Week 5: Make It Make Sense

 The idea of fluidity with writing, mixing both fact and fabrication seems necessary when telling a story "based in" the truth. Our lives have very interesting elements to them. Some start of intriguing, and flare off a bit, to say the least. There is a level of truth stretching and bending that helps build a good memoir. I look at it like the truth of the memoir is the structure of the build, it is what holds everything together. The truth is the steel pillars holding the structure up, it can even be the roof and the windows. The parts that get embellished are like the furniture, the kitchen appliances, and the photos on the wall. The structure is very real and keeps the building up, but the embellishment makes the place look good inside. 

We all would like to think our lives are of interest and every part would keep people on the edge of their seat reading it but it reality it may not. Real life is unpredictable. The unpredictability of it can push the limits of the minds imagination or can be just be down right confusing. Some of our lives can be pretty conservative as well. A writer can find a believable balance between fact and fiction that will bring a story together. Lidia Yuknavitch, who released the novel The Chronology of Water, knew what parts of her story would intrigue the audience and what parts should be moved around to spice the story up bit. Her ability to identify these elements made for a memoir with great fluidity and creativity. 

   One of my personal favorite memoirs is from the musician and poet, Gil Scott-Heron, who had a musical career that ran through five decades. This career gave us twenty albums, two novels, and a memoir. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Gil Scott-Heron, wrote the memoir The Last Holiday about his experience on tour with Stevie Wonder as they campaigned to make Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday. Gil started the memoir sharing stories about his upbringing, bouncing around from Tennessee to New York City, as well as Chicago. The climax of the memoir is when Gil was on The Hotter Than July with Stevie with his band as the opening act. The spot became open when Bob Marley got ill, with him eventually passing away. When the tour reached Washington D.C, there was a huge rally on Dr. Kings birthday, January 15, 1881. This rally became the highlight of the memoir, with stories being shared about Heron's relationship with Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, and a list of other celebrates.

   Although this memoir shares amazing stories about the musicians we love today, the essence of the writing was about his mother and personal childhood stories Gil shared with the readers. There was a great balance between Scott-Heron's professional career as a musician and writer that we marvel over, and him as a human being going through life before he became who he was. What I learned from the text is the importance of timing, as well as staying true to who you are. Gil wasn't the most popular musician with the top 100 hits, he was a writer of truth and reality. The truth that Gil wrote about got him noticed by agreeability the greatest musician of all time, Stevie Wonder, and aligned him with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr as they pushed together to make King's birthday a holiday. Being a writer of substance and reality put Gil in a prestigious class of great men. 

   Some of the quotes that stood out for me in The Last Holiday A Memoir were "Michael was one of the few phenom's remaining when I arrived and Greg organized a brief introduction to folks. I was cool with that, even pleased to meet them in person. It had not been as electric as meeting Quincy Jones or Miles Davis, but I wouldn't forget had happened. But what did I know? Only that this youngster, with hair falling over one eye and a voice so soft and quiet that your ears had to reach for it, was record royalty." "But these casual encounters with artists off duty gave me no warning about how the electricity would elevate, how the excitement level would rise in the arena when Michael Jackson joined us onstage as the band went into the  reggae rhythm of "Master Blaster". He would raise the voltage."

  "I rarely missed things Stevie said to me. But when I saw him at the bottom of the backstage stairs at the arena in Oakland, I thought I must have misheard him. Maybe it was the shock at what he had said, Maybe I had missed what he had said and just thought I did. It was something I didn't want to hear. But no, I must have mistaken Stevie for sure. "I said some psycho, some crazy person, shot John Lennon!" Stevie said. "And I'm wondering how to handle it." I am not so silly or naive as to suspect that there is an ultimate evil. But the death of a good man, so rare as to be nearly extinct, is a thorough tragedy. And what do you say about it to seventeen thousand people who have come out to see you and enjoy themselves?"

   "I always knew where I'd been. I was in last period history class at Dewitt Clinton High School when the principal announced from the bottom of an empty barrel: "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that your president is dead." He was talking about John Kennedy, shot to death by someone in Dallas."

  "I was in the little theatre at Lincoln when a guy everyone called "the Beast" had thrown open a rear door and shouted, "The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King has been shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee."

  "I was in my bedroom on West 17th Street when man first reached the moon and I had written a poem called Whitey on the Moon" that very night (for which my mother had come up with the punch line: We're gonna send those doctor bills air mail special to Whitey on the moon.")"

   The historic accounts Gil had throughout his lifetime, even partaking in a few, would've been perfect material to blog about. Even Gil's documented accounts of his early years in his home, to his experience in middle school, onto high school, and his University years would be perfect to read about in a blog. Scott-Heron depicted his entire life from adolescence, all the way up to his adult years as a musician in a booming industry of celebs and scandals. I can only imagine how popular a blog post from him would have been in the 1970's. Seeing that I idolize Gil so much as a person and how much he means to me, it may change the reading experience for me if I found out the lines were blurred a bit for the memoir. Probably not though because it is documented how amazing of his life he had, through real accounted stories about him from his perspective and from others, and the music he left behind backs a lot of his claims. The stories he told in this memoir of some of legend so even if they are fabricated, I still enjoy them the same.  

 Gil Scott Heron (Author)

The Last Holiday: A Memoir 

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QNNI5E?ref=KC_GS_GB_US