Pod Insights The Moth The Moth Radio Hour: Live from the United Palace About this episode A special episode live from the United Palace in Washington Heights, New York. Subway station romance, lost names, and buried truths. This episode is hosted by CJ Hunt, with additional hosting by Jay Allison, producer of The Moth Radio Hour.
As a high school student, Lin-Manuel Miranda reveals more of himself than he realized while writing his first musical.
Having grown up in the world of music, Quiara Alegría Hudes finds her college music program lacking.
Thanks to his wife, Led Black discovers a new type of masculinity.
Podcast # 783
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0:43 Speaker 01 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show, and in this episode, we're bringing you stories from a live show at the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights, New York City. It was produced with the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance Partnership, and the theme was "When You're Home." This, by the way, was the first audience of any size to be at a Moth performance since the beginning of the pandemic. Here's your host of the evening, comedy writer and performer, C.J. Hunt.
1:18 Speaker 02 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The Moth!
1:26 Speaker 02 You like that? I start real Hunger Games-y. Welcome back to The Moth! We are here at United Palace, and I say welcome back because it really does feel like that, right? Like, I have not been able to see a Moth audience like this, even though this is just a fraction of that audience. It is beautiful to be able to be with you and see you, and to know that there are thousands at home who are tuning in with us to experience this night. So, The Moth is dedicated to true stories told before a live and partially digital audience. All of these stories are told, no notes, no net. What I love about
2:08 Speaker 02 the craft is it's just a storyteller, their own courage, and you, and your waiting ears and excited eyes. The theme, the theme is "When You're Home."
2:22 Speaker 02 You are home with us, and from the bottom of my heart, on the behalf of The Moth, we just want to say, "Welcome home."
2:35 Speaker 02 So for each of these storytellers, instead of reading their illustrious bios, we like to introduce them by a question. And the question is, "What are three things that make you feel at home?" And this first storyteller, he said, "My wife, my kid, and my other kid." We are excited to have him here. Please put all your hands together for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
3:16 Speaker 03 Sometimes, the truth just pops out.
3:21 Speaker 03 It's January 16th, 1997, 8 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. And my girlfriend Meredith has surprised me with tickets to see Rent for my 17th birthday. And we go up to the last row of... This is like original cast, first year Rent. And we go up to the last row of the mezzanine of the Niederlander Theater. And my mind is blown. And there's a moment in the second act where the truth just pops out.
4:05 Speaker 03 Meredith and I are, what you would call in high school, theater kids.
4:12 Speaker 03 You know our kind. You've heard us warming up. You've seen our silly games. Zip, zap, zom.
4:26 Speaker 03 Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
4:32 Speaker 03 You make fun of us.
4:35 Speaker 03 But we know something you don't know. We know that when we get to the auditorium, we are safe, and we are making something that is bigger than all of us. We know, while you are in your grades wondering who likes who, and who hates who, and whose life is over, and who is thriving.
4:58 Speaker 03 We know life is bigger than our grade because we're making things with people of all other grades to try to make the best thing possible. Meredith and I met when I was cast as the pirate king and she was the major general's daughter in Pirates of Penzance. And the romance is inevitable because the job of the pirates is to romance the major general's daughters. And we do show after show together. We did Godspell together. She directed a chorus line. I was her assistant on that. And that year, she takes me to see Rent. And there's a moment in the second act of Rent where Mark and Roger, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal,
5:41 Speaker 03 are having this heated moment. And Roger accuses Mark. He says, "Mark has got his work. They say Mark lives for his work, and Mark's in love with his work." And I'm like, "Yeah, Mark." And he goes, "Mark hides in his work. From what? From facing your failure, facing your loneliness, facing the fact you live a lie."
6:09 Speaker 03 What? Yes, you live a lie. Tell you why. You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive.
