Lost Joy

by Camden Joy

  This occasionally blue-eyed fellow (Adolf Hitler) could have dominated all of Europe but he refused to invade Britain. (He loved the British!) Hitler too was an author of lost pamphlets: Hitler’s Secret Book remained unpublished until the late ’50s. In this pamphlet, he writes that, “No inducement exists to make eternal England’s enmity against Germany. In fact, Germany—in showing itself useful to British interests from time to time—will be invited to be on England’s side regardless of whether there was an enmity in the past.”

  So Delmer met Hitler and promptly (conveniently?) met eradication from the history books—much as the slobbering aviator D’Ambrosio before him and the “Mad Diarist” Loonis after him—the meeting reduced to a chance encounter in Delmer’s pamphlet. (And yet Hitler loved the British, loved police.) Sefton Delmer—Adolf Hitler—do you notice how nicely they echo each other? (Delmer’s father—a constable.) I think you see where I am headed with this. [Sefton Delmer, incidentally, was never tried at Nuremberg.]

  After meeting with Hitler, Delmer suggested to the British government a secret ministry of propaganda, had himself installed as head and ran it during World War Two—fresh (I say again) from his meeting with Adolf Hitler, Delmer claimed that the BBC’s current propaganda (consisting exclusively of expatriates beaming their denunciations and diatribes back into the fatherland) was too obvious to have any negative effect on the enemy (—well, well espionage buffs! would not THIS be the perfect cover for a double-agent?!). He claimed that as soon as you know someone is trying to sell you something, you tune out this “white propaganda.” Delmer’s solution was to gather lies and distortion into something he called “black propaganda.”

  Black propaganda was a slight and a subtle form of psychological warfare. By pretending that his shortwave radio show was a legitimate news source that dearly loved the pamphleteer Adolf Hitler (as simultaneously it worked to distress the German people), Delmer supposedly nibbled away at their certainties, at their belief in leaders, paralyzed them in the face of patriotic efforts. The German people (the Advertocracy has since claimed) were led to believe that Rudolf Hess had joined the English side and that the Wehrmacht actively opposed most of Hitler’s aims, and the German authorities were convinced (or so we hear) that the invasion of Europe would come at Calais at a far later date than the actual Normandy landing.

  [I myself have just recently been the recipient of these very tactics emanating from nervous little Advertocrats seeking to undermine The Entire Process but no doubt we will get to that, brothers and sisters—]

  Supposedly, as Delmer claims, a combination of black and white propaganda defeated Hitler. In his book, the British won the war. Hitler loved the British, loved police. (And Sefton Delmer’s father a constable; Delmer British.) A meeting between these men was swiped from the history books.

  What (stop your fidgeting) does all this have to do with Great Record Album Singers? Well: in his mind Hitler pictured a sort of master race, in which all the ethnicities competed against one another rather like the Olympics but Hitler believed whites would win—that whites were (in essence) The Master Race—so he didn’t invite Blacks to join the competition. This was white propaganda, black propaganda, these were Sefton Delmer’s inventions, the father of modern advertising, co-father with P.J. Goebbels.

  Reportedly, as the story goes, Hitler was defeated.

  An opened and a shut up kind of case.

  Except that after the war Delmer accepts an offer from the marketing agency Beragulum-Mahoney, flies to Osaka Japan—again although Japan was said to’ve “lost” the previous war (like a pamphlet) no one thinks it’s odd that this man who met with Adolf Hitler (a man who in turn envisioned a master race) is now pole-vaulting right over to some country with whom we just “fought” some gigantic war, they allow Sefton Delmer to enter Japanese airspace, they clear him to land, and immediately he contributes to the reconstruction of the country by selling . . . televisions! Sells—in fact—over FOUR MILLION TVS in the next year and a half.

  Speaker: What kind of TELEVISIONS?

  Congregation: Black and white.

  Speaker: Fathered what kind of PROPAGANDA?

  Congregation: Black and white!

  —with the help of P.J. Goebbels.

  They go interview Delmer as to Beragulum-Mahoney’s goals in Look magazine, July 1948, and he says, and I quote from that issue’s page 87, “We will make Japan a model for our world. We will establish here the first true advertocracy.”

