I remember Biggie Smalls rapping about letting his tape rock until it popped. It was a phenomenon I completely forgot, as CDs were the move in the 90s. Recently, I purchased a near complete cassette discography of Roberta Flack and the prophetic words of Biggie never rang truer. Roberta’s cassettes stay on full blast, full time in my apartment. Her svelte voice and sassy words ricochet off the peaches, mints, chocolates and salmons of my walls. For the first time, I understand the bliss of letting my tapes rock until their imminent doom.
Something about the way she does what she does moves me to a newly discovered place. Even as I write this, between chopsticks and a soup spoon digging down into miso with spinach, she and Donnie have me rocking to an airily sexy tune. Hearing her, pulls out all of this guilt and unfathomable desire. Others have excited me before. Patti makes me wince, closing my eyes until mere slits remain. Nina makes me roll my head, neck and eyes in perfectly choreographed movements. Dinah makes me lightly toss my head back and curl my lips in the left corner. But Roberta, Roberta does something else. When she calls Jesse back home, I tremble. The solemness is overwhelming. It is the sentimentality that accompanies thoughts of ancient lovers and long extinguished flames. Something about the slow twang that strings her words together makes me crave those mornings, under crisp white duvets, in arms I have outgrown.
Her plain question, unencumbered by the weight of pride, about the feeling in the morning, opens the wounds I thought were healed, washed of pain and absolved of their emptiness. Reminiscing the ecstasy of holding firmly, finally, a lover chased for eternity, only knowing deep inside that once your façade collapses, their interest vanishes leaves me spent. In the middle of the dishes, wiping the sink, writing a letter, arranging the bromeliad, I am always forced to stop when she begins because I know the feeling, like the intrigue, is always gone at dawn.
When she moans and sighs, breathing life into memories that died long ago, the images of men over the years flash across the landscape of my mind, each one holding a special place and a strange feeling. Why does the regret come so quickly between the eternal pauses and the mild drops in her voice?
My own eyes become heavy, unable to support the weight of lids too old for my years, when she talks about his face. The pure joy of a crush relished in unassuming gazes and telling giggles rushes forward, a fleeting smile lightens my face. Then the sadness comes when she reminds me of the first time I saw so many beautiful faces and endless brown eyes. The shock of light kisses and starving hugs embraces me.
I have been trying to make sense of this for weeks now. What is it about her that makes things so stale seem so fresh? Why do I still remember, so precisely, the lines of his nose and the contours of his cheeks in a dream where his face is not present? How is it that a sensation I have moved away from can come sauntering back into my life as if it never left? Who is Roberta Flack and where does this sentimentality come from?
© T.I. Williams
Read more!
