ real, human spite.  simply existing, we learn that vengeance is the aftertaste of being wronged.  in probably her best known song, she sings, "cant get revenge and keep a spotless reputation / sometimes revenge is a choice u gotta make"  miranda pens "petty bitch anthems" w/ a graceful hand that lolls in country's wordplay but refuses to idle on a beach, in the back of a car, on the porch.  they r songs of action--a relentless desire that electrifies, its tendrils strangling our common sense.  they r songs of heartbreak or nostalgia that tug at yr heart until u fall in2 a collective but restless mourning.  they r songs, of course, of revenge.

i am a miranda lambert fan because, like mary, her voice carries a really vibrant grit.  the tune carries a feeling as much as the words.  it's a voice built for sorrow as much as redemption.  it knows how 2 turn suffering in2 a public display & in doing so, we r invited 2 join along.  as i am leaving the sprint center a nearby husbo remarks that her voice isn't as good as carrie's (underwood) & my friend has to quiet me as i begin to shit talk 2 high heavens.  it's not about the technical proficiency!!!  call me when carrie's protagonists aren't just slippin their abusive husbands a lil poison in the cocktail; miranda's got us out there on the stoop w/ gun loaded & thousands of women stand alongside her screaming "if he wants a fight well now he's got one he ain't seen me crazy yet".  if ur husband cannot recognize the difference between these two singers please leave him at home!!!

miranda's openers were one soft hot country boy w/ chiseled abs & then, as my friend grace pointed out, a band that looked like that man's band cryogenically aged 15 years.  they of course rocked but as much as rock is intoxicating, they simply were not the miranda lambert i had been waiting 2 hear.  when miranda took the stage we all went absolutely hog.  the three college girls sitting in front of us who had been chaotically snapchatting about 5 selfies a minute immediately stood & put their phones (mostly) away.  this is the raw power of miranda lambert.  miranda was wearing a western shirt w/ pink fringe & a snakeskin pattern etched in fragile gold, exhaustingly hot frayed black denim shorts, black boots, fish nets.  what do u wear when u r ready 2 reveal ur greatest flaws & desires & fantasies--reader, look no further.

i don't know if miranda is one of the best performers i've ever seen, but she puts on a show in the smilin' & stompin' department & so i will always be in attendance for a good time.  her new album has some tracks of frankly strange arrangement.  "mess with my head" is a little like an 80s pop song, "track record" has beachy riffs that are like indie surf rock 2009 (country is always about 10 years behind in the pop dept).  miranda is sick & lets the audience know--she's never shied away from the opportunity to be vulnerable, in fact her music is driven by it.  her songs are proud to be made of feelings.  her actions hold them w/ the greatest esteem.  she sings well in spite of a setback bc her voice comes from its root.

she plays a rendition of baggage claim that ends w/ that "i'm feelin' alright" song, following a cover of "say you love me." she pulls out classics like "white liar" & "kerosene" & "mama's broken heart" which make me scream.  "all kinds of kinds" has a dog slideshow & during "all comes out in the wash" a shirtless man drifts amidst the bubble suds.  "gunpowder & lead" has an anime-style animation where a woman is poised & ready for what comes next.  i would kill 2 b miranda's graphic designer.  "pretty bitchin" is an anthem for minor victories, "all comes out in the wash" an ode to small mistakes.  "the house that built me" causes the sprint center to glow by smartphone light, as tears fill everyone's eyes.  u can't go home again but u can build a monument 4 everything you've left in the past.  we r here kneeling at its feet, our next move inches from our fingers.