Heuristics of the (my) Mind; Miami and freestyle
(Work in progress, article about Miami and freestyle)
I hate how the mind/brain works by associating, generalizing and categorizing experiences. These feelings can be fine, but most of them are feelings of a longing for the past; something bittersweet. The way a song can remind you of a person because you first heard it with them or you had a conversation about it with them, the way a scent can remind you of a point in your life because you were around certain stimuli as you experienced it or you remember where and how you were when you experienced that very scent, the way a taste can arouse and elicit emotional feelings because you can recall a distant memory from it. For myself, the bittersweet feeling is always elicited by listening to 80(8)s and early 90s freestyle/Miami freestyle/latin freestyle.
I remember when we first started living in the United States; I remember being 5 years old, being driven to school by my uncle, who was, at the time, a teenager in a red, two-door, sports car and was attending Miami Coral Park High and listened to Power 96, when Power 96 had any merit or reputation, when DJ Laz wasn’t making that electronic-noise-sounding, too big for his britches, ghetto shit but was taking us on journeys into bass, the years before hurricane Andrew, when our apartment complex, Camino Real on 16th and 102 still had that big tree in the parking lot I would climb after the school bus dropped me off from Sweetwater Elementary; when winters were cold and their mornings silent, when spring brought love and showers, when the summertime summertime meant roller skating at your favorite rink—there were oh-so many to choose from—where they would play Debbie Deb, Lisa Lisa, and a selection of many more alliteratively named artists.
But most recently, to add to the bittersweet feelings of longing, freestyle has come to remind me of someone.
(Watch this video, listen to this mix: )
