Blog

I am a militant falsetto, onna move to sow sacred ground, my voice subtle as background radiation, indivisible as dark matter, whispering so gentle a Christian aunt swoons. An American man, I genuflect to the reverb of Curtis Mayfield’s mantras in 3-minute anthems.

I am a militant falsetto, converting agony of foremothers and forefathers chained within clauses of declarations, flinging alchemy and medicine from within the tectonics vexing barometers of who can I be, who our country’s history says I can be. If I more than nudge my volume past protocol, suddenly I become a Black man who frightens the uninitiated.

When I first saw the cactus in bloom, some 15 years ago, I was hiking the hills of Mount Washington in LA with Olga, friend and educator, fierce poet and cultural worker. A blossoming cactus! Turned me out, DC boy that I am. Honestly, I wasn’t all into the beauty of cactus. Olga broke down how her kin made meals from certain cactus. Olga refocused my sight. Reminded me to see all at once the thorns and the blossoms, the militance and the falsetto.

Recently, Instagram’s algorithm nudged me with an old photo I’d posted of a blossoming cactus. I promptly shared the image with Olga, who I’d last seen in her own IG posts walking the picket line with striking LAUSD teachers. Olga’s response turned me out.

“Nature saves. And nourishes. Every single day. The world is mad, Mr. Peter …. On some days the world terrifies me …. The ugliness makes me ill. In the soul. But there is the other side where the good & love resides. Hope you’re well. And finding joy despite it all – I know you are. Un abrazo.”

I wrote her back: “I feel you. Big SOCIAL ugliness. INTIMATE ugliness. Backwashing between and among us all. Honestly, I’ve been working diligently to concentrate on how I am behaving in my daily anonymous flow. Remembering to be polite whether I’m on the bus or in the liquor store buying a lottery ticket. Listening for my mother’s voice. My mother used to INSIST on courtesy. You’ve got me thinking about how to become, like, a master at wading through it all with a mind to NEVER be a conduit for the bullshit, to break circuit on the bullshit. Protecting myself by connecting with nature, like you said. Imagining something richer….Hugs back at you too!”

A compassionate exchange in an era where empathy is chum for sharks in business suits and MAGA hats, in the U.S. and abroad. Children are required to face judges on their own. ICE SWAT teams are sicced on workers. Border ‘security’ tear-gases desperate asylum seekers. A queer politician resigns from the Brazilian legislature in fear of his life. Men and women, already demonized, are forced to harvest produce beneath boiling clouds darkening skies from fires. Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever is rebranded in rhetoric that appeals to some mythical magical state of Whitelessness.

‘The world is mad, Mr. Peter ….’

I am a militant falsetto for integrity. I discern my masculine independence dousing for a jubilant individuality. I dedicate myself to nurturing humane collaborations for democratic outcomes. I listen for the sound and message of my blossoming song.

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ —

“…In his essay, “Love and the Enemy,” from his book, Flyboy in the Buttermilk, Greg Tate inspires me, and reminds us all, that “any liberation or empowerment strategy that doesn’t grow out of love, in its most constructive, critical, and compassionate senses, is useless.” Tate then throws it down: “The warriors we need to step forward now aren’t the confrontational kind, but healers…. if we don’t exercise our capacity to love and heal each other by digging deep into our mutual woundedness, then what we’re struggling for is merely the end of white supremacy — and not the salvaging of its victims….” Here I go, trying to say something with legacies at stake. I don’t want another Black boy or man to capitulate to inner demons. I don’t want another Black man demonized and destroyed by society’s various methods of profiling. I don’t want another brother to dismiss happiness, because ours has never been a national priority. I don’t want another dude to dismiss happiness as corny and unmanly and irrelevant to being real, because happiness has been designated and assigned and claimed as the exclusive domain of history’s philosophers, parchment, and patriarchs. We deserve happiness…. Let’s become ‘dap’ for one another: gentle fist bumps of encouragement and mutual acceptance of a national consciousness of community…. [the] resonant sphere of my militant falsetto. Only my falsetto can contain the vulnerability I need for these holiest of testimonies, the hopes drawn from my most sacred struggles. Only my falsetto feeds the fire of VoiceMusic that I pray will move you….” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

Winter Solstice 2018 … and I’m guided by the question, What will I live for?

I’m energized by the mantra, Change for the better faster!

I’m inspired to tap creativity, imagination and inspiration as indispensable tools for constructive resolution of personal trauma and social drama.

Recently, in a TEDxPasadena Talk with my daughter, I testified most personally about how I answered the question and lived the mantra.

