Never underestimate the power of your closest friends all chanting “I’m good enough” into your ears. As I finish the mixing and mastering of ilyAIMY’s three new about-to-be-released singles, it’s “Good Enough” that’s the trickiest, and it has to be better than simply good enough: It has to be WORTHY.
There’s a whum, and in that whum is the unending noise of my frustration.
My 50th Birthday is in 5 days and I find myself confused by the world. The world is crazy. America’s crazy. People ask how I am and I say “that’s a fraught question right now, but I’M okay”.
I’m good enough.
Saturday’s full band show celebrating my birthday is at Glen Echo Park – one of the oldest amusement parks in the country. As I was doing an In Process… interview a couple of weeks ago the woman being interviewed mentioned Suburban Gardens a couple of times. I had to look it up, and apparently before being a black-owned planned community, it was “The first and only major amusement park within Washington DC”, created and owned by a Black-owned real-estate company.
“Cool” I thought.
And then I went on to read “Suburban Gardens opened in 1921 and was in operation for almost two decades. It was a welcome site for African Americans who were excluded by whites from Glen Echo Amusement Park in nearby Maryland”.
I was reading this within 48 hours of having signed the contract with Glen Echo.
I was aware that protests had centered on Glen Echo Park as desegregation came to Maryland in fits and starts. It’s hailed as a success story. Reading further, Glen Echo Park only survived another seven years after it was forced to desegregate, and reading between the lines for the reasons given (“upticks in gangs”, “violence and vandalism by those walking home from the park”, transit ceased going to the park, even though the park was owned by a transit company… ) it sure seems like a white flight kind of response.
It’s painful to read the histories of a little park that has always seemed so magical to me. But I’m so grateful the park has become an amazing example of something that could’ve remained toxic, but that’s been reclaimed and repurposed for something GREAT.
In just the day of my birthday show, in addition to ilyAIMY, the Glen Echo National Park will be hosting Indian dance lessons, Brazilian music, swing dance and jazz, an African American photography show, some cool glass stuff involving horseshoe crabs and square dancing.
Those two last items are separate. Unfortunately the world is NOT ready for square dancing horseshoe crabs.
I have no doubt that the Glen Echo Park’s funding is being threatened. I’m sure that their mentions of diversity and history are being attacked somewhere in the background even as I type this on a cold Sunday night.
I’m glad to see all those activities on their website.
Not that I’ll be learning the Lambada next weekend. My Lovely wife would be like “nope”!
