Wild Life

Heather V. Black Planet gallery

There is a sense within American youth to aspire to a wild life loosely defined by excessive drinking, hooping and hollering, movies, videos, drugs, long and wild parties, and a generally practiced detachment mistaken for cool. Unbridled passion often leads to regret, and young people engrossed in music that gives free expression to wanton behavior, anger, and crude calculated destruction are particularly at risk of deep troubles in their short lives. 

I am old enough to have a sense of the effect of soldiers returning home from World War II. It mostly comes from my teenage years suddenly wondering why I was watching James Dean, and Elvis movies with the rebellious white punks with the slick hair styles. My parents would have not gone for any of that behavior in me, but subtly these guys were become models. 

After World War II white soldiers came back home with a restlessness that transferred into the motorcycle gangs that eventually, and quickly turned into rebel gangs.The restlessness and the way white soldiers dealt with the stress of war sickness was different with Black soldiers because of race, and the social climate it engineered for them. The characters James Dean, Elvis and others came out of that era, that angst, and struggle to connect with themselves and society. Connecting with self, and society was deliberately harder, and more dangerous for Black men, in particular, and Black people over all. 

Today those are subtle, less obvious influences on children because of the newness they feel alive and fresh from their mother's wet wombs. The 1960's unleashed genius upon the planet in a way that very well may never be duplicated in the world again. There are unique factors to the charge of energies that shaped the youth from the late 1950's through to the1970's that created a mass introduction of ingenious ideas, and approaches to every academic discipline, and socially restructured a rigid environments for young people's exploration.  In turn those young hippies and revolutionaries are now adults, and grandparents. A ball or two was dropped, and the parents carrying the ball now are absorbed in attendant fears, obsessions, and distractions that have little, but mostly nothing to do with the development of the creativity within their children. A return to the rigid social and family structures that were blind to their contradictions is a visit back to the 1940's and '50's without apologies or introspective conversations. 

I don't know who suffers the most in these games of partying like it's 1999, as Prince used to sing, the women, or the men? Women are often depicted in popular movies badly. They are drunk, or made drunk to be fondled, and taken advantage of, or they are bad ass chicks who kill and take without regret, or remorse, or they are the lovable Thelma & Louise types, or merely sex kittens. The boys and the men pretend to be, or are often violent. Women, to them, are second rate beneath their male friends who they romp around with breaking the law, and seducing women under the thin guise of badly insinuated romance that is contemptuous. 

Seeing women flagging their precious selves like wet rags or flags in the wind to get attention, to give up their pussy for pleasure, money or acceptance is painful to behold. I use the word behold on purpose. It is important to convey the enormity of what is being bartered away for cheap thrills and short rides. The boys and men in this game need to receive the ability to see through their daughter's eyes, and women need to learn how to see themselves their daughter's eyes and the perception of divinity. should be sought after, if they want to be perceived as men women need to trust.Women need to be Known by men in a way unknown to most men on this path. How that could conceivable occur is dependent upon men. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 

Black woman sitting crossed legged on car - Kristy !!!!