We stood shoulder-to-shoulder. I was her ‘Be There Man!’ We spoke of our 15 years of healing work, after my daughter suffered at the hands of her former stepfather. I told our audience that I learned, with my daughter’s guidance, the value of being a presence of integrity in her life. I also celebrated the healing presence of a group of good men in my life.

Looking back, I learned how worthless I would have been to her, if I had reacted with exaggerated demands for respect … silence at the crossroads … ‘bring it on’ as problem-solving strategy … or any other tone-deaf masculine reactions that pulsed with threat, were inflamed by revenge and sought satisfaction in violence.

Our situation required me to act beyond clichés. In real time, I needed to find and speak the words of love, atonement, vision, and partnership. I had to show up, and be relentless about showing up, to help rebuild sacred father-daughter intimacy.

During the crisis, and now as the next phase of our life unfolds, I’ve learned that my actual power is quite simple. Speaking up. Speaking out. Standing as a persistent ethical presence. All while bearing witness to possibility in the face of conventional thinking.

That’s why I tell anyone who will listen: my quest for happiness is not to avoid ugliness – in my intimate life, in American society, or, for that matter, anywhere in the world. Happiness is the prism, the mission, through which to view and refract human ugliness and guide me through storms into sanity. Happiness is the fuel for my inner reverb! It’s my reboot tool. It’s my vision tool.

Happiness keeps me on the hunt for compassion practices…

Happiness helps me remain a conduit to transmit wisdom across generations…

I don’t mean happy-go-lucky, either, a Ben Carsonian update on minstrel do dah day. I mean happy. In stride. Synergies ringing like a vibraphone’s fluorescent notes.

Connecting me to epic reasons for living as unique as fingerprints, and repping an inner fortitude and Fandango that refreshes other folks, even when we’re all facing and negotiating the isht hitting the fan.

I think of Wreaking Happiness as the Record of a Good Man grappling to become a grown man, distancing himself from conventions, claiming and committing to a dynamically humane execution of masculinity. (Have Mercy!)

I invite you to think of Wreaking Happiness as the working journal of a dude crafting the skills needed to steep himself in Conversion … unleash himself as Enzyme … situate himself as Catalyst … place his trust in Transformation….

How could I earn the term of endearment, Angel Pot Pie, uttered by Miss Joyce, the 90-something-year-old best friend of my late mother?

What is the lullaby that plays if I don’t handle my business and it comes home to handle me?

Where can I lay my head?

Whose child am I?

At the dawn of a new year, I don’t act because I KNOW the future.

I act because I BELIEVE in the future.

I act because I want to MAKE the future.

I have my fears, but I ain’t scared.

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ —

“… I’m trying to catalogue when I’ve [felt happiness], identify the characteristics consistent to the experiences, figure out what mindsets, actions, meditations, spells, and collaborations I’ve wielded to mesh with, incite, recognize, intensify, even jack up, the sensational. Then stitch awareness into my dynamic doing of the do, so I decrease the time between peaks and increase the time between valleys. And beneath this insight is peeping the difference between fear and being scared. Fear and being scared are not synonymous. Fear is healthy. Being scared is not. Fear is hard-wired into human motivation for survival: it’s smart to fear a predator or predatory situation. Fear revs up my instincts to create a solution, create safety. Fires up my mind and unveils the options and associations and the combo of skills and improv right on time that resolve into actual solutions with mutual benefits and re-creations and wholeness. Being scared is taught into us through ritualized Do As I Say Do! Being scared substitutes and rewards outside sanction over the sustained, independent quest for power-on-power, eye-to-eye, harmony within interdependent strength.” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

