Amy Winehouse’s Last Song is Named Power

A few days ago I saw the documentary film Amy about Amy Winehouse. Other than hearing her song “Rehab” and seeing her image on magazines, I knew nothing about her until I watched the film. I have now heard all of her music, and feel foolish I allowed the tabloid image of her to deter me from seeking it out before. When the film replays her death, it’s nearly impossible to not feel a part of your heart fall away. Mine did.

The film reveals how closely Amy’s songs mirrored what was going on in her life. On her album Back to Black, there’s heartache I’m sure she hoped she’d live long enough to atone. “Love is a losing game” wants love to win. The sting of the line “I died a hundred times” wants so much to be believed. “I told you I was trouble,” asks for a kind, trustworthy soul to see the misguided attempts for love. She was only 27 and she was going through the lessons of her relationships the way any of us do in our twenties, except hers became drenched in the sickeningly oppressive celebrity culture and the hardest drugs money could buy. Amy was loving, loyal, sensitive, kind, witty, but painfully lonely. Her personality was magnetic. There’s a scene of her in the recording booth singing “Back to Black” and at the end she says timidly, “It gets sad there at the end, doesn’t it?” Smiling, with the corners of her mouth turned down, it’s as if she is asking permission: is it okay to be this sad? She proudly trots out of the recording booth, having finished her work—the work of making a space where it is okay to be that sad, knowing full well that she will be heard.

The film trusts its viewer. The filmmaker Asif Kapadia lays out the pieces of Amy’s life, no piece seeming to weigh more than any other, and he leaves it up to the audience how or which pieces might fit together to bring insight into Amy’s life, death, and legacy.

One of the more noticeable pieces in the film is the pivotal age and transition in Amy’s life at 9 years old, when apparently this dark loneliness entered her like a parasite that could never be satiated. That year, her mother and father divorced. That is also the year when she said she realized she could do anything she wanted. In effect, Amy realized she could eat the entire bag of candy and no one would stop her. Amy told her mother eventually, “You need to say no to me.” But her mother was not able to say no to her. Amy was shown at just 9 years old that she controlled the world, and for a child, that is a very scary thing. In so many of her actions, Amy seemed to be trying to hand back this power to her parents, especially to her father. Her friends comment in the film that Amy turned into a child around her father, and that she worshipped the ground he walked on. There is an image of her a few days before she died, leaning on his shoulder and sucking her thumb. This is the man who said that Amy didn’t need rehab, after she had told him she would go if he thought she needed it. She gave the power of that decision to him, the way a child does, and he responded like a child. It’s so easy to confuse permissiveness with loving your child, but as Amy plummets, you want so much for her to have a firm moment of tough love from her father, the person she seems willing to listen to the most. It’s heartbreaking to hear her father’s voice-over in the film regret that moment when he said she didn’t need rehab, and even more heartbreaking for a completely different reason when he continues, explaining that ultimately Amy was the only person who could have saved herself. It becomes more difficult to feel compassionate for Amy’s father when he brings a camera crew to St. Lucia to have his daughter filmed for his own personal gain at a time when Amy was finally unencumbered by paparazzi, sans what became her masquerade of eyeliner and beehive, and on what appeared to be an uphill trend toward wellness. She said to him that she’d give him money if he needed money (rather than have a camera crew film her) and then begs him to be kind to her on camera after he is callous. In that moment, she was the parent cautiously scolding the child—playing his game only to be utterly exploited by it. Her attempts to show she was the child needing structure, safety, guidance, and limitations blew back in her face, but her attempts to be the adult show her she might only be loveable when convenient or profitable. Also at the age of 9, Amy developed bulimia. When she told her parents about it, separately, they each dismissed it and did nothing. Every opportunity she could, in a kind of Alice in Wonderland freefall, Amy acted out, attempting to prove she was the child needing love and care, literally making herself sick in extreme efforts to either self-soothe or self-destruct, looking for someone to take the reigns, someone to guide her in the blackness of her experience. It started with bulimia, then with marijuana, alcohol, reckless sex, harder drugs, and further with the belief that she was nothing but trouble. Near the end of her life, as she walked on the street, hounded by paparazzi, her bones as visible as a concentration camp survivor, and the people close to her feeding on her like rats, Amy seemed to have faded fully into the blackness she sang about.

