May
Reading in the bathroom | Grace Jones | I’ll never write my memoirs
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Master sauce is a term that comes from Chinese cuisine. It refers to a highly concentrated, complex base sauce. When it is used, it is adapted to a variety of dishes, often diluted.
Grace Jones is the master sauce.
Though Grace Jones: I’ll Never Write My Memoirs is about “peeking under the covers,” by revealing her personal triumphs, struggles, and endurance, I have to start by acknowledging her contributions to art and design. She writes in her book how important partnerships and collaborations are to her projects. Her most famous one with French art director Jean-Paul Goude. Their collaborations on photo shoots are not emphasized here or in the book. After all, those are easily found online and often imitated. It’s their magnum opus, A One Man Show, that’s ahead of its time, and worth watching at 45 minutes. Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, and Lady Gaga have all been influenced by Grace. And A One Man Show fully exemplifies the unattainable quality of expression many other artist attempts to do. Unfortunately, this is the only recorded concert performance.
”I couldn't sell out, but I created the space for others to be able to make it, without the pressure of being the pioneer.
Grace, the raconteur
Like Robert Evans’ The Kid Stays in the Picture, Grace is nothing if not full of legendary stories and experiences. And like stumbling on obscure words in a Jane Austen novel, Grace Jones drops so many obscure names that I need to drop the book and Google them every other sentence. Some are more familiar like Nile Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Eddie Murphy, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Dolph Lundgen. Yet names like Pola, Tina Chow, Antonio Lopez, Kenzo,Tony Pike and Pikes Hotel, Issey Miyake I am only vaguely familiar with. And then once I learn who these people are, I crawl down a rabbit hole of 1970s and 1980s hedonism, glamour, excess, and lost souls.
Some of my favorite anecdotes:
- The time she thought she was going to win a Grammy for A One Man Show and instead it went to Duran Duran. After the ceremony, Jones was turned away at the after party and got into an altercation with a driver. In retaliation, she wrote “asshole” on the back of his car.
- The time she stormed out of a recording session due to frustration, smoked something from Keith Richards, wound up carried out of the studio and taken home in a car.
- The impact of Paradise Garage and once witnessing in the early morning streets of New York, one man completely naked, fully erect walking after having danced all night and well into the morning at the venerable location.
What may be my favorite anecdote is the story of Jones performing a duet (wearing a sickening Philip Treacy hat) with Luciano Pavarotti. Her voice reminded Pavarotti of his recently deceased father who promised he would be with him on stage. But it’s what she reveals emotionally after the performance says so much about what many black women go through.
Video: Grace Jones with Pavarotti
Jones is still a ‘Sister Citizen’
In Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, she writes about the field dependence study using the crooked room:
In one study, subjects were placed in a crooked chair in a crooked room and then asked to align themselves vertically. Some perceived themselves as straight only in relation to their surroundings. … But not everyone did this: some managed to get themselves more or less upright regardless of how crooked the surrounding images were.
Harris-Perry goes on by alluding this experience to what it feels like being perceived as a black woman in America, where all the perceptions and assumptions are skewed. But if there is anyone who stands in her true upright, it is Grace Jones. She is so self-possessed, so clear in her vision, so fully-formed, you forget that she is a real person. It’s easy to forget that she is vulnerable to the challenges of being “seen.”
In her chapter on “Strength” Harris-Perry writes:
The standard set by the ideal of the strong black woman is impossible to maintain. Its insistence that black women can always make a way out of no way sets the stage for failure.
In I’ll Never Write… Jones recounts how she felt after her stellar performance with Pavoratti:
I was totally alone … think everyone left because their way of interpreting what I had done was that it was a triumph, and that I had proved that side of Grace Jones that people assume is all of what I am. The confident, immune, strong, unshakable Grace, who doesn’t need any moral support … I am fiercely independent, but I suppose I am scared of being abandoned.
In Harris-Perry’s chapter on “Myth” she recounts other black women’s experiences in the workplace:
Ivy Kennelly’s study of employers’ stereotypes of black women reveals that white employers make a number of labor decisions based on their beliefs about black women…and express concern about their “aggression” and tendency to “complain about everything.”
In I’ll Never Write… , Jones writes extensively on difficulties with her label, Capitol Records, while directing her video “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)“:
I had to struggle to get respect from the Capitol people. I was in every shot so I would always have my makeup touched up in a room away from the studio. And when I came back they would be shooting something, or having the cast change clothes. I would say, ‘What’s going on? I am the director. I know what I am doing.’ I got very paranoid. The Capitol people were all whispering behind my back, undermining me. It was deeply ironic considering what the video is about, but I don’t think they had the first idea I was actually making any kind of comment in the video.
”Sisters can sometimes get their way by confirming the expectation that they are threatening and angry, but doing so, may leave them feel that they have not truly been heard at all.
Grace, on maintaining integrity
When I’ll Never Write My Memoirs was released, she caught media attention over her last chapter. She pointed out that younger performers have no long-term vision or plan for their careers. However, this is not just some diva throwing a lil’ shade.
My interpretation is that she wants young performers to develop a body of work to be proud of, instead of clinging from idea to idea. She wants true artists to be original, even if that means either taking more risks or taking less money. As she put it,
I couldn’t sell out, but I created the space for others to be able to make it, without the pressure of being the pioneer.
I want to end this review with a photo. In honor of her memoirs, I went as Grace Jones for Halloween.
Reading in the Bathroom is a book review series by IDSL. Reading is obviously not done in the bathroom exclusively. Sometimes it’s at a park bench, outdoor cafe, or on the train. But the best reading is done in the bathroom.