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Calvin Macon’s battle from addiction to published author

THE BIRMINGHAM TIMES — Macon started out smoking marijuana, eventually used cocaine and then crack cocaine. After retiring from the military, he was mostly using crack. When he realized he was addicted, he tried several ways to quit smoking the drug.

Published

6 years ago

May 4, 2019

Oakland Post

By Erica Wright

To this day, Calvin Macon regrets the condition he was in when his parents last saw him.

“I was struggling,” he said. “I had a house and I was married, but I was still struggling with drugs. My parents died within about a month of each other [in 2004], and then my uncle died. I remember my dad telling my mom when she was really sick, ‘The only reason I’m here is for you.’ He died shortly after she did.”

Macon said his father had diabetes and an abscess on his toe. He went to the hospital to have it removed, which resulted in a blood clot that led to his death.

Macon, 62, a retired U.S. Navy veteran, sculptor, and recent author recalled the day he was getting ready to smoke crack cocaine at home—then he saw the light and knew it was time to quit. That was six months after he lost his parents, and he has been clean for the past 15 years.

Resisting temptation hasn’t always been easy: “I can see a cigarette lighter and think about when I used to smoke, or I can be driving somewhere and think about it because there are so many places I’ve been around Birmingham where I would go and buy drugs and smoke it or whatever,” he said.

Faith

Macon’s faith in God’s redemptive power is much stronger than his urge to do drugs, though.

“I believe in God, Jesus Christ, and I always knew I was supposed to be doing something else. That’s how I ended up writing my book,” he said. “I wrote my book in like a week and a half. I had written a couple of poems before, but when I decided to do this, I did it in hopes that it would help somebody because if I can do it, then they can do it.”

Part of his trusting God meant he had to end friendships that were not good for him, he said.

“I had to cut people off because they weren’t real friends anyway,” he said. “They’re friends while you’re smoking, but you just have to let folks go and you can’t be around it.”

Macon said he focused on sculpting, which he has done since serving in the Navy from 1975 to 1999. While serving on his first ship, he hand-carved a sculpture out of a wooden pallet.

“After we got supplies, I would find pallets or … any kind of wood available, [such as] broom handles, to make mobiles, coffee coasters, pipe holders, whatever,” he said. “Then in 1997, I started [working with] stone. I was stationed in Japan, where I met a stone sculptor. He gave me a chunk of soapstone, and I gave him a piece of ebony. Since then, I’ve been [working with] stone.”

Macon said it usually takes a month to shape a piece. Though he has done work for others and some galleries, he now mostly creates works for himself.

First Book

Macon began writing his book last year. He was inspired by some of his sculptures and would write poems to go with the pieces, then decided to put those poems in a book.

“A word or a phrase [would come to me], then I would write a poem around that word or that phrase and put it on Facebook with a picture of my work,” he said. “People would tell me I should copyright [the poems and pictures I put on Facebook].”

Macon got in contact with a publisher about writing a book. A few weeks later, the vice president of acquisitions called and said they were interested. It took Macon about a week and a half to put together material for his recently released first book, “I Can See the Light,” a compilation of pictorial poems that accompany his sculptures and illustrate how he overcame his struggle with drug addiction.

“Some poems are related to a specific carving in the hope that the artwork will add texture to the poem. Some poems reflect my thoughts and feelings as an addict, [as well as] interactions with my family, friends, and other addicts. Some are based on [my] post addiction reflections on the general revelation of God and how I see things today,” he said.

Recently, Macon recited some of the poems from the book at Bards and Brews, a poetry performance and beer tasting hosted by the Birmingham Public Library (BPL) at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Birmingham Native

Macon grew up in Birmingham as one of eight children; he has four older siblings and three younger siblings.

“I was a middle child, so I was pretty much on my own,” he said. “The older kids got stuff and the baby kids got stuff, but I was in the middle, so I was kind of by myself most of the time. [Even] when I would come home from the military, no one would even notice.”