However, in the midst of it, she was transforming the R&B music scene, opening her mouth in a fearless, expressive wail of her every vulnerability, hope, and darkest disappointment. As her music brought her stardom, she couldn’t really believe the power of her work, of her authentic self shining out and leading others. Amy used a roll of her eyes or a drug-laden performance to diminish it, or dismiss it completely. In her earlier career, before her fame, she found blissful joy in her music and she said it was the only thing she desired. But as her celebrity and drug-use increased, she mocked her work, calling the jazz she initially loved and emulated in her first album “elitist.” More and more it appears she used drugs as a way to escape her power as an artist, even sitting down on stage and refusing to sing in her last performance. It was a full-blown drug-aided tantrum in an effort to hand back the power placed in her by the world, similar to her attempts she made with her parents, but this time it was between herself and 50,000 adoring fans. Before her immense success was obvious, she herself said that fame would do her in, that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She tried to find an anchor in her parents. Then she tried with her husband, but he was a man as unanchored as she was. Her need for love and safety with him was dangerously distorted when she said to him, “I’ll do anything you do,” referring to his drug-use, and “I’ll cut myself if you cut yourself,” once again handing over her autonomy to someone else. Her relationships, her drug-use, and her bulimia succeeded in making herself smaller and dependent.

Watching the arc of footage of Amy from the fresh-faced, smiling young girl to the emaciated, bloodstained celebrity is enough to make you scream at the screen, “It’s coming! Get out of the there. The killer is right behind you!” It feels like she is committing suicide right in front of everyone, bit by bit, and then in giant leaps. It’s obvious how much her community is aiding and abetting her demise. She becomes unrecognizable not just in consequence of her drug use, but also on purpose in what seems like an intentional effort to create a mask. It seems to start out in play, in fun, the way a child puts on a mask, a dress-up party...let’s pretend. Her beehive and batwing eyeliner free her and give her confidence. As her addictions take a deeper hold, her mask becomes more for protection. Then later, the mask and the authentic self merge. They get slammed together in the confusing, chaotic Pollock painting of paparazzi, tours, money, drugs, and charts. Her beehive gets larger and larger, absurdly big, disturbingly tangled. Her eyeliner gets sloppier, and then completely smears down her face at times. Perhaps it is all because she needed to hide more and more, an effort to feel safe, an effort to disguise the trouble within her. I’m not sure. But it’s hard to ignore the caricature she became. Someone who was pretending to be Amy Winehouse. .

Thankfully, the film shows us that Amy was a hero as much or more than a victim. Amy was an adult and made her choices that lead to her death, no matter the dysfunctional roles she found herself playing. Her father’s remark that she was the only person who could save herself is true. And she was trying—she just didn’t get to finish the work of recovery. Right at the end of her life, she began calling her friends from childhood who truly loved and accepted her, who faded away during her ascent to fame when they said they could not support her behavior and drug use— truly the most loving acts made by anyone presented in the film. Amy was finally looking for the support and love she needed in the people, these friends, who were safe. She had divorced her husband who had been the biggest influence of her harder drug use, and who had taunted her in a video when they went to rehab when she said, “I quite like it here actually.” She was reconnecting with jazz, the roots of her love for music and inspiration. When she sat down on stage in her last performance, perhaps it was actually a redemptive moment. She was making a choice to end what she didn’t believe in anymore, knowing she could rebuild something different, something that reflected the true values she was beginning to realize. When she called her friends about the show and subsequent tour cancellation by her label, she was not worried about it. Rather, Amy was excited because she was going to get to go to her friend’s wedding after all, something the tour was going to prevent. In her refusal to sing, Amy was choosing her close, loving friends over stardom and a moneymaking tour. She was choosing a more ordinary existence rather than the fame and celebrity by which she felt betrayed.  

In the film, Amy’s father and Amy’s husband try to blame Amy’s downfall on her addiction. Just because a person has to find treatment for addiction first, before addressing other issues, doesn’t mean it occurs in a vacuum. We can chock it up to addiction, but what really happened?

