One fortunate side-effect of the Florida condition is the urge to find the poetics in things that are thoroughly depressing. I'm fresh off the boatlift (as that fool Pitbull, Mr. “Let me valet in your face,” might put it) from a mid-summer trip home. Cue disclaimer: my critical edges have been temporarily rounded out--it's what happens to our features in the tropics. Nevertheless, permit a few simple and barely thought about observations. It hit me, hard, that I’ve been looking at the nation with New York-tinted goggles. There are those of us for whom creative financing has been our way of life and will be forevermore. But for those in the higher brackets, the ones who make upward mobility in this city damn near impossible? Recession-schmecession! Property is still changing hands, accents seem to be set on Northern Italian, too much of foodieBrooklyn now has homes in Montauk. Poor Montauk.
Not so in Miami. South Florida’s spurts and pitters--which have always depended upon the speculation of land and its eventual abandonment--is part of what makes it such an anomaly. You might call it our colonial condition. Being wanted and then not. You can dream big with no follow-through. The vegetation will inevitably take over, so what’s the point? It is an always-unfinished place that houses always-unfinished souls.
Sure, it’s a familiar experience to not recognize the skyline where one grew up. But in the Miami of today, there are literally hundreds of standing skeletons that cloud the horizon. Construction projects (the shoddy and the shady) will remain uncompleted. There’s too much that’s shut down. The place feels depressed in a Detroit and New Haven kind of a way, and like those places, there is also a creative ruckus in the air.
In the inspirational spirit of KT’s post on Colby O’Donis, I’d like to offer two shots that go down easy. Here are two recent songs from the northern and southern ends of the state.
I’ll start with Carol City’s own Rick Ross. Ross first got my attention with “Push It,” a song that did a few things with the music from the Horatio Alger montage in Scarface. Synth stabs galore. Here I’d like to play his “Here I Am.” I just like it when they give us a serious balladic snippet to hang onto (also see Fat Joe’s current “I Won’t Tell”). Do what the song says and just try and enjoy yourself.
Black Kids, the force behind the other song of the week, gives me the opportunity to shout out our capital city. The Jacksonville band calls this euro-goth song "Hurricane Jane." There's a very local-band-gets-discovered feeling to the sound.
Cojelo Suave,
(ATV)
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