...One of these days I wanna do a thread where Alastor absolutely murders Valentino...

Artistry

Pairing: Damian Al-Ghul Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Trope/s: Childhood Friends, No Powers AU

Summary: A story in which two seemingly dissimilar eight-year-olds build bonds through their love for martial arts. Written for the MGI Trope Tussle 2021.

Words: 4808

Damian and Marinette first met when they were 8 at his mother’s Wushu studio. At first glance they were an unlikely duo, before meeting in martial arts class their social circles ran entirely parallel with one another with Damian attending a private school that was a feeder for Gotham academy and Marinette attending a public elementary local to her, but they truly brought out the best in each other.

Damian had grown up inside his mother’s studio, working day in and day out from the tender age of 3 to improve his weaponry and martial arts skill. His mother and father, divorced but trying their best to co-parent for his sake, each preached to him about the importance of self-discipline and concentration. When his mother and her father, Ras himself a master martial artist, had competed in Wushu they were national champions. As a third-generation practitioner of Wushu, Damian had a lot riding on his shoulders.

Marinette’s mother had practiced Wushu as a child in China. When she first arrived in France she found herself disappointed that there were no local Chinese martial arts centers, let alone Wushu training centers. Sabine always thought it would be a passion she could pass down to her future child, but there was only so much she could teach on her own. However, as fate would have it, after a falling out with Tom’s father Roland the Dupain-Chengs found themselves in a city not too far from Gotham, New Jersey. Sabine was pleasantly surprised to find that the martial arts scene was much more alive there than it had been in Paris. However, between the bakery and her young daughter Sabine had little time to spend practicing martial arts. It wasn’t until Marinette’s kindergarten teacher suggested that Marinette be enrolled in a sport to better her hand-eye coordination that Sabine finally put her daughter into formal martial arts courses.

At first, everything was fine until it became apparent that Marinette was progressing much faster than her peers, despite her typical clumsiness she was surprisingly adept at martial arts. Sabine wasn’t entirely surprised as while Wushu was difficult to teach within the confined space they had at home, she still took the time to practice Tai Chi with her daughter on the weekends, providing Marinette with martial arts fundamentals and self-discipline. With Marinette’s slight inclination for martial arts paired with her hard work she was outperforming her classmates and even some of the older kids at the studio she went to. Eventually, Marinette found herself ostracized by her peers, but her teachers at the studio refused to advance her because they had an in-house rule where children could not be advanced more than two years past their age group. Tom and Sabine knew that pulling Marinette out of the sport entirely was off the table, the pure joy that spread across her face every time she mastered a new trick was proof enough that she was in love with the sport. So they set off to find a new studio to train at, where Marinette’s needs as a budding martial artist would be met. After looking around for a while, they decided to give Talia’s Wushu academy a try despite it being a little over a 30-minute drive from their house.

In regards to the first year of their friendship, Marinette would describe it as very professional, and almost nothing more. It took a while for Damian to become more cordial with her. When asked, Marinette would say “Damian didn’t like me, but he tolerated me enough as a partner because there was only so much practice he could have done alone.”

At first, Damian did not like Marinette at all, in fact, maybe he even hated her. When he first met her, Damian thought she was like every other “talented” kid that came into his mother’s studio, only to realize talent alone would get you nowhere in the sport of Wushu. On her first day, she immediately took up the spot next to him at the front and center of the class and offered him a warm smile, “Hello my name is Marinette, I’m new here.” Damian returned her greeting with a harsh tut of his tongue and the turn of his head, he was there to train, not to make friends. Marinette’s expression was aghast, but she quickly recovered and mumbled a soft “okay not talkative then…this is going great….” Damian suppressed an eye roll, simply because he knew his mother would not tolerate that in her classroom.

Against every one of Damian’s expectations, Marinette proved herself to be a hard-working individual. Eventually, after seeing her work on her technique and tricks after class during open gym hours, seeing that she wasn’t relying purely on natural ability and truly was putting in the effort to become a better martial artist, he began to tolerate her. The first time he returned her daily “Hello” with the nod of his head Marinette’s facial expression went from neutral to shocked to absolutely beaming. Damian simply raised his eyebrow and continued with his pre-class warmup.

Over time Marinette had grown a deep respect for Damian; she wished he was a bit friendlier, but despite their rough start Marinette realized early on that, while gruff and unfriendly, Damian was kind in his own way. He always pointed out when someone’s technique was wrong so that they wouldn’t hurt themselves, he always helped bandage someone up when they were hurt, and he always stayed after class to help his mom clean up. Most people would think he did it out of obligation or his mother’s demands, but Marinette loves people watching, and even after just a few months Marinette has observed that Talia would rather Damian use the time to better himself and will insist that she, or one of their workers, handle the menial tasks.

It was not until Damian saw Marinette work through her struggles that he gained respect for her. While Wushu is a largely performative sport where everyone’s moves are choreographed, Talia wanted to ensure everyone was also learning basic self-defense resulting in regularly held sparring sessions at the end of class. Marinette was a great performer, she was highly expressive and could easily recall choreography, but she had minimal exposure to actual sparring and her reflexes were not as sharp and trained like the others. She managed to win against her opponents in the first few classes by utilizing her creativity, but eventually, her lack of experience caught up with her and in her third month at the studio, she began her losing streak. Looking at her lose to her opponents time and time again he couldn’t help but wonder to himself, “will you still be here tomorrow?” Growing up in the studio, Damian knew that most of the people who were considered to be “gifted” had a tendency to drop out the moment things no longer came naturally to them, they grew frustrated with themselves and then with the sport. At this point, he figured he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead, the stage was set for her to become the most prevalent figure in his life.

Despite being in the same classes for over 3 months Damian and Marinette had never sparred. It was actually quite odd that they hadn’t yet sparred, the pairings for the most part were random. Talia reasoned that with the right circumstances even someone who seems weak could win; it was important to never underestimate an opponent and lower your guard. After bowing to one another their eyes met. If you asked them as adults they would unabashedly say that they love the other’s eyes, it was like staring at the calm before a storm. Their eyes were clear, fierce, and piercing. Despite being clearly disadvantaged Marinette showed no fear. She met his first few strikes blow for blow and even managed to evade a few of his strikes with a few unique tumbling passes – something Damian noted that she excelled in. He could tell she has been studying him, observing his strike patterns from his previous matches. Rather than reacting to his strikes, she was anticipating them – a smart move considering her reflexes were lacking. Unfortunately for Marinette, this meant that one unanticipated fake was all it took to defeat her.

That night during open gym hours Marinette approached Damian on her own for the first time. “There is only so much I can practice on my own, please train with me.”

“Why would I do that?” Damian held his face firm, his mouth in a thin line and his eyebrow slightly quirked.

Marinette’s eyes steeled over with conviction. “Did you know that every time you get up from xie bu you duck your chin down in your struggle to regain balance? It’s obvious you’re trying to shift your center of gravity. Instead, try leaning on your front leg from the beginning. The first few times you try this method, you should put a ball between your chin and neck to keep your head held up until you get used to it.”

“How did you–?”

“Notice? I love observing others, I can help you. There’s only so much we can practice on our own. I need help with my reflexes and you need someone who can review your performances. We can’t do this alone. You don’t have to like me, you just have to work with me. What do you say? Deal?”

“Tch. Deal.”

At first, their conversations mainly consisted of Marinette’s one-sided chatter during their warm-up, breaks, and cool-down stretches. It took a while for Marinette to get Damian to open up, but once she found the right topics she found that he was strongly opinionated about almost everything and shared quite a few hobbies with her. While Wushu was the common interest that brought them together, they were much more alike than they thought. They both enjoyed art, video games, and superhero shows to name a few common interests. Damian would say he would want to be a hero without any powers, someone who relies on their own skill to punish evil-doers. Marinette on the other hand would love to be a magical girl who could save others without causing too much damage. After hotly debating the topic of normal heroes and powered heroes, Damian and Marinette came to an agreement that both sides had their own set of struggles and perks.

Damian and Marinette found themselves spending more time with each other both inside and outside of the studio. After arguing over which type of paint was superior, Marinette was team watercolor because of its varied use, relative cheapness to oil paints, and blendability where Damian was a more traditional artist who believed that the blending capabilities of oil paint were just as good, if not better, and their longevity was worth the cost, the two decided to settle it with a paint off. Art sessions quickly became a biweekly tradition between the two, whenever the Gotham botanical garden would have a new exhibit Marinette would insist they go to sketch the flora. Damian quickly found that Marinette was almost as passionate about plants as he was about animals, with the way she flitted about the garden he couldn’t help but wonder if she had been something like a ladybug in her past life. There were also plenty of weekends spent sketching Damian’s pets, though Marinette would note that no drawings could capture what good boys Titus, Alfred the Cat, Jerry the Turkey, and Bat Cow were.

Together they found new ways to integrate Wushu into their hobbies, Marinette had plenty of friends at school who loved art and plenty of friends who did Wushu at the same center, but Damian was the only one she shared nearly all her passions with.

With their art, they began making flyers and posters for the studio, and banners to cheer on their classmates at competitions – Damian would argue he only did this because it would increase morale, which in turn would produce better results for the studio. Marinette struggled with the posters at first as a lot of proposed designs incorporated traditional Chinese characters, she couldn’t even write in Pinyin! Tom and Sabine had prioritized teaching Marinette about her French roots, in the event that one day they decided to move back to France, and neglected teaching her much about Chinese heritage. Marinette still learned basic conversational phrases: yes, no, please, thank you, and familial titles, but she was nowhere near conversational or fluent. After realizing Marinette did not know how to speak Mandarin Damian made it his personal goal to make her at least conversational before they would begin to travel internationally for competitions. Many of the major Wushu competitions took place in China and if Marinette was going to be his partner in the couples division he was going to make sure she was able to converse with any interviewers they may meet, and that if she were to end up lost – he swears Marinette was born without a sense of direction – that she could find her way back to him or their hotel. He hoped that while working on the banners he could work in a few lessons on traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters so that Marinette could at least read signs. Apart from art, reenacting scenes from video game cutscenes and superhero movies became one of their favorite activities, it became a way to train while still having plenty of fun. Sometimes after mastering a new move-in Ultimate Mecha Strike, they would break out the crash mats to test if the moves in the game were actually physically possible.

Even the hobbies Damian didn’t share with Marinette he was willing to partake in, and the fact that he was trying meant the world to Marinette. Damian was rarely physically affectionate in the first few years of their friendship, and it was even rarer for him to vocalize his emotions, and so Marinette quickly learned that Damian had a tendency to express himself through his actions. A lot of people failed to see how warm and loving Damian truly was, but Marinette saw it in how he interacted with everyone. For example, when Damian’s eldest brother opened up an acrobatics and gymnastics center Damian immediately volunteered to design and paint a mural on the outside that would more easily catch attention, Marinette watched him alter the design day and night and sort through hundreds of color palettes to ensure the pairing was just right. She saw his kindness through his interactions with his family and hers, the painting of her mom and dad baking, a gift from Damian for their 20th anniversary, hung up in the living room was more physical proof of it. When Marinette began sewing he proudly wore her designs and when she began to take commissions, he always kept her business card on his body in the event someone asked about his apparel.

One of Marinette’s fondest memories with Damian was when they decided to host a bake sale to offset the cost of international travel for the competition team. It was near the Mid-Autumn festival so Marinette and her parents decided to make mooncakes. Damian had some experience in the kitchen helping his mother make baozi and baklava, but he definitely wasn’t as experienced as Marinette who grew up in a bakery, yet he still came over to help them with the first few test batches and to help design packaging. Watching him carefully weigh out the ingredients her parents listed and chat about his favorite flavors with her parents in French filled her with so much warmth. The kitchen was filled with banter as a discourse between traditional baked mooncakes and skin mooncakes arose. Marinette and Sabine preferred snow skin mooncakes, the chewiness pairs well with pastes like red bean and taro, where Damian and Tom were strongly on the side of the more traditionally baked mooncake, arguing that the crumble of the pastry paired with fillings like salted egg and lotus paste was clearly superior. Marinette was unsurprised that Damian was strongly advocating for traditional flavors, but her father? The same man who made mustard macarons? It wasn’t until Marinette suggested thousand-layer mooncakes were simply croissants with a pasty filling that everyone else was willing to set aside their different preferences to unite against her. While the thousand layer mooncakes and traditional mooncakes baked, and the snow skin mooncakes steamed Marinette and Damian got to work on the packaging. In order to reduce cost, they had ordered plain packaging and planned to carve potato stamps with Mid-Autumn festival motifs: the moon, rabbits, flowers, fans, and lanterns. Despite having seen how proficient Damian was with a blade in training, Marinette was pleasantly surprised, if not downright awed, by Damian’s precision with a knife. By the time Marinette had finished carving out one flower Damian had finished three lantern carvings. After finishing stamping the final package Marinette daringly pressed the still paint-laden potato stamp onto Damian’s cheek which quickly devolved into a paint fight. The picture of Damian and Marinette covered head to two in paint was proudly pinned at the top of her corkboard, Marinette would never forget the sound of the kitchen filled with laughter that day.

Damian’s parents were extremely supportive of this arrangement. Talia thought it was a great opportunity, open gym hours were busy and she couldn’t give all her attention to Damian, having a training partner could really help him grow. If they got along well they could even enter paired events together! Bruce was enthralled that his son found someone to spend time with other than his friend Clark’s son, Jon. Jon and Damian were great friends, but Jon lived in Metropolis and so the boys rarely saw each other outside of business galas and Skype calls. It was nice knowing his son had someone he could spend time with in person, Bruce was concerned that Damian’s interpersonal growth would be stunted by his lack of interaction with his classmates at school. To see his son being a kid, laughing freely, filled him with great joy, he knew that being the son of a billionaire and a top-notch martial artist had put a lot of pressure on Damian’s shoulders, but he never knew what he could do to help his son. Seeing the walls in Damian’s room at the manor fill up with pictures of him and Marinette smiling, Damian smiling, made Bruce figure that everything was going to be okay.

Sabine and Tom grew to love Damian like their own son with the more time he spent at each other’s houses. At first, they were a bit skeptical, they didn’t quite understand what their daughter saw in the boy, but they trusted her judgment and boy are they glad they did. Damian was like a missing piece of their family, despite his hard exterior, the boy was extremely loyal and caring, they could always count on him to have Marinette’s back. Sabine especially had a soft spot for him after watching him correct Marinette’s brush strokes on the banners, teaching her the differences between what she wrote and what he was writing. The two watched their daughter give herself wholly to this boy, and in return, he gave himself back to her and that was all they could’ve ever wanted for Marinette, to love and be loved.

As they grew older they shared more than just common interests: their dreams, their fears, and the pressure they faced from their families. Marinette knew what she wanted for herself – something Damian was envious of. When they were 11 to offset the competition costs, Marinette’s mother began designing and sewing their competition outfits. Once Marinette saw what her mother was doing she wanted to help, and she ended up falling in love with fashion design. From the age of 13 and onward Marinette designed all of her own stage wear, as well as Damian’s. Sabine would joke that with such a talented daughter it’s a shame they didn’t stay in Paris. Damian wouldn’t admit it – Marinette would – but the thought of possibly never meeting Marinette made him feel uncomfortably empty; he wonders how he bore with that feeling before becoming close with Marinette. Damian wasn’t sure what he wanted for himself, he would love to take over his mother’s Wushu studio, maybe even expand it, but he was always raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit his father’s corporation. Despite loving both options, loving both his parents, there was also a part of him that wanted something that was completely Damian, he had already spent so much of his life living in the shadow of his parents. It wasn’t until high school that Damian opened up to Marinette about this, as the time to make decisions grew closer Damian naturally grew more anxious about his future. Marinette rarely gets the chance to comfort Damian, oftentimes he bottles his emotions up until they’re ready to burst, and even then Marinette has to slowly coax him into talking about them, even if it is with his brothers and not her, she just wants him to feel safe with his own emotions. The first time Damian opened up to her about the pressure he felt as his parent’s only biological son she immediately swept him into her arms, stroking his hair she began to tell him about how loved he was. She told him “Damian I love you, your family loves you, my family loves you. I just want you to know how loved you are. I speak not only for myself, but for everyone who loves you when I say this, do what makes you happy. Your parents will be happy as long as you are, they trust that they raised you to make good decisions for yourself. Even if you don’t know what it is that makes you happy yet, don’t be afraid to explore your options; I’ll be right here by your side and I’m going to support you no matter what. You’ve told me before that even if you inherit the studio Maya would co-own it with you, or even if you inherit your father’s business you would be working alongside your brothers. You are not alone, the world is not riding on solely your shoulders.” Damian was completely silent, if not for the wetness on her shoulder and his grip tightening around her, Marinette would figure he was unphased. Marinette has known that she loves this boy, far past the platonic love she just expressed, but for Damian, it was at this moment that he realized that not only was he loved, but he was in love with Marinette.