His father worked at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Birmingham and Dickey Clay Pipe Company in Fairfield. His mother cleaned houses in Mountain Brook.

Macon’s family grew up in the Acipco-Finley and Hooper City neighborhoods and moved to Hooper City by the time he was in fifth grade, which he began at Lewis Elementary School before transferring to Eagan Elementary.

“We had to change schools and went to Eagan, [where] we were one of two black families,” he said. “We had to fight our way home every day.”

Macon attended Phillips High School, where he was in one of the first few classes to integrate the school. After graduating in 1975, he enlisted in the Navy for advanced electronics.

“I was the only black in the class out of 50-something guys that went through,” he said. “There were plenty of black guys in the Navy, but they weren’t in advanced electronics or air controllers; they were on deck jobs and things like that.”

Macon was stationed in several different U.S. locales, including Memphis, Tenn.; Norfolk, Va.; Jacksonville, Fla.; San Diego, Calif.; Monterey, Calif.; he also served in Japan. While enlisted, he earned a bachelor’s degree from a State University of New York (SUNY) school.

“The Navy had instructors riding on ships, so you could take some of your basic classes onboard,” he said. “The way the program is set up, you could take the classes, or you could take the tests if you thought you could pass. Then [your work would be] submitted to the university, which would give you credit. That’s the way I did it.”

For Those Who Suffer

Once he retired from the Navy, Macon returned to Birmingham and worked as a receiving manager at a home-improvement store. While working, Macon was a self-described “functioning drug addict.”

“I probably started using drugs in the 1980s, when I was still in the military,” he said. “When I wasn’t around it, I was fine. Whenever I would come to Birmingham, I would be in trouble until I could get back up to Memphis, [where I was stationed], and then I would be fine. Once I retired, [though], there was no control of it because I was retired and getting a check, and I had my own house, so it was hard.”

Trying to Quit

Macon started out smoking marijuana, eventually used cocaine and then crack cocaine. After retiring from the military, he was mostly using crack. When he realized he was addicted, he tried several ways to quit smoking the drug.

“I would carry only certain amounts of money. I couldn’t call anybody I would smoke with,” he said. “None of that worked until I just said, ‘Lord, help me, just help me!’ Somehow it worked, kind of like that let-go-and-let-God thing. [At the time], I didn’t know what that meant, but now I do. … I used to just pray for one day, for Him to just give me one good day to quit.

“It’s extremely difficult for people who smoke crack or use any other opioid to stop. They may tell themselves, ‘I’m just going to do a little bit,’ but you can’t do just a little bit. No one starts out to be an addict; they just get caught up in it. Once they’re hooked, the world collapses because they can’t get out.”

Macon was finally able to get out—and he knows his parents would be glad to see that their son has now seen the light.

“I Can See the Light” (Covenant Books) is available at Amazon and in bookstores, including Barnes and Noble and Books A Million.

This article originally appeared in The Birmingham Times.

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Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

1 month ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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A Prolific Painter: Artist and Advocate Lois Mailou Jones

Lois Mailou Jones was a prominent African American artist whose career spanned more than seven decades, from the Harlem Renaissance to the modern art movement. She was not only a prolific painter but also an influential educator, bridging cultural gaps and challenging stereotypes through her vibrant and diverse works.

Published

2 months ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Courtesy of National Archives, Washington, D.C.

By Tamara Shiloh

Her unique journey of self-expression, dedication to art, and advocacy for African American and African themes made her a crucial figure in the evolution of American art.

Jones was born on Nov. 3, 1905, in Boston. Raised in an intellectual and supportive family, she demonstrated an early interest in art, encouraged by her mother, who believed in the importance of creativity. Lois studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she faced racial challenges but persisted in pursuing her passion.

Her pursuit of higher education led her to the prestigious Design Art School, where she perfected her skills in textile design. Later, Jones attended Harvard University and received further training at the Académie Julian in Paris. This European experience greatly influenced her style and broadened her perspective on art.