  [Dear friends, I must inquire at this time if you’ve ever witnessed Cable Access Fifty-Three? I commend it to all of you for they accept no advertising money, are devoted to promulgating TRUTH at whatever cost. The newspapers deny its existence or else simply deride it in listings as the ‘Conspiracy Channel’ but I say unto you tonight this is untrue unfounded unkind unfounded and untrue. Cable Access Fifty-Three, write that on the back of your hand; Cable Access Fifty-Three, it’s where I’ve learned everything I know. If you can, call the station—though don’t bother to call Information for their number, they’ll tell you Fifty-

  ad-ver-toc-ra-cy n, pl -cies 1 a : one of the totalitarian “shadow societies” b: a purported democracy which actively protects unelected authorities; specifically, those authorities who exploit envy by way of coercing consumers into repeated purchases of unnecessary, often shoddily constructed, products 2 : any state in which autocratic dictums issued by advertisers are implemented through a national mobilization overseen by the police state 3 : a very bad place where people are made to feel small if they don’t own the right things.

  Three “does not exist” and then demand to know what you want with them—find the station, get a copy of the show they unveiled the other month on The Advertocracy—Sefton Delmer uttered the word but once and that was the last time it was spoken aloud until uncovered by the sisters at Fifty-Three. Seeing that show, my hair caught fire with the realization that it was fine to step forward and to speak now of what my mom taught me but made me promise to keep secret. So let me, if I may, begin all over again.]

  Part One

  Having seen Cable Access Fifty-Three’s program, it is incumbent upon me now to clearly express unto you that a secret organization maintained by Lying Constables & Advertisers—I feel—MUST clearly run the whole shebang for in this Advertocracy of ours there remains no better well-kept secret than the Biological Secrets, specifically the secret mystery of dermal melanoblast and in particular this secret mystery called Invibiosus Dermal Melanism—literally “pigment envy”—whereby the maturation process stimulates an over-abundant production of amino acid tyrosine thus:

  —give tyrosine some oxygen it starts to resemble a tiny space station, an enzyme drifts in and docks—

  —and turns our space station into melanin the dark pigment—

  —and incredibly enough blasts this off into one’s cytoplasm and thusly is accomplished the incontrovertible indisputable established fact that—

  —white brothers, once grown-up, become black men and visa versa, that black brothers grow up to be white men.

  To say that the biochemistry underlying this switch of skin pigment has accidentally escaped the national dialogue for the last however many hundred years does not even hint at the breadth of this melanistic issue’s prolonged coverup; for one—in vain—may peruse TV’s “science” channels (these are cleverly orchestrated by Lying Advertocrats) for mention of invibiosus dermal melanism and be assured you will come away only empty-handed (but keep looking! for eventually you will see). Industrial melanism—yes, this they will admit—how certain moths displayed striking examples of rapid evolutionary change, an entire species changing color in less than a hundred years—

  —but invibiosus dermal melanism they suppress talk of this at all costs—and I ask who can blame them, for could we still teach The Lessons of History in Delmer-ese once knowledge of this pigment switch grew widespread—Telling of how white men at planter’s wharves and auction houses used to behave like Joseph’s
own brethren (white men being, remember, only grown-up black brothers) by selling into slavery those black brothers destined one day to be their inheritors, the next white generation—clearly, this habit of selling off the next generation constitutes One Bad-Assed Unbearable Truth which Sefton Delmer’s Advertocrats actively suppress By Any Means Necessary—they attempt to distract us by advertising white people sports cars to us as “A Revolution”—the only products they even market solely for us black brothers are those jams and jellies made to straighten our kinked-up heads to look more white, to soak up the natural oils of our bushy hair, then they sell us too their flowing hair-weaves and these straight-mopped wigs they sew out of the hair of dead white people—these being the standard commercials during any African-American film-strip tale, one such as “The Greatest Record Album Singer That Ever Was” which we have observed a million times on that blue-eyed TV screen of ours: Man meets woman, woman falls for man, man rejects woman, woman pours boiling grits on man while man bathes, woman locks self in man’s bedroom and shoots self to death—commercial break—Christian brother raised near Detroit hears secular Sam Cooke on the radio, resolves to become a popular singer, devoutly religious parents call him “sinful,” discourage him at every turn “for his own good”—commercial break—King of ’70s Soul Music (a.k.a., The Greatest Record Album Singer That Ever Was) topples from Cincinnati stage in 1979, slams into steel instrument case, comes out of hospital after fifteen days saying, “I was being disobedient toward my calling, I was moving toward God but I wasn’t moving fast enough, this fall was God’s way of saying I had to hurry up”—commercial break—Meanwhile how lost the brother has gotten in the 1960s! kicking around on the Chitlin Circuit performing the music of others to little recognition restlessly searching for dynamic and powerful sound combinations finding none intimate enough: “Nobody was writing the kind of material that I heard in my head and wanted to sing,” this brother tells later interviewer. “My only choice was to write my own”—commercial break—Brother realizes himself as Al Green, who is tired of being alone and says so in his first song, a million folks buy this single, followed by three platinum albums released in 1972, three gold albums released in 1973, grammies and grammies and more grammies, then Al Green rethinks it, decides he isn’t tired of being alone so much anymore and so gets ordained as a minister in Memphis, devotes himself to gospel music, rejects secular past—commercial break—Brother dreams and yearns, brother longs and aches, brother accomplishes, achieves, attains widespread credit and renown, God shows up, God tests brother, brother barely passes test, God tries brother, brother surrenders all to Kingdom of God, brother is saved—Roll credits then more commercials—

