On July 4 th 2012 Ocean “came out” in a Tumblr post, preceding the album’s drop. The deployment of pronouns in “Thinking Bout You,” (“ My eyes don’t shed tears, but boy they bawl when I’m thinking ‘bout you”) sparked discussions of Ocean’s sexual orientation prior to the album’s release.
His debut album, Channel Orange, solidified his existence in a new contemporary R&B canon. The meanings and remixes present are heavily informed by the mythos of the titular artist, and his history (and mystery), are integral to Lawson’s engagement with his figure.įrank Ocean’s debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra was released in 2011, and later secured him a record contract with Def Jam. I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean is a book that interpolates Frank Ocean-his image, his lyrics, his enigma-into poetry and lyric. The focus is of Lawson’s text is not just music. Is the poem a love story? Commentary on Ocean himself? Commentary on a God that often leaves us waiting? Could it be all of these at once? Whereas Frank Ocean’s song details his imagining the “forever” of a potential love, Lawson’s poem is about absence, of being left behind. What was originally, in Frank Ocean’s track, “ ’cause I’ve been thinkin bout forever,” in Lawson’s work, becomes: For example, in the poem “Thinking Bout You” Lawson begins, One might think of this not quite as erasure, but as reapplication. Throughout I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, Lawson incorporates directly quoted lyrics (appearing in italics in the book) in new ways. Here the nouns and verbiage of music become one with memory, just as time collapses when we listen to words that make us feel something.
#Nostalgia ultra cassette archive#
An archive of moments that bring us love or joy. Too, her word choice, by what form of technology is not stated outright, conjures the idea of an album: a blank vessel to fill with one’s own stories. But a witness, here, is something more than passive-someone who not only observes but is now part of what’s transpired, swimming in the thick of it all.
In the poem, Lawson implies how a listener, or a reader, relates to a track: as a witness.
The name of how music plays / often means what it is: A record-a witness a cassette-a small blank conch The book begins, in the same way that Frank Ocean’s debut album does, with a track-and we might think of each poem as a track in Lawson’s book-called “Start.” Shayla begins: When you listen to a song you like, what significance do you impose onto the narrative? Do you imagine yourself in the story of its lyrics? Plant your own histories or moods within it? Shayla Lawson enacts these questions and more in her book, I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean, a project that embodies what it means to listen to an album, to experience it, to tread in it, and to be-even if only temporarily-transformed. I envisioned an environment that allowed for such a dream: my chilly body in the cusp of fall and winter, layered in clothing, and locking-arms with another boy in the squeaky bleachers after his game. In this version, I was happy and love-struck, watching a sweetheart run a touchdown across the football field. I approach she is never the same -Shayla Lawson, “Seigfried”Īfter first hearing “Forrest Gump” by Frank Ocean, I put the track on repeat and reimagined my days in high school.
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