6:21 Speaker 03 And that's when Jonathan Larson reached out
6:25 Speaker 03 and punched me straight in the heart. And the truth popped out. Because the moment that show started, I was like, "Oh, I'm Mark." Because I was the kid who carried the camcorder to school. I was the kid who, when I wasn't in the auditorium and was hanging out with my friends, I had a camera up instead of actually hanging out with my friends. While everyone else was actually getting to know each other, I held everyone at a remove and recorded the whole thing. So when Jonathan Larson's Roger says that to Mark, it felt like he was talking to me.
7:04 Speaker 03 And I went from someone who likes musicals, and if he saves enough money buys TKTS tickets on his birthday, to thinking, "Oh, the truth can come out in a musical. You're allowed to write musicals."
7:20 Speaker 03 And that's when I went from being a fan of musicals, of being a theater kid, to trying to write my first musical. And I wrote my first musical that year.
7:32 Speaker 03 It was called Nightmare in D Major.
7:37 Speaker 03 And I wrote it in a feverish weekend over a winter break. And we had a student-written theater club at my high school. They would have five student directors. They would pick five plays from the submissions from all over school. And my musical got picked. It was the first musical ever done, because they're usually just 20-minute, one-act plays. And so they did Nightmare in D Major. Fast forward to opening night, April 1997, Eastern Standard Time.
8:10 Speaker 03 And I should mention here that two things. One, my mother's a psychologist.
8:20 Speaker 03 Two, Nightmare in D Major is terrible.
8:25 Speaker 03 It concerns our young protagonist who falls asleep and has a nightmare in D Major. And all of this Freudian concerns come to haunt him. Chiefly among them, the main villain of the piece is a fetal pig. He dissected an AP bio who is back for revenge.
8:49 Speaker 03 Shakespeare it ain't. Rodgers and Hammerstein it certainly ain't. And, um, and there's other characters that are all from the Freudian subconscious, because like I said, my mother's a psychologist. And there's an alcoholic Uncle Steve and a scary clown from a child's birthday party, and they're all coming back to haunt the protagonist in D Major. And I'm sitting there, and, and the show is getting laughs. And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm thrilled that the students who are watching and my parents who are watching are enjoying it. And there is a moment in the show where this little girl comes on stage. And she was played by an eighth grader, she was played by Sarah Schweisky.
9:34 Speaker 03 And she sings.
9:37 Speaker 03 "You probably do not remember me, but in fourth grade you were in love with me. You don't know my name, but you know my face. Sometimes I get just a bit sad when I think that you have forgotten me, but I'll always be in your dreams, in your dreams. And I'll stay right here in your dreams, in your dreams."
10:12 Speaker 03 And several things happen at once.
10:15 Speaker 03 One, there is nothing funny or silly or student-like about this character. This character pops up, the character, the main character tries to play with her and hang out with her, and he's cut off because he's told she passed away when he was young. And I suddenly remember that when I was four years old, my best friend died. She was, it's, it's the nightmare scenario for any parent.
10:54 Speaker 03 Each of her parents thought she was with the other, and she drowned behind her home.
11:01 Speaker 03 And this is what I remember. I remember my mother telling me in my room on a morning when I had nursery school. I remember crying. I remember getting in the car that day. My nursery school teacher ran a carpool of her own students to take us to Uptown Nursery on 179th Street. And I remember that teacher whispering, "Lynn's friend died," to every parent of the children she picked up along the way. I remember about a year of gray, just the memories are gray.
11:44 Speaker 03 I remember that year more vividly than I remember her. And I realize if anyone laughs at this part of this student show, I'll die. Because the truth popped out. Because I didn't remember her, but she showed up in my first musical. And I look over at my mother, who I'm sure has a lot to say about this. And they understand. And the show goes on, and it's a very silly ending, and the guy wakes up and the play is over. But I get addicted to that feeling of the truth popping out in the show.
12:28 Speaker 03 And what are we all gonna do when it's staring at us? I remember when I was writing Hamilton and the line, "I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory," popped up. That is not in Ron Chernow's book. That is not in any history book. That's something coming out of me that makes me understand this person. And a lot of people, because I work a lot, sort of think, "Oh, well, it's autobiographical. He's Hamilton." But I felt the exact same way when Aaron Burr said, "If there's a reason I'm still alive when everyone who loves me has died, I'm willing to wait for it."
