LOST IN THE WORLD: FINDING KANYE WEST
NDING KANYE WEST
December 7, 2013 by
dothewritething
I had been invited by my friend to the French restaurant Balthazar’s for her birthday party in SoHo. We were only eating desserts, so I knew it was real. Never had I been to a restaurant to just eat dessert—and Balthazar’s is one of those nice restaurants. The kind you’d walk past long enough to know it exists but it never crosses your mind to actually go in, to make it real. The kind that, before I left for the evening, I Googled to see if there was a dress code and hoped that there was something in my closet which could be utilized as a password. So nice that, before you did anything, you looked at what everyone else was doing to make sure you did it right. So nice that, I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb; I wanted to fit in like the middle finger.
Throughout the night a friend of my friend, whose birthday it had been, made it a point to let us know that he’s been to Paris—and that he speaks French. He was poor, like us. His hair was kinky, like mine. But he was a gambler raising the stakes before we had even placed a bet at the table to show us that we were nothing alike. He was trying to win money from a casino whose currency he wouldn’t respect even if he hit the jackpot. He had been to Paris. He had spoken French. France—and French—became a currency exchange to show us that our dollars—which few of us had anyway—were lesser than his Euros. Our passports weren’t stamped; we didn’t have the cultural capital. Few of us knew what a service a la russe meal was, so few of us cared. Let me correct myself. I did not know what a service a la russe meal was, so I did not care. That didn’t stop him though. It wasn’t until the waiter came that I remembered that I wasn’t here for “Le Tour de France;” I was here for my friend’s birthday.
With all of his chips down on the table, I watched him struggle with the French language, to order his dessert, like a kid who made others feel bad for not knowing how to ride a two-wheeler when his training wheels had only been removed a week earlier and he still did not know how to use his brakes correctly. Needless to say I took pleasure in watching him crash, over and over again. But as I watched him crash into fence, into tree, into parked car, I began to feel for him. I began to understand what he was really doing. He was trying, in his mind, the best way he knew how, to learn something new. None of us taught him what he knows. And maybe by teaching us what little he knew, he could understand the limits of what he’s learning. Because I understand the bumps and bruises that come with living and learning new languages, I understand Kanye West—and his frustration.
(cont....)
Check out this essay one of my bruhs wrote.
