Thursday on the Ropes.
‘Cause baby, whether you're high or low
Whether you're high or low,
You gotta tip on the tightrope…
—Janelle Monae, The Archandroid
Trigger warning: Brief description of violence.
Mood & Aesthetic
25 years ago this fall, I began my freshman year at Florida A&M University. Everything felt brand new. From the warm, sticky weather, to classmates who hailed from all over the globe, to all the stars I could suddenly see at night as we walked back to the dorms from the clubs with no air conditioning, my first days and weeks in Tallahassee, Florida felt like they were happening a world away from Detroit.
After freshman orientation, all SBI students were expected to have read a classic in the business world: The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know. The ideas in that book felt new, too. I only remained a business major during my first semester. I’ve always had absolute clarity about what I’m willing to do, or not do, when it comes to my academic and professional lives. I just wasn’t corporate material, in the best sense of that personal judgment.
The title of that book has remained with me a quarter century later, although I couldn’t tell you what’s in it. Over the years, I’ve had all kinds of relationships with ropes. Skipping them. Knowing them. And everything in between.
Some ropes have helped me climb up the rough side of the mountain. Some have helped me be lifted higher, as those further up the heights toss down a line. “Here, tie this around your waist, and I’ll pull you up!” Those ropes are lifelines.
Other ropes have hit me in the face. You think someone is sending you life, hope, friendship, love, anything that will lift you higher… but then… SMACK! Right in the face.
If you’re lucky, the rope will just sting a little… and you’ll recover…
…but if you’re less fortunate, it’ll be worse. After all, ropes symbolize horrible things in my people’s history. Terrible things. Those ropes are the stems of the “strange fruit” that Southern trees bear, as well as trees not-so-far South (looking at you, Midwest). Our collective cultural imagination around Black bodies at the end of ropes, when we can bear to consider it, tends to conjure up able bodied men, not women or children…
(And yet, I can’t stop thinking about Laura Nelson.)
Ropes figure in our worst nightmares, as well as in white supremacist fantasies, for a reason.
Rope fences. Lassos. Nooses. Sailor’s knots. Colonization and enslavement would have been impossible without the rope.
Yet just like we have taken the tongue of our oppressors, subverted it, and made it all our town, we also have used ropes for our own ends. After all, the first ropes that have survived into modern times came from the African continent, made from water reeds beside the Nile, twisted and braided into something wonderful. Thousands of years later, people all over the world use ropes for all sorts of purposes, from basketmaking to clotheslines to mooring watercraft to shore.
I’ve been thinking about the ropes of liberation, which have always defeated the ropes of oppression. First, there are the ropes around boxing rings, which inspired today’s blog title. As a Detroiter, I am proud of the legacy of Joe Louis. There was the greatest, Muhammad Ali, and his daughter, Laila, born the same year as me. There are so many others whose names we could call. We live life on the ropes in this country, but somehow, we manage to thrive even when it seems like we’re down for the count.
As a Black woman who was a Black girl of yesteryear, I’m also thinking about the ropes we played with. Professor Kyra Gaunt, an ethnomusicologist at SUNY-Albany, and the author of The Games Black Girls Play, writes about jump rope being essential to identity making and creativity, including the foundation of hip hop.
I remember learning to jump rope growing up, although my lack of coordination (probably due to poor eyesight, even with corrective lenses) meant that I never learned to double dutch. That made me feel bad.
But! I could turn the ropes. And turn them, I did. Swish swish, my hands went, as the rope went tap tap.
The softest rope was clothesline, used at home. Twine was scratchy against your hands and would switch against your legs (another unpleasant memory). The school jump ropes were covered in hard plastic and when they hit you, they hurt.
After the girls finished laughing and giggling about it, the ends of the heavy jump ropes would be placed into my hands. It was a sensation I’d never forget.
Even Black girls who weren’t as cool and who were offbeat in the ‘hood were included, in our own way…. and together, we’d sing the same songs.
Down in the valley where the green grass grows,
Along came Keisha, sweet as a rose,
She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet,
How many kisses did she receive?
My ears can still hear the rhythm that my body longed to danced to. If I close my eyes, I can hear the sound of the pavement in our driveway, the gravel of the schoolyard, the polished hardwood of the gym.
Lemon and lime, you gotta be on time,
Cause the school bell rings at a quarter to nine,
Saying “one, two…”
It’s probably fitting, then, when at the end of my first year as a professor, the body blow of hearing a sister professor with twice the number of articles required for tenure at my first job didn’t make it meant that I was ready for Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope.”
When it first dropped, I listened to it over 1000 times. Not even kidding... it described my life perfectly at the time.
Cause baby, whether you're high or low
Whether you're high or low,
You gotta tip on the tightrope…
I didn't even get to the rest of The ArchAndroid until that summer. That album was Wayne State, and Electric Lady was the soundtrack of my first 2 years at Penn. (Both my student and I were at the EL tour's first concert at the Electric Factory in September 2013. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.)
Jane kept me sane during impossible times. I'll always love her.
Because there is no difference between me and her… and you.
We not only tip on the tightrope…
...we live on the ropes.
What I Am Reading
—With 3 classes, I haven’t had tons of time for spare reading. But! I’ve got a dissertation proposal defense, then a dissertation defense, before Spring Break. So proud of those students, and can’t wait to say more good things about them.
—It feels like I’ll be able to plunge back into the stack soon, and very soon. Because as of the second week of March, I’m traveling again. (More about that below.)
—I’ve had some reading to do for the Writing the Other: A Deep Dive into Diverse Characters course. Can’t say enough good things! I’ll give a full report when I have a little more time.
What I Am Writing
—My academic queue is now cleared of all non-academic projects (for now) except for one outstanding chapter that no one’s emailed or asked me about. (Depending upon who’s lurking, that may change soon.)
—It’ll be novel writing time this weekend. It’s taken me 3 months to figure out how to address the fixes my agent asked for. I have new and growing respect for folks who do this full time. Don’t know how anyone can write multiple books per year! I’m growing to accept myself, fully, and that I may always work at a slower pace.
Being/Doing/Going
—This past weekend, we got to meet applicants to our doctoral programs. It’s always a privilege to meet such amazing folks.
—My classes are underway, and going swimmingly. I don’t say that often. Thankful for grace, for real.
—Next week is our Ethnography in Education Research Forum, which my program colleagues and many of our students run. I’m on the faculty advisory board, but mostly, I am a supporter. (This is our 40th year. It’s a big deal, and folks come from all over the world.)
—I’ve updated my Events page! Looking forward to learning and sharing my work with others this spring and summer.
Word(s) of the Week
Patience. At my undergrad church, the elders used to tell us not to pray for patience, for God would bring you trials.
And yet in our era, patience is in short supply. Untying the Gordian knot that is our social relations during these times requires it…
…as does letting some of those knots be.