13:14 Speaker 03 That's not in any biography of Burr you're gonna find. That's the moment where you write and you write until the truth pops out.
13:25 Speaker 03 There's a moment in Hamilton where the parents lose a child. And I have had countless parents come up to me and say, "How do you know what this feels like and how did you find the words?" And one thing that is true is that it took me a day to write that song. I wrote pretty quick. And another thing that is true is that I have been writing that song since I was four years old. Because I have imagined how that felt since I was four years old. And I remember poor Meredith, the girlfriend who got me tickets to Rent,
14:09 Speaker 03 coming home to six voicemail messages from me saying, "Call me when you get home, call me when you get home, call me when you get home." Because I have imagined 50 ways she has died on the way home on the train from my house. Because of that year of Grey. And I realize that when you choose your heroes, I chose Jonathan Larson, who tragically passed away the day before his show had its first public performance. And I wonder how he felt writing the second act of that show. Watching Mark and Roger talk to each other
14:52 Speaker 03 as an artist in the midst of the plague of the AIDS crisis. As Jonathan watched friend after friend and a generation of artists die in this plague of this disease. And how he felt when he got to those lines. And how sometimes as an artist, all you can do is hold up the camera and bear witness until the truth pops out. Thank you.
15:31 Speaker 02 Lin-Manuel Miranda.
15:38 Speaker 01 Lin-Manuel Miranda is a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning songwriter, actor, director, and producer. He's the creator and original star of Broadway's Hamilton and In the Heights. Miranda is the co-writer of Warriors, a new concept album with Issa Davis, based on the 1979 film. He's the recipient of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award and the 2019 Portrait of a Nation Prize. Select film and TV credits include Tic Tic Boom, Moana, Encanto, Mary Poppins Returns, and Mufasa, The Lion King. He and
16:20 Speaker 01 the Miranda family are active supporters of initiatives that increase representation in the arts, ensure access to women's reproductive health, and promote resilience in Puerto Rico. He lives with his family in New York. Coming up, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Kiara O'Leagria Hugh Diaz tells us about her first love: music.
16:51 Speaker 01 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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19:58 Speaker 01 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, and in this hour, we're bringing you a special live show from the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights, New York City. Here's your host from the evening, C.J. Hunt.
20:11 Speaker 02 Our next storyteller is an incredible storyteller, like all of these storytellers. And when asked, "What are the three things that make them feel at home?", they said, "My James Baldwin books, my Piri Tomas books, and my Entizaki Shangue books." Please put all of your hands together for Kiara Allegria Hudes.
20:35 Speaker 06 Thank you. So, as early back as I can remember, I was chasing the good notes. The first time I remember this, I was four years old. I was visiting my Aunt Linda and Uncle Rick, who were professional musicians. And they showed me an album cover, Champion Jack Dupree. Well, I thought that was pretty cool, because his name was like a little weird and wild, Champion. And my name, Kiara Allegria Hudes, is a little weird and wild.
21:17 Speaker 06 So, they stacked two Yellow Pages on top of the piano bench. For those unfamiliar, Yellow Pages are books that contain phone numbers. And they sit me on top of the Yellow Pages, so that I'm high enough that my hands can reach the piano keys. And they drop the needle on the Champion Jack Dupree album, and they say, "Play along", and they leave me alone. So, the first thing I did was listen. I had never heard him before. It was New Orleans blues piano.
21:53 Speaker 06 And then I just tried putting my finger and pressing one key down and it sounded really bad. So you know, it's like I recoiled, like I had touched a hot stove top. And I tried putting my finger on another key and that note went with the record. And I spent the next half hour chasing the good notes, chasing the notes that went. It was kind of like an action adventure for my hearing. And as I did that for half an hour, the weight of the world outside disappeared. I was only four, but the world already started to weigh a little bit. My parents were already fighting a lot. By the time I was in middle school, the world had begun to weigh a lot more.
