Ain't No Crystal Stair. Okay And What?
Retrospect coffee mediations on an unequal eyeconomy and the value of the visual.
Life ain’t fair and ain’t no crystal stair.
We are in consistent complaint and tears about all this shit, struggling to get toward some semblance of equity or equality. Moving. In our hearts we believe life’s justice should be different (well some of us).
Fear and need are powerful maneuvers that creep into actions disguised. Easily underwriting and approving behaviors, they both corral and employ intentions to install some sort of means to get ourselves and our body the object of need or to preserve us to continue in survival (or struggling to survive). For better or worse this is us.
On Wednesday I lead a class into the darkroom of visual marketing and the erotic economy hoping to develop more possibilities of tricking with the visual and tricking the ideal of representation. Entitled Unequal Eyeconomy ‘BodyView’ the workshop is a manifestation of readings and beings. On beings, I am a graphic artist. I’ve been a strategic marketer, visual designer, vixen and an artist. I continue to be a cluster fuck of all the jobs and gigs I’ve executed because of who I am; some of which I’d like to hold captive for the sake of not giving a fuck about proving my authority or respectability about teaching this subject matter. Mothafuck a CV, nigga it’s just big me. The better assessment indicator when it comes to visuals, when it comes to marketing, when it comes to appealing to sex and when it comes to cyber-space is: what haven’t I done. I’m really like that.
The workshop in name and exposition rests in and carries on the work of Siobhan Brooks in Unequal Desires : Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry and Jennifer Nash’s The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography. It’s a genetic mixing of the Siobhan’s logic of injury (as Nash would say) and also “organizing around the paradoxes… [and]… around possibilities rather than pain”1. Particularly I became embryotic in Chapter 5 of Unequal Desires. It is included as assigned reading. Chapter 5: Reproducing Cyber Desire: The Role of Technology and Desire Industries presented badass theorizing around tech and its ability to produce image, draw attention and capture desire. Although, I do not include Nash in the readings, what we did in the workings of the class was a fleshing out of what some may consider pornographic. Pornography is not a thing but an argument2. These are the muvas and I am their seeded result, like they planted me.
KB , who’s been helping me see my strategic mind and put my mind’s pieces together lately, sent me a video attachment on the morning of class (truncated for read time):
Good morning. Soooo I finally got to finish the BodyView Thirst Trap class and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I struggle with consistently capturing my vision for dancing and taking this course built my confidence in being able to be more consistent.
My favorite cues were composition and line of sight because I feel like those cues really help me to better understand how I utilize the space around me to enhance my movement and how to balance dancing for my own pleasure and the pleasure of my audience.
The video I sent is one of my favorite videos I recorded for the sexuality and mythology portion. An aspect of sex that I enjoy is voyeurism/Consensual exhibitionism so I get a lot of pleasure putting on a show
The danky, dark, sightly granulated video was so good to me. It was giving Mac computers with the rainbow logo videocam realness and I lushed KB to post the first beginning seconds onto Instagram as promotion for the class in exchange for the registration fee. Kb posted it.
It’s now Saturday.
The post that KB made received in total 40 hearts and I’m not complaining or crying about it. It’s the facts. If anything it’s a testimony to all the visual marketing and cultural shit we talked about (and the things we didn’t), to the shit spoken (and unspoken) in the bodies of work of Siobhan, Jennifer, Kiara and myself.
Desire is unequal, the erotic economy is no crystal stair and our eyes assess and assign value differently. Systemically conditioned, colonial bound, fear and need driven. Despite these facts we still exist, we must survive. And we will still move. I’m reminded in the moment I saw the metrics that this is my working.
“…how it could possibly be a way to reconcile the body back from the exploitation of racism and classism. My hopes is to explore a new approach to living in the capitalistic economic system that is neither extreme, moderate or docile— but radical. One that comes together to slowly erode what’s no longer serving (me)(us)(we) and negotiate a lived reality without splitting the difference.”3
Recapping the class with Nova Mae (Moe) I mentioned how I don’t think I’m done with Unequal Eyeconomy. It isn’t finished, there’s more. There will be more workshops, we’ve got a bit of ways to go.
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Mother to Son. Langston Hughes, 1922Nash, Jennifer C.. The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2014.
Slade, Joseph W.Pornography in America: A Reference Handbook.ABC-Clio, 2000.
S, Ashley. “Materiality and Embodied Existence Beyond Colonial Binaries, Video Vixens, Gospel Drag, Sexual Economies, Unequal Desires and the South Is a Portal.” 400 Degreez Of Erotic Funk, 19 Oct. 2024, 400degreezpole.substack.com/p/materiality-and-embodied-existence.