The truth is, Amy had power. People think of power as a negative thing. It’s a loaded word because it is often used when we see it being abused. Many times examples of power are people suppressing others. That is a false sense of power. It functions as an optical illusion. It’s like asking everyone standing next to you to sit down and claiming how tall you are. In this world, we call that power, but that is actually powerlessness. Amy had true, authentic power. She invented the world, as every artist does, when she sat down and got to work, making songs. She wrote them, recorded them, and created something that no one can ever take away from her or any of us. Of all the people surrounding her, she had the power. The Dapkings needed her songs to make their music. The recording engineers needed her songs to do their work. The record label needed her songs to sell and make money. The paparazzi needed her image to exploit. Her father needed her to feel worthy. Her husband needed her to feel valid. Everyone needed Amy, and what she may have realized right at the end is that she didn’t need them in the ways they needed her. What I think Amy didn’t know is that she could trust her power. As it is for all of us, power is something we need. Without power, we cannot act. Because of power, we are able to create in all sorts of ways. Power is the bigness of living our authentic selves. It is our claim and choice to live outside what others prefer, and it is what makes us free. Amy made a platform for her authentic self to shine and inspire, and that is something she never needed to diminish. People may have tried to get her to believe that her power was hurtful. But she didn’t need them to do that to believe that power was dangerous. This was her belief. As a child, Amy had to take on power that she was not ready for and it hurt her. It wrought wounds from which she never healed. She couldn’t trust power even when she became an adult and a singer of international acclaim. She was confused between her power—a power that was authentic—and others’ false sense of power. Her father, her husband, and her management team—their power wasn’t really power. It was a powerlessness that fed off of minimizing her power and forming their identities through hers. Amy was not able to say no to these people, nor was she able to say no to the inner beliefs that drove her destructive behavior. With her music, she made a space where her soul was free to play, where she was loved, where she had power. But, in the end, she did not have the time to find trust in it. Nevertheless, her power endures. In time, it will win over the negative interjects of the tabloids and the inner and outer distortions she endured.

Amy, your power, your music, it can never be diminished. It can never be stolen from you, and, thank God, it can never be taken from us. Your power still guides those who hear it—to speak what makes us most vulnerable, to unabashedly be ourselves, to wail the truth of the moment. Thank you, Amy. I’m so sorry, Amy. Rest in peace, Amy. 

Pink Dress

Listen to our new single here: http://lnk.to/PinkDress

I wrote this as a personal sequel to Joyce Carol Oates' story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been". Violence against one girl has consequences for all girls. 

Holding the Dying Baby of Dylann Roof’s Heart

Inspired by the voices of the victims' families today forgiving Dylann Roof, Ryan and I wrote this today. 

When a person criticizes, blames, or shows contempt for another person, he is destroying trust and safety in the relationship. For some, these wrathful behaviors escalate into violence, domestic abuse, murder, or terrorism. In this relationship, the abused person has to minimize himself and behave in a way to control the behavior of the abuser. This is not compliance or manipulation, but rather it’s self-monitoring to make the environment safer and more predictable in order to survive. In America, Black women, men, and children have always had to monitor themselves to attempt to avoid the repercussions of a collective, abusive white culture. We now know from videos taken by bystanders that Black Americans have not just been abused by law enforcement, they have been murdered, in some cases just for moving in a way that irked an officer. And this week in Charleston, Black people were murdered for merely existing. They were hunted and killed as if their existence threatens the survival of their white counterparts.

Oppressors believe their contempt for the oppressed is a static truth. In Dylann Roof’s case, his contempt gives him a purpose, a reason to feel righteous, and a feeling of significance that he cannot forge through his own merits, but only by degrading or destroying the merits and lives of others. His contempt for Black Americans is what he uses as a distraction or antidote to his own self-hatred. If he can blame these difficult feelings on others, he believes he is safe and invulnerable from all the pain of his wretched reality.

But the contempt he feels is not enough. He believes that the validity of his perceptions—his righteous indignation and contempt—rest upon other people being wrong or invalid in their perceptions that disagree with his. For Dylann Roof, white supremacy cannot exist at the same time as equality for all.  The fact that Black Americans at a church can be free, happy, loving, and kind—something he does not have—is the ultimate threat to his distorted internal world. It weakens the shield masking his self-hatred. He must prove that he is superior and Blacks are inferior. He must make judgments and assumptions about them rather than know them, receive their kindness, and examine his own feelings and behavior.

If he had taken the time to open his heart to one of the 9 souls he murdered, he may have found the deep emotions of feeling hurt, scared, abandoned, and insignificant. He may have made a path of healing rather than a path of death and destruction. But Dylann Roof is a coward. With his racist terrorist attack, he attempted to create what he believes is an ever-lasting, global mask for himself, to avoid the certainty of his cowardice. But we see through it.

