I.
Jazz.
The genre of music that tells stories of passion, romance, melancholy, intrigue, playfulness, and grit. I want to say that around the early age of 20-something, I began to understand who I was and what I liked. That was the conclusion of college and the introduction to life outside of comfort. That was graduating from prematurity and venturing into something that was learning how to have things to myself. My taste in music was one of those things.
At 23, I searched for something for my imagination to have a proper soundtrack to. I hung around Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where the very best of both Blackness and art came to express itself.
I’d go to BRIC to check out the new installations of art, I’d visit BAM to watch the old films that enticed my hungry imagination for something outside of the mainstream, and I frequented the Brooklyn Moon Cafe to write by the window. Living in New York City, live music was always available to you. On the train, on the streets… and at the cafe, every Wednesday, they played live Jazz. I’d hang around Greenlight Bookstore across the street and wait for the night to come, for when the festivities would start. I’d find my seat before the place got too crowded. I’d order their BBQ jerk chicken and a glass of peach sangria. I’d people-watch, paying attention to the dates happening that night or the folks getting off work for some relaxation. The chatty bunch who hung around the bar, and the ones like myself who kept to their own space. We’d all wait until the music started at 7pm. We’d look at the little stage they created in the back of the cafe, instruments set up and wait with anticipation, as if the instruments would play themselves.
And every Wednesday was a new person blowing my mind away. It would be a trumpeter, a saxophonist, a drummer, a master bass player, a this and a that. And I’d sit in the back, by the window, in this dim-lit cafe with a bunch of grown Black people who came for a great time as I did, hearing the clinking of forks on plates and chatter behind wine glasses, the very best of us enjoying the very best.
I grew up hearing instruments over a loudspeaker vibrate right through my muscles and rattle my bones when I’d go to Haitian parties with my parents and sisters, bands playing like their art depended on it. Jazz reminded me of that.
Jazz is clever. It’s expressive. It’s angry, it’s sophisticated. It’s mature and erratic. It’s synchronized and soothing. It’s egotistical and it’s humbling. Through every instrument, Jazz has something to say. And when I listen to it, I feel like a woman.
I feel like a woman who has a story, who has a voice, who has a future, who has a life when I play it. It encourages me to be open and engaged with the world. To pay attention to every dime that falls from a wallet. To every laugh that echoes down the street from a person’s mouth. To every streetlight that comes on when it gets dark out.
Jazz makes me feel HERE.
II.
Romance.
For so long, I interpreted romance as either a genre of love or a performance, a gesture of affection from one person to another. I’d watch a movie or television show and see how someone’s attempt to sweep someone else off their feet would bring such euphoria, and I wanted that. The high. I became obsessed with what happens when two people are engulfed in each other. I’d teach myself how to kiss with the fluffy part of my pillow, and I’d sneak into the adult section of the library to take out every single Harlequin book that they had. The ones with the beautiful, majestic white man and woman on the cover, holding each other close with a passion in the air between. As I got older, as I found my own love, I never understood why it couldn’t happen the way I read or saw. I felt I was missing something. I’d choose to love people who performed the gesture but didn’t embody the attitude of a romantic person. It frustrated me, aggravated me that people couldn’t be romantic when it was all so simple… I chased it, without understanding that romance was so much more than that. I searched for performance and not embodiment.
A few weeks ago, I talked myself into a realization. Everyone calls me romantic. It’s been that way for years. And I wondered why that was, especially when those people hadn’t experienced me in a partnership governed by it. I researched the difference between a romantic and the gesture of romance (specifically from someone who might not be romantic), and came to find that romantics celebrate beauty. They reside on feeling/emotion over reason/realism, and have a strong sense of empathy. If we look past the aspects of partnerships, romantics within society are eager to share the truth, to hold up the mirror, and to bring color to idealisms that flatten our potential to interact and create with each other.
The rhetoric of “romanticizing my life,” the thing we say very often nowadays, feels like an attempt to engage with life in a way that’s sweet. A phrase that gives us permission to enjoy the most mundane things, especially if you are hardened by this world. I remember a friend of mine telling me over coffee, “I actually really dislike that phrase. Being present in your life doesn’t have to be romantic. We don’t have to dress things up just to appreciate them. Just… BE. Be there. Take it in. You don’t have to force it.”
