PROJECT 2/ ethnographic poetry
During our second visit to the Bloque de Oro on October 10, 2018, we participated in a walking tour of the neighborhood offered by Taller Puertorriqueño to learn more about the area from a community member. Our guide, Marilyn Rodriguez, an artist and the Director of Education at Taller, organized the walking tour around the murals that decorate many of the buildings in the neighborhood. Marilyn not only told us about the creators of the murals and their community involvement, but she also offered insights and explanations of the imagery in great detail.
As we walked between murals, Marilyn also gave us a local’s history of the neighborhood, which included family histories, the ebb and flow of small businesses, as well as individuals and institutions that stood out as pillars of the community. After the tour we ate dinner at El Bohio and walked into Centro Musical, a store that Marilyn indicated that we must visit if we were interested in learning more about music in the community. There we met and had an extended, almost familial conversation with a woman behind the counter who introduced herself as Rosita. We left the store and met with a local musician to explore the possibility of taking percussion lessons.
Over the next two days we individually wrote up our fieldnotes and documented our reflections on our time conducting fieldwork. Afterwards, we exchanged notes and, from each other’s writing, began to craft a set of four ethnographic poems for our second assignment. Scroll down to read them.
MFL to N. Philly
And we’re off. Transit cops on the train
with guns. A sighting--unlikely
for those with more money--brings
thoughts of 4,5,6 trains uptown after 125th
in New York City. Yet, we’re in Philly with
plans to co-author a field manual of sorts:
Huntingdon Station &
The Familiar Smell of Someone Else’s Piss
beginning with units of measure:
A 20 minute walk
through someone else’s hood.
The number of Puerto Rican flags: TNTC--
too numerous to count--
scientific notation for “we lost count after 8”
passing a store with flags from all over
on the corner
of American Street--
from Puerto Rico to Palestine
“Every culture uses furniture!”
and has a colonizer.
Is that Don Omar’s “Pobre Diablo”
playing from a car? Shit, first stop
on this fieldwork is high school
#Nostalgia #Reggaeton
while kids pop wheelies on motorbikes,
folks down side streets sit on stoops
and music in the street feels like home.
Some things numbers can’t capture,
so snap shots of murals and see
Taino and African
and a third, conspicuously missing,
a pointed erasure
I [we] love it.
The vejigante’s hands
are different colors, but both Black.
One of them looks like mine [ours].
I [we] choose to believe the artist did that
on purpose.
Taller Talks, Walks
“We look like we have money
because we have a nice building
but
we
don’t.”
Murals retouched several times, edifices
holding community members’ definitions.
Knowing can push forward or stall.
Celebrando la Cultura, a woman
painted herself into this mural, painted
more freedom to be what they are.
Local legends--
this tour is much more than murals.
This is the Bloque de Oro.
This used to be a hospital
but now
it’s something else. Community businesses
replaced by mental health
businesses and hospices,
others passed
generation to generation
and sometimes not
like Raymond’s bar, #TheSpot por años,
where folks would party there until
Raymond got old.
But Centro Musical still stands and
tunes outside fill the late summer sky
at N. 5th and Lehigh. Fitting.
Don Omar, Ozuna and Marc Anthony: different eras, different crowds, pero
Boricua
pa que tu lo sepas #Fua!
En El Bohio, we drink parcha and eat
mofongo with bean sauce,
like locked twins, fraternal in the field,
porque no hay salsa ni merengue.
For survival we speak humor in the diaspora
even when our hair stands on end.
Nails
Matte pointy nails in navy and army green
on one hand,
a fellow passenger unwittingly weaves the
sounds of our conversations together
I wonder how much they half-heard.
Enter, Marilyn.
Black based nails with silver bedazzled tips.
She is an artist.
Exit, street.
At the El Barrio mural,
I’m drawn in by the description and depiction of vejigantes -- Carnival. How to
get children to behave.
The Bloque de Oro is delineated by winding
yellow waves of concrete
stretching along the sidewalk
Marilyn points and vejigantes appear in
more murals up the street.
Another Taller building and mural “3
cultures, 1 heart”
The children’s activities used to be held
there during the Feria.
Jerry’s ladies’ fashion storefront window:
quince dresses, all white suits for little boys,
and barely there leotards.
Whatever the word is to describe the theme,
Jerry nailed it.
Back at Taller, we look at the current
installation
“Ghetto is re-source-ful”
It concludes with a video.
We watch the artist, in an abandoned lot,
Make something beautiful out of dirt.
Sifting out needles and nails,
Rusted razors and other friendly foes of a Philly child's side street Carnival.
He mixes the dusty soil
with whatever's at the bottom of a discarded
bottle.
Imagine. Create. How to get children to behave.
He is a vejigante.
#Vibes
They just stand at the front of the train car.
Why do they have guns and bullet proof
vests?
#InsecureVibes
Someone pissed in the stairs.
#EveryHoodVibes
People sitting on their stoops.
#ClearlyNotJustNOLAVibes
Free sale managed by women and small children.
#CommunityVibes
Botanicas out here offering a different kind
of healing.
#AguaFloridaVibes
The Dominican spot smells like the food is
bangin.
#CaribbeanVibes
Marilyn is good people as told by Bill
Summers and Daniel De Jesus.
#ReferenceVibes
Rosita in Centro Musical is good people.
Rosita no le gusta los hombres que faltan
respeto and she'll tell you to your face.
She'll also tell you if you're a good boy (as she does to Daniel).
#FamiliarTiaVibes
A local musician
boldly states that Puerto Rican people don't
respect themselves.
*record scratch*
This man doesn't sit well with my spirit, and
not just because I disagree with him
(#Cosign).
#OutOfPocketVibes #UnfortunatelyFamiliarTioVibes
Let's leave that door closed.
We hop in a shared Lyft and find ourselves
in a sea of police. They just stand at the
front of the car.
#OverPolicingVibes #EveryHoodVibes
When I get home, I put on Agua Florida to
wipe away the day.