��WELCOME TO THE WORLD WUSHU CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019 LIVE FROM GOTHAM, NEW JERSEY” roared overhead on the speakers.

Damian and Marinette were standing in a hall away from the main room where other contestants were preparing themselves both appearance-wise and physically. Marinette herself was fixing the crown braid in her hair. The women’s event would take place in the morning to late afternoon, where the men’s event in the evening giving Damian ample time before he needs to warm up to support Marinette. He gave Marinette’s ensemble a once over and with his cheeks tinged red he muttered “I like your costume, you look really cute”, quickly averting his gaze.

Marinette immediately flushed, almost as red as the silken top that adorned her torso, and brought the hands that were adjusting her braids down to her hips and leaned forward, exclaiming in a hushed shout as to not disturb the other competitors warming up, “Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, are you making fun of me? I just want to make sure that any pictures taken do not make me look like a hot mess. Could you imagine what could happen if Audrey Bourgeois sees pictures of me completely frumpled looking and cancels my apprenticeship?? Oh my God and then Parson’s will find out and rescind me and then I won’t be able to visit you at NYU!” Marinette’s hands now rested on her cheeks smearing away her perfectly placed blush. How Marinette managed to go from disgruntled to spiraling in less than a minute is still a mystery that still eludes Damian after years of friendship, but it was his duty to calm her down. He understands her nerves, they had spent the last few years dominating the juniors division and as they entered the senior division there was a lot of pressure for them to win there too. Unfortunately, for every person who wanted them to win, another five were praying for them to slip up, but now is not the time to be overcome by nerves, her turn would come soon and she cannot afford to be overwhelmed by nerves.

Damian fully grasped her wrists pulling her hands away from her face, “Marinette, genuinely you look stunning”. After that comment, Damian noted to himself that it seems like there was no more need for the blush she applied anyways. With the soft tut of his tongue, he smoothed out the harsh lines of her smeared blush using the pad of his thumb. He whispered, just loud enough for her to hear, “Don’t worry too much about your hair and makeup, the most important thing is your form”. Marinette leaned into his touch and gave a small nod, calming down from her spiraling thoughts, he always knew how to ground her.

“Contestant number 54 you’re up next!”

“That’s you; you might want to fix up your makeup real quick, but everything is going to be fine.” He handed her a bag with her cosmetics and a wipe and quickly clapped his hands around her shoulders to guide her to the main stage so she could focus on herself.

Fixing her makeup Marinette shot him a cheeky grin, “wish me luck?”

“You don’t need luck. Marinette you have the skill, you know that.”

“Next up is Marinette Dupain-Cheng from New Jersey, USA! She is definitely a fan favorite to win today on the Women’s Taolu floor. She is internationally known for competing not only in the women’s division but also in the couples’ scene. She’s been training for the individual event from the age of six and for the partner event from the age of nine with her studio mate Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, who is predicted to win the Men’s Taolu event. While we do not have a couples’ Wushu competition here, since turning 18 they have been dominating the senior international couples’ Wushu scene and have gone undefeated.”

Taking off her team jacket, with a quick nod to her parents, Talia, and of course, Damian Marinette strode to the center stage. Damian would never grow sick of watching her transform on stage, it was strikingly similar to the magical girl shows she had been obsessed with as a child. The moment Marinette stepped onto the mat her whole demeanor changed. Her back straightened up, her head would be held high, and most of all, the look in her eyes was filled with inextinguishable fire.

By the end of the event after getting changed Marinette and Damian were making their way to his car. Once Damian turned 16 and got his license, it became a tradition for them to go out for a celebratory meal together without their parents. “Marinette!” Damian heard a voice call out, Agreste he noted in his head. Marinette had met Agreste and Tsurugi while vacationing in Paris. While they weren’t the worst, in fact, Tsurugi was typically pleasant company, Damian was in no mood to socialize after the several rounds of interviews he had to endure after winning first place in Men’s Taolu. Many of the interviewers failed to understand that while yes, he had more opportunities to train as he is a third-generation Wushu champion, it was his hard work that got him to where he was, not his genetics.

Seeing Damian continue on to his car, not wanting to keep him waiting, Marinette quickly bid them farewell with a promise to see them tomorrow. “Hey wait for me!” Marinette called out, running after Damian. Despite his pride usually preventing him from heeding to his peers’ commands, Damian stopped in his tracks, his breath shallow and wondering why Marinette’s voice still makes his heartthrob despite having heard it call out to him for over 10 years. Feeling her hands latch around his arm gave him a sense of comfort. Her grip was strong and steady, yet still gentle. He couldn’t help but envision his hand in hers instead of his arm. The bouquet and hand-painted card in his car were waiting to see if she felt the same.

Avenge Me!

(I felt like writing something fun for the winter season, so have a snowball fight. I included most of the studio people, even though I know Bertrum came into the picture long after Henry. Just go with it. None of this really makes sense.)

(Warnings: None? I guess people getting knocked out and violence, but it’s all comedic.)

“Thomas, I-I don’t think we can beat them.”

“Don’t talk like that, Wally! We can’t show them fear!”

“But we’re outnumbered! Outgunned!”

“Shut up and listen to Thomas, Wally! We can’t doubt ourselves, not now.”

“But I’m scared, Lacie!”

“Just stay behind us, kid, and stay out of their line of sight.”

Wally obeyed and ducked behind the mechanics. Murray stood a few yards away, peeking over the edge of the wall. His breath came in clouds of steam that blew away with the chilly wind.

He checked his watch, “It’s almost time.”

“Get ready to fire.” Thomas grabbed up his ammo. Wally followed suit, his hands trembling from fear and cold. He glanced about himself.

“Where’d Boris go?” he asked.

The three mechanics whirled around, “Boris?!”

“Yes?” Wally sighed in relief as the cartoon wolf poked his head out from behind a snow drift, a can of bacon soup in hand.

“Get down!” Thomas grabbed him by the strap of his overalls and yanked him behind the barricade. Boris crouched down in the fresh powder and opened his can of soup.

“Okay,” Murray spoke quietly, eyes glued to his watch. Wally and the others tensed and clenched their ammo in nervous fists (Boris alone remained unconcerned). Wally squeezed his eyes shut, relishing the last few moments of peace before war broke out.

“In five, four, three, two, GO!”

Screams echoed about the vacant, snow covered lot as arms emerged from behind the three snow banks and released a rain of snowballs.

“Get down!” Lacie called. Wally threw his arms over his head, expecting at any moment to be struck down by a volley of snowballs, but miraculously survived. The janitor felt a surge of confidence and took hold of another snowball and chucked it over the barricade.

Somebody cried out in alarm from the snow bank to their left and there was a pause in their team’s attack.

“Nice shot, Wally!” Murray cried, hurling snowballs two at a time, “That’ll even the odds a bit!”

Grinning broadly, Wally gathered up his next ball and prepared to join the conflict in earnest.

Johnny was down in a matter of seconds despite being the one most sheltered by the barricade. Susie looked over at him as he fell backward, a ring of snow on his coat indicating where he’d been hit.

“We’re a man down!” She called to her teammates as she chucked a snowball.

“This game is stupid!” Grant said, ducking as a snowball sailed over his head.

“No, Johnny!” Shawn cried, reaching an arm out to the fallen organ player, “He was so young!”

“I’m not dead.” Johnny said nervously.

“Conserve your strength, Johnny! We’ll avenge you!”

Grant rolled his eyes, “You know this isn’t actual war, right?”

Shawn didn’t hear him over his own war cry.

Bertrum looked up from his place beside Grant. The theme park designer had decided sitting in the snow was beneath him and rolled out a mat to rest on.

He turned up the collar of his coat and glared, “Why did Drew have to drag us into this?”

“Joey thought it’d be a good team building exercise.” Alice replied as she gathered a snowball up in her gloved hands. The cartoon had on a scarf and winter dress, despite the fact that the cartoons couldn’t feel cold.

“Squatting in the snow and catching our death of cold while playing an idiotic game of snowball warfare is meant to strengthen our team bonds?”

“Yep,” Susie said, “So start throwing.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“We’re already a man down. You and Grant better get up and help us,” Susie threw a glare their way, “Or else.”

The obvious response was “Or else what?” but Grant and Bertrum didn’t much care to find out and begrudgingly took up the snowballs.

This is going perfectly! Joey thought to himself as he risked a glance over the snow bank, I can almost feel all the team bonding going on!

“Ow! You elbowed my ribs!” Joey turned as Sammy glared accusingly at Jack.

Jack glared back, “Well, you shouldn’t have been in the way!”

The lyricist raised an arm to throw his snowball but Sammy shoved him over, throwing his aim off. Jack plopped down in the snow and struggled to sit back up under the weight of his layers of warm clothing.

“What was that for?!” he exclaimed.

“You shouldn’t have been in the way!” Sammy replied, sounding smug.

Jack managed to roll back up to his knees and grabbed up some snow to throw at the music director. Sammy followed suit.

“No! Attack them, not each other!” Joey called hopelessly as they began pelting each other. 

“Hey, cut it out!” Henry called from his post at the end of the barricade and rushed to stop the quarreling co-workers. Norman watched as the animator dashed by.

“Sammy and Jack are out. There’s only four of us left.”

“Don’t worry, Norman! We can do it!” Bendy stretched his rubbery arms wide and started to gather up a huge ball of snow, “This’ll knock a few of ‘em out!”

“We’ll cover you!” Joey said and lowered his voice, “Norman, you sneak up behind them.”

He indicated the bank where the mechanics lay in hiding. Norman nodded quickly and slunk off, keeping low to the snow and hugging the barricade. Joey glanced over in time to see both Sammy and Jack chuck their snowballs at Henry. His last words were “Are you kidding me?”

Guess we’re down to three, now, Joey thought, suddenly regretting his decision to have a snowball fight.

Turmoil appeared to have erupted among Joey’s ranks. Good, Thomas thought.

“Keep it up!” he called, “If we keep up our stream of fire they won’t be able to react.”

“We’re running out of ammo!” Lacie called, gesturing to their scant stockpile of ready-made snowballs. Thomas nodded to Wally.

“Start making more!” Wally nodded and got to work furiously packing the snow into ammunition. Murray slid over to help him.

Thomas continued his attack. One of his projectiles elicited another cry from the snow bank to their left.

“Got one!”

Wally looked up from his work to see and gasped.

“Ambush!”

Thomas whipped around in time to see Wally and Murray go down as Norman rose up seemingly out of nowhere. He and Lacie dove behind another snow heap as even more snowballs whistled over their heads.

“How’d he sneak up on us?” Thomas said.

Lacie shook her head, “I don’t know, but we need to take him down.”

“Agreed.” Thomas risked a glance, “I’ll rush him, you cover me.”

Lacie took up her last handfuls of snow, “Go.”

Thomas leaped forward, rolling over the small hill of snow. Norman looked up from his cover behind their barricade but immediately ducked down again as Lacie’s snowballs came at him.

Thomas’s feet flew over the snow and leaped over Wally and Murray, who both looked disappointed at dying.

“Avenge us, Thomas!” Wally called after him.

Thomas lunged forward with a cry and chucked his snowballs as Norman reeled backward and threw his own. The mechanic knew he’d been hit at the tell-tale thud against his chest but still managed to get a good shot in. Norman took the snowball full in the face as he landed on the ground, Thomas coming to fall beside him.

They lay where they’d fallen, listening to the sounds of carnage around them. Norman cleared the snow from his face and nodded to Thomas.

“Good game.” he said, offering a hand.

Thomas glanced at him and slowly accepted the shake, “Yeah, you too.”

Mentally cursing Joey, Grant threw his snowball over the barricade and watched it land with a disappointing plop in no man’s land. He looked back up in time to see a snowball headed straight for him. He hit the turf with a yelp. Someone behind him cried out in dismay and he turned to see Alice eyeing the new stain of snow on her dress.

“Darn it, we were so close to winning!”

Susie looked over at her, “Don’t worry, Al. We’ll still win.”

“We’ll avenge you, too!” Shawn yelled, and lobbed another snowball.

Alice slouched down onto the snow beside Johnny, who was rocking back and forth to keep himself warm.

“Hey,” Shawn said, looking over the snow bank, “I think something’s going down in Thomas’s territory!”

Susie and Grant risked a glance while Bertrum hung back. Sure enough, someone was throwing snowballs at Thomas and Lacie.

“This gives us a chance!” Susie exclaimed, “We have the most people left!”

“Victory is ours!” Shawn grinned at Grant, who couldn’t suppress a smile.

“Look out!”

Bertrum’s warning jarred Grant from his visions of a nice, warm office and he looked up in time to see the mother of all snowballs descend down towards him. He felt rooted to the spot, unable to save himself. Then Shawn was shoving into him and he was sprawling into a patch of snow that fogged up his glasses. Grant swiped his coat sleeve across the lenses and turned back around.

“Shawn?”

Shawn was lying face-down, partially buried by the mountain of a snowball. Grant’s eyes widened and he lunged forward, as did Susie and Bertrum.

“Shawn! Are you okay?” Grant furiously shoveled the snow off him and turned him over. The disoriented Irishman blinked up at him.

“Wow, that hurt.” he said quietly.

“We will accept your surrender!” Joey called.

“Yeah!” came Bendy’s squeaky voice.

Susie stood up from where she was crouched, “Are you kidding me? You might have seriously injured someone with that-”

A snowball (a considerably smaller one) sailed over the other barricade and right into Susie’s face. The voice actress sputtered and backed away.

“Bendy!” Alice cried indignantly.

“What? We didn’t call a truce!”

“I think this game is over.” Henry stood up from behind the snow bank, “Let’s all go back inside and-”

“Never!” Bendy chucked a snowball at him.

“We gotta see who wins!” Joey roared.

“Indeed we do.” Grant turned as Bertrum spoke. The older man’s lined face had set in a mask of determination.

“Go.” Grant turned back at Shawn’s weak voice, “I’ll be okay.”

“I won’t let you down.” Grant choked out.

“I know you won’t.” Shawn smiled and sank back into the snow.

Grant stood beside Bertrum, “I will avenge you.” he promised.

There was a scuffling to their right and they both turned as Lacie dashed across no man’s land and leaped over the snow bank.

She rolled to her feet and held her hands up, “Truce?”

Grant and Bertrum shared a glance and nodded.

“Truce.”

“Aw, heck.”

“What?”

Bendy gestured to the force of three preparing to attack them, “Lacie’s still alive!”

Joey followed where the cartoon pointed, “Aw, heck.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Hold our ground!” Joey declared, gathering his snowballs closer to him, “Get another monster snowball ready!”

“I think you guys are taking this too far.” Henry came forward, brushing Bendy’s snowball from his beard, “You may have actually hurt Shawn.”

“Aw, c’mon, Henry!” Bendy waved aside the concern as he formed another huge snowball, “He’s fine!”

He raised his voice, “You’re fine, right Shawn?”

“I think you knocked him out!” Susie shouted back.

Bendy paused, looking surprised, “Really?”

“Oh, he’s just being dramatic!” Joey assured, “Keep going, Bendy!”

“No, don’t keep going, Bendy!”

“Would you be quiet?” Norman spoke up from where he sat further back from the front lines, “I want to see what happens!”

“You’re blocking the view!” Sammy added as Jack gestured for him to sit down. Both seemed to have forgotten their anger with each other. The other corpses (minus Shawn) gathered closer to see the outcome.

Henry glared at them, “I will not back down until you all-”

Whatever the animator was going to say was cut short as yet another snowball met with his face.

Joey whipped back to face their attackers. Lacie, Grant, and Bertrum had taken up Bertrum’s mat and were using it as a makeshift shield. The three of them charged forward with an enraged cry, sending snowballs at their targets as they ran.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Bendy asked as he ducked down.

Joey crouched beside him, “I never really laid down any rules!”

“This is going to be good.” Norman laughed.

Joey and Bendy jolted back as their opponents leaped over the barricade, their feet sinking into the snow. Lacie separated from the rest and plowed straight into Joey, sending the air right out of his lungs. Joey looked with fear into Lacie’s triumphant grin.

Then Bendy was hurling his gigantic snowball, “Get away from my dad!”

The mechanic jerked away right as the snowball was about to hit her, unfortunately giving it a clear path to Joey, who was immediately knocked out at the impact.

“Ha!” Grant cried, “Revenge!”

“I’m sorry!” Bendy called to his creator’s still form, “I will avenge you!”