  And the thing these little Hitlerian Advertocrats that speak Delmer-ese (for he concocted the whole lingo with P.J. Goebbels and then sold us our televisions) the thing they love to sell us on in these commercials is this notion that ‘It’s as simple as black and white’ WELL what if Black and White are not that simple at all? (For as we’ve seen preacher Al Green is both Green and Black)—they will make you Try to Deny what you see with your own eyes how the lives of African-Americans bleach out as they mature—are dried of options like dehydrated jerky—just as my life—the life of a thusfar white boy—fills as I grow with more and more color until someday soon (quite soon, I pray) it will grandly spill over and stick to my skin, darken, caramelize, and I awake as handsome and chocolatey fine as my black father, preacher Green (as opposed to my white father, whose name I never knew)—

  I always suspected preacher Green was there the night I was conceived—the first thing I ever heard was his voice—when I confronted my white mother on this she admitted this was absolutely true—they were making out to The Belle Album she confessed and things got completely out of hand—what a disco hound that woman (and of the white man who inseminated her and begat me—about my white father who can say—evidently a fellow with a hurried manner—a watch-watcher cruising for snappy sex between a shit, shave, and shower)—

  Nowadays who even chats of Al Green anymore but to snicker “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO . . .” and then giggle “Ooooh yeah. He murdered that chick and then found GOD har har” like it was some publicity scam put over on us by Lying Advertisers not the act of a wounded man sincerely redeemed—he had it all, Italian shoes and white people sports cars, and HE SACRIFICED EVERYTHING—some said Al Green turned Yellow—but yet how is it that with nearly every step we still speak reverently of Bob Marley, every day with veneration, with open unclouded adoration—should Al Green like Marley have died in the early ’80s (instead of simply “dying” in the early ’80s to be “reborn in Christ”) then we might more regularly thank our lucky stars for his ever appearing—for we needed them both—Marley and Green were so much the two prongs of a single attack, parallel in purpose, but to speak of these contemporaries now our prejudice is nakedly apparent as we initially introduce them as “Marley the Angel” and “Green the Dupe.”

  Simultaneously and from the very same American R&B sources they arose, Al Green and Bob Marley, reacting to the mean muscular militant jerk of so much over-politicized ’60s soul by internalizing The Moment of every song, by making music which could transmit careful apologies, could reach out, teach trust, administer to the listener.

