Mr. West (4 page)

A DAY AT THE MALL REMINDS ME OF AMERICA

Recently, my 14-year-old sister was approached at the mall to see if she'd be interested in working at Hollister, or Abercrombie and Fitch, or American Eagle. I can't remember.

She's that beautiful. And with the mall's lights all around her—I can only imagine.

Yet on Facebook, one of her friends calls her a loser. More write, “I hate you.”

I wonder if Kanye knows that these girls are experimenting. As with rum. As with skin, all the ways to touch it.

My day at the mall begins with a Wild Cherry ICEE and an Auntie Anne's Original Pretzel. A craving.

I pass women who you can tell are pregnant, and I know we all might be carrying daughters.

The mall is so quiet. The outside of the Hollister looks like a tropical hut, like the teenage girls should be sweating inside.

No one's holding doors for me yet, but they will as I take the shape of my child.

And if my child has a vicious tongue, it will take shape lapping at my breast.

TAYLOR DOESN'T SPEAK OUT AGAINST RACISM

People are upset because Kanye's talking about Taylor again.

He apologizes without apologizing. He speaks out. He rehashes. But this time

he says, “Taylor never came to my defense at any interview …”

So the media writes as if little girls all over the country are upset again.

But I've read the comments and I think it's some of Taylor's white knights

who keep up with these articles. Who else says “waste a shell on this POS”?

I'm starting to blame her, too. She could sing a song about it
that makes a little more sense. She could say,
Don't hate him.

IT'S HARD NOT TO BE MOVED

I can tell—it's starting to get to Noah.

Often he's with me when I'm doing research.

Today I went to copy-paste a comment into an e-mail, and he stopped me,

said I needed to take both comments,

that it was
significant
that there were only two and this is what they said.

So this part is for Noah:

http://www.411mania.com/music/news/164797/Kanye-West-To-Appear-On-Kardashian-Reality-Show.htm

Comments (2)

1) Wow, Kanye looks mad fuckin lame in that pic. At least he [mostly] makes good music.

Posted By: SS87 (Guest) on December 04, 2010 at 01:12 AM

2) fucking awesome!!!!….no, really…i hope he dies….i do, i hope he goddamn dies…fuck him, goddamn concieted hypocrit muther fucker…the

only ratings he will deliver is if he gets decapitated on live television during half time of the super bowl…i'd actually watch that

and don't feed me any of your sympathetic bullshit…he's an untalented con artist and racistthat deserves to be beaten with a hammer and thrown screaming from a helicopter

Posted By: mikey (Guest) on December 04, 2010 at 04:21 AM

We're both still surprised at the racism and violence and hate.
We're full of fear

but that's not what fearsome means.

HATE IS FOR HITLER

my mother used to tell me.
So I said and say, I don't like … really don't like … can't stand …
My grandmother used to say it.

I wonder if Kanye's mother said it too.
Unconditional love
is what she speaks most about in her memoir.

I wonder if raised in a good family in Alabama
she picked up the same saying
my grandmother did

when she lived with her mother as one
of the oldest of six sisters and five brothers
in Philadelphia after the Depression.

All of my grandmother's friends went off to World War II.
She went to the dances for the servicemen, held them,
then followed the lists that were posted, lists of dead men.

How can these kids say they hate Kanye?
Why do they hate? Why is the word
in their mouths and out their fingers?

I think Kanye's like me,
and I think it's incomprehensible.
I think he and I and my mother and Donda West

are easily moved.
We enter into discourse thinking first,
love
.

BECAUSE KANYE ISN'T KING KONG OR EMMETT TILL OR A N****

When I admire my small, white nose, I'm Taylor Swift.

Too, if I'm made of red candies and floral underwear,

if I spend a day descending all the stairways I can find.

It's one way to be a woman, a woman being a girl.

I could meet the many white knights, with their hands

around swords, their ears perked to the motion of men.

If I ever thought life was a whistle, I thought it twice.

dear kanye

  
  

KANYE WEST
, “Power,” line 13 of verse 2

MY SUMMER WITH KANYE

So many crickets, small and brown, so small, babies maybe, hardly in control, their jumps foolish and sweet.

My birthday this year was everything I wanted it to be. My mother and sisters came. We swam in the Hampton Inn's outdoor pool. We ate prepared foods from Wegman's.

That day, the
New York Times
ArtsBeat blog posted about a preview of Kanye's music video for “Power.”

So much is false, and the voice of the viewer.
Is
Kanye imposing?
Is
the chain heavy? Do the women kneel
before
him? What does that look like? A woman apologizing? With some request?

The horns are not as devilish as they are the horns of dinosaurs, the Minotaur, an African gazelle, a god of the sea I imagine, the shapes of twisted arms, dark, twisted arms.

And there is no ceiling. The sky moves in the video.

Two weeks later, Kanye is quoted as saying, “I'm not trying to dive into anything unless I really, really think that I can marry this person. I look at this person and I say, ‘This is how I want my daughter to be.' ”

I'm thinking of babies, too.