“You won’t have the chance!” Bertrum flung his snowballs at Bendy, forcing the little demon to dodge. Grant and Lacie charged forward as Bendy leaped for the safety of a snow bank. With his cartoon speed, he created a mass of snowballs within seconds and hurled them at his adversaries. At the same time, Grant, Lacie, and Bertrum released theirs.

All four went down under the fire. No one was left alive.

“We won!” they all cried simultaneously.

“No, we did!”

“I hit you first!”

“You did not!”

“It’s a tie, okay!” Henry yelled from his place beside Joey, “Now can we all get inside and help Joey and Shawn?”

Grant nodded and broke away to assist Shawn. The others looked more than a little indignant but were at least willing to let the argument rest to take care of the wounded.

“That was… fun.” Bertrum said, sounding surprised.

“Yup. Ruthlessly pummeling each other with snowballs has its perks.” Lacie agreed.

“Can we do it again?” Wally asked excitedly.

Thomas patted his shoulder, “Maybe after we’ve recovered from this one.”

All the studio members straggled inside, Grant supporting Shawn and Henry carrying Joey. Bendy looked more than a little guilty.

Then a pair of cartoonish looking ears popped up above the snow, followed by a cartoon snout.

“Is the game over?” Boris asked.

Everyone slowly turned around and stared. Boris looked back in confusion.

“What?”

“Boris, you…” Alice shook her head, “You’re alive.”

“Yes.” Boris agreed.

“Then that means-”

“WE WON!” the mechanics hollered. Everyone jumped in fright as Thomas, Wally, Lacie, and Murray gathered together and cheered their victory.

“But- But that’s not fair!” Bendy said, “He didn’t do anything!”

“We didn’t lay down any rules.” Norman said with a small smirk.

Boris looked more than a little shocked as his teammates rushed forward and lifted him up, making him drop his empty can of soup.

“Out of the way!” Murray called, “Winners coming through!”

Everyone stepped aside as the mechanics carried the very confused wolf inside. Muttering to themselves, the rest of the studio filed after them.

Joey was roused slightly by the elation in the air. He looked up at Henry and smiled wanly.

“See? Told you a team building exercise would do them good.”

Henry just gave Joey a withering glare.

Joey nodded, “I’ll shut up now,” and passed out again.

Reid all about it

David Belcher / The Herald 03.04.1998

(Glasgow, Scotland) Boss Grooves: David Belcher welcomes the pop renaissance of Creation's original siblings Even taking into account London's inflated prices, it remains undeniable that £40 should still be sufficient these days to allow a couple of geezers to get splendidly blootered. Ah, but would £40 be enough for two members of the Jesus and Mary Chain? This pop alco-puzzle was among my concerns when I met Mary Chain-men Jim Reid and Ben Lurie in a Camden pub last week. For the Mary Chain, remember, are the band who, as wee teenaged laddies, created a reputation for pyrotechnical rock'n'roll riotousness when they first ventured from their home in East Kilbride to stage their debut performance in Glasgow. At that gig in 1984 they a) fell out with the bloke operating the sound-deck; b) bust up his gear; c) bust up the headlining band's gear; d) bust up a dressing-room, and e) eventually got duffed up by the venue's bouncers. Thereafter, as the band's latest press biog makes clear, the Mary Chain's two fraternal mainstays, Jim and William Reid, led a notable life of rock'n'roll excess in all areas. A German drug bust featured early doors. Later in 1984, at London's artily-experimental ICA, there was an apres-gig riot when the crowd decided to be insulted by the band's terse 25-minute set. Over the years, the JAMC CV has encompassed at least one more rioting London audience; one not-so-fraternal on-stage fist-fight; a Radio 1 airplay ban (for supposed drug references); a refusal by record-plant workers to press a Mary Chain single (on the grounds of obscenity or blasphemy or both). Oh, and in Toronto in 1987 Jim Reid was charged with assaulting an audience-member with his mikestand. More importantly, the Jesus and Mary Chain spat out a stream of lasting albums and hit singles, in the process establishing their own trademark sound: a sizzling white-hot blast of white noise which somehow managed to be melodic, angry, nihilistic, uplifting, and fizzing with righteous alienation all at once. Then, at a time when a host of other bands belatedly started having hits with exactly the same sort of melodic-yet-alienated white noise, the Mary Chain mysteriously dropped from sight. Three years on, however, the Mary Chain are back, reunited with their first manager, a fiery and no-nonsense Glaswegian fellow by the name of Alan McGee, who now runs his own label... a label which has latterly had a measure of success with a band featuring another couple of squabblesome siblings, the Gallaghers. Aye, yon folk who brought you Oasis, Creation, are poised to issue a corking new Mary Chain single, Cracking Up, on Monday, to be followed in June by an album, Munki, that's every bit as caustic and tuneful as anything the Reid brothers have ever done. Don't miss the Mary Chain when they kick off a low-key UK tour in Scotland at the Loft, Dumfries, on April 22, and Glasgow's Garage (April 23). But where have the Mary Chain been? What went wrong in their relationship with their previous label, Warner Brothers? What have they learned? How have they changed? Where are they going? And how much of Creation's £40 bar-kitty will they sup during our hour together? Jim Reid reflectively savours his half-pint of Belgian wheat beer, the real ale connoisseur's choice. "We feel rejuvenated," Jim says flatly. He looks as unhealthily pallid as ever he did, but there's a discernable vitality about him now. A new-found maturity, too. "Warners didn't like our current album when they heard it half-way through. It was honest of them to tell us, and they did say they'd still release it. But we'd always felt they never knew what to do with us. "Maybe we'd shut the label out in the early days... maybe we were a tad paranoid, seeing musicbiz monsters and demons where there weren't any. We probably wasted time and energy fighting them. There we were, a bunch of kids thinking we were walking through a minefield, when in fact we'd actually just locked ourselves in a studio, imagining that everyone was out to get the Mary Chain. "Anyways, Warners and the Mary Chain having mutually got rid of each other, the best thing we could do was finish the record. We got rid of our management, too. So it's been a hard couple of years, with no safety blanket. It was hard watching the rise of Creation at the same time. "Creation is the most natural label for us to be on, but at the same time, because Alan is a mate, we didn't want to go and ask him to sign us. We wanted Alan to hear the music and like it for what it is." He did. He does. Everything is bliss-shaped and Mary Chain-fashion. But why Munki? "We wanted a title that was un-Mary Chain-ish, something that would make people think: 'That's weird, you wouldn't expect that from them.' We wanted something that would pigeonhole us less as dark, brooding, miserable, rain-drenched - all the things we're usually seen as. 'Munki' is simply a meaningless word our younger sister, Linda, thought of." While 'munki' is meaningless, Munki is an album notable for being pithy, zippy, poppy, perky, jaunty. Linda Reid sings on one track, too. "She'd never sung before, but she's a natural. She stays with our parents in East Kilbride - she's an English student in Glasgow - and she happened to be down in London with us in our studio." The long-term plan? "There isn't one. There never is. We'd like to tour as many places as possible, and see where the demand might be. We like to be liked. We don't want to be sitting in the middle of nowhere, playing to no-one, thinking: 'What are we doing here?'" When the Mary Chain began, though, this urge to strike a chord with the populace wasn't exactly evident, chaps. "Our early stuff involved us putting on a front. We always wanted to be popular, but we didn't have enough confidence on stage. So we got drunk; we bluffed it; we looked as if we didn't care. We were actually hurt when people didn't like what we were doing, or we played badly at a gig. "Because if people get the point of a gig, there's nothing better." Agreeing, I prepare to exit. At this juncture, Ben decides to replenish his beer. And ach, why not, he'll add a double whisky. Jim opts for a Bloody Mary. A wild old JAMC night seems in prospect. But a couple of days later a Creation bod inadvertently revealed that most of the label's drinks-money was in fact returned to them. 100% aged in sober wisdom: the Mary Chain are stronger than ever.

Funny Phoebe, Funny Joey by Pip Adam

“The One With The Black-Out” During a power outage, Rachel falls for the owner of a lost kitten, a dark, attractive Italian guy. Meanwhile, Chandler is trapper in an automated-teller vestibule with a gorgeous model. It is late and we are tired. The Italian guy is creepy. At this stage we root for Ross. Ross has just found out his estranged lesbian wife and her girlfriend are going to have his baby. Ross has a monkey. It’s a bit up in the air how big a part Ross will get to play in his child’s life. So, yeah, we are slightly, ‘Go Ross!’ and hoping Paolo won’t stay round too long. Rachel doesn’t speak Italian. The woman in the vestibule is a Victoria Secret model but Chandler won’t talk to her. Chandler’s head is talking and talking and talking. Chandler’s head gives bad advice concerning the Victoria Secret model. Poor Chandler. Poor Ross. Also, ‘vestibule’?

“The One With All The Jam” Monica becomes obsessed with making jam as a means of getting over Richard. Still feeling unfulfilled, she decides she wants to have a baby and visits a sperm bank. The sperm bank is not Joey. Ba dum cha. Our daughter starts watching a programme with what she calls ‘laughing in the background’. Monica is a chef but at the moment is unemployed. Monica lost her job after accepting "gifts" from her restaurant's meat supplier. Richard is Tom Selleck – he wears his trousers high and his shirts tucked in but, you can see the appeal. ‘Ooo,’ goes the live studio audience. ‘Aaaaahh.’ Chandler makes a joke. ‘Hahaha,’ goes the live studio audience, laughing in the background. Chandler makes jokes to hold back the sadness of his parent’s divorce. Chandler’s father rejects the gender binary and works in Las Vegas. Chandler makes a joke about this.

“The One With All The Jealousy” Ross becomes obsessively jealous of Rachel’s sexy new co-worker Mark and is convinced he is flirting with Rachel. Monica is smitten with a sexy busboy. Rachel and Ross got together. Ross was angry at Rachel. Rachel was angry at Ross. Ross and Rachel kissed in the rain. Ross and Rachel are going out together. Ross is a controlling bully. Ross goes to Rachel’s work and makes a fool of her. Ross is a creep. Ross is angry at Rachel. The busboy is a player and a liar. Monica wears big fake boobs for her waitressing job. A lot of fun is made of Monica’s big fake boobs and the fact that Monica used to be fat. Monica is always around food. Monica’s big fake boobs catch on fire. Waitressing is hard work.

“The One With The Cuffs” Monica “pulls a Monica” when she caters her mother’s party. Chandler gets himself locked into a compromising position with Rachel’s boss. Monica’s parents are horrible to her, we start to see where Ross gets it from. Monica’s parents think the sun shines out of Ross’ arse. Rachel’s boss is played by Alison La Placa who received extensive training in classical piano and voice. She’s been in Greys Anatomy, The OC, Boston Legal and ER but only once or twice. The joke is Rachel’s Boss is tall and sturdy and good at her job and ambitious – she makes Chandler her bitch. The joke is woman who are a bit like men do that. If Chandler had done it to her he would have found a way to make it funny. It’s not a woman man thing. Chandler’s can make anything funny but Rachel and Monica are the best at prat falls.

“The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie” Ross debates whether to date a faraway beauty or a less desirable woman who lives nearby. Chandler tries to set up a date for Rachel with some co-workers. Ross cheated on Rachel. Or did he? Then they broke up. Ross is not a nice person. Monica gets smaller and smaller. We play fuck, marry, kill with the cast of Friends. I go Joey, Chandler, Ross – in a heartbeat, fastest reply I’ve made in days. I go Phoebe, Phoebe – but can’t bring myself to kill any of the women. Monica gets smaller and smaller and keeps making food. Rachel is doing fine, you hardly notice how much weight she’s lost.

“The One With Joey’s Dirty Day” On Joey's first day on a major movie, one of Hollywood's legendary stars finds him in a compromising position in his trailer. Rachel regrets asking Ross for a favor when it sparks a new romance. We shout at the TV screen, ‘Don’t Rachel! Don’t! Don’t ask Ross!’ Ross is a creep. Joey has a shower in Charlton Heston’s dressing room because he forgets to shower after a fishing trip. Joey played Al Pacino’s arse in a shower in an earlier episode. Joey is getting older. ‘How you doin’?’ gets old. Joey wears more polar-necked jumpers. His ‘getting older face’ doesn’t match his ‘not getting smarter mind’. The joke is Joey is beautiful and dumb but it can’t last forever and we can’t work out how he’s paying his rent. Phoebe lived on the streets and her mother committed suicide and Joey falls in love with her twin sister. Phoebe has a twin and gave birth to her brother and his wife’s triplets. But all this happened in other episodes. In this episode Joey has a shower and Ross falls in love with Rachel’s boss’ niece. He’ll marry her, Emily not Rachel, but not yet. He’ll marry her, Rachel not Emily, but we can’t think about that because every time we do we feel sorry for Rachel.

“The One With The Girl Who Hits Joey” When Joey starts dating Katie, he finds she packs a painful punch. Ross has trouble making friends with his new neighbours. It’s funny when a woman hits a man. It’s sexy when a woman hits a woman. Katie makes Joey her bitch – she could take him. Monica gets smaller. Then Rachel gets smaller. Chandler gets bigger. His face puffs up. Phoebe stays about the same. Ross’ hair cut changes from one episode to the next. Joey is Joey. Phoebe never gets to see her babies. Ross never sees Ben any more. We don’t get to see Carol and Susan much, which we’re disappointed about because Carol and Susan seem like decent people. Like maybe they are from a different TV show. Like the time Robin Williams was on. Oh, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Jean-Claude Van Damme was on Friends. Everyone in Ross’ new apartment block hate him and we cheer and cheer.

“The One With Unagi” Ross tries to teach martial arts to Rachel and Phoebe. Joey hires a look-alike to pose as his twin brother for a medical experiment. Ross creeps up on Rachel and Phoebe and tries to terrify them. When this doesn’t work he creeps up on some other women and is chased but not arrested. We hate Ross. Joey hiring a look-alike for the twin experiment is one of the funniest things that has ever happened in the lives of these six 20-something friends living in Manhattan.

“The One With Monica’s Thunder” Minutes after Chandler proposes to Monica, she plans to celebrate on the town with her pals - until she catches Ross and Rachel kissing. Chandler walks through a door and loses 20 pounds because Matthew Perry gets pancreatitis during the hiatus. The orange shirt he finished last season in hangs on him like a tent. Monica is still tiny in his arms. Rachel’s hair is long but not as long as it was. With Ross and Rachel the writing seems kind of on the wall. Jennifer Anniston is about to meet Brad Pitt. Rachel’s arms are tiny. Poor Rachel. Poor Monica. Poor Chandler. Funny Joey. Funny Phoebe. Creepy Ross. The white dog is on the veranda.

Oh my goddd I was scrolling back through your blog and the 1950s lesbian exr is a thing that just could not conceivably be any further up my alley (I realise what this sounds like and I apologise), so I was wondering if we could get another little snippet? No pressure ofc. PS I love your writing and even if we never get any more of tscosi it's still probably my favourite podcast of all time

Hi!

Thank you so much. There will definitely be more Starship Iris eventually, but I really appreciate that.

Re: the fic, I was simultaneously trying to write a historically accurate-ish look at 1950′s American lesbian identity and activism, and give it a bit of a noir feel, which in theory I think you could do because holy shit these women were risking so much, and they had to basically be spies anyway because the FBI was legit trying to keep tabs on them and their meetings. I don’t really know if I’m the person to do it, though; this feels pretty damn far out of my lane, to be honest.

I really wish there was more historical fiction about this cause in this period; you can find some fascinating shit just doing a cursory wikipedia crawl. Like, the first lesbian periodical was created in 1947 by a 25-year-old who was working as a receptionist at RKO Studios; her boss was like ‘just look busy so people think I’m a big deal’ and so she was secretly using company equipment to type and format a zine about lesbianism, like 25 years before the APA stopped calling homosexuality a mental illness.

Anyway, I only wrote about three pages; I stopped when I realized how long it would need to be, and how much work would be involved, and also frankly it’s a lot easier to situate Enjolras in a fic about queer activism post-Stonewall, because the D.O.B.-era organizing tended to be pretty assimilationist. Like, I think their work was important and has been unfairly neglected, but I still think Enjolras in any era would chafe at their gradualism. 

Enjolras isn’t even mentioned by name in this, but uh I think you’ll be able to find her. 

(Head’s up: this is the very opening of the story, it’s from Grantaire’s POV, and she has not begun to work through her issues yet, so quick content warning for period-typical internalized homophobia and self-loathing, as well as period-typical sexism. Also, historical note: from what I can tell, “lesbian” had negative connotations even within the community at the time.)

“Grantaire, are you alright?” said Murray. He didn’t try that hard to hide his laughter. “You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly.

“You’ll need to set aside your small-town attitudes if you want to succeed in the big city,” Chester added. “There’s all sorts here, as you can see.”