The mission of the wounded, masked self is to occupy the space with any number of distractions, be it dramatic conflict with close family or friends, social media, alcohol or drugs, television, porn or sex, video games, or violence. Dylann Roof found the perfect distraction and antidote to his problems. He made himself a part of a dysfunctional group and mindset that offered him identity, significance, and community. Perhaps he feels he is reclaiming familial love by enacting racist terrorism in the name of his ancestors he has aggrandized as victims. People bond over shared experience and familiarity. In a dysfunctional family or group, the shared meaning between group members can be very cynical and strengthen the isolation of the group in that they cannot trust anyone but each other. But the only people doing the oppressing are the group members themselves, keeping one another fearful, aggressive, and presuming powerlessness. They make themselves the heroes of their own falsified persecution when they enact violence on their chosen enemy.

Truth is not static. The concept of “truth” is a perception of the beholder who is mistaking it for a concrete reality. Truth is more of a verb and should be used more like “truthing.” Truthing is the acknowledgement of our ever-changing and moving experience—to pay attention to what we are feeling nonjudgmentally. Truth, on the other hand, is the belief that my truth is dependent on others’ truth agreeing with mine. To enter this kind of conflict is to assume there is a winner of the truth. This is the root of war, extremism, and terrorism. This conflict between “truths” creates a panic because the image of ourselves, the core of our beliefs and identities, is threatened by the other, and so we attack.

The families of the victims of the Charleston shooting voiced forgiveness of Dylann Roof in an emotional bond hearing today. They see the true cowardice, the misery, the vacuous, unloved heart of Dylann Roof, and are not afraid. We must hold their wisdom. We must acknowledge that this is their way of truthing. They are paying attention nonjudgmentally to their grieving, aching hearts and by doing this, they touch the sadness in all of us, even those of us who are cruel, unforgiving, and murderous. They are showing the true compassion of Christ by holding the dying baby of even Dylann Roof’s heart. 

What We Deny Fathers

Before I got pregnant with our son, I had a week or so when I didn’t think I could live another moment without him. I felt there was this little person knocking at my door, and I was on the other side calling to him, “Baby, it’s me. I can’t get to you.” This one month, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed my baby or I would die. This was exaggerated perhaps because we had had a miscarriage the year before and I had waited to get pregnant again because I felt too fucking sad to be happy about another baby. I finally was happy for another baby again and wasn’t willing to wait. Each night, I’d lie in bed and my heart would burn for this person I felt was already attached to me. I found myself seducing Ryan in my hormonal drunkenness, saying sexy things like, “The only reason we’re here is to make babies. Now do it!” He said he wasn’t ready. When that ovulation window closed, I curled up in the bed and wailed and wailed the doom of the world.

We were both ticked off with one another, each of us resisting what the other said they wanted. After a few days of talking it over with each other and with our close friend Luke, Ryan said to me, “We will have a baby. Trust that. We will. But I want to want our baby as much as you do.”

And that was an eye-opener. I had assumed he would never come anywhere close to the desire I had for a baby. I had been a sexist punk, staking sole claim of any and all baby-wanting. Here he was, with tears in his eyes, telling me, I want to experience what you’re experiencing. I want the burning heart. I want that knock at the door.

I knew I didn’t want to steal that from Ryan. I hadn’t realized my desire for a baby hadn’t given him the space to realize what the hell he felt about having a baby, or even give him the space to have fun, to enjoy this rite of passage. I also wanted our baby to be given the gift of being desired by both his parents.

I was able to lay off and find patience. I thought about the fact that somehow my baby was already with me, that the burning sensation in my heart truly was the soul of our baby. Each night, I’d be excited to lie in the dark and concentrate on this feeling. A month later, Ryan was the one whose desire for a baby could no longer wait. I surrendered and we got pregnant.

Raising our son has been very much like this early realization. Ryan desires all the rites of passage with our son as much and sometimes more than I do. In the early months, it was very easy for me to want to take control, to tell Ryan to hold the baby this way, not that way...and I would realize I was falling into the belief, whatever cultural belief, that the baby world is a woman’s world, a woman’s place, a woman’s purpose, and not a man’s. There was even a part of me at times that believed I knew more than he did about this (even though I had no clue). In these moments, Ryan would remind me, “This is mine too. I need this.” And I would take off the mommy-crown, collapse in the chair and just be me, the part of me that is not a mother, the part of me that is so thankful I don’t have to know what I’m doing and carry the weight of the world, the part of me that can be an artist, the part of me that can be a daydreamer, and just let my partner relish in his part of parenthood, his part of the despair of not knowing why the baby is crying, and then the joy of soothing him and soaking in that relief of silence and peace. 