WATCHING WEEKS

I am mother to the smallest baby.
Inside, fingernails grow this week.

So we bought our first video camera.

The language of documentation
comes to me immediately. “This is
what I'm working on. This is
your dad doing a dance for you.”

I didn't mention Kanye. But
this week is no small week for him.
He premiered his 35-minute movie.
He compared his shots to Kubrick,
his acting to Tarantino. And he
explained his ideas on MTV as if
he were speaking to children.

This should be a week I commit
to grading 80 pages of student work,
but I can't help but sleep. 16 hours
one day. 14 another. I wake to eat.

My students ask me to play more
Kanye music videos during our class.
And I think we
could
put the label
“Phenomenon” above his name
in the center of the board. Follow
“Causes” to the left, “Consequences”
to the right. How many composition
lessons I could make about Kanye,
his music and life. If I felt up to it.

This week I try to feel the baby, still
hidden from us, from Noah's kisses.

I TRY NOT TO SEE MYSELF AS A MOTHER FIGURE

I imagine Kanye's hand on my stomach
because I've begun to imagine that everyone's
touching me through my clothes.

I was not one for fantasies,
but fantasizing makes me more of a woman.
If I see Kanye's teeth

in my bedroom, if I see him
with the head of a falcon, penis of a buck
(which I've never seen), or

if I see myself in his studio,
in his house, introduced to Jay-Z,
drinking what I can't drink—I am a fool.

I am encouraged to paint myself the fool.
Tattoo of Kanye's head on my hip.
Something to morph.

To humble me. Humiliate me.
If I can only see myself protecting Kanye,
am I even a woman?

DEAR KANYE,

I can't draw a parallel today between you and the branch I saw on the sidewalk. It wasn't like the tree branches here—it was like one you'd see on the beach, maybe only a New Jersey beach, but I think others, too. And it resembled an arm. That's what I remember thinking. And it wasn't the first time something on these sidewalks near my house reminded me of an arm or a hand. There's a leaf I remember distinctly. My mind is so quick to see these dead pieces of trees as lonely parts of the body. And my mind
tries
to connect this stone-gray arm to you. My mind sees that where the branch broke from the tree (if it is a branch at all and not chopped from the trunk), there is wood that curves together to the sidewalk in such a way that fingers might. And my mind asks if these are not the fingers that move freely in a dream and play some kind of music for you, or run along the top of your head in the manner of one who loves you. Are they not the fingers that begin to resemble your mother's?

I realize some days I shouldn't write about you.

AFTER DONDA DIED, KANYE DATED AMBER

The question all around the internet was,
Is Kanye West's Girlfriend Trashy?

Her birth name is Alyssa Audrey Rose Palmer.

On YouTube, the interviews are short and sometimes
raunchy as hell.

“I'm actually a virgin in my ass,” she said.

In other videos, all the ones where her face is
front and center, and she's got blue lipstick, sunglasses
in the shapes of hearts,
or her bra out—

she's chewing gum. Like a cow,
I think, in my eighth grade science teacher's voice.

She licks her teeth while she's making points like,
“I don't have a stylist.”
Something along the lines of
make sure they know
,
“I style myself.”

Her interviewer responds,
“I live and die for that,”
in a voice I've heard on black sitcoms in the '90s.

Someone in the comments writes
to women who watch this video—like me—

“
YO IF THERES ANY OTHA HOT_ CHICK LIKE THIS ONE
holl-
laaa”

Do I respond?
Is
he
trashy?

Why do women watch this video of Amber?
Are they looking for the Kanye in her?

Girl, raised by her aunt, with a name as sunshine as hers—Mary Lakes.

Girl, Portuguese, Italian, African, Irish. Former
exotic dancer. Featured in music videos of Young Jeezy and Ludacris.

I remember hearing that she might marry Kanye in the Caribbean in January 2011.

I remember thinking,
Is she trashy as all get out, right on Kanye's
arm?

SUGE KNIGHT

Suge is pronounced like sugar without its -ar.
Liar turns lie. Color turns cull. Whisper, wisp.

In August 2005, Kanye hosted a party before the Video Music Awards. And Suge got shot there.

MSNBC reports:

ambulance, fire and police officials swarmed
the shooter was described
as black and wearing a pink shirt

Giddy. Frivolous.

Treasure, trezh. Splendor, splend. Shiner, shine.

In March 2010, Suge is suing Kanye for money, but a car accident keeps him from his court date.

Perez Hilton reports
a quote from Knight's lawyer:

Nobody likes Kanye West anymore.

Even though he's still selling millions of records, everybody's
sick of him.

Error, err. Geyser, guise. Razor, raise     blaze.

The bullet took the light from the front of the gun. The bullet took the light into the leg and bone.

I think Suge's alight with something like grief.
Can Kanye save him from something like that?