Grantaire nodded. There was nothing more dangerous than someone desperate to prove they were more Bohemian than you, she thought. She wondered if they were only doing this because she had corrected Chester about Rothko. Maybe she should’ve kept her mouth shut. She could have just let him be wrong and avoided the whole adventure, or prank, or byzantine office hazing ritual–whatever had inspired them to take her here, of all places.

The Musain. Run by the mob, of course, but that wasn’t what made the place so notorious. There wasn’t exactly a neon sign screaming gay bar! But even if Grantaire was as naive as Chester and Murray seemed to assume, she probably could’ve put the clues together herself from the clientele, men mingling with men and women mingling with women. 

How much looking was too much looking? It all felt like too much. She tried focusing on the grimy wall of bottles behind the bar, except one of the bartenders had hung a poster of a pin-up girl back there, naked but for a strategically-placed ukulele, grinning a slick, lipsticky grin. There was no safe real estate to rest your eyes on. Every inch was dangerous, an admission of something.

“I’ll be right back,” she croaked. “Ladies’ room.”

“If you can tell which one it is,” laughed–Chester? Murray?–who even cared, she thought, ducking into the crowd.

The water did not help like she’d hoped. Grantaire switched off the tap and wiped at her face, badly wanting a cigarette. She wondered how much longer she could hide in here before it got suspicious. Two or three minutes, she figured, but when she stepped back into the bar she’d need to be perfectly composed.

Then again, neither of her new colleagues seemed too perceptive. Case in point: this present stunt, designed to unnerve her in an entirely different direction. Even now, she could at least detect a certain sick humor about the whole affair. She was still half-smirking when a woman walked in. Grantaire looked away on instinct, but foolishly, right into the mirror, to be pinned instead by the stranger’s reflection. There was just no catching a break tonight.

Grantaire had seen the stranger already from the other side of the bar, would have noticed her from a hundred paces. She was tall and athletic-looking, dressed like a man in a button-down shirt and trousers. Normally a girl of that stature slouched, pulled in her shoulders as if apologizing for taking up the space, but every line of this woman’s body was utterly assured, self-possessed. Her hair was cropped short, and there was a stark beauty in her strong brows and sharp cheekbones, feminine without a trace of softness.

Her eyes slid to Grantaire and away again: registered and dismissed in a single motion.

Grantaire dried her hands—slowly, because she still did not really want to go back. Anything was preferable, maybe including this.

In a way, it was almost a relief to see that nothing had changed. Seasons came and went but Grantaire was still Grantaire: a bundle of too-tight nerves and awkward elbows, scratchy throat, furtive gaze bouncing everywhere it shouldn’t. Still nursing a fascination with the most dangerous-looking female in the area. A puppy dog panting after a wolf.

Grantaire snorted, echoing in the cramped space. The woman looked back at her.

“Sorry,” Grantaire mumbled.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Your friends seem to be having a good time,” she said. Her voice was cold and dry as the Arctic Desert. Searing sun, powdery snow.

Chester and Murray weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination. They were barely co-workers; Grantaire had only been at the magazine for five days, had only arrived in the city three days before that, had been hired sight unseen by the eccentric editor-in-chief on the strength of a portfolio sent by mail and a first name that could pass as a man’s. It was even odds that once the bossman returned from his honeymoon and discovered his brand-new cartoonist was a she, Grantaire would be right out the door again, no chance to slip a single drawing into the lineup. As it was, her presence at the office had the air of a lingering typo.

Best-case scenario, her new employer would turn out to be one of those awful tyrants who refused to acknowledge any degree of fallibility, and he’d keep her on out of sheer hardheadedness. Perhaps after a year or two, she’d fade from a novelty to a background detail, and she’d finally grow up enough to stop trying to prove herself when it mattered the least.

None of it was worth explaining.

“They’re harmless,” said Grantaire instead. “That new intellectual type. They like modern art and smoking marijuana and pretending to understand poetry. They’re not here to gawk, not really.” She could not make herself shut her mouth. It was like having a fit. “They only brought me by to try to get a rise out of the girl from Skokie,” she was saying. “They’ve got nothing against your kind.”

“My kind,” the woman repeated, and Grantaire gave a helpless inward flinch. Was it rude to imply someone was a homosexual simply because she was wearing trousers at a gay bar? It didn’t look like a costume; she wore it with too much grace. “Don’t you mean ‘our kind’?” the woman said.

Grantaire froze, still clutching a wad of paper towel. She hadn’t expected to feel caught out. She had almost hoped for it, maybe, some slight terrified swoop of the stomach, but one foot inside the Musain, one glance at the flesh-and-blood patrons flirting under threat of police raid, had put it to rest.

(“Welcome to city life,” Chester had said, with a chuckle. “Meet your new neighbors!”)

Grantaire could only stand there, in the drab skirt and blouse she had picked specifically to blend in at the office, and measure the distance in miles, in light years.

She threw the paper towel in the trash, made herself meet the woman’s eyes. Grantaire was a head shorter, but somehow it was her spine that craned down, her shoulder blades that pulled together, her posture that begged forgiveness for the sheer fact of her blood and muscle and skin.

“I’m nothing like you,” said Grantaire.

“Really?” came the reply, unimpressed. “Because I could’ve sworn I saw you in here last week. Minus your friends.”

It had to be a bluff, thought Grantaire. Without two rowdy men at her back to make the whole thing a joke, she had barely managed to step in before she’d hightailed it back out.

It had to be a bluff, unless it wasn’t.

First Chester and Murray, and now this. Grantaire had just about had it with people trying to shock her by telling her things she already knew. Sex perverts exist, Grantaire, on one hand. You’re one of them, Grantaire, on the other.

At some point, a girl reached her limit.

“Oh,” said Grantaire, “I’m a lesbian, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

The woman blinked at her, not expecting—what? The directness? The word? The slightest illusion of a backbone?

Grantaire bared her teeth in a grin: another illusion. Nothing but well-honed reflex at this point; every bone in her body knew how to lie.

“And that’s the beginning and end of what we have in common,” Grantaire said. It had been a long day; she gave herself the petty satisfaction of slamming the door on her way out.

“Feeling better?” Chester asked, all mock-sympathy, when she returned. “Maybe a ginger-ale to settle your stomach?” It had the shape of an offer but the taste of a dare: can you stay long enough to drink it.

“Throw in some whiskey and you’ve got yourself a deal,” she said. Murray laughed. Her head hurt.

“Don’t look now, but there’s a woman, if you can call it that, watching us,” said Murray in a low, amused voice. “Think she’s got her eye on you, Grantaire.”

For once in her life, she wouldn’t rise to take the bait. “You’re hilarious,” said Grantaire without looking up. “A regular Bob Hope.”

“They still laughing at Bob Hope out in Skokie?” Chester said.

“It’s Illinois,” she snapped, “not the Mesozoic Era.”

“Mesozoic,” said Murray, as though he’d never heard anything so ridiculous. “Big word for a little lady.”

Mesozoic. Eight letters. But it didn’t matter how you contorted yourself; somebody would always find a way to be sore at you for being too much of one thing or another.

Grantaire hunched down on the stool, away from the sweep of those imagined eyes, and forced herself to smile.

Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Creep

Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 28 December 1967

And the child on whose shoulders I stand 
 whose longing I purged 
with public, kingly discipline 
today I bring him back 
 to languish forever, 
not in confession or biography, 
 but where he flourished 
 growing sly and hairy 
 — Leonard Cohen (‘The Spice Box of Earth’)

AN ELEVATOR man with hairy hands grumbles “shit,” as he takes me up. It is a massive mid-town hotel, in steep decline. The corridors are long and lit occasionally, like a cardboard coal mine. Humid ladies in black lace seem to peer from every transom, and old men with their backs turned lurk in every shadowy corner. There is a smell of stale cigars, or is it piss? I knock politely on a wafer-thin door, and wait.

Finally it opens, and Leonard Cohen, Canada’s most acclaimed young poet and novelist, offers a seat and some coffee. He has been listening to a tape of the half-completed album on which he will soon make his debut as a pop star (a year ago that would have given even me pause, but not today, when Leonard Bernstein picks the hits and the Partisan Review talks about “Learning from the Beatles”). His verse—collected in slim volumes perfect for pressing roses—so unabashedly romantic that it sits among my New Directions paperbacks like some later day Ossian from the North.

With Annie gone 
 whose eyes to compare 
 with the morning sun.
 Not that I did compare, 
but I do 
 now that she’s gone. 
— ‘For Annie’

No wonder Allen Ginsberg huffed out of a meeting with Leonard Cohen muttering, “This place looks like a ballet set.” There is a sinewy quality to those muscular images as they stretch across a page. There is a shameless agility to those leaps and conceits, which seems ethereal next to the boog-a-loo of modern verse.

But Leonard Cohen is a Visceral Romantic and he can hit you unawares because his emotions are recollected with anything but tranquility. He suffers gloriously in every couplet. Even his moments of ecstasy seem predicated on hours of refined despair. Leonard does not rant: he whispers hell and you must strain to hear his agony.

The fact is, I’m turning to gold, turning to gold. 
It’s a long process, they say it happens in stages. 
 This is to inform you that I’ve already turned to clay.
 — ‘The Cuckold’s Song’

Today, he faces me across a hotel room with the sun shining second hand in the windows down the block. The drapes are as florid as his verse. In fact, the room could be the set for most of his poems. The bedspread is faded, and you can hear the toilet. Atop the bureau is a seashell ashtray, embossed with Miami palm trees. To this pasteboard Chappaqua, Leonard Cohen has added only a Madonna decal for the mirror, and a terrible cold.

His front pockets bulge with tissues and Sucrets. The cold seems appropriate; his nose aches to be filled anyway. It is a huge nose, etched by some melancholy woodcarver into the hollows of his cheeks. He wipes it and wheezes gently as we hear a tape of his song, ‘Teachers’.

Though he claims he has always written with a typewriter for a guitar (“I sometimes see myself in the Court of Ferdinand, singing my songs to girls over a lute”), Leonard Cohen has been spending this past year or so creating lyrics with real melodies. He made his pop debut recently as Judy Collins’ beautiful person. Her choice was inspired; Leonard Cohen has written her best material—songs of love and torment powerful enough to be fairy tales.

And just when you mean to tell her
 That you have no love to give her
 Then she gets you on her wave length
 And she lets the river answer
 That you’ve always been her lover.
 And you want to travel with her
 And you want to travel blind 
And you know that she will trust you 
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.
 — ‘Suzanne’

“I think my album is going to be very spotty and undistinguished,” he says in greeting. His eyes sag like two worn breasts. “I blame this on my total unfamiliarity with the recording studio. They tried to make my songs into music. I got put down all the time.” He sits back on his bed, folds his hands in his lap, and lets his voice fade into an echo of itself: “It was a continual struggle… continual… they wanted to put me in bags. I thought I was going to… crack up.”

He is modestly addicted to cracking up. References to breakdowns past and future dot his conversation. He seems to judge periods in his life by his failure to cope with them. His favorite words—or those he uses most frequently—are “wiped out” and “bewildered.”

“When you get wiped out—and it does happen in one’s life—that’s the moment… the REAL moment. Around 30 or 35 is the traditional age for the suicide of the poet, did you know that?” (You look around for razors, pills, sharp edges, or easy plunges.) “That’s the age when you finally understand that the universe does not succumb to your command.”

That moment magnified into theme, is the chief concern of his major novel, Beautiful Losers. It is a multisexual love story, ecstatically, lyric like his poems, but deeply committed as prose to expressing its theme through an accumulation of detail. Its protagonist, a petty researcher, is victimized by the love of his wife and of his best friend. They control his life: soothe him, fuck him, teach him, cuckold him, and ultimately destroy him. Their triangle, joined on all sides, is further complicated by Catherine Tekakwitha, an Indian saint who fixes herself in the protagonist’s consciousness as an extension of his wife (also an Indian) and his own suffering. Martyred by the suicides of both his lover-tormentors, our hero is left to ponder the moral of Catherine’s life: suffering is madness, but it is also the sacred ground where Man encounters God. Somehow, we are all fated to walk that ground, is Leonard Cohen’s message. To embrace that agony of communion is to live with grace.

It begins with your family But soon it comes round to your soul.
 Well, I’ve been where you’re hanging 
I think I can see where you’re pinned
 When you’re not feeling holy
 Your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.
 — ‘Sisters of Mercy’

He was born in Montreal, to a wealthy Jewish family. “I had a very Messianic childhood,” he recalls. “I was told I was a descendent of Aaron, the high priest. My parents actually thought we were Cohenim—the real thing. I was expected to grow into manhood leading other men.”

He led himself through McGill, where he studied literature with Oxonian aplomb. A professor published a volume of his poetry on the University press, and Leonard Cohen became a writer. It was, he insists, “as accidental as that.” Because if he had had a choice, he would have become a revolutionary. But he approached radicalism with a bad cold, and a thorough knowledge of the Tonette. Though the Montreal Communists fascinated him with their paranoia and their certainty, he was less than embraced by his chosen confreres. “They saw me as a symbol of the decline of the enemy,” he recalls. “I never had that heroic revolutionary look. There was a certain openshirted quality I could never duplicate, I always looked different, maybe because my folks owned a clothing factory.”

Today, he wears poet’s gray, and a soft worker’s hat hangs on his closet door. He is getting old; the trousers of his cuffs are automatically rolled. He watches you jot that down in the middle of a point about politics and you wonder if he knows you plan to use it.

“I’m not a writer coming to music in the twilight of his youth,” he says suddenly. You look up. He begins to discuss the rock scene, then and now. Once, he thought Elvis Presley the first American singer of genius. Once, he played a Ray Charles record till it warped in the sun. Once, he thought of himself as Bob Dylan’s ancestor. “It wasn’t his originality which first impressed me, but his familiarity. He was like a person out of my books, singing to the real guitar. Dylan was what I’d always meant by the poet—someone about whom the word was never used.”

Until a short time ago, Leonard Cohen had never heard Dylan. He has spent much of the past seven years in a cottage on Hydra, Greece. He still returns there regularly for replenishment, the way F. Scott Fitzgerald’s heroes should have gone back to the Midwest. It keeps him from making too many scenes outside himself; that seems to be the scene he can make best.

Anyhow, you fed her five MacKewan Ales 
 took her to your room, put the right records on, 
 and in an hour or two it was done. 
 I know all about passion and honor 
but unfortunately, this had really nothing to do with either: 
 Oh, there was passion I’m only too sure 
 And even a little honor 
but the important thing was to cuckold Leonard Cohen 
I like that line because it’s got my name in it.
 — ‘The Cuckold’s Song’

“I wrote ‘Beautiful Losers’ on Hydra, when I’d thought of myself as a loser, financially, morally, as a lover, and a man. I was wiped out; I didn’t like my life. I vowed I would just fill the pages with black or kill myself. After the book was over, I fasted for ten days and flipped out completely. It was my wildest trip. I hallucinated for a week. They took me to a hospital in Hydra. One afternoon, the whole sky was black with storks. They alighted on all the churches and left in the morning… and I was better. Then, I decided to go to Nashville and become a song writer.”

He came to New York instead, thanks to a lady who is now his manager. And here he is—slaving over the songs he calls “Eastern Country laments,” trying to make them sound the way they read. Things are happening for Leonard Cohen. ‘Suzanne’, his best known lyric, made the charts on a vacuous cover version by Noel Harrison. Two recent compositions appear on the latest Judy Collins album. And Buffy Sainte Marie will include selections from Beautiful Losers on her next LP. Sometimes the two visit Saint Patrick’s, where there is a bas relief of St. Catherine on one of the Cathedral doors. Buffy puts daisies in the statue’s hair. “She sees the suffering in Catherine,” he explains. “She feels the thumping on the sky.”

If his forthcoming album is a good one, Leonard Cohen may well become one of history’s odder choices for pop stardom. But the men we deem to worship are never ordinary; that is the one passion they must guard against. If the time is ripe for a guru with a cold in the ego, Leonard Cohen’s modest agony will stand him in good stead.

“My songs are strangely romantic,” he admits, “but so are the kids. I somehow feel that I have always waited for this generation.” He pulls out a letter from a young girl who wonders over his unremitting despair. He frightens her because she senses that he has achieved an understanding of life, but he is sad despite it. She prays that the comprehension she seeks will not bring her such misery. She prays for him, and for herself, that he is really blind. And she ends by calling Leonard Cohen a “beautiful creep.”

Real tears form in the corners of his eyes, but modestly, they do not flow. He sighs for real. “That’s what I am—a beautiful creep.” He excuses himself and you grab for the letter when he is gone. That too is real.

