Apologize for the wait, school has been tiring. I hope that this chapter is good enough for the drag... Also, this marks the beginning of the Rock and Roll era, as well as the Civil rights movement.

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Rock Around the Clock

Bill Haley's Comets

1955


He had always known of this discrepancy, that being probably the best and worst word to apply to the situation. But as someone completely influenced by every single person that lived within him, he had everyone's opinion, which then filtered and became his personal opinion representative of all. The one that usually won out the most was the most popular stance at the time.

But once he has the oppressed also living within him, suffering within him, angry within him, that too makes him think of their opinion, and hence his own is in a constant change, stable and abrupt and contradictory. And he has been this way since the country was formed, in fact he had no recollection of stability within his own head, maybe a little after England took him in, but that didn't last very long, did it? And America thought, this must be the mind and the perception of a true republic.

He will admit that the he felt rather uncomfortable to be there, with those that were a part of him but did not look like him. He felt all sad, hopeful, angry, confused, mean, happy. He felt it all.

They all looked at him with a bit of awe and hate and hope that he come out of this accepting them all equally within his chest, within his being. America idly thought; would my skin color, my hair, my eyes, my body, change if I do? But he knew then that was southern white him talking, because he had accepted other groups before – albeit that it took quite a long time and it still wasn't perfect – and it had not changed him much other than mentally. Which means it probably changed him a lot.

Which was the rather strange irony, wasn't it? In all the talk of pureness of race, he wasn't pure anymore, was he? Sure he was made of beings that were (or considered themselves) to be pure. But when one is a being made of many beings, then one isn't pure anymore. One is something entirely new.

He thought about what all the other countries would say of this. They thought him rather stupid or ignorant of culture, didn't they? Well, sure, maybe most of the population was, but that didn't mean all, and if even one person was different from the common, that affected him too.

He is English. He is French. He is Irish. He is Italian. He is German. He is Russian. He is Chinese. He is Japanese. He is Filipino. He is Mexican. He is Cuban. He is Spanish. He is Native. He is Nigeria. He is Angolan. He is Congolese. He is different. He is America.

And they can fight and struggle and discriminate all they want within him, over anything: race, religion, ethnicity, class, gender, sex. Anything they goddamn well please, and tear his insides apart and his mind in pieces, but at the end they were still all inside, still all connected. They were all different and same.

There are battles done to differentiate, like his independence, the civil war. And then there are battles done to assimilate, like the southern black are doing now. Fights to break apart and fights to bring together. And of course, he wants both fights to prevail, because that is his nature.

Unless his nature changes too. Deep within his heart there is a pain that is comfortable and nice, a fight brewing in his stomach that seems to give him an energy he knew not he had. There is a change in his process of thought that is exhilarating. And everything is also the same, there is no pain, no brewing, no change. He wonders which will become him. He wonders which he wants to become him.

And while a rather portly man at the front speaks with a thunderous voice, with the sound of a thousand happinesses and sadnesses ringing in and out from his very core, about America, to America, oh! America himself is marveled and hopeful and hateful. And all their love and hate festers within him, creating him, changing him, loving him. He knows this feeling, he knows it and its power. Lincoln, America thinks, were it that you were here to see me again! Douglass! That your dreams of my beauty and mercy may now come true! How did you love me? How did you conceive my spirit and my being? How can all my ugliness be so beautiful to you? I've had not better loves!

The black girl next to him, dark thick hair pulled tightly into a braid, peach colored dress nicely cleaned and ironed, smelling of soap and earth and touching his hand so softly, looking into his eyes so reverently. How old is she? She stares at his too blue eyes with fascination and a giggle, with a love deeper than he has ever known. She has no true concept of nation, of what a nation is, but she knows he is beautiful and scary, and he is home.

He has seen into her and knows his true self.

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At the curb of a rather dingy street somewhere in Montgomery he sits next to a radio drinking a coke, listening to white man's version of black music being played, and it is catchy. There are black girls crowded near it, dancing with their little feet rather wildly, gyrating about in a way that's rather scandalous. But the music is a bit too strong to ignore and he gets up. Walks to them, and they stop dancing, just looking at him.

"Well, how do you rock around, hmm? Anyone care to teach me?" And they do.

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