The thing about that is… romance is an act of resistance, thus making it powerful. And as a people, we have lost touch with feeling good with what we’ve got. We chase and chase and are never satisfied; hungry for more with a bottomless pit. As a child and young adult, what I was chasing was real. That visceral feeling, that lust for euphoria, is a very natural thing to want. Romance as a gesture IS appreciation, and if people have a hard time doing that, then maybe dramatizing that mundane thing might just be the key to gratitude.
I’m romantic because I marvel at everything. I appreciate so much. I walk outside and I’m eager to discover something new about the world. The sky, the ground, human beings, animals, the way plants bloom, the way eyes change color under the sun, the smell of perfume on the skin, the way a great book moves me, the way a passionate argument gets me to stand up, stealing kisses in the hallways… romance comes so easy to me because it’s something I feel, and so naturally, it’s also something I perform and exude and extend.
I think that’s where we’ve gotten the power of romance wrong. People have weaponized it as a means to get something out of someone, most times sex or to shut someone up. But romance, to me, is an appreciation for life in a way that can surprise a person, even yourself. It leaves space for creativity to have its way, to be impressed by the possibility. It’s intimate, it’s heavy, it’s light, it’s sturdy.
Romance reminds me that I am alive. It brings me back to God’s creations. It humbles me. It cradles me in arms of protection and kisses my head as a reminder that I am beautiful, seen, and loved. I am my best self when I tap into my romanticness. I am my favorite woman when I can be romantic.
And that is why, when I think about my next pursuit of love, I remind myself that I must be able to exercise my romance at full capacity, as well as have a space with my partner to receive the romance they have to offer, as well. We must pour our appreciation into each other actively, in ways we didn’t know we could receive.
Being romantic makes me feel like my favorite type of woman.
III.
Independence.
When I was living at home with my parents, desperate for an adventure, I felt like a child. I felt small. I didn’t know who I was capable of becoming because I had never allowed myself to imagine who that could be past a dream. That was my greatest pain, living only in my head and not knowing how to make my reality as beautiful as I could imagine it to be.
The moment I took to the streets for my life, to live it, I opened myself up to the greatest opportunity to learn how to love myself. The first few months of living solo were messy and beautiful because of it. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had so much support, that I always felt guided in divinity. The confidence people talk about in magazines didn’t feel like the one I was building. It felt warm. It felt like trust. It felt like a home inside of myself that I cleaned out and learned to come in and out of without worrying I’d lose my keys or the right to live there. I formed something that was all mine. All the people who wanted to help me only taught me how to maintain this home in my heart, but how I decorated it, and how I made it specific for myself was my own volition.
I was forced out of my head and into the world, and the conversation I had with it felt so ripe. I was eager to learn everything, and thus, made me appreciate everything. That is where my romance began to take on new heights. A city like New Orleans, filled with relaxation, Earth, color, spirit, the organics of the soul, art that came from a deep place, and homes that were so expressive… I couldn’t have imagined growing into my own person anywhere else. My charming two-bedroom home, with a fireplace in the center of the open-concept kitchen and living room. The wood floors with spacing in the cracks made winter unbearable but didn’t deter me. The French doors. The seafoam walls.
I decorated my home with colors that warmed my heart. I took ownership of the parts of me that came from my mother and found a love for flowers, having a vase in every room of my apartment and switching them out every three weeks. I’d wake up on the weekends and brew a fresh cup of coffee, sit on my porch under my banana tree, and enjoy the neighborhood cats. I’d blast Haitian jazz from my speaker, windows wide, when I cooked, floating across the kitchen like my mom did, moving from pot to cutting board, and letting the steam of the dinner I conjured seep outside. The sound of the music gave notice to the neighbors outside that fun resided there. I’d walk past the cemetery down the block, with raised graves across the property, and say a prayer. I wrote poems and ideas into my journal, constantly finding time to daydream. I’d ride the streetcar down St. Charles and fall in love with the huge oak trees in Audubon Park, the southern castles with large pillars, and the gritty parts of the city underneath the bridge. The swamps, the heavy dew of humidity during the summer that laid me out naked in bed for many nights. The sound of the freight trains every twenty minutes. I’d say hi to the people, chat with the farmers as I brought their fresh fruit to my nose before buying them, and decide to make myself something new every other night.
I made money and spent it wisely. I became friends with some of the most expressive Southern storytellers I could have ever met, and they taught me about the art of storytelling. I dressed myself up in light clothes, dresses that showed my arms, and wore my hair big. I had nights when I cried from the loneliness, from missing my familiarity back in New York, but I was so thankful to experience what it felt like to take care of myself. To build a LIFE.
Getting in touch with the responsibility to myself made me feel like a woman I was so thankful to be. That power gets me by day in and day out. Knowing I can make decisions whether good or bad, and they are MINE to make and learn from, has been so gratifying.
IV.
The little black dress.
There’s a dress I have in my closet that I wear around the house, and around the house only. It’s a long tank dress, with straps you can adjust. Stretchy Jersey fabric that allows for it to cling to the body comfortably. Ribbed, with brown ombre buttons going down with a slit going from right above the knees to the hem, that stops right below the knees. And it makes me feel absolutely beautiful and all to myself.
I put it on during the weekends, mostly, when I’ve showered early in the morning and intend to have a wonderful day. It makes me feel like a woman. I like to feel my body move in it, my hips and my pudgy stomach. I never wear a bra with it; this is the type of dress you slip on and feel loose in. My arms, which are insecure spots for me, get to be free, and the way the straps come close to my neck makes my really beautiful clavicle pop.
When I wear this dress, I intentionally put on my favorite gold earrings, do something nice with my hair, and tend to my home and my creativity as necessary as possible. It puts me in such a mood of authority. I’m extra attentive to what I cook, watering my plants, brooming the floors, wiping the counters down, and reading in my favorite spot on my couch.
I feel grown. Present. In love with my life, whenever I wear this dress.
They always say that a woman must have a little black dress in her closet. And while I don’t have that for the regular going out occasion, my dress is perfect for the moments of intimacy with myself.
And I love it.
V.
My writing.
As much as this gift of mine scares me, I understand it’s because I am great at it. Because of my romantic nature to feel obligated to change the world, I kneel at the feet of the power that my words have.
It has been so beautiful to watch the ways my art has transformed over the years. How I never stopped charting myself, archiving thoughts and perceptions from past selves that used to occupy me. Seeing what my obsessions are through the stories I tell, and the ones I seek. I can’t believe that God has constantly made a way for me to always do this, and even during the seasons when I was too afraid to do it, my responsibility took precedence.
Writing has never left me. My goodness.
As a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, and now as a full-fledged one. I can’t believe this is my life. This is who I am. I am a woman of words. It’s been 25 years of this, of creating from a voice that never runs out of things to say because she is always learning something. I’m more obsessed than I want to let up because then that would mean I have to do it often. I’d have to do it when I feel like it and don’t. I would have to be more giving. And yes, while that’s the point and the dream, the way that life outside of the art tries to sabotage it, sometimes you wonder if it’s wise to dedicate so much of yourself to this thing because so many people have told you it’s not a guarantee to a happy life.
I have been plagued with disillusion from the idea that this life is mine, and what I make from it is mine, too. That no one else can do it like I do it. That scares me because I don’t want to just be a dream. I want to live this specific life that God has carved for me. I do not want to disappoint Him. The world, though. How cunning in gaslighting my dreams.
The other day, when I was crying from the sadness I felt knowing I was stagnating in this current job that paid my bills, I asked myself, “What can I do to get out of this?” And God said, “You must write.” That’s it. He did that thing I always say he does: drops the gem and dips. And I didn’t ask another question. I didn’t say another word. I just… nodded. Because everything comes back to writing. Everything comes back to this voice.
…what would happen if I gave all of me to this? What would happen if the woman who has been shaped to stand in my shoes got to speak her truth, LOUDLY? I’ve been cute and quiet for a long time, observing from the edges.
…what would happen if I just, shouted?
What a woman I will be, next…
to live and to love your woman.