Beautiful creep! You can’t help hearing him in the toilet; he pisses in quick panting spurts. You want to put him to bed with hot milk and butter, turn up the vaporizer, and kiss him good night.

And you want to travel with him 
 And you want to travel blind 
 And you think maybe you’ll trust him 
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind.
 — ‘Suzanne’

5 Questions on Art & Activism: Tse Tse Fly Middle East

In an exploration of art and activism, we are launching a new blog series - 5 Questions on Art & Activism - interviewing artists who have been actively fighting for various causes with their creative practice. To begin with, we have the pleasure to pose the 5 questions to Tse Tse Fly Middle East, formed by artist, curator and writer Simon Coates in the United Arab Emirates in 2015.

About Tse Tse Fly Middle East

Tse Tse Fly Middle East started life as a monthly experimental music, noise and film night in the Al Barsha district of Dubai.  Intended as a safe space for like-minded artists, they showcased local experimental musicians, noise-makers, film-makers and visual creatives, with the night spawning a collective of like-minded individuals.  Based in London since 2017, Tse Tse Fly Middle East is now a non-profit platform that produces and curates live events, radio work, interventions and artworks in the name of human rights and freedom of speech. Their work was deemed as culturally significant by the British Library and their audio productions was requested to be added into the archives. 

Tse Tse Fly Middle East produces live events in partnership with human rights and freedom of speech charities and NGOs, typically mixing curated experimental short films with live music performances. They have partnered with the likes of Reprieve, Amnesty International, Index On Censorship, English PEN, War On Want, Labour.

In September 2019 they partnered with UK charity FORWARD to release an album of spoken word and experimental music entitled These Are Our Friends Too that highlights issues around female genital mutilation.  Tracks from the set were featured, among others, on the BBC radio programme Late Junction and Resonance FM programme Sonic Imperfections.

The 5 questions

The Instrument of the State - Tse Tse Fly Middle East

YBI: How do you see art and activism? Do you see them inseparable?

Tse Tse Fly Middle East: 

I think it would be naïve to say that art and activism are inseparable. 

Mark Rothko was an incredible painter and the fact that he wasn’t an activist as well doesn’t detract from his work. For me, if you’re looking for a way to present a socio-political opinion then art can be a powerful conduit. But it’s the arts in a broad spectrum that work best for the activist – music, film and literature will always be more immediate than, say, expressionist painting or avant-garde mime.

By way of an example, we recently worked with women’s rights charity FORWARD on a spoken word and experimental music album on themes around female genital mutilation. It’s a difficult listen presented in a difficult art form about a difficult subject. In the planning stages we knew this and, because we wanted to reach as many people as possible, we put together a load of literature and photos, and did radio programmes and podcast interviews to properly explain the project.

So I don’t think art and activism are inseparable. They’re complementary and, if used skilfully, can deliver a powerful punch. I remember one event we did in Bath in the UK. We showed a series of experimental short films, specifically about conflict and refugeeism in the Middle East. When the films finished the audience burst into spontaneous applause. That was very rewarding.

YBI: Do you believe that artists have a responsibility as citizens of the world to act/ respond, in whatever means, to the many crises our world faces right now? Be it human rights violations, climate crisis, racism, sexism and so on? 

TTFME: 

I don’t really see the point of art that doesn’t have a message of some sort. Art shouldn’t be decorative, art should an antagonistic, argumentative and emotional. It should start fires and ignite discussion. 

Having lived in the Middle East I don’t think it’s fair, though, to put all artists under some kind of political or social obligation, simply because I know that in certain countries being outspoken can mean ending up in dire circumstances. I’m talking prosecution, imprisonment and torture.

However I do have the utmost respect for artists and activists that give themselves the responsibility to act and fight the power. At times I think that blue chip artists and creatives could do a lot more to support others that need help, but I’m not sure what a difference, say, Damien Hirst, would make if he suddenly started making overtly political work. For me the truly politicised artists are the ones who have always put messages in their work, right from the start. People like Ai Weiwei and William Kentridge, for example. Look at what Joseph Beuys did to highlight environmental issues. From my own point of view I find it very difficult to make anything that doesn’t have a message, or that doesn’t attempt to prove a point.

YBI: What could we, as artists and creatives, do in your opinion?

TTFME: Based on my own experience in the UK I think, no matter what you do, - if you want to make a difference, you should be realistic and set yourself achievable goals. I honestly thought that coming back to the UK would be the start of another amazing chapter in the story of for Tse Tse Fly Middle East. With everything that’s going on right now (and was happening back then) - especially the rise of the right – I imagined that people would be only too eager to get involved in what we do, and join in in order to spread the message. The trouble is that the darkening of the political landscape and the ridiculous move to leave the European Union means that people in the UK are drawing in their horns and looking after their own self-interests. Not that I blame them, we really are living in ludicrous times.

That being said, I do wonder why activists in far more difficult places than the UK - in Iran, Hong Kong, Iraq and Lebanon - seem to be a lot more fired up than they do in Britain. I have enormous admiration for these people who seem fearless in their determination and I wish the UK would take note. Extinction Rebellion have achieved a lot in terms of bringing attention to environmental issues, and I wish that other individuals and organisations would be as vociferous and as willing to take risks.

Overall, my own advice to artists and activists alike who want to make a difference would be to communicate, collaborate, co-operate and to keep going.

YBI: How did you begin fighting for human rights and freedom of speech in the Middle East with your creative practice?

TTFME: I lived in Dubai from 2011 until 2017 and it was during my time there that I witnessed all manner of human rights and freedom of speech abuses. It’s all the more shocking as it takes place in plain sight – whether its construction workers being forced to work in intolerable heat for a pittance, women being treated as second class citizens, migrant workers having their passports and phones confiscated.

Websites that the government doesn’t want you to see are blocked, the local press is heavily self-censored. People who express an opinion that’s counter to that of the ruling families are prosecuted and imprisoned. Homosexuality is illegal. One time I was curating a corporate exhibition in Dubai and the company who had commissioned the show said they wanted only Sunni artists’ work on display (I ignored them). The list goes on.

I’d formed Tse Tse Fly Middle East there in 2015 and, when I decided to come back to the UK, I did consider ending the project. However, I was determined to let people know about the social injustices that happen in the UAE and surrounding region, and re-inventing Tse Tse Fly as a non-profit organisation in the UK means that it works as the perfect communication vehicle.

YBI: Could you tell us one figure, collective or organisation that inspired your work in art and activism? 

TTFME: I’m just old enough to remember the Rock Against Racism movement in the UK. The idea behind the movement was to unite musicians of all genres against the right wing and everything they stood (and stand) for. This meant you’d see bands like The Clash stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Misty in Roots to pass on their message. Also, there was the organisation Crass - a band, plus a record label plus a bunch of artists and poets - who had a fervent anarchist ideology that was strongly politicised against social injustice. Having these kind of people around meant that, if you were into stuff that seemed left field from a cultural point of view, you weren’t marginalised, and that you could come together under a common flag. 

I’d see posters around town advertising social benefit concerts with line-ups that included punk and reggae bands, stand-up comedians, artists, film-makers and ranting poets, all in one evening. Real diversity united, and perfect for a young teenager who was terrified of nuclear war.

Also, in March 2019 we were chosen to put together some work in Yinka Shonibare’s studio for his Guest Projects initiative. Yinka is an amazing human being, an incredible artist. His work on themes of colonialism and black identity is dignified, astute and beautifully put together.

Images from the Tse Tse Fly Middle East Guest Projects residency

Projects

Station Electric - Human Rights & Freedom of Speech on Air 

Partnering with In Place of War, the UK charity that uses creativity as a tool for positive change, Tse Tse Fly Middle East is curating a selection of radio programmes on themes of human rights, censorship and free speech for the project, to be launched on 30 Jan 2020. The exhibition marks four years of the Tse Tse Fly Middle East radio programme on UK arts station Resonance EXTRA.

Hosted on the Tse Tse Fly Middle East website, the exhibition will feature contemporary and archived radio programme episodes that champion human rights and freedom of speech. These may be programmes that were made in extreme circumstances, episodes that feature discourse on the key themes of social politics or programmes that approach censorship and civil rights from a unique perspective.

Alongside the radio recordings there will be a gallery of photographs from the Tse Tse Fly Middle East archive. 

These Are Our Friends Too 

​Tse Tse Fly Middle East have partnered with leading UK-based African diaspora women's campaign and support organisation FORWARD to produce These Are Our Friends Too, a unique album that highlights the work FORWARD does to eradicate FGM (female genital mutilation).

​The first stage of the project resulted in a book of the same name that features more than thirty pieces of work, a short film made with Media Trust, and the new collaboration will see twenty of the poems re-imagined. 

For the new album Tse Tse Fly Middle East hand-picked a selection of female artists and musicians, and each one was given a spoken word recording of one of the poems from the These Are Our Friends book read by members of the FORWARD team. The artists then composed and recorded a sonic background for their designated piece, with the resulting spoken word and experimental music compositions making up the new, nineteen-track set, These Are Our Friends Too. The album features contributions from some of the foremost female proponents of noise from Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Serbia, Bulgaria and Sweden, as well as UK-based collaborators. And the visceral, uncompromising and unsettling tracks that result reflect the disturbing nature of female genital mutilation.

Buy These Are Our Friends Too here.  

To find out more about Tse Tse Fly Middle East, check out their website here

The blog post is published by Candy Choi

The ever-changing face of America and what I make of it after all these years.

July 21, 2019

As a proud member of the gerontocracy, I’ve seen the world evolve in ways I never imagined as a child. Take, for example, the not-so-simple matter of race relations and attitudes toward skin color.

When I started school at St. Alphonsus in 1953, every kid was white. But not really white. My first big box of Crayolas included a color called “Flesh.” I remember staring at it, thinking that it did not look like the color of the skin of anyone I knew. And certainly not like that of the “colored people” (as African-Americans were known in the early ‘50s) in the Detroit neighborhood where my grandparents lived.

Crayola didn’t even try to make a crayon for them.

As I got a little older and started playing youth baseball, my team, the Bullets, occasionally played a team from the south end of Dearborn that everyone called “the Syrians.” They were a bunch of Arabic kids whose parents or grandparents actually came from Lebanon, and I recall thinking that they looked white but that most of them had better tans than the kids on my team.

By the time I was in high school during the early to mid ‘60s, the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr., was ascending in national attention. I didn’t watch much nightly news in those days, but I was aware that Walter Cronkite of CBS, and “Huntley-Brinkley” of NBC, covered it every evening on TV.  At that point in my life I remember often hearing the words “prejudice,” “discrimination,” “segregation” and “integration,” but I don’t recall ever hearing the word “diversity.”

Actually, in my mostly blue collar neighborhood, there may have been more discussion about “nationality” than skin color during those years. The grandparents of most of my friends had all immigrated to America from somewhere else--Italy, Poland, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and Belgium. Canada, too, although we never thought of Canadians as immigrants. In any case, Dearborn was “all white.” Period. And mayor Orville Hubbard neither said nor did much to refute his separatist reputation.

When I went off to college, one of my biggest surprises was the racial--and geographic--composition of the Michigan State football team. The mid 1960s were the glory years of Spartan football and most of the best players were black and from the South. Such as All-American defensive end Bubba Smith (Beaumont, Texas); All-American wide receiver Gene Washington (LaPorte, Texas); All-American roverback George Webster (Anderson, South Carolina); and Jimmy Raye (Fayetteville, North Carolina) who became the first black quarterback from the South to win a national title. Those great ‘65 and ‘66 teams also included two Hawaiians, placekicker Dick Kenny and All-American fullback Bob Apisa who was born in American Samoa.

If you search for a photo of the 1965 Alabama football team, which shared the national championship with MSU that season, you will find that it does not include a single black face. And if you Google photos of the 1966 Notre Dame team, which shared the next year’s national title with the Spartans, it reveals just one black player--that of All-American defensive tackle Alan Page.

In my estimation, head coach Duffy Daugherty has never received sufficient credit for all the things he did to integrate college football.

By the end of my second year on campus, the civil rights movement, student protests against the war in Vietnam, worries over being drafted into the military, the emerging sexual revolution, drug use and all the cultural changes associated with the ‘60s--in music, literature, hair styles, clothing, etc.--made “crazy” feel routine.

And then on Sunday, July 23, 1967, things got even crazier.

I recall sitting with some pals at “the Canteen” at Camp Dearborn, eating a black cherry ice cream cone in the late afternoon sun, when a St. Al’s girl I had known since first grade walked up to our table and said, “Have you heard about the riot going on in Detroit?”

Riot? Detroit? What? Huh?

The next evening I drove down Warren Avenue into the city with my Dad, and I remember seeing independent business owners sitting on the steps of their stores, with rifles locked and loaded, prepared to defend their properties. The following day at the Detroit paint factory where I worked that summer, I took the staircase to the rooftop of Building 42, looked out toward the Detroit River and could see hundreds of fires dotting the cityscape. Detroit was put under curfew for four days; the National Guard, as well as two divisions of the U.S. Army, were called in to quell the disturbance; and in the end, 43 people died, over 7,000 arrests were made and 2,000 buildings were destroyed. The riot was triggered by an early-hours bust of a blind pig, but black frustration with racial inequities was at the root of it all.

Detroit has never been the same since.

I graduated from college in December of 1969, and about two months later drove across the country with my buddy Joe on an adventure to the West Coast. I was soon able to find a job as a janitor at the uber-exclusive Pacific Union (Men’s) Club at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco. It was my first introduction to people with “yellow skin.”

I was part of a work crew that consisted of a Filipino, a Korean, a Chinese man and three white guys. The three Asians had all come to America in hopes of saving enough money to bring their families to the U.S. All three struggled with English, and I helped my Korean buddy learn the language by reading aloud the comics section of the Sunday paper, while pointing at the illustrations.

Because of the language barrier and my short time on the job, I gained few good insights into those guys and their respective cultures, other than to say I knew them as great workers.

After a couple of months, Joe and I moved on to Los Angeles, but I was feeling like a bit of loser, homesick and hungry. He found a gig as a carpenter; I soon caught a ride back home with some pals who were visiting the coast. In December of 1970 I finally landed my first big boy job as a copywriter for the Automobile Club of Michigan (AAA) at its headquarters in downtown Detroit.

It was the fulfillment of my boyhood dreams. I was writing every day about insurance, travel and auto financing services. I was being taken to lunch several times a week by art studios or the ad agency that created AAA’s radio and TV advertising. And I finally had a couple of bucks in my pocket.

But something was percolating below the surface at work. Word leaked out that the Auto Club would be moving its headquarters from downtown Detroit to Dearborn. And, suddenly, there was a concurrent realization that there was not a single black person or woman who was a department manager at the downtown headquarters or at any of the 56 Michigan AAA branch offices at that time.

Although it still felt like the ‘60s, instead of revolting, disgruntled black employees and a female employee filed separate discriminatory lawsuits against the Auto Club. The suits dragged on for years in the courts, but by the time I left the company in 1979 there were numerous blacks and many women in prominent positions at AAA throughout the state.

Meanwhile, during the early-to-mid ‘70s, the Motor City came to be known as the Murder City. Also, federally imposed school busing accelerated the flight of white people from Detroit. Nevertheless, in December of 1977, I bought my first home in an integrated Detroit neighborhood called North Rosedale Park. Thanks to an active civic association, involved block clubs, a community house for hosting neighborhood events, etc., North Rosedale worked.

However, to the south, the neighborhoods branching out from nearby Evergreen Road, and the ones north of West McNichols, had become virtually all black. I was inside a few homes in those neighborhoods only a handful of times, visiting or partying with black colleagues from work. However, I slow-cruised the streets of Northwest Detroit many times in my car, an admittedly imperfect way to try to understand what it was like to live there. I observed people who were obviously middle class, but I observed many more who appeared to be “underclass.”

For a time I was a member of a North Rosedale Park committee to help prevent neighborhood crime and was privy to a police department map with pinpoints that plotted major crimes in the 16th precinct. Car thefts. B&Es. Shootings. Murders. I could clearly see the extent of the problem throughout the precinct. Like everyone else I read about the crime throughout the city in the daily newspapers. I watched the coverage of it on TV. And I could “feel it” when I drove through the neighborhoods in my car.

I got married in 1979. And by the end of the ‘80s Debbie and I had four small children. It was time to make a big decision. Stay in Detroit and send our kids to Detroit schools, which had become dysfunctional? Drive our kids many miles to private schools in the suburbs? Or move?

In 1989, Ross Roy, the long-time downtown Detroit ad agency that I was then working for, relocated to Bloomfield Hills. And we moved even farther north to Clarkston where the public schools had an excellent reputation.

Once again I was living in a virtually all white community.

