Dateline: Berkshire — It’s odd being out in suburbia, but I do love Nina Simone.
I’ve been told (frequently, by my often frustrated other half, among others) that I’m the high priestess of the non-sequitur (and the incomplete sentence… the elipsis… the persistent if not tortuous sidebar), but do bear with me. By the end, all things fit. I tend to pull it all together.
Nina never lived in the Royal County of Berkshire to my knowledge, but neither did I until recently. Black American bisexual woman expat — that’s stuff she and I have in common. That densely compacted chunk of identity. Also, she died the very year I relocated across the pond to England. Could be why she comes to mind so often. That and a recurring sense of outrage. In my better moments, I rage at the injustices of the world, making what ripples in the norm I can, but Nina… well, when Nina raged, she did so gloriously.
In her lifetime, she witnessed a great deal to be enraged about — racism, sexism, lynchings, murders, bombings all featured in her music by the 60s, when she covered Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. She then released her own emotive protest songs, such as Mississippi Goddam and Old Jim Crow, both of which were banned in one region or the other. It seems shocking to many now — now that she is a deceased icon susceptible to the usual hagiographical treatment — but Nina Simone advocated violent resistance during the Civil Rights era. She spoke in direct opposition to leaders like Martin King, though she would eventually come to mourn both the man and his methods with her tribute Why? (The King of Love is Dead). But at that time, Nina spoke of Blacks rising up in armed insurrection and forming their own 51st state or independent nation. Her radical nature shocked listeners, lost her more than a few friends and by the 70s, for personal, political and financial reasons, Nina left her nation, becoming an itinerant expat, living for a time in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland and the Netherlands before settling in France, where she died in 2003. Her ashes are sprinkled in various locations throughout Africa, leaving us today with no one place to fix Nina Simone in our minds.
So Nina and me and Berkshire? Okay, so I’m not an armed secessionist advocating for the independence of our esteemed county from Her Majesty’s dominions (I mean, I’ve got the school run at 3). And, despite what my better half might claim on the rarest of occasions, I am not a “demanding diva” bitch, as Nina has been called, though I can raise my hand to being at times “difficult.” One reviewer of a recent Simone biography claimed that Nina’s renownedly difficult personality may have been “a manifestation of an undiagnosed chemical imbalance,” variously diagnosed as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Or her moods may have reflected “a life of failed marriages, failed affairs, failed motherhood, dislocations, financial woes, a history of racial and sexual discrimination” and a sexual orientation and identity apparently suppressed by marriage, domestic violence and rape.
My god, when laid out in black and white like that, my own life in my small corner of the world — with my struggles with suburban motherhood, marriage, racial and sexual identity, and a sense of dislocation and being ‘mis-read’ or ‘mis-taken’ — pale in a chasm of contrast rather than comparison. But Nina’s music and life still speak to me. Something in me, when I listen to Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, still moans in recognition. Her 1964 version of the song helped form the soundtrack of my angst-ridden teenaged years (along with At Seventeen by Janis Ian and random tracks by Joan Baez — two other bisexual women musicians of the 60s and 70s… I’m seeing a trend here…. but a subject for another post). Okay, to be fair, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood could be the soundtrack of my life. If that weren’t the case, would I be riffing about being the proverbial only bi in the village? About the anxieties of coming out in suburban Berkshire? About being out, but not being sure anyone notices? Or notices in the ‘right’ way? Or wondering if it matters? If it changes anything? If anything even needs changing? And if so, if I’m the one with the mental, emotional and spiritual cojones to change it? I mean, just who the hell do I think I am?
I am a mother of two beautiful, caring and fiercely intelligent children. The wife of a lovely man with more depth than can be mined by little old me in one lifetime, I am sure. The caretaker of an aged dog with a chronic cough and a collapsing trachea and two spoiled hens who cluck a lot about how infrequently I muck out their house. I write poetry and I am my own boss with my own business. I am black (mostly) and curly haired and I am tall and smart and dumb and bold and timid and bisexual and musical and persistent. Gentle, thoughtful, distracted, occasionally clumsy. I am also furiously curious, ragingly opinionated, and intensely vocal. And I hate, above all things, to be misunderstood.
There’s isolation and loneliness in not being fully seen and appreciated for all that you are and able to bring to the table. There’s also solipsism in worrying about it too much, which I endeavour to avoid. But I do live in suburbia, infamous for its “little boxes,” its normativising force, for how it presses all of its inhabitants into moulds, and for how its inhabitants press back.
This blog is where I’ll rage against the little boxes. Where I shall strive to defy the normativising machine and share my views on a variety of issues. Here I will also revel in the joys of my surroundings and the very good people I share them with.
It’s not a moan. I like my life. I like where I live. I like where I’m at. I just need to find a way to bring more of me to bear, that’s all. To be more visible, more useful, more understood… not just for me, but also for anyone else like me who might feel like the only one of their species in a 30 mile radius.
I know in my gut, we are not alone.