As a pre-teen, I incessantly practiced baseball. Once, I was throwing a tennis ball against the wall of our brick apartment building in southeast D.C., then fielding the ball as it rebounded, ricocheted, and bounced back to me. From the kitchen window in our Apartment 304, my mother shouted a question down to me.
       “Peter, what’s that piece of trash near you.”
       Continuing my drill, I shouted back.
       “I don’t know.”
       “Pick it up.”
       “Why I got to pick it up!? I didn’t throw it down there.”
       Luckily Moms was three stories up. My question, in my neighborhood, was universally defined as back talking, no matter how accurate I was about the source of the potato chip bag. I had definitely entered ass-whipping territory. I was lucky I wasn’t within arm’s length.
       At this point, I was smart enough to, uh, ‘respectfully’ stop playing catch.
       Moms didn’t skip a beat. She shouted down at me in a tone of voice that might as well have been an ass whipping.
       “You live here don’t you! Pick it up NOW and throw it into the garbage container in the parking lot.”
       End of discussion. I picked up the bag and trudged to the garbage container!
       My Moms always saw life through the lens of ethical living. You live here don’t you!
       She was ever dedicated to imparting Home Training. Then make where you live as beautiful as you can!
       She could envision what I’m now inspired to call the ‘Fifth Season!’
       Fifth Season is a magnificent term created by the writer N.K. Jemison, in her book of the same name. Jemison defines a Fifth Season as “an extended winter … triggered by seismic activity or other large-scale environmental alteration.” Makes me think of what Gil Scott-Heron called ‘Winter in America’ in my youth – an extended season of being dangled between atrophied ‘unalienable’ rights and hungry bounty hunters.
       With this blog, Wreaking Happiness, I’m claiming, forecasting, and working for a ‘Fifth Season’ of joy! Wreaking Happiness takes cajones during this era of Sir Trump d’void of Funk and the persistent violence that too often stalks brothers. No matter! You can’t stop a vision!
       I’m pledging to document a large-scale alteration in my ecology through the curatorial senses of one joyful Black man.
       No doubt, I’m down for a new season that still defines freedom as a refusal, a resistance, an alert engagement with what’s wrong in the world, but I’m also down for a Fifth Season that has me learning to tap my inner Briar Patch of unique emotional power and potential and hopefulness as resonant tools to help make beauty in the world.
       Wreaking Happiness will feature musings, reporting, observations, and other ecstatic insights; interviews and Q&As; photos and videos. My goal is to build Wreaking Happiness into a cool oasis that provides an example of one dude’s shameless celebration of his life, and operates as a jazzy platform that explores life and history from a refreshing, life-affirming new angle that says enough havoc.
       Cultivating such perspectives through the life of this Black American male from southeast D.C. takes cajones during this era of Sir Trump d’void of Funk and the persistent violence that too often stalks brothers. But as you can tell, I was primed for this mission by my mother, a foster child who married my Pops in her 20s. She remained my prime ethical teacher until she died at 57 in 1984.
       Going forward, I promise to keep most Wreaking Happiness posts short and sweet. But in this launch post, let me riff a bit on the reverberations rippling out from the core ethical experience given me by my beloved mother.
       A happy Black man? Oxymoron? Democratic slaveholder? President Trump?
       En garde avant garde!
       Holding on to hopefulness ain’t never been easy. Black folk have done it as geniously as any cultural group ever has. I ain’t easily envisioning or calling up a Fifth Season tracked by a joyful Black male. Not when every writer worth a MacArther Fellowship, National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, or a perch on the best seller lists, can swap competing, intersectional lists of boys and men, not to mention sistren, shot by cops and destroyed on urban crossroads.
       Not to mention how that violence is used in the calculations of Sir D’void of Funk and his DOJ minions who ring the ‘black on black crime’ clarion call as a reason to power up the ‘war on crime,’ and the legal infrastructure of the FBI – can we say COINTELPRO boys and girls! – to fight nonexistent black terrorist organizations.
       But with my mother’s voice ringing in my ears – You live here don’t you! – I’m called to participate kindly on the sidewalks of our lives; to delineate kindness; to publicly celebrate this humanity as a counter spell, an equal-and-opposite force, taking place in real time. And if white supremacy is an illness, a social illness, as I heard Dr. Frances Welsing call it in my youth, I cannot live my life in thrall or fear of an illness. I must, yes, resist this illness, but as an inoculation that protects me to live free, to live rich, to live interesting, to live in safety and service and exploration, wreaking happiness along my way, adding my voice to the soundtrack we all make at our best!
       I’m consoled by a ferocious humanity at the crossroads of creation & death. I’m down when a righteous fist is needed. But it’s hard making beauty with clenched fingers. Pain is America’s fetish. Rage is America’s touchstone. Joy is America’s nonsequitur.
       You live here don’t you!
       Then make where you live as beautiful as you can!
       En garde avant garde!
       Onwards to the Fifth Season of Joy.
PS—Wreaking Happiness is launched in honor of my first child, born September 30, 1977. He gave birth to a life-long season of sacrifice, joy, pain, and instruction for me! I remain humbled by the miracle of our lives together.

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ — “…we’ve struggled to be first among equals who protect and maintain an interior world of freedom and purity and spontaneity and silliness…. I understand and embrace the wonderful African American humanity with which we forged joy out of insanity. But it’s time to forge joy from joy, ignite happiness from happiness, to spiral inward to get to an indivisible irradiation, whose fragrance is exhaled as part of each breath we take. Want to be happy. Will be happy. Become onery about happiness. What happiness can I cultivate when I don’t have to look over my shoulder? What endorphins will I release – in my body and into the body politic – by singing of myself, singing to myself…being myself…again…? What ecstasy? For ourselves and for others we love…?”
www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

In 2017, my NissanVersa Note was totaled by a dude driving a stolen car. After resolution of all insurance and legalities, I lacked the scratch to replace my car. Been riding LA’s Metro system. For sure, I’ve seen individuals in mental and physical pain, shredded by the LA’s economic tectonics. I must say, though, I’ve also experienced and witnessed sublime displays of generosity. I smile hearing men, women and children shouting ‘thanks bus driver,’ as they depart through the back door. Frankly, I’m touched by what I now reframe as a vein of subtle, invisible joy.