We lived in Clarkston for 20 years. As I attended local high school football and basketball games over that time, I began to notice an increasing number of black players on the mostly suburban teams in Clarkston’s league. And I recalled that when we moved out of Detroit, it wasn’t just white families that were leaving the city, many middle class black families left for the suburbs, too.

My children rarely met kids with black, brown or yellow skin in Clarkston. In fact, they rarely met kids with the kinds of last names--ending in “i” or “o” or “ski” or “wicz”--that I took for granted while growing up. But they met many such people in college and continue to do so in their respective careers. And I’m proud that they tend not to be judgmental of people with different skin colors.

After we lost our home due to an electrical fire in 2010, Debbie and I embarked on a new adventure that took us to Grand Haven in West Michigan. Heavy Dutch influence. Politically conservative. Predominantly white. During my first summer here, someone I met at a party referred to Detroit as “Detoilet.” Also, at estate sales and neighborhood functions, I was often asked whether I go to church--something I was not used to on the other side of the state. It’s a whole different vibe in West Michigan, to be sure.

We’re now into our eighth summer in Grand Haven, and even here you can see the changing face of America. There’s a family down the street whose daughter is marrying an African-American man this month. There’s a woman I know at the gym whose son married an African-American woman last month. And one day recently, a neighbor from the next street over stopped to talk while pushing a stroller and introduced me to his son’s twin boys. With their darkish skin color, dark hair and eyes, I assumed that they had an Indian or perhaps Pakistani   mother.

Such things were unheard of when I first visited Grand Haven in the early ‘70s.

I was inspired to write about what I’ve observed concerning the ever-changing face of America after shopping one evening at Westborn Market during a visit to Dearborn earlier this summer. When I walked into the store I felt as though I had entered into some sort of international marketplace. White people. Black people. Arabic people. Asian people. Indian people. The place was packed with people of color of all types. It was certainly not the “cake eaters’” market of my youth.

WHERE I COME OUT. I’ve been thinking about attitudes toward skin color since early childhood, when I first realized that there were black people who could speak Polish living on my grandparents’ block. As I look back on the past seven decades, here are five observations and my opinions about them:

Birds of a feather flock together. My grandparents lived in Polish enclaves. The Arab families I knew as a kid clustered in an area of Dearborn called “Salina.” In college, the black kids usually sat together in the grill and cafeteria. And rich people tend to reside in the same zip code. It’s a natural human tendency for people who share a common culture to congregate with their own kind. I get that. Yet I’ve always felt that if Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal desire to build their home next to Mr. and Mrs. Robin, they have every right to do so.

I was in perhaps the sixth grade when I first heard about school “busing” to achieve racial integration. Brilliant idea, thought my 12-year-old mind. But as a young man I reversed my position as I came to understand the vital importance of “neighborhood schools.” When moms and dads, no matter their color, give a serious damn about their kids’ education, they prefer to live close to their children’s schools, facilitating the parental involvement--school open houses; child progress meetings; attendance at plays, concerts and sporting events--that is so important to the successful education of their kids. Also, there were many times I ran into our children’s teachers at the bakery or Damman Hardware in Clarkston--everyday community encounters that enhanced a “connection” with their teachers. The chance of that happening with cross-district busing is far less likely. I would argue that whatever slim chance Detroit had to remain a viable major American city after the riots of ‘67 was killed by forced busing in the early-to-mid ‘70s. It caused the last of Detroit’s white middle class to say, “That’s it...we’re out of here.” Many black middle class families said the same. So, ultimately, the city was left to a population that was mostly poor and black. (Interestingly, Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, was an opponent of busing.)

No matter race, ethnicity, age or income level, most people make little effort to learn anything about the attitudes, interests or culture of the “other guy.” I’m far from being a hundred percent at it, but when I have done so the results have often been astounding. Such as the time I walked into a large Arabic market on Warren Avenue in East Dearborn a few years ago in search of the secret to making authentic Middle Eastern shawarma. When I showed sincere interest to doing so, I was escorted around the store and introduced to four or five different employees who filled my head with knowledge about Arabic spices and marinating techniques. I was the only “white person” in the store that day, but when I walked out the door I got high fives, slaps on the back, wishes of good luck--and big smiles--from every employee I encountered. I’ve had many similar experiences with black people when I’ve shown interest in their music, food, personal histories, etc. It’s amazing what you get back when you attempt to find out what the other guy is really all about. I would also add that being curious about or empathetic with “the other” should be a two-way street. If everyone--white, black, Hispanic, yellow, Arabic, native American, etc.--made small, incremental efforts to knock down the invisible barriers between us, it would be so much easier to coexist on this rapidly shrinking planet.

Diversity is infinitely more interesting than homogeneity. I could cite hundreds of personal experiences that cause me to feel this way. From listening to folk songs while sitting in a circle of Scotch people to eating kimchi with Korean folks in San Francisco. From drinking cherry-juice- infused spirytus with relatives in Poland to attempting to harmonize around the piano in a black family’s home in Toledo. From torching my tastebuds with sauteed jalapeno peppers in an authentic Mexican market in Pontiac to the youthful insights of the black North Carolina teenager who spends a part of every summer in the home across the street from us in Grand Haven. Diversity broadens horizons. Changes perspectives. Expands one’s view of the world. No matter where or with whom one ordinarily flocks, it’s highly beneficial, sez I, to get out and fly with birds of a different color.

We could really use a modern-day Henry Ford, someone with a not-yet-conceived, revolutionary new product--or process--that employs large numbers of ordinary workers and pays them a living wage to build it. That’s what Henry did when he introduced assembly line production to build the Model T and doubled the wage of his workers to $5 a day, putting them on the road to the middle class. Or maybe we need a modern-day Work Projects Administration (WPA) that employs unskilled people--and pays them enough to afford a dignified middle class life--to rebuild our roads, bridges, water lines, public transit systems, the entire U.S. infrastructure. Because I now think that racially segregated poverty persists more due to economic inequality than any other factor. There are available jobs galore in the fast food industry, tourism, hospitality, health care and more. But they’re jobs that don’t pay enough to secure a middle class life. And it is now generally accepted that the single greatest predictor of a student’s achievement and eventual economic success is household income. I used to think that education was the key to lifting up the poverty stricken-- whether black, brown, white, whatever--into the middle class. But while the American population is more educated than ever before, the canyon between rich and poor has only widened over the last 40 years.

Like everyone else, I have opinions. These have been mine about racial issues. I’ve never lived in a ghetto. I haven’t had much interplay with Hispanics. I’ve never been poor. And I claim no special expertise in matters regarding attitudes toward skin color. I’m just one guy who has been watching, thinking about these things for a very long time. I probably won’t be around to see America become a majority-minority country. I only hope that when it inevitably happens that all people of all skin colors will do a better job of negotiating those invisible barriers on that two-way street I spoke of earlier.

10 Cities Where Americans Are Deepest in Debt—but Still Buy Homes!

Elnur/Shutterstock

Debt is one of those ugly/inevitable facts of life that no one likes to discuss, right up there with death, weight gain, and new seasons of “Bachelor in Paradise.”  But it’s becoming impossible to ignore. With the Great Recession receding further in rearview mirrors, Americans are again hitting the gas on spending, pushing household debt levels to a record $13.5 trillion this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And an increasingly big chunk of that is housing debt. After all, with ever-higher home prices come ever-higher mortgages, right?

But debt burdens vary dramatically by housing market. And forget Conventional Wisdom: The places with today’s highest home prices (we’re looking at you, New York and San Fran!) are not where folks are the most debt-burdened. But make no mistake—the real estate implications of high debt loads can be huge, constraining buyers and potentially slowing price appreciation to a crawl. Correspondingly, lower debt levels can be a sign that a housing market has plenty of room to grow.

So the realtor.com® data team set out to find the places where home buyers are the deepest and the least into debt. We looked at the debt-to-income ratios—the all-important metric that accounts for all debt owed by mortgage applicants, divided by their pretax income. This ratio is a key factor in deciding how much folks will get approved for, or even if they’ll get the loan at all.

“Escalating rises in real estate prices are causing more consumers to be stretched,” says Eric Tyson, co-author of “Mortgages for Dummies,” who points out that debt-to-income ratios are rising, but have not quite hit the levels we saw during the housing bubble. “In the years ahead, we could reach the point where it really puts a lid on future price appreciation.”

To find out just how much debt home buyers have taken on, we analyzed mortgages taken out over the first eight months of 2018.* Then we calculated the median debt-to-income ratio for mortgage borrowers in the 200 largest metropolitan areas.** We limited our list to just two metros per state, to ensure some geographic diversity.

OK? So just in time for the prime Christmas buying season, let’s first check out those markets where buyers are the most stretched.

Cities where home buyers have the most debt

Claire Widman

1. Honolulu, HI

Median list price: $692,600 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 45.1%

High-rise buildings in Honolulu

voshadhi/iStock

Honolulu is dotted with high-rise condominiums with gorgeous ocean views, catering to luxury buyers from all over the world, particularly Asia. Many of these folks are so loaded they can put in all-cash offers. That pushes prices skyward, and has made it harder for locals who don’t have a few million in the bank. They’re forced to take on higher and higher debt to become homeowners.

“Everyone is competing for property here, and that’s caused prices to keep going up,” says local real estate agent Brandon Sakata, of Locations Hawaii. The limited supply of property doesn’t help matters. “When you [combine this] with the very high cost of living and jobs that don’t support this, you have home buyers stretching themselves.”

The median household income in Honolulu is only $81,300, so it’s no big surprise that many islanders are taking the biggest loans the bank will provide to get a foothold in the market. Hey, nobody ever said a ticket to paradise came cheap.

2. Riverside, CA

Median list price: $389,900 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43.4%

Single-family home in Riverside listed for $400K

realtor.com

Californians have the highest debt in the country, according to the Federal Reserve. And residents of Riverside, about an hour inland from Los Angeles, are saddled with the double whammy of lower wages along with rising home prices. A lack of inventory is continuing to push up those costs.

“I’m just shocked at the amount of payments that a lot of people are willing to accept,” says Matthew Rundle, a local mortgage banker at Westin Mortgage.

Many families are snagging single-family homes priced around $400,000 in the suburbs, with cute front yards and a view of the mountains just outside the city. As a result, monthly mortgage payments between $2,500 to $4,000 are the norm, Rundle says.

While that may sound reasonable for California, folks in Riverside aren’t exactly making bank. The median household income is just $62,000—a far cry from the $117,500 median that folks are earning up north in San Jose, CA, the center of Silicon Valley.

“Many are accepting huge payments they can’t pay off,” says Rundle.

3. Cape Coral, FL

Median list price: $299,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Homes on Cape Coral’s canal system

realtor.com

The streets in Cape Coral, about two hours south of Tampa, are lined with palm trees and modern, one-story homes with access to the city’s 400-mile canal system. (Venice itself only has around 30 miles.) These canals are a big draw for baby boomers seeking second homes for retirement before they’ve paid off their first abodes. Typically, they rent out their Cape Coral homes until they’re ready to retire.

But two mortgages add up to a lot of debt.

“Now you got two residences on your credit,” says local real estate broker Mike Lombardo of Old Glory Realty.

After the housing bust, buyers held off for a while. So did landlords who got burned after tenants couldn’t pay their rent anymore. But with the economy and housing market roaring back, boomers are entering the market again, says Lombardo.

Lombardo is also seeing more younger buyers buying homes—and they tend to have the highest debt-to-income ratios.

4. Lakeland, FL

Median list price: $225,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Lakeland ranch home

realtor.com

Like Cape Coral, Lakeland is another retirement community boasting plenty of 55-plus developments. But it’s also popular with younger buyers, particularly those who have been priced out of nearby Tampa, FL, where median home prices are $264,950, and Orlando, FL, at $303,200.

The problem is that many of those millennials have tons of student debt and low credit scores to boot. For example, nearly half of those who graduated Southeastern University, a Lakeland school with about 4,000 undergrads, haven’t even started to pay off their loan, three years after leaving the university.

But with housing prices on the lower side, debt isn’t preventing many buyers from becoming homeowners. The brick ranch homes that are common here sell for around $175,000. And things like flood insurance and property taxes are relatively cheap in Lakeland compared to many other Florida cities.

5. El Paso, TX

Median list price: $174,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Downtown El Paso

DenisTangneyJr/iStock

El Paso residents are already bogged down with auto debt. Millennials in the small city that straddles the border of Texas and New Mexico have the third-highest median car loan balances in the nation, according to the online loan marketplace LendingTree. Add in mortgage debt, and locals are swimming in red ink.

“Public transportation here isn’t prevalent,” says Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. That means folks need a car to get around.

In addition, “even though housing prices are not very expensive in El Paso, the incomes are fairly low as well,” he adds. The median household income is just $44,400, well below the national median of $61,400. Smaller paychecks make it that much harder to pay off a mortgage on a modest four-bedroom home in the suburbs, going for just under $200,000.

The rest of the top 10 metros where home buyers are taking on the most debt include Stockton, CA; McAllen, TX; Greeley, CO; Las Vegas; and New York.

Now let’s take a look at where the grass is a little greener, and folks are taking on the smallest debt loads.

Cities where home buyers have the least debt

Claire Widman

1. Huntsville, AL

Median list price: $259,100 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 33.6%

Home in Huntsville

realtor.com

When you think rocket science, Alabama isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But for decades now, this town has been an aerospace hub, housing a NASA flight center and earning the nickname Rocket City. And Huntsville is still thriving, with such employers as the aircraft maker Boeing and the industrial manufacturer Siemens. This means that residents with well-paid jobs don’t need to go too much into debt to afford one of the area’s reasonably priced homes.

“Young professionals absolutely can afford to buy a home,” says Valerie Miles, a broker with Re/Max Unlimited. She also sees plenty of military families purchasing single-family homes in the region. “We have much more homeownership than renting.”

While their peers in Silicon Valley often pay seven figures for real estate, well-paid engineers in Huntsville have their choice of homes. A short drive out of downtown, home buyers will find sprawling subdivisions in communities like Big Cove, where well-appointed four-bedroom homes go for around $260,000. Now that explains why folks here aren’t exactly worried about bill collectors.

And Huntsville’s economy continues to boom. Earlier this year, Mazda and Toyota announced they would build a $1.6 billion joint plant and employ around 4,000 workers. Cue the moving vans!

2. Ann Arbor, MI

Median list price: $356,500 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 33.7%

Ann Arbor condo building

realtor.com

Ann Arbor is another under-the-radar city that’s booming. Google recently opened a new, 130,000-square-foot, tech worker campus here (complete with on-staff barista and a massage studio, natch). Ann Arbor has grown into something of a small tech hub, where well-paid techies can take advantage of lower-cost Midwestern real estate and stay out of debt.

“We see a lot of people who are selling a home in San Francisco or Los Angeles and moving here,” says local real estate professional Deb Odom Stern of the Charles Reinhart Company. “If you’re moving from a more expensive market, you’re going to be amazed at what your money can get you.”

You’re also likely to take on less debt.

And while the typical college graduate in the class of 2017 owes around $39,000, the typical University of Michigan alumni owes just $19,000, according to U.S. Department of Education data.

This walkable college town, with its shops and pizza joints, has a number of modern condo buildings with gyms and pools that sell at around $500,000. But those trying to save some money can head to the ’burbs, where there are townhomes priced at around $275,000—within walking distance of a Whole Foods.

3. Fayetteville, AR

Median list price: $275,700 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.2%

Fayetteville, AR

DenisTangneyJr/iStock

For the sixth straight year in a row, Walmart has ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list, pulling in a revenue of $500 billion for the past year. And its headquarters in Bentonville, AR, give the surrounding Fayetteville metro area quite a boost. Having Walmart here, along with Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, a multi-billion-dollar trucking company,  means the region pulls in well-paid tech, marketing, and finance pros from all over the United States.

“Fayetteville has grown from a college town into a destination,” says local real estate agent Jill Bell of Crye-Leike.  

And while folks are saving up for the standard $250,000 priced single-family home in the suburbs, they won’t be spending a ton on rent. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment here is just $593, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

4. Durham, NC

Median list price: $360,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.5%

New construction home in Durham

realtor.com

Durham continues to flex its tech and engineering muscles, as the region attracts more skilled workers. In fact, Apple appears close to opening up a new campus in Durham’s Research Triangle Park. The campus is home to around 170 companies offering countless tech, data, and engineering jobs.

And unlike in many tech hubs, builders in Durham are answering the need for more homes. New construction makes up around 35% of houses listed on realtor.com in Durham. Streets in communities like Sherron Farms, a designed community, are filled with new three and four-bedroom two-story homes that come with crown molding and granite countertops. The best part? They start at around $300,000. Take that, Silicon Valley!

