channel ORANGE: Where the self is established
Someone is about to get their ass beat in Street Fighter. Turn on the PlayStation 2. Get lost in what sounds like a spacecraft taking off. Chuckle a bit, you’ve been waiting all day to have a little fun. Choose your character. If you lose, you can always be someone else. Just start.
What am I? What am I channeling? What am I broadcasting? ORANGE. The color of the fruit it gets its name from, the interior of a mango, and the near bottom stripe of a rainbow. Orange is also associated with the sacral chakra, which governs creativity, sexuality, and reproduction. The Sanskrit word for it is स्वाधिष्ठान roughly translating to “where the self is established “. This album is a coming of age story. It is filled with sentiments such as “we’re behaving like teenagers”. I’ve been listening to channel ORANGE for 7 years; I can say I’ve grown up with it. At 15 years old, I had a more intellectual nature, or what I thought was intellectual. That nature informed the way I approached art and the thing that it imitates. I’m the ORANGE, and I’ve been peeling back my layers. I wanted to take an intellectual approach to this piece, but it’s my heart that compels me to write. It is my heart that’s been listening to this music.
I’ve had 4 forevers that have expired. I heard recently from an older brother that “Falling in love is for teenagers, and love for adults”. Magic spells have expiration dates. We come down from highs,and falling in love is no different. The first time I played with the magic was at 13, then again at 17, then 19, and then 20. I could be reminded of anyone of those evanescent love affairs when “Thinkin Bout You” comes on. Naturally, I feel the aftermath of my most recent. Poignant lyrics and agonized vocal tones take me places I haven’t been, to the household of summers’ past. Summer is the season where all of the love in my life sees a climax. The pain in “Thinkin Bout You” does not come from just looking back, it comes from looking forward. The first full song on the album is the time machine. Every track after is the past, a nonlinear past. Cupid and Chronos are at odds with one another. The right emotion warps the concept of time in numerous ways. Dejavu has always made my stomach tingle.
One of my favorite shows in middle school was Two and a Half Men. My favorite character was naturally Charlie Harper, played by Charlie Sheen. Charlie made his money writing jingles for consumer products. In the golden age of television, we suffered through commercials like: “Stanley Steemer”, “We Are Farmers”. The list goes on. “Fertilizer” feels like a jingle or sitcom theme. It reminds me of the Family Guy opening. Such an upbeat tune that I often sing along to and miss the message that the artist is sending my way. “Fertilizer” is a song about compromising, maybe even settling for someone you care about. Taking bullshit even if that’s all someone has to offer. Love is madness.
I am not from “Sierra Leone”, I grew up in Philly. For the greater portion of my teenage years, I felt like I belonged in California. West coast swagger unconsciously came out of me. Being 22, staring at my Jordan year from across 2 seasons, I see style as a thing I should be refining. At times I miss wearing tie-dye shirts and bright colored shirts. I wanted to be a hippy oh so bad, so badly that I failed. Or maybe I hit my mark because I did not care what anyone thought at the time. Frank echoes the sentiment: “We’re behaving like teenagers”. The recklessness, a devil-may-care attitude gave me the freedom to ignore conventions for the sake of self-expression. These days it seems a lofty ideal that’s often preached. If this were a game of truth or dare, being who you think you are is the dare. I’m guilty of choosing the truth. But actions beat revelations every time.
It is not clear whether what Frank sings about in “Sweet Life” is real. I am not too concerned with biographical details. Art doesn’t care about the truth of this world. Art only cares to create a new truth. Frank paints a world I want to live:
Livin' in Ladera Heights, the black Beverly Hills
Domesticated paradise, palm trees and pools
The water's blue, swallow the pill
Keepin' it surreal, whatever you like
It seems this world isn’t real. But if you take the blue pill, you’ll think it’s real. Better to live in the dream world than to defer the dream. The narrative of this song reminds me of Prince Siddhartha before he became the Buddha. The song is a conversation between the prince and the king who urges his son not to leave paradise:
So why see the world, when you got the beach?
Don't know why see the world, when you got the beach
He goes out anyway. The outside world isn’t what he thought it would be, and he exclaims towards the end of the song: “But this neighborhood is gettin' trippier every day”.
Money has power. The older I get the more the cliché becomes a golden rule. The lack of money is the root of all evil: It's a subverted proverb I know. At 15, when I tasted poverty I tasted real pain. It hurt worse than the summer night my first relationship was torn asunder. “It’s not just money”.
The piano keys, the bass, and the kick drum hit simultaneously every quarter note. My head bops with the bass. That’s “Super Rich Kids” for you. I was at Tom’s place the other day, a friend of mine. We went to smoke on the roof as we did so, I sang: “we start our day up on the roof”. I have a love of heights. Though I have thought about leaping, I much rather enjoy the close-up of Philadelphia’s skyline. Frank pays homage to Mary J. Blige with the bridge:
Real love, I'm searching for a real love
Oh, real love, I'm searching for a real love
I couldn’t relate at 15. At 22, the search for real love is a journey, that’s slowly becoming an odyssey into the self.