  Rather than dominate, control, overpower the beat Al Green chose to duck beneath the song, to under-sing. Consequently, Al Green—one critic swooned—sensuously tickles the soft tender backside behind every song’s knee, that point of vulnerability that will tease it down onto the animal-skin rug in the candle-lit den. But there are those (I SEE YOU!) who can’t hear past the goopy strings and laid-back lovin’-ness, the determined grace, ease, and sly smoothness of the man—that distinctive squeal, that keening falsetto (—oh how can these not do it to you!)—that lumbering husky quaalude murmur set to a tantalizingly shushed dance track—those jabs of brass—spurts of guitar. For Listen Closely Children and You Will Hear: Al Green is an emotional wreck, sounds as if he is serenading someone in intensive care. You can hear his distraught expression—his face all scrunched up as he sings to this comatose love, his shoulders high, eyebrows leaping, trying to Hold It Down while still gettin’ funky, doing his damnedest to sing on eggshells, to hit all the high notes without unnerving the other ICU patients. Occasionally things in his songs—Jesus, marriage, an ungettable babe, The Lord—appear to possess his every meaning, HE WILL CONVINCE YOU THAT THESE MESSAGES ARE THE POINT OF THE SONG but I must disagree and I say the MESSAGE is the MESSENGER—for example Al Green sings “Take Me to the River” which I hear as “Take Me to Al Green” for Al Green IS my river. [On a bad day, when the day like some scald dog has scurried crouching and defeated to the furthest corner of one’s vision (then abruptly is gone), I rely on preacher Green’s songs to run soothingly acrost my tortured brow like a medicinal balm, his voice to succor me, I count on being dipped in the soothing bath of his voice, and I relinquish my soul to the warm moan and flow of his Green river waters.]

  In the ’70s both Marley and Green did the unpopular by electing occasionally to celebrate their new-found religiosity—Robert Nesta Marley singing of Ras Tafari and Al Green singing of Jesus Christ. In the mid-’70s both were nearly killed by people who raided their houses—Al Green by Mary Woodson a former girlfriend who entered his apartment while he bathed and scalded him with “Memphis napalm” and then she died a few moments later from a bullet which came out of a gun owned by Al Green—Bob Marley by political gangsters who forced their way into his pad and attempted to take his life but only wounded him in the arm then fled. By the turn of the decade they were both at the height of their careers which was when they each left our sight—in 1981 Green was killing his career with gospel tunes when cancer suddenly killed Marley.

  Seven years go by and it’s the NBA Finals sometime around June of 1988 and I am sitting alone watching Detroit battle Los Angeles in a meanly fought Game Six—tiny guard Isiah Thomas scoring a record number of points on a majorly sprained a
nkle—aided in his noble efforts by fierce young forward Dennis Rodman—Magic and Kareem heroically fending them off as best they can—the entire television screen is filled with greatness, with talented dedicated sweat-drenched brave African-Americans—when commercial break—and first it’s hilarious Bill Cosby selling Jell-O brand gelatin, then a trailer for the new silly Eddie Murphy movie, then super-cool Carl Lewis and Superbowl quarterback Doug Williams telling me how I should not do drugs nor do graffiti neither, then ultra-hip Arsenio Hall plugging his next show with guests Dick Gregory and Andrew Young, and I look away—there is a Martin Luther King quote on the wall of King talking about this dream of his that he had, and I look away—on the other wall is a painting from the Harlem Renaissance, and I look away—the radio in the kitchen loudly plays “Kiss” by Prince, and I look away—then my mom passes through the room, asks me what is wrong and why I am crying and I say how I see that all the great men in this world are black like Al Green and I’ll never amount to nothing. And Mom, she goes: Not all the great men are black like Al Green, what about . . . And she thinks and goes: What about Michael Jackson he’s sorta not black, what about Rod Carew? And I go: Rod Carew IS black. And so she goes: YES but he’s also JEWISH and that means he’s not REALLY black. And I go: Oh. So then she goes: My baby I gotta tell you a secret at this point in time it is such an enormously well-kept secret that people will hate you if you speak of it, no one will ever love you and you will be roundly disdained and die in filth alone, so promise me you’ll tell no one that you know this. So I go: I promise. Have you heard of The Fact of Life, she goes. I go: Sorta. Then she goes: Well, The Fact of Life is this: At a certain age white boys turn black. What, I go: Really? She nods. So I go: But how come not everyone is black then? Oh well, she goes: The other Fact of Life is black boys, they turn white. So we switch, I say to check her meaning: White boys grow into black men like Al Green and black boys grown into white men like my father. She nods once more: That is correct. Wow, wow, wow, I go. And she goes: It’s a secret, don’t ever ever tell anyone I ever told you. I won’t, I go: So Isiah Thomas, was he . . .? He was white when he was little, mom answers. And Jesse Jackson, I ask: And Reggie Jackson and George Jackson? And she goes: Them too, all of them were white like you. Wow, I go: That’s great, so so great, I’m so happy. So you see, my Mom rubs a kiss into my forehead and starts back to the kitchen to finish our dishes: There’s hope, there’s always hope, you’ll be a great man yet, you’ll make your mama proud.