5. South Bend, IN

Median list price: $160,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.5%

Victorian home in South Bend

realtor.com

News flash: South Bend isn’t Chicago. It doesn’t have the high prices (the median is $289,950 in Chicago,) expensive property taxes, and traffic of its gigantic neighbor two hours to the east on Lake Michigan. And that’s made the college town of South Bend something of a go-to for Illinois expats.

“They see how much they can get with their money,” says Beau Dunfee, managing broker at Weichert Realtors, Jim Dunfee & Associates in South Bend. “So they make the move.”

The city revolves around the University of Notre Dame and its Fighting Irish football team. The college and its respected law and business schools ensure that this city has a number of well-paid professionals. And these folks are buying up colorful 100-year-old Victorian homes that line the historic downtown.

“We really don’t see a lot of debt, because the homes are so affordable. People can easily save up for a 20% threshold,” Dunfee says. And bigger down payments mean smaller mortgages.

The rest of the top 10 metros where home buyers are in the least debt include Birmingham, AL; Madison, WI; Lansing, MI; Charlottesville, VA; and Fort Wayne, IN.

* Mortgage data is from Optimal Blue, a digital mortgage trading platform.

** A metropolitan statistical area is a designation that includes the urban core of a city and the surrounding smaller towns and cities.

Allison Underhill contributed to this story.

The post 10 Cities Where Americans Are Deepest in Debt—but Still Buy Homes! appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

10 Cities Where Americans Are Deepest in Debt—but Still Buy Homes!

10 Cities Where Americans Are Deepest in Debt—but Still Buy Homes!

Elnur/Shutterstock

Debt is one of those ugly/inevitable facts of life that no one likes to discuss, right up there with death, weight gain, and new seasons of “Bachelor in Paradise.”  But it’s becoming impossible to ignore. With the Great Recession receding further in rearview mirrors, Americans are again hitting the gas on spending, pushing household debt levels to a record $13.5 trillion this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And an increasingly big chunk of that is housing debt. After all, with ever-higher home prices come ever-higher mortgages, right?

But debt burdens vary dramatically by housing market. And forget Conventional Wisdom: The places with today’s highest home prices (we’re looking at you, New York and San Fran!) are not where folks are the most debt-burdened. But make no mistake—the real estate implications of high debt loads can be huge, constraining buyers and potentially slowing price appreciation to a crawl. Correspondingly, lower debt levels can be a sign that a housing market has plenty of room to grow.

So the realtor.com® data team set out to find the places where home buyers are the deepest and the least into debt. We looked at the debt-to-income ratios—the all-important metric that accounts for all debt owed by mortgage applicants, divided by their pretax income. This ratio is a key factor in deciding how much folks will get approved for, or even if they’ll get the loan at all.

“Escalating rises in real estate prices are causing more consumers to be stretched,” says Eric Tyson, co-author of “Mortgages for Dummies,” who points out that debt-to-income ratios are rising, but have not quite hit the levels we saw during the housing bubble. “In the years ahead, we could reach the point where it really puts a lid on future price appreciation.”

To find out just how much debt home buyers have taken on, we analyzed mortgages taken out over the first eight months of 2018.* Then we calculated the median debt-to-income ratio for mortgage borrowers in the 200 largest metropolitan areas.** We limited our list to just two metros per state, to ensure some geographic diversity.

OK? So just in time for the prime Christmas buying season, let’s first check out those markets where buyers are the most stretched.

Cities where home buyers have the most debt

Claire Widman

1. Honolulu, HI

Median list price: $692,600 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 45.1%

High-rise buildings in Honolulu

voshadhi/iStock

Honolulu is dotted with high-rise condominiums with gorgeous ocean views, catering to luxury buyers from all over the world, particularly Asia. Many of these folks are so loaded they can put in all-cash offers. That pushes prices skyward, and has made it harder for locals who don’t have a few million in the bank. They’re forced to take on higher and higher debt to become homeowners.

“Everyone is competing for property here, and that’s caused prices to keep going up,” says local real estate agent Brandon Sakata, of Locations Hawaii. The limited supply of property doesn’t help matters. “When you [combine this] with the very high cost of living and jobs that don’t support this, you have home buyers stretching themselves.”

The median household income in Honolulu is only $81,300, so it’s no big surprise that many islanders are taking the biggest loans the bank will provide to get a foothold in the market. Hey, nobody ever said a ticket to paradise came cheap.

2. Riverside, CA

Median list price: $389,900 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43.4%

Single-family home in Riverside listed for $400K

realtor.com

Californians have the highest debt in the country, according to the Federal Reserve. And residents of Riverside, about an hour inland from Los Angeles, are saddled with the double whammy of lower wages along with rising home prices. A lack of inventory is continuing to push up those costs.

“I’m just shocked at the amount of payments that a lot of people are willing to accept,” says Matthew Rundle, a local mortgage banker at Westin Mortgage.

Many families are snagging single-family homes priced around $400,000 in the suburbs, with cute front yards and a view of the mountains just outside the city. As a result, monthly mortgage payments between $2,500 to $4,000 are the norm, Rundle says.

While that may sound reasonable for California, folks in Riverside aren’t exactly making bank. The median household income is just $62,000—a far cry from the $117,500 median that folks are earning up north in San Jose, CA, the center of Silicon Valley.

“Many are accepting huge payments they can’t pay off,” says Rundle.

3. Cape Coral, FL

Median list price: $299,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Homes on Cape Coral’s canal system

realtor.com

The streets in Cape Coral, about two hours south of Tampa, are lined with palm trees and modern, one-story homes with access to the city’s 400-mile canal system. (Venice itself only has around 30 miles.) These canals are a big draw for baby boomers seeking second homes for retirement before they’ve paid off their first abodes. Typically, they rent out their Cape Coral homes until they’re ready to retire.

But two mortgages add up to a lot of debt.

“Now you got two residences on your credit,” says local real estate broker Mike Lombardo of Old Glory Realty.

After the housing bust, buyers held off for a while. So did landlords who got burned after tenants couldn’t pay their rent anymore. But with the economy and housing market roaring back, boomers are entering the market again, says Lombardo.

Lombardo is also seeing more younger buyers buying homes—and they tend to have the highest debt-to-income ratios.

4. Lakeland, FL

Median list price: $225,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Lakeland ranch home

realtor.com

Like Cape Coral, Lakeland is another retirement community boasting plenty of 55-plus developments. But it’s also popular with younger buyers, particularly those who have been priced out of nearby Tampa, FL, where median home prices are $264,950, and Orlando, FL, at $303,200.

The problem is that many of those millennials have tons of student debt and low credit scores to boot. For example, nearly half of those who graduated Southeastern University, a Lakeland school with about 4,000 undergrads, haven’t even started to pay off their loan, three years after leaving the university.

But with housing prices on the lower side, debt isn’t preventing many buyers from becoming homeowners. The brick ranch homes that are common here sell for around $175,000. And things like flood insurance and property taxes are relatively cheap in Lakeland compared to many other Florida cities.

5. El Paso, TX

Median list price: $174,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 43%

Downtown El Paso

DenisTangneyJr/iStock

El Paso residents are already bogged down with auto debt. Millennials in the small city that straddles the border of Texas and New Mexico have the third-highest median car loan balances in the nation, according to the online loan marketplace LendingTree. Add in mortgage debt, and locals are swimming in red ink.

“Public transportation here isn’t prevalent,” says Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. That means folks need a car to get around.

In addition, “even though housing prices are not very expensive in El Paso, the incomes are fairly low as well,” he adds. The median household income is just $44,400, well below the national median of $61,400. Smaller paychecks make it that much harder to pay off a mortgage on a modest four-bedroom home in the suburbs, going for just under $200,000.

The rest of the top 10 metros where home buyers are taking on the most debt include Stockton, CA; McAllen, TX; Greeley, CO; Las Vegas; and New York.

Now let’s take a look at where the grass is a little greener, and folks are taking on the smallest debt loads.

Cities where home buyers have the least debt

Claire Widman

1. Huntsville, AL

Median list price: $259,100 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 33.6%

Home in Huntsville

realtor.com

When you think rocket science, Alabama isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But for decades now, this town has been an aerospace hub, housing a NASA flight center and earning the nickname Rocket City. And Huntsville is still thriving, with such employers as the aircraft maker Boeing and the industrial manufacturer Siemens. This means that residents with well-paid jobs don’t need to go too much into debt to afford one of the area’s reasonably priced homes.

“Young professionals absolutely can afford to buy a home,” says Valerie Miles, a broker with Re/Max Unlimited. She also sees plenty of military families purchasing single-family homes in the region. “We have much more homeownership than renting.”

While their peers in Silicon Valley often pay seven figures for real estate, well-paid engineers in Huntsville have their choice of homes. A short drive out of downtown, home buyers will find sprawling subdivisions in communities like Big Cove, where well-appointed four-bedroom homes go for around $260,000. Now that explains why folks here aren’t exactly worried about bill collectors.

And Huntsville’s economy continues to boom. Earlier this year, Mazda and Toyota announced they would build a $1.6 billion joint plant and employ around 4,000 workers. Cue the moving vans!

2. Ann Arbor, MI

Median list price: $356,500 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 33.7%

Ann Arbor condo building

realtor.com

Ann Arbor is another under-the-radar city that’s booming. Google recently opened a new, 130,000-square-foot, tech worker campus here (complete with on-staff barista and a massage studio, natch). Ann Arbor has grown into something of a small tech hub, where well-paid techies can take advantage of lower-cost Midwestern real estate and stay out of debt.

“We see a lot of people who are selling a home in San Francisco or Los Angeles and moving here,” says local real estate professional Deb Odom Stern of the Charles Reinhart Company. “If you’re moving from a more expensive market, you’re going to be amazed at what your money can get you.”

You’re also likely to take on less debt.

And while the typical college graduate in the class of 2017 owes around $39,000, the typical University of Michigan alumni owes just $19,000, according to U.S. Department of Education data.

This walkable college town, with its shops and pizza joints, has a number of modern condo buildings with gyms and pools that sell at around $500,000. But those trying to save some money can head to the ’burbs, where there are townhomes priced at around $275,000—within walking distance of a Whole Foods.

3. Fayetteville, AR

Median list price: $275,700 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.2%

Fayetteville, AR

DenisTangneyJr/iStock

For the sixth straight year in a row, Walmart has ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list, pulling in a revenue of $500 billion for the past year. And its headquarters in Bentonville, AR, give the surrounding Fayetteville metro area quite a boost. Having Walmart here, along with Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, a multi-billion-dollar trucking company,  means the region pulls in well-paid tech, marketing, and finance pros from all over the United States.

“Fayetteville has grown from a college town into a destination,” says local real estate agent Jill Bell of Crye-Leike.  

And while folks are saving up for the standard $250,000 priced single-family home in the suburbs, they won’t be spending a ton on rent. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment here is just $593, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

4. Durham, NC

Median list price: $360,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.5%

New construction home in Durham

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Durham continues to flex its tech and engineering muscles, as the region attracts more skilled workers. In fact, Apple appears close to opening up a new campus in Durham’s Research Triangle Park. The campus is home to around 170 companies offering countless tech, data, and engineering jobs.

And unlike in many tech hubs, builders in Durham are answering the need for more homes. New construction makes up around 35% of houses listed on realtor.com in Durham. Streets in communities like Sherron Farms, a designed community, are filled with new three and four-bedroom two-story homes that come with crown molding and granite countertops. The best part? They start at around $300,000. Take that, Silicon Valley!

5. South Bend, IN

Median list price: $160,000 Median mortgage borrower’s debt-to-income ratio: 34.5%

Victorian home in South Bend

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News flash: South Bend isn’t Chicago. It doesn’t have the high prices (the median is $289,950 in Chicago,) expensive property taxes, and traffic of its gigantic neighbor two hours to the east on Lake Michigan. And that’s made the college town of South Bend something of a go-to for Illinois expats.

“They see how much they can get with their money,” says Beau Dunfee, managing broker at Weichert Realtors, Jim Dunfee & Associates in South Bend. “So they make the move.”

The city revolves around the University of Notre Dame and its Fighting Irish football team. The college and its respected law and business schools ensure that this city has a number of well-paid professionals. And these folks are buying up colorful 100-year-old Victorian homes that line the historic downtown.

“We really don’t see a lot of debt, because the homes are so affordable. People can easily save up for a 20% threshold,” Dunfee says. And bigger down payments mean smaller mortgages.

The rest of the top 10 metros where home buyers are in the least debt include Birmingham, AL; Madison, WI; Lansing, MI; Charlottesville, VA; and Fort Wayne, IN.

* Mortgage data is from Optimal Blue, a digital mortgage trading platform.

** A metropolitan statistical area is a designation that includes the urban core of a city and the surrounding smaller towns and cities.

Allison Underhill contributed to this story.

The post 10 Cities Where Americans Are Deepest in Debt—but Still Buy Homes! appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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Greetings, Oh Faithful Readers! From the most prolific joke writer on the planet…!

Greetings, Oh Faithful Readers! From the most prolific joke writer on the planet…!

Friday, June 22, “Cake Boss” star Buddy Valastro revealed his secret to recent weight loss. Apparently it had to do with not eating so much cake. Koko, the gorilla that learned sign language has died at age 46. It’s last communication was signing “That Chipotle burrito last night tasted a little funny.” Koko, the gorilla that learned sign language has died at age 46. It’s final signing was giving a middle finger and saying “That’s for keeping me in a cage for 46 years.” A study says pot users feel more pain. Mostly from the indigestion and upset stomach from eating nothing but pizza, Oreos and Doritos all day. Orlando International Airport will require facial scans of all passengers. The problem is the system only recognizes people from pictures wearing Mouse Ears. A study says the American swamp sparrow has been singing the same song for 1,000 years. That’s almost as long as Richard Simmons has been Sweatin’ to the Oldies. A report says some people are taking out loans to pay for vacations. Mostly the people who need a break to get away from worrying about being so far in debt. Starbucks is blaming “health and wellness” for sagging Frappuccino sales. Along with the fact that people are tired of half their paycheck going to pay off their monthly Starbucks bill. Algeria has ordered a complete shutdown of the Internet during high school exams to prevent cheating. Apparently kids will do anything to get higher scores that will get them into college and a chance to get out of Algeria. Algeria has ordered a complete shutdown of the Internet during high school exams to prevent cheating. Which is sad that in the U.S. kids are so inventive of ways to cheat on tests with their cellphones and still can’t get passing grades. Romania’s most powerful politician has been convicted of misconduct. Which answers the question as to how he became Romania’s most powerful politician. A Nigerian man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on an IRS tax return scheme. Apparently he didn’t declare the money he got collecting cash for imprisoned relatives of his country’s princes. A Nigerian man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on an IRS tax return scheme. To which the IRS is saying “We thought of it first!” Experts say the WHO decision to classify gaming addiction as a mental health disorder is “premature” and a “moral panic.” Although it’s hard to call it premature and a panic since it has pretty much been around since 1983. Two mayoral candidates have been killed in Mexico, with 18 dead so far. Talk about a rough primary season. Iraq’s Supreme Court has endorsed a manual recount of all ballots in last month’s national election. Which has inspired Al Gore to try for one more chance at taking Florida and claiming victory in 2000. The State Department claims China is adapting and improving tactics deployed by Russia in the 2016 elections. To which they are saying “This is for all those tariffs!” A Japanese city official had his pay docked for taking lunch three minutes early. He lost a half-day’s pay, mostly because like all government workers he puts in about a six minute workday. Johnny Depp says his spending problems were actually worse than reported. It was so bad, the money he wasted if turned into movie receipts could have actually made a profit for “The Lone Ranger.” AT&T has launched a streaming service for $15 a month. If it’s anything like their phone service, they will offer black and white reruns from the 2003 fall lineup. Steam video gaming is offering a tool to see how much customers have spent on games, with one 20 year old spending $100,000. Which “Steam” refers to what came out of his parents’ ears when they saw what he did with his college fund. Steam video gaming is offering a tool to see how much customers have spent on games, with one 20 year old spending $100,000. If this was back in the arcade days, he would have had arthritis from the motion of depositing 400,000 quarters. Twitter has acquired anti-abuse startup Smyte to curb hate on the platform. Which apparently means it will be used to just delete 95% of all tweets. MTV’s new studio will launch reboots of “Daria,”“Made” and “Real World.” If it is successful, they may even really go retro and actually try playing music videos again. A report says more than 1 Million U.S. children were victims of ID theft last year. Which is no problem if they have no credit because they will all be broke anyway when they finish college and have to start paying off their tuition loans. A report says more than 1 Million U.S. children were victims of ID theft last year. The worst part is when they find out by the bank coming around to shut down their lemonade stand and seize the assets to pay off their money they owe. A report says more than 1 Million U.S. children were victims of ID theft last year. What are the thieves after? Emptying out what has accumulated in a Gerber’s life insurance policy? A study says the herpes virus may play a role in Alzheimer’s Disease. Which is good news for men who can tell their wives they can’t remember how they got herpes. Doctors say border separation could have a traumatic impact on children. Although at this point it looks like it could have an even worse effect on politicians. Canadian legalization of marijuana will offer pot delivery by mail. And you thought the postal service was slow now. A study with mice says caffeine protects the heart by helping it make energy. Which finally explains the reason why they will spend hours every day running on a wheel. A study says imposter syndrome is real. The question is are the researchers who did the study really who they say they are? A study says imposter syndrome is real, where people feel all their success is due to luck. That certainly explains how Justin Bieber has lasted so long. A study says imposter syndrome is real, where people feel all their success is due to luck. Which if true sure beats getting there through a lot of time and hard work. Real Housewives of Orange County alum Alex Bellino’s husband has filed for divorce. For a show based on housewives, they sure seem to get divorced a lot. SNL’s Pete Davidson has confirmed he is engaged to Ariana Grande. When they get married he can carry her over the threshold, from the dressing room to the stage, to the limo after a concert… Brett Favre has joined the fight against youth tackle football. Although at his age youth tackle football anymore includes the NFL. Johnny Manziel’s CFL coach says he should be playing in the NFL. Apparently he feels Manziel can ride the bench as well as any backup quarterback in the game. Johnny Manziel’s CFL coach says he should be playing in the NFL. It’s too bad he never had a chance to play in the NFL as his only other time as a professional was spent with Cleveland. The Denver Bronco’s stadium has gotten a new temporary name. Until they get a new sponsor, the site will be known as “Your Company’s Name Here.” A team reportedly asked NBA prospect Kevin Knox about a baby that doesn’t exist. Which is just their way of saying “Welcome to the league!” U.S. Open Tennis will drop having to throw the ball to broaden the pool for applicants trying out for ballpersons. Which shouldn’t be a problem as it didn’t stop people who couldn’t sing from showing up for auditions for “American Idol.” A Rhode Island bill would keep Donald Trump off the 2020 ballot unless he releases his tax returns. Which should be even easier now that the tax returns will be the size of a postcard to just put a stamp on it and mail it to all the states. Melania Trump says children detained at the border are “a direct result of adult acts.” Meaning her husband. ABC has ordered a spinoff of “Roseanne” without Roseanne Barr. It will be called “Roseanne Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” The National Enquirer admits it sent articles about Donald Trump to Michael Cohen for approval before being published. Apparently they wanted to make sure the reports were correct about his lunch with Elvis and love child with Bigfoot. The White House is proposing disbanding security details for Scott Pruitt and others in the administration. With so many controversies already, the only security Pruitt should be concerned with is job security. The White House is proposing disbanding security details for Scott Pruitt and others in the administration. Mostly because with Pruitt running the EPA, the only security needed is to protect what is left of the environment. Melania Trump visited migrant families with a jacket saying “I Don’t Really Care Do U?” Which turns out to actually be the name of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. Donald Trump says the GOP needs Democratic votes for immigration bills, but complains that Democrats won’t vote for anything. To which Democrats are saying “Have you tried impeachment?” The White House says it wants to merge the Education and Labor Departments. Mostly so both agencies can be in charge of children and the factories where they will soon be working. A record high 75% of Americans think immigration is a good thing. Mostly people looking for a staff to clean their pools, maintain their yards and cook their meals. A report says smartphones will be used as car keys as early as next year. All they need to do is program them to not start the car until the driver stops texting. Researchers say the tongue of the T-Rex was stuck to the bottom of its mouth. Which explains why they were so fierce, getting angry when the other dinosaurs laughed at it while it tried to eat peanut butter. Some sad news from the world of golf with the passing of two time major winner Hubert Green and five time British Open champ Peter Thomson. They were two classy men who played the game with great respect. Meaning neither of them would ever have hit a moving putt, if you know what I mean. I remember Green winning the U.S. Open when it was revealed he played the final round after receiving death threats. Those were the good old days when death threats had nothing to do with politics, just people being crazy for general reasons. The golf world will miss them both as should the world in general. They lived good lives and believed in giving back. So I hope you all think about them when you remember as usual

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Find out Ways to Make More Money With team.

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Hyperallergic: The Black American Women Who Made Their Own Art World

Faith Ringgold, “For the W omen’s House” (1971), oil on canvas, 96 x 96 in, courtesy of Rose M. Singer Center, Rikers Island Correctional Center (© 2017 Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York)

On the heels of the Civil Rights movement, in a 1971 New York Times article, Toni Morrison made a terse assessment of the downstream effects of second-wave feminism, as observed by black women:

What do black women feel about Women’s Lib? Distrust. It is white, therefore suspect. In spite of the fact that liberating movements in the black world have been catalysts for white feminism, too many movements and organizations have made deliberate overtures to enroll blacks and have ended up by rolling them. They don’t want to be used again to help somebody gain power- a power that is carefully kept out of their hands. They look at white women and see them as the enemy- for they know that racism is not confined to white men, and that there are more white women than men in this country, and that 53 percent of the population sustained an eloquent silence during times of greatest stress.

Jan van Raay, “Faith Ringgold (right) and Michele W allace (middle) at Art Workers Coalition Protest, Whitney Museum” (1971), digital C-print, courtesy of Jan van Raay, Portland, Oregon (© Jan van Raay)

Morrison’s indictment of the exclusionary politics of white feminists seems eerily prescient for today’s times, especially in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election. Black women, as the novelist recounts, “had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.” What Morrison gets at here is that black women have held and will continue to hold space for each other as a mode of survival. What comes to light in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum, perhaps the most important exhibition New York has seen in recent years, is that in spite of an art world that tried to keep them on the margins, black women artists fostered individual and collective modes of expression through self-determination and networks of care.

This sterling exhibition, historicizing two decades of black women artists’ cultural production, begins in the three galleries surrounding Judy Chicago’s magnum opus of feminist art, “The Dinner Party” (1974–79). Each section is so dense that it could be its own exhibition. Viewers begin in the 1960s, encountering the Spiral artist collective and the wider Black Arts Movement that followed. In ensuing galleries, co-curators Rujeko Hockley and Catherine Morris present a range of artist collectives and alternative spaces formed in New York at the height of Women’s Liberation in the ’70s. The final galleries chronicle postmodern photography, performance, and multimedia art created in the wake of multiculturalism in the ’80s. Quite poetically, one can’t get to Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” a permanent fixture of these galleries, without seeing some part of We Wanted a Revolution.

Installation view of We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum (© Jonathan Dorado)

Greeting visitors upon entry to the show is Faith Ringgold’s mural for a Rikers Island women’s prison, “For The Woman’s House” (1971), and Maren Hassinger’s sprawling constellation of wire rope sculptures, “Leaning” (1980). Together, these works foreshadow the show’s inter-subjective lens on black women’s identities, their friendships, and their political realities. “Leaning” is about a kind of unified presence, across space and time, quietly illuminating the power of collectivity. More than tempered anger at a racially exclusionary art world, a theme of bold refusal is present in the 242 artworks and pieces of archival ephemera on display.

Keen visitors will quickly discover points of connection between the artists on view and an overall ethos of care permeating each gallery, which is supported with vitrines of rich historical documents. For example, not only is Lorraine O’Grady a conceptual artist, but We Wanted a Revolution reveals that she was also a publicist for other artists, as shown in a press release announcing Senga Nengudi’s performance of “Air Propo” (1981) at Linda Goode Bryant’s black avant-garde gallery Just Above Midtown. Documentary photographs of Nengudi and Hassinger in the Los Angeles-based Studio Z collective’s performance “Freeway Fets” (1978) hang in the same space. The curators arrange artworks and archival objects to sharply narrate the ways black women artists persevered by way of their practices, despite how inhospitable the art world could be.

Works by Lorraine O’Grady in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum (© Jonathan Dorado)

Through reams of historical documents and papers, the curators unflinchingly recount instances of racism and exclusion, from the feminist cooperative AIR Gallery to Donald Newman’s controversial 1979 Nigger Drawings show at Artists Space and even the Brooklyn Museum itself. During a town hall event at the institution in 1971, its director at the time, Duncan Cameron, appeared open to criticism yet ostensibly defended the Museum’s exclusionary practices regarding the women and minority artists who were vying for representation; there was widespread outcry. Ringgold, leading members of the Women Students and Artists for Black Liberation, initiated the meeting. Amid budgetary and administrative struggles, Cameron resigned in 1973. Forty-four years later, we finally have a show centering the recent history of black women artists — and not one relegated to the Brooklyn Museum’s long-shuttered community gallery.

The exhibition’s archival vitrines present blunt reminders of painful and contested histories, but they also exhume buried stories waiting to be told. Correspondence between Howardena Pindell and Goode Bryant reveals an intimate tenderness and warmth. In a letter to her gallerist sent from Rio de Janeiro, Pindell wrote: “I’m spoiling myself rotten — doing nothing much but going to the beach and walking around the most beautiful people … the climate is fantastic — even bought myself a string bikini and almost let it all hang out.” These words were written by the same hands that sewed and stitched together the intricate, unstretched canvas of “Carnival at Ostende” (1971), which hangs on an adjacent wall. To think of these letters in relation to Pindell’s video piece “Free White and 21” (1980), also on view, humanizes the artist. In “Free White and 21,” Pindell interrogates, through witnessing and autobiography, the psychic violence of racism and the slow degradation of one’s spirit in the face of constant micro-aggressions; this juxtaposition drives the point home that the political is also deeply embedded in the personal, and that taking a moment of reprieve in Rio could be just as radical as publicly calling out the art world’s complicity in perpetuating racism and inequality.

Installation view of We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum (© Jonathan Dorado)

The subtitle of We Wanted a Revolution is “Black Radical Women, 1965–85,” evoking the question of what constitutes radicalism. Is it an artist’s engagement with protest, activism, and community organizing? Is it the subject matter the artist takes up? Or is radicalism persistence in the face of a constant threat of erasure and silencing? One has to approach these questions with a healthy sense of skepticism here, as art institutions attempt to become more inclusive in their curating, staffing and collecting practices. As a fellow culture worker, I’m saddened at the ways in which the race, gender, sexuality and other identity categories of artists often become politicized with a sweeping lack of criticality inside the space of the museum. But there are no clear-cut or neatly defined answers in We Wanted a Revolution.

Where We At Collective, “Cookin’ and Smokin'” (1972), offset printed poster, 14 × 11 in, Collection of David Lusenhop (photo courtesy of Dindga McCannon Archives, Philadelphia, PA; © Dindga McCannon; photo by David Lusenhop)

Visitors will see that artists’ and artist collectives’ political and philosophical concerns shifted across generations, a reflection of intersectional identities and subject positions. The Spiral artist collective, founded in the midst of the social and political upheavals of the 1960s, is evoked in an installation that features a self-portrait by Emma Amos. Spiral, first established by Romare Bearden in Harlem in 1963, had loose aesthetic alignments. The group had famously divergent opinions about what defined black art, and was not inclusive of women — Amos was the lone female member. Around the corner from this section, we see artworks made by members of the Where We At collective, founded by Dinga McCannon, Ringgold, and Kay Brown in McCannon’s Brooklyn apartment in 1971. Their work addresses the perennial issue of black women’s double exclusion from male-dominated black art collectives like Spiral and AfriCoBRA as well as from the white mainstream art world. For Where We At, the solution was for the artists to establish support systems for each other and to eliminate the barriers keeping their art and ideas from entering the world. Where We At’s bylaws outline the group’s aspiration to eventually open an arts academy exclusively for black women.

Meanwhile, activist Barbara Smith’s Boston-based queer black feminist group, the Combahee River Collective, was emphatically intersectional from its founding in 1974. “Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand,” the collective proclaimed in its manifesto. “We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.” Ana Mendieta, desiring to make space for artists of color to articulate the critical terms and contexts for their works, took to curatorial practice, including Pindell, Nengudi, and other artists like Beverly Buchanan and Janet Henry in her groundbreaking 1980 exhibition at AIR Gallery, Dialectics of Isolation, part of which is restaged here.

Beverly Buchanan, “Untitled (Frustula Series)” (ca 1978), cast concrete, private collection (© Estate of Beverly Buchanan, courtesy of Jane Bridges)

Betye Saar, “Liberation of A unt Jemima: Cocktail” (1973), mixed-media assemblage, 12 x 18 in, private collection (© Betye Saar, courtesy the artist and Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California; photo by Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum)

A shared desire for change doesn’t always signal shared political sentiments and positions within and across generations of artists. For Ringgold and her daughter, the writer Michele Wallace, the art of protest was a family affair; they practiced it together at the Whitney Museum, as we see in photographs of the two picketing with the Art Workers’ Coalition in 1971. When taken together, the assemblage works of Betye Saar and her daughter Alison Saar provide a rich intergenerational dialogue about the departures and liberties younger artists took with their artworks as a result of earlier generations’ protests. One sees such a transition of focus from racism to sexism in the black liberatory aesthetics of Betye Saar’s “Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail” (1973) and her daughter’s concerns with the politicization of black women’s bodies in “Sapphire” (1985). “In some ways, I myself felt that maybe I didn’t need to fight that same fight,” Alison Saar said in a recent symposium with Hockley at the Brooklyn Museum, “because I didn’t have hand grenades and hip-slinging mammies with Uzis and stuff like that I thought that maybe my work was less political … just in terms of telling our own personal stories it becomes political.”

A quiet but equally powerful takeaway from this show is that many of the women represented worked fiercely to champion and safeguard the field of black art history through publishing and establishing their own collections and foundations. The artist and art historian Samella Lewis and the artist and filmmaker Camille Billops both collected and documented African American art and archives while pursuing their own practices. I was touched to know that Los Angeles-based black collector and philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton had loaned to the exhibition O’Grady’s iconic bullwhip and the dress she made of 180 white gloves for her “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” (1980) performance. The costume accompanies O’Grady’s documentary photographs taken at the New Museum and Just Above Midtown. Kellie Jones, the esteemed art historian and curator of Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (an important precursor to We Wanted a Revolution), appears in some of Lorna Simpson’s earliest portraits of the 1980s. These moments reaffirm Hockley and Morris’s commitment to telling the narrative of black women’s advocacy, patronage, collection, and promotion of each other’s work.

Lorna Simpson, “Rodeo Caldonia (Left to Right: Alva Rogers, Sandye Wilson, Candace Hamilton, Derin Young, Lisa Jones)” (1986), photographic print, 8 x 10 in (courtesy of Lorna Simpson; © 1986 Lorna Simpson)

Concerns about the art historical canon aside, the artworks on view here are both stunning and revelatory. Blondell Cummings’s dance performance “Chicken Soup” (1981), shown here as a video projection, is hauntingly good. In it, Cummings (who died in 2015) appears alone on a stage sparsely equipped with a green scarf, a cast iron skillet, a scrub brush, and chair, and proceeds to transform the space into a volatile environment of domesticity and labor. At moments, Cummings combines virtuosic leaps and dancerly lunges with writhing convulsions and repetitive movements as if cleaning a floor or tending to a hot meal on a stove. There is a riveting dissolution of the dance’s legibility as dance with each intensifying gesture. Ming Smith and Coreen Simpson’s expansive photographs of Harlemites deserve their own surveys. Simpson, for instance, portrays queer club-goers and church ladies alike through a luscious, empathetic lens.

Part of what makes We Wanted a Revolution so impactful is its consideration of the entire scope of black women’s cultural and political work in its two-decade span. In addition to artists, gallerists, curators, art historians, and dancers, it highlights the work of literary figures like Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, Ms. Magazine co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes, congresswoman and the DNC’s first black woman candidate Shirley Chisholm, filmmaker Julie Dash, and playwright Lisa Jones. When taken together, these women surpassed any specific art historical milieu, but were at the forefront of a persistent, forceful, and diasporically-minded cultural paradigm shift led by and for black women.

We Wanted a Revolution is a part of “A Year of Yes,” a year-long examination of feminism and feminist art marking the 10th anniversary of the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center. The success of Hockley and Morris’s show is a testament to the power of examining narratives with cultural specificity and inclusivity, and what Morrison pointed to as black women’s perpetual self-invention and self-definition. These works and their histories are worthy of prime real estate in major museums and art institutions. How moving it was for me to see black women, young and old, photographing themselves in front of the exhibition’s opening text and seeing themselves in relation to the art on view. If you build it, they say, the people will come — and perhaps then the revolution finally will, too.

Installation view of We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum (© Jonathan Dorado)

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 continues at the Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn) through September 17.

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