We talked about how my urge to micromanage him made him feel as if I believed he was not capable of being a father, of taking care of his very own son. I quickly realized that if I said one thing about actually it’s easier putting the onesie on this way, I was undermining him, disrespecting him, making him want to yield to me and give up. This simple interaction of not trusting a father to put on a onesie the “right” way gives weight to this myth that women know better how to care for children, that mothers are more essential than fathers, that fathers don’t know what the hell they are doing with a baby, and that a woman’s place is in the home with her children. If a new family starts out this way, how is a father ever to catch up with not only his child but with his partner—to be trusted, seen, respected, and loved as a man, as a father, as a capable human being? And how is a mother ever to catch up if she is given this duty as her sole purpose in life, when she has so much more yearning inside of her to say, create, become, change, build...a new world?

I stopped butting in. When he was with the baby, it was his time for trekking the unknowns of baby-land, and it was my time for wow-I-can-just-be-here-and-not-worry-land. Ryan took the reigns of being a father, but he could only take them if I let them go.

Because of Ryan’s desires and his willingness to fight for them, I haven’t had to enter the lineage of women in my ancestry of being the dominant caretaker. It sometimes feels so engrained inside of me to feel guilty or ashamed if I’M not the one with my child all day, or I’m not doing whatever activity with him to develop the such-and-such part of the brain I read in some magazine that mothers (not fathers) should be doing. I am certain that being a mother is not what I am solely here to do no more than being a father is what Ryan is solely here to do.

For years I didn’t think I’d ever want a baby, and then suddenly I did more than I ever expected. The want was voracious and all consuming, so much so that I feared motherhood would erase me completely. Ryan’s desire for a baby was different, but no less important. He was not going to let me or any backward cultural expectation make him miss out on the small, intimate moments of his son’s life. And because of this I haven’t had to miss out on the other things I am here to do, to make music, to write songs, to hopefully make a difference with what I think, what I believe.

If we want an equal world, with equal pay, with equal opportunity to make our mark, with more affordable and accessible childcare, we need to acknowledge fathers’ desire to be with their babies and carve that identity, even among the fathers who seem desireless and those who withdraw. One step forward is honoring that what may look like absence has its origins in cultural shaming of men who express nurturance.   

Aunt Buna Low: a song that didn't make the album

There never was so ugly a girl as Buna Low. / Of six sisters, her face stood alone. / At 14, each danced to the altar to and fro. / Five times a maid poor Buna Low. 

Her sisters gave an army the town / of boys who loved their sweet Buna Low. / One by one the coal mine did crown / the boys new kings of the underground. 

Aunt Buna, grown grey, made pie each day / for the tins her nephews devoured / until the day the methane sparked / and under earth her little boys cowered. 

Buna's sisters wailed at the black mouth / where no man came in or out / and the fire burned for a decade / clearing the town of people and doubts. 

Aunt Buna Low stayed behind / where she sang to her buried sons. / Her skin withered and hung / as the smoke blacked out the sun. 

She cried ten years a tear / so sad God condemned her doom / by churning a storm so cruel / rain made an ocean of the mountain tomb. 

The bodies of her boys surfaced on the water / to each Buna swam and kissed. / They cried, "Sweet Aunt Buna Low, / why did you leave us so alone?" 

by Cashavelly Morrison

Long-Haired Mare: Daughter WRites Down what her mother used to Say

1. Eat. You’re a grey dress of bones.
2. You with that hatchet wound between your legs. I’d sew yours up if I could.
3. Talk about the nice things. Don’t talk about the bad things. Everyone's nice, everyone's happy. Tell them you play tin-can-alley. Well, it ain’t a lie! Tell them about the tree taps for maple syrup. Folks that don’t come from here find that interesting. They think it's a miracle. They don’t know where things come from. They eat eggs, but they never seen a chicken’s ass swell up red. But don’t talk about that. Talk about the great big musky fish we fry up. Or the walleye fish. The gold scales. Talk about that.
4. Remember you ask anyone for anything, you’re asking for shame.
5. He’s so rich, he spends it on silver buttons. 
6. Once you got yourself a fire, most of the day’s battle is over.
7. When I don’t got something is when I want it the most. Even if when I had it, I hated it.
8. You ought to have yourself a good time before you be put to work the rest of your life.
9. Sleep is the only come-easy thing in this whole world.
10. My little doe. Don’t ever leave my lap.