What’s Love Got to Do?
And so I have to write once more, the only difference is that this time it has to count, it has to be read by others, it has to be critiqued, it has to be graded. I can’t write if I don’t read; I don’t think any person can.
To those that ever wonder the thought, “How can I improve my writing?”; “How can I improve my music?”; “How can I improve [insert any craft here]?” You have been told many times that practice makes perfect, but I beg to differ. Aspiring writers out there write every day bent on perfecting their craft. They sit, stand, lay, with pen and paper, or computer keyboard at hand. Writing everything they know, everything they can, even those they can’t; their work will remain static. What can change when one is not adding any new fuel to the brain’s reservoir and in lieu of reading new and different styles and topics to bounce your ideas off of, you are in the same place, with your same style, your same ideas, limited to your own experiences.
So those of you that want to get better at something go out and experience it; not from your hands. Filmmakers: watch. Cooks: eat. Singers: listen. Lovers: be loved. Writers: read.
For those of you that are into writing, here’s a poem by Richard Blanco entitled What’s Love Got to Do With It? taken from his book “Directions to the Beach of the Dead”
All summer papá holds a cigarette out the window of his laser-green Buick, points his lips left to blow the smoke into the mirage of exhaust between rush hour cars. All summer he listens to La Cubanisima on AM radio exploding with accounts of how Castro took everything we had, how we’d get it back someday. All summer he wears polyester ties and his over-polished loafers. All summer I float my arm like a wing out the window as we glide down Coral Way, past storefronts and memories: the 7-11 stops for Blow-pops and Slurpees, the square pizzas at Frankie’s, the birthday dinners at Canton Rose. All summer I want to ask if he remembers what I remember, but I don’t, so he just drives, all summer, keeping a safe distance in the right lane, from our Miami suburb to my uncle’s bodega, where all summer I price and rotate, mop and bag and save for my own car. All summer I don’t want to be me. I don’t want to be my father either, eleven years in his windowless office adding and subtracting, wishing and forgetting he could be more. All summer he picks me up at 6:00 and we drive back on the same road, the same mix of cigarettes and Piña Colada air-freshener, the same visors eclipsing our faces, the same silence. All summer I wait for him to say something—anything, like: I hate grapefruit juice, or I can’t stand the Navarro’s, or I’ve cheated on your mother or I hate this life. What he did say was: I love Tina Turner, every time I took control of the radio and tuned-in to her FM hits. All summer he sang along in his thick Cuban accent (waus love gotta do/ gotta do wis it) and whistled through the words he didn’t know. Then he’d say something about Mamá and him in the 60’s dancing to Ike and Tina in Cuba, and pick up the refrain again (waus love but a secon’ hand emoshun). He embarrassed me with his singing all summer, that summer before his throat swelled, before the weekly visits to Dr. Morad, before the Mitomycin and Hail Marys failed, before he’d never sing again. That summer, when all I managed to mutter was: Yeah, I love Tina too.
I hope you were brave enough to read it.
