|
|
|
|
|
|
HOME | ABOUT | BIOS | EMAIL |
|
 |
| |
Monday, July 11, 2005
WE BELONG TOGETHER
Mariah Carey
The Emancipation of Mimi
Island : 2005
[Buy It!]
STAY THE NIGHT
Mariah Carey
The Emancipation of Mimi
Island : 2005
[Buy It!]
For years she relished her face. Its lips pursed, eyes half-closed mid-seduction, cheeks so perfectly blushed, a smile languid and captivating. Her face followed her. Some might say like a shadow, but aside the day's dying hours, shadows trail. Her face led. Led her through velvet ropes, down anonymous hallways, into first-class lushness, to a future beyond her pigtail fantasies.
When she first started — before her face was A Face — a black woman had asked her, "What are you?" in a jokey way in front of a lot of people. And the question scared her, made the uneasy color in her face darken, brought her back to the self-consciousness she was just beginning to overcome, the self-consciousness of being so many things that she was nothing in particular. She laughed because she was taught to laugh but she prayed that she would never get that question again. And she didn't. Being A Face meant that you didn't get asked questions you didn't want to answer.
Her face continued to multiply. People would study it, stare at it, scrutinize the glossy imitations of it that people sold to other people. She knew that this was what was supposed to happen, that she should feel good about it, but it made her uneasy. Could they see inside? If they reproduce you so many times is it like X-rays and it can cause damage? Is it really just a reproduction of your face or is it like some people said, that a camera takes a bit of your soul?
She couldn't ask anyone these questions, of course, because once you say them aloud they become true, and someone would laugh at her anyway. And so she became wary of having her face reproduced, but this wasn't how she was supposed to act and there were consequences and suddenly she was a different kind of Face and things went haywire. She saw her face and saw The Face. She began studying her friends' faces to see how they looked at her: they saw The Face. Even her mother saw The Face. When she made love, men made love to The Face.
And so she hid, as we would all do. She hid in empty apartments and on islands and in cars with dark windows. And after she got tired of those, she hid behind a microphone, because that's where she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be The Voice. The microphone was where she began, the place where her face didn't matter, where she felt that she could actually be heard, that people listened to her words, even though she spoke them melodically, and sometimes religiously, her voice quivering as the Holy Spirit moved through her, even though she didn't believe in the Holy Spirit and He didn't believe in her either.
Then a funny thing happened, the sort of thing that she didn't plan on. That she had, in fact, planned against. People listened and heard. They didn't look. They heard. For the first time in years, they heard. This confused the sort of people who get confused about this sort of thing, but she understood. She knew that people were sick of Faces, that people wanted something else. They didn't know what, but something else. And so even her sad song became an anthem — precisely what it wasn't, but these are things you cannot control — and she no longer saw The Face. She saw herself, finally, and it didn't matter what the people around her saw because the people Out There heard. She didn't live happily ever after — she never would — but she would survive. And as she left her empty house to face the world once again, she glanced in the mirror and smiled contentedly. What's hers was hers again.
posted by Yancey
LINK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