Here’s one of my periodical ‘Peeping Joy Vignettes!’ – this time the Black Man of Happiness is riding LA’s MetroWreaking Happiness! Felt someone tap me on my back at the Pasadena Lake station. My hackles rose instantly. I turned to see Lamar and his daughter. Dude was handing me a cell phone. ‘You dropped this back there.’ He pointed toward the turnstile. I patted my left pocket in panic. Empty. I almost dropped to one knee in gratitude. I took back my iphone, my lifeline. My wariness shifted to humility and gratitude. I shook his hand. Asked his name. His daughter leaned against her daddy’s waist. ‘Thanks brother! I really appreciate it.’ I held out my fist to his kid. She gave me some dap. They walked back to where they were standing. People get ready there’s a train a coming… !

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ — “ … Dear Loved Ones, Brothers, your D.C. Homeboy is a grown man living and working in LA…. I am glad to be alive and among the number of human beings who embrace improvisation, imagination, and creative thinking, folks dedicated to social justice, to fair use of planetary wealth, and to a future grounded on ethical action, democratic opportunities to live in peace and prosperity, and to have safe water, air and food. I’m writing you from within a sphere and spirit of enthusiasm and profound, sometimes complicated, vitality that hums within me, even when I fail to walk my walk as a “lover, not a fighter,” to echo an old MJ song. And I stay alert for what my past has bequeathed and for what’s offered in the here-and-now on the sidewalks of our lives….” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

Wreaking Happiness Goes Love:
See you, wouldn’t want to be you?

By Peter J. Harris

WREAKING Happiness?
“Can an hombre be feliz until he’s six feet under?”
asks Luis Alfaro, in “Oedipus El Rey.”
Wreaking HAPPINESS?
“….Is it something I said?”
asked Richard Pryor from the pyre to an LP-cover lynch mob!
How to even conceive of wreaking happiness?
With tomahawks flying?
With moab pulverizing an already pulverized landscape?
With trumpcare abusing the idea of healthcare?
With the Newspeak of 1984 sounding like nursery rhymes?
Wreak happiness amidst havoc?
Wreak happiness amidst havoc!
When and where Apocalypse looms,
we must become Apocalypsonians!
Exit onto Grooved Pavement Ahead.
Claim & witness life-affirming textures.
See humanity in all the right places.
Ask daring questions
How can you measure the velocity of your joy?
What’s the technology of your happiness?

What does happiness smell like on your skin? Where within our society is my happiness reflected? Who wants me to be happy? Who looks out for my happiness? What is my history of happiness? Where is my country of joy? What is the culture of my joy? What is the spirit of my joy? What is the first draft of my State of the Union speech about happiness? How would I describe happiness in letters to my future and historical selves? What is the introduction to the Autobiography of My Happiness? What proverb contains my message about happiness? What wisdom about happiness do I want to pass on to my children? How happy was I as a child? What new patterns of happiness will I create for the future? How hard am I working to be happy? How much is happiness worth? What will I live for? Who will I live for? What is my birthright to happiness? What is my birthright as a human being? What is the sound of the first thing, the second thing, if the first thing out my mouth says to listeners: you are a miracle wrapped up in human flesh? Where do I go inside myself to invite happiness to come back here?

When does the season of celebration start?

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ — “Neither a spell nor a book will stop the bullets fired by rogue cops, Stand Your Ground vigilantes, gang bangers, or men gripped in the passion play of violence. No sorcery, no book can block society’s virulent, visceral historical flow of venom against Black men. But a spell, a book (a pulse, a fever, a totem, an intelligence, a quest – a good read!) can help generate a restorative and rejuvenating field of energy, spark new insights, start a cascade of ah ha moments, and expand our thinking beyond least common denominator. Safety first, yes, and safety for all, yes, but yes yes yes to sizzling with a Love Supreme! Flooding the ecosphere with healthier, more expansive, definitions of masculinity. Deepening meditations on our manhood. Translating the spiritual codebook into sidewalk practices for African American men and for those who work for our safety, sanity, opportunity, and fulfillment…” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop