Thank You, Steve Jobs

In 1986, I bought my first Apple IIe, and it changed my life. Back then, the choices were limited to clunky PCs with Microsoft technology, Commodores, and Ataris. I chose the IIe because it felt right. It was user friendly and I didn't have to remember complex codes for commands, as if I was some postgraduate math major. All I had to do was point, click, and begin.

It was that easy. Steve Jobs, it seemed, had created a computer just for me. Or that was how it felt.

And that has always been the secret of Apple: the individual experience. I've always thought that the difference between the Apple consumer and the PC buyer was that every Apple owner believed that Steve Jobs had created the product with him or her in mind. It always seemed as if a friend had made an exquisite gift that he wanted to share with me. It was those kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings that I've always attached to Apple products, which suggested, even in the middle of work, "C'mon, let play!" Microsoft, on the other hand, was always corporate: "We don't have time to play. Get back to work! Now!"

This is the radically different way that Steve Jobs convinced us to think about the world. For at the heart of Apple products is the desire to communicate and to make our sensory lives as rich and layered as possible. And the complex engineering is always expressed in elegant, user-friendly devices that follow the intuitive contours of our minds. For whereas the products that his competitors offer merely shift the variables, Steve Jobs has transformed the inhuman integers of 0s and 1s into a humane language that all of us can understand.

This has practical implications in our world. If we stopped thinking about "just the numbers" and more about what they meant--the values-- then we would see the human faces behind our 9% unemployment rate: brothers and sisters who have are looking for work so that they can feed their families, keep a roof over their heads, and maintain their dignity.

Steve Jobs wanted us to think about our world and the ways that we can make it a better through our individual experience. This idea is reflected in his Commencement address at Stanford University:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. 

Thank you, Steve Jobs. You have expanded the possibilities of my life and the lives of my children, who have grown up doing their homework, surfing the web, and listening to music on their iMacs, iPods, and iPads. You could call us an iFamily

iLove.

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Jobs_Headshot_2010-CROP.jpg

The Genesis of "Bob Marley and Bradford's iPod"

I have been losing too many friends to conditions that plague Black men my age: hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. When we were younger, we would talk about books, soccer, film, football, and girls while we smoked and had a few drinks at a local bar. Now we are beginning to resemble the characters in "Miami, USA" (Florida Bound), a poem about my first impressions of Miami Beach: "old men/ trade prescriptions, amber bright/ as stars over Auschwitz tagged to their sleeves."

I could say that my conversations with my friends were the genesis of "Bob Marley and Bradford's iPod," but I would be lying. The roots of this story are far more complex than many of my other stories, but they share a common heritage.

Bradford Ramsay, my doppelgänger, is a fused character from "The Day Mrs. Ho Sang Got Arrested," in my first collection of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien: The story is about a young man from Mona Heights, Jamaica who likes to smoke marijuana and to flick the ash through the window. Unbeknownst to Bradford, a seed has spouted into a "beautiful plant" which has been nurtured by his mother's hands and the rich fertilizer in her garden. One day, the police show up at their front door…

I've often wondered what would happen to the characters I created in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien. I've played with combinations of their names for many years now, which is how Bradford Ramsay was born. I guess that's why this genre is called speculative fiction.

The idea for the "haunted" iPod came after I wrote the post, "Five Songs I Must Have for my iPod." Many writers, including Stephen King who used it in "Ghost Radio," have been intrigued by the idea of a device that allows multidimensional communication, and I figure this trope will be used and reused for as long as Ogun rules.

Of course, anyone who has been reading this blog knows about my love for Bob Marley's music and the gratitude that I have for the impact of his life on my work. Bob's music guided me in constructing the conflict between Bradford and his antagonist, Dr. Tyrone Robinson. An article in The Gleaner also influenced the story: "60 per cent of Jamaicans held the view the country would be better off under British rule." I'll let you read the story to find out how Bradford reacts to these kinds of Anglophile sentiments.

The character "Bob Marley" in this story was grounded in a strong feeling that I've had ever since I attended the symposium on RastafarI: Bob is a becoming a caricature of a weed smoking Jamaican Rastaman.

Sure, Bob smoked the herb and sang many songs in its praise: "Excuse me while I light my spliff/ O God I gotta take a lift" ("Easy Skanking), and "I feel so high I could even touch the sky/ Above the falling rain" ("Kaya"). But to reduce Bob's work to smoking herb or to regard "One Love" as merely a Kumbaya sentiment is to miss an important aspect of Bob's work:

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armagiddyon (One Love!),

So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!).

Have pity on those whose chances grows t'inner;

There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation.

There ain't no Kumbaya in these lyrics. This is another way for singing "War": "Until the philosophy that holds one race inferior and another inferior/ is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned/ Everywhere is war."

Bob is a warrior/prophet/poet whose compassion for the downtrodden/dispossessed sufferahs changed my consciousness and the consciousness of my generation who grew up in postcolonial Jamaica. Through Bob Marley's music, we learned to respect our identity (his Garveyite roots) and to fight/resist/ chant down any s[h]ystem that would diminish our I-manity. This is why I have argued that Bob Marley should be elevated to the stature of a national hero of Jamaica and President Barack Obama should exonerate that Marcus Garvey, Jamaica's first national hero.

Maybe one of these days, I'll collect all of my posts into an eBook about Bob Marley. Until then, my friends, quit smoking, eat healthful foods, start exercising, and buy "Bob Marley and Bradford's iPod."

Five Songs I Must Have for my iPod

I see an old warrior sitting by a hearth of smoldering coals. The air is thick with the scent of stews, aromatic herbs, and roasted flesh. Sentinels lurk beyond the brush and a stand of pines. His sheathed sword has been laid across his right leg that has been scarred in many campaigns. The thongs of his sandals are still tight and battle-ready. An owl's hoot ricochets through the camp and all the young warriors grab their swords. He smiles to himself and remains unmoved. But then, he looks up and through the smoke he sees "Her" serving the soldiers or perhaps not doing anything in particular. Maybe just washing the dishes. She is so beautiful. The old warrior feels something that he hasn't felt in a long time. It’s this mixture of compassion and longing. The last time he felt like this was—before the wars started. He can’t believe an old codger like himself could still be moved this way. He’s been with many women (some whose memory still hurt him), yet he's surprised that his heart can still muster these emotions. And even though he's a normally confident man, he is boyish, foolish, and shy around her, and yet strangely protective. That’s how I feel when I hear "Waiting in Vain" by Bob Marley--an old warrior surprised by love:

From the very first time I blessed my eyes on you, girl,
My heart says follow trough.
But I know, now, that Im way down on your line,
But the waitin feel is fine:

The Gipsy Kings version of “Bamboleo” is one of my favorite songs. There’s so much fire, and the speaker is unapologetic about life or love and is determined to live his life on his terms. No compromises: “Porque mi vida, yo la prefiero vivir asi!”

Este amor llega asi esta manera
No tiene la culpa
Caballo le ven sabana
Porque muy depreciado,
Por eso no te perdon de llorar
Este amor llega asi esta manera
No tiene la culpa,

Amor de comprementa
Amor del mes pasado
Bembele, bembele, bembele
Bem, bembele, bembele

Al Green’s pleas and promises in “Let’s Stay Together” and how his lover makes him feel, “Cause you make me feel, so brand new/ And I want to spend my life with you.” And then, his confusion:

Why somebody, why people break up
Oh, and turn around and make up
I just can't seeeeeeeee
You'd never do that to me
(Would you baby)
'Cause being around you is all I see
It's why I want us to

Let's, let's stay together
Loving you whether, whether
Times are good or bad, happy or sad

Al, I, too, can’t understand.

When I was in sixth form at Jamaica College, I remember having a heated discussion with Donovan Ashley on the steps of Simms House about whether Thom Bell or Bob Marley was the better songwriter. This was a time when even the most screwfaced, dreadlocked bad man was walking down King Street singing in falsetto “Bethcha by Golly Wow” by The Stylistics even while he clutched his knife or gun. Donovan said that Thom Bell was the better writer because he wrote only about love and love was the only thing that mattered. This was also the time when I believed that love was only for the bourgeois and that everything should be devoted to the revolution and to bringing down apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). I argued that the only music that mattered was music with "conscious" lyrics. I think in the eyes of my peers, I won the argument. But forty years later whenever I hear “Sadie” by The Spinners and remember my mother who made her transition a few years ago:

Early one Sunday morning
Breakfast was on the table
There was no time to eat
She said to me, Boy, hurry to Sunday school

Filled with her load of glory
We learned the Holy story
Shell always have her dreams
Despite the things this troubled world can bring

Oh, Sadie
Don’t you know we love you
Sweet Sadie
Place no one above you

You were right about love being the only thing that matters, Donovan. You were!

I could listen to every song on Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, but if I had to choose one, it would have to be “As”:

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day
Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I'll be loving you always
As today I know I'm living but tomorrow
Could make me the past but that I mustn't fear
For I'll know deep in my mind
The love of me I've left behind
Cause I'll be loving you always

"True love asks for nothing/ Her acceptance is the way we pay." It's a lesson I'm still learning. Sing on, Stevie!

Besides the fact that I’m fascinated by memes, I’m taking the lead from Rethabile’s post via Crafty Green Poet about 5 songs that “appeal to the poetic sensibilities."

And if I were to cheat just a little, I'd add Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass with "Bad Luck" and "Wake up, Everybody"-- a herald to the dormant bodhisattvas--"Me and Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul, and "Praise Ye Jah" by Sizzla Kalonji, for sheer effervescence.

As in the nature of memes (some are subject to change), I’ve modified this one and I'm tagging Georgia , Marlon, Madbull, Professor Zero, and The Prisoner's Wife (for your new iPod?) Name five songs that if you were stranded on a desert island and could only have 5 songs on your I-Pod what would they be? As with most memes, as you pass it along mention who tagged you, so some mad scientist (or blog historian, Nicholas?) can figure out the Ariadne thread.

If anyone else wants to join in, feel free to tag yourself!

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"If you have never heard or read about Bob Marley, this book is the best place to begin…. For someone like myself who knew Marley personally and has read nearly everything ever written about him, the book makes me feel like I’m reading about Bob Marley for the first time… If you want to place a Marley biography in your library, this is the one to buy."



Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah
Eminent Rastafarian author, broadcaster and journalist.