Jones’s career began in textile design, creating works that were used by leading textile companies. However, her true passion was painting. During the Harlem Renaissance, she moved away from textile design to focus on fine art, exploring themes that reflected her heritage and the African diaspora.

Her early works were influenced by European Post-Impressionism, featuring landscapes and still life, but Jones’s style evolved over time. After spending time in Haiti, she was deeply inspired by Caribbean culture, and her palette became more vivid, her subject matter more symbolic. The influence of African and Caribbean culture is evident in her later works, where she used bright colors and geometric patterns to convey the spirit and stories of the people she encountered.

Her contributions to African American art were significant during a time when Black artists struggled for recognition. She often focused on themes of African heritage, pride, and unity, blending African illustrations and portraits with Western artistic techniques to create a unique visual language that celebrated Black culture.

She was also a dedicated educator. She began her teaching career at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina and later became a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she taught for almost 50 years. Through her teaching, she influenced generations of young Black artists, encouraging them to explore and express their cultural heritage through art.

In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked to exhibit her work alongside other Black artists, helping to create a platform for voices that had long been excluded from mainstream galleries.

Recognition and Legacy

Jones achieved significant recognition throughout her lifetime, both in the United States and internationally. She exhibited her work across the globe, including in Paris, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Jones continued painting until her death in 1998, leaving behind a rich legacy of artistic achievements and contributions to art education. She broke boundaries by celebrating Black identity and heritage at a time when these themes were often marginalized.

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At Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening, Music Director Kedrick Armstrong Will Make History

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.

Published

2 months ago

October 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong. Photo by Scott Chernis.

By Oakland Post Staff

Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.

Armstrong, 30, is not a new face to Oakland as he has been an active partner with the Oakland Symphony over the last few years both on and off-the-stage.

From 2022-24, Armstrong led three Oakland Symphony programs and guest-conducted the orchestra, showcasing his broad knowledge of the classical repertoire and enthusiasm for spotlighting diverse voices.

On his Oakland Symphony subscription debut on Feb. 16, Kedrick led the World Premiere of “Here I Stand: Paul Robeson,” an oratorio by Carlos Simon on a libretto by Dan Harder, commissioned by the Oakland Symphony.

On April 16, 2023, Armstrong conducted the Oakland Symphony’s Family Hype concert, presented in partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Bay Area. Armstrong first led the orchestra for a free “Summerstage at City Hall” concert at Oakland City Hall on Aug. 4, 2022.

The music program “Kedrick Armstrong Inaugural Inextinguishable Oakland!” will include commissioned works from master drummer Allison Miller and Bay Area artists – Ethiopian artist Meklit and Latin percussionist John Santos – in celebration of Living Jazz’s 40th anniversary.

Oct. 18 musical program:

Julia Perry: A Short Piece for Orchestra

Celebrate the 40-Year Anniversary of Living Jazz with three jazz-rooted compositions.

“Valley of the Giants” (for Eddie Marshall); Allison Miller, composer; arranged and orchestrated by Todd Sickafoose. Featured artist: Allison Miller, Drum Set; guest artist: Dayna Stephens, Saxophone.

Medley: “Ethio Blue, My Gold, Stars in a Wide Field”

Songs and Lyrics by Meklit; arrangement and orchestration by Sam Bevan. Featured artist: Meklit, Vocals; guest artists: Sam Bevan, Bass, Colin Douglas, Drumkit, Marco Peris Coppola, Tupan/Percussion.

“Un Levantamiento (An Uprising)”

Composer, percussion: John Santos; arrangers: Saul Sierra and John Santos. Featured artist: John Santos, güícharo, bongo; guest artists: Pedro Pastrana, Puerto Rican cuatro; Maria Cora, spoken word.

Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable”

Pre-concert talk by John Kendall Bailey begins at 7:05pm.

For tickets, go to: https://oaklandsymphony.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SUu0000001rYXMAY