Folsom street in West Philly, it is a small street right behind an apartment complex. That complex was Aspen Village when I was younger, now I don’t know what it is. My friends don’t live there anymore. In 2006, clothes were still baggy, they were slowly slimming though. In 2006, I had my entire friend group close by. In 2006, we all played outside. I hopped fences, played ding dong dipsy, and enjoyed 25 cent Doritos. Life was great. I remember the first time I found myself behind Aspen Village, where Johnathan lived. I was with Tony. I owe that man for a lot of my street smarts. I had never been on Folsom street before; in fact, I didn’t even know the name of the street. I looked down that street with Tony. It was dark on the other side; there was good shade and a few skinny adult figures. Tony looks at me and goes: “Those are crackheads”. I didn’t know what crack was, or a crackhead, but I accepted the label. They’re just adults we messed with and ran away from. I still associate that street with crackheads, though there’s nobody back there anymore. The crack epidemic ended not too long ago, but there are still people who are hooked on the drug. Crackheads are castaways in the community. They’re really just my neighbors that need help. Today, crackhead is thrown around loosely with phrases like “crackhead energy”. Humor helps us cope as a society sometimes. Other times, it may cause us to forget how much damage was really done in the past, especially to “Black” people. I’m glad songs like “Crack Rock” and Tyler the Creator’s “48” were made. They remind me not to forget that the perspective of the fallen and the castaway is more valuable than we know. “You don't know how little you matter until you're all alone” speaks volumes.
III. Into the inner temple
Cleopatra was the last pharaoh. A beautiful woman that was able to charm Julius Caesar. There’s a story that said she did so by having her servants roll her out of a carpet directly in front of Caesar’s feet. Naturally, being a lover of the arts and drama, he was amused by the foreign monarch. Many believe that there wasn’t love between Julius and the last pharaoh. Cleopatra was a woman that wanted to keep her kingdom afloat, but I believe there was also love. That is the story of “Pyramids” in a nutshell. I’ve had my own Cleopatra. I was enraptured by her; however, when I began to fall into myself, she fled. Likewise, after Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March, Cleopatra later found herself courting Mark Antony, a former ally of Julius Caesar. Good thing he didn’t live to see his mistress with his comrade, though he did die at the hands of a friend. And frankly, I don't know which is worse.
The first half of “Pyramids” gives a brief history of Cleopatra and her fall, then it gradually transitions into Frank talking about his own relationship. He thinks he’s with a queen. He understands that even royalty does seemingly unpleasant things for their own advancement. In this case, he’s dating a stripper. He’s not insecure about it, instead, that fact makes him relish the time he spends with her even more. I dated a girl who modeled not too long ago. She posed for the camera and was sometimes the object of desire for the viewer. It made me feel even more special knowing that she was mine. The things we did together weren’t performative, they were real, at least for the time being.
The first step is admittance. Frank never says that he’s “Lost” instead his female companion is the one that’s lost. They’re lost together and he doesn’t want to admit it. Back to the idea about “Sweet Life” being about the Buddha, Frank, like Prince Siddhartha is lost in the material world. He hasn’t found enlightenment yet. He’s lost spiritually. At least it hasn’t manifested in the physical like how Anakin Skywalker lost his fleshly matter and became the robotic Darth Vader. “White” though it has no words, I believe it is about cleansing. Frank is separating himself from the carnal world and starting to view things through a spiritual lens. “Monks” blends the spiritual with the secular: “Monks in a moshpit/ Stage-diving Dalai Lama”. It seems enlightenment isn’t about being an ascetic but mindfully enjoying the world and acknowledging the spiritual aspect. Desire is not the root of suffering, not knowing who you are and what you want is.
“Bad Religion” is about acceptance. The Most High doesn’t change, but people do. Those that love us today can love another tomorrow. In the song, the taxi driver tells Frank, “Allahu Akbar” which roughly translates to “God is great”. Frank understands that God’s love is also an unrequited love, an undying one. He sees this kind of love as a curse. The kind of curse that makes him contemplate taking his own life. At the end of “Lost” a voice says “Faith is the substance” which is a reference to Hebrews 11:1 in the Bible. In Frank’s case and my case, faith is the substance that keeps us alive.
“Pink Matter” is the reason I listen to Frank Ocean. “Cotton candy, Majin Buu” was all I needed to hear. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. Now I do. This song is the resolution of the album. For a few minutes, he ceases to wrestle with his sexuality and emotional turmoil while he explores the mystery and wonders of sex with a woman. Then he realizes that he wants more than just the woman. It was his love for a man that had him torn up in “Bad Religion”. This is clarity for him. He accepted and became who he is, thus he became enlightened. The self was established in his sacral chakra. His ability to write from the perspective of Jenny in “Forrest Gump” further solidifies that.
The last thing you hear on the album is Frank is getting out of the car, going into his house, and turning on his gaming system. The very same action I’ve found myself doing for the past decade, maybe even longer. I’ve been waiting all day to play. Most games are better with a companion but they can’t go into training mode with us. They can’t go into our souls and establish who we are.