22:38 Speaker 06 By that time, my parents were separated. And the two parts of my life were split and torn in two. I had also been to more funerals than I knew was normal. It was HIV AIDS days. It was crack cocaine days. And a lot of those funerals were of like my big cousins who were like in their twenties. Now, my mom is a priestess or a santera in a religious and spiritual path called Lukumi. For those unfamiliar, Lukumi originated in Yoruba land, Nigeria,
23:18 Speaker 06 and was brought to and syncretized with Caribbean Catholicism. So the bata drummers, and the bata themselves are enorisha. They are the voice of a spirit or a god. My mom would introduce me to the players and she would introduce me, tell me their given, their birth names, but also their ocha names, the names they carried from the time they were initiated in the religion. And I really liked that they had chosen a path that added a new name to their life.
23:56 Speaker 06 And I would listen and the drums had a physical vibrational effect on me. I could feel the density and the intensity of my heartbeat shift. I could feel it inside my blood. I would be in awe, but that kind of hushed kind of awe. And if she couldn't afford the batata players for a given ceremony, or if they weren't available, she'd pop in a Babatunde Olatunji tape. That's a master drummer from Nigeria. Or she'd pop in a Selena y Reutilio tape, which was Cuban folkloric music also in the tradition. Now, by high school, Bachata Rosa had come out, which was Juan Luis Guerra's seminal album.
24:40 Speaker 06 And my cousins at Abuela's house would pop in the tape and they'd press play. And we had all been to those funerals together. And we were reeling, but once those songs came on, they became so embodied. And they would take little timid me, little timid Kiki, and they'd drag me onto the linoleum floor of Abuela's living room from whatever corner I'd been hiding in. And they'd slap my ass until I kind of loosened up and I would join them. I would join the dance. And again, the weight of the world would just disappear. So when I got into Yale University to be a music composition major, I was pretty blown away.
25:25 Speaker 06 I was the first in my family to go to college. And I thought, OK, here we go. I'm going to chase these good notes to places I can't even imagine. I got into those handsomely wooden-paneled seminar rooms. You know, and they start playing Bach, they start playing Brahms, they start playing Schubert. And I realized that the word "music" actually had a different definition at Yale than it had in my life previous. It meant "Western classical," without having to say so. So all of a sudden, this little "uh-oh" kind of planted itself in my gut.
26:05 Speaker 06 You know, it's meant white, male, and dead oftentimes by more than a century. I tried to say, "Well, I want to do my project on Stevie Wonder." I remember the students and the professor did actually laugh out loud at that one. I tried also to say, "Well, you know, I want to do my project on Selena and Rayo Tilio." And I remember the professor saying to me, "You know, that's folkloric stuff. That doesn't really merit the level of attention that we're trying to look at in this classroom." You know, and even just dealing with Brahms and Bach and Beethoven, there was no dancing.
26:49 Speaker 06 Okay, you sit, music, this is how you listen to music. You sit still and listen, that's it. Music is not about dancing. Music is not about the spirits. It's not about ancestry. It's not about body. I mean, there's definitely no ass-slapping happening in the seminar rooms at Yale. So I was pretty bummed out, but I thought, "Okay, well, I love this Bach so much. I love this Chopin so much. I love this Mozart so much. That's enough to sustain me for four years of really meaty investigation and playing." But I was jonesing. I started jonesing for some Afro-Caribbean stuff, and I went to the Listening Library.
27:32 Speaker 06 And the Listening Library, like most rooms at Yale, it wasn't the biggest one, but it's really architecturally gorgeous. Wooden paneling, stained glass windows, and these floor-to-ceiling wraparound shelves, meticulously ordered, of boxed CDs and boxed vinyl sets. Entire catalogs of Bach, just by certain individual performers. And I said to the Listening Library, and I said, "Do you have any West African stuff? Do you have any Afro-Caribbean stuff?" And she led me over to the ethnomusicology section. I was like, "Okay, here we go." And the first thing I had to do was get on my knees, because the ethnomusicology section was basically kind of down on the floor.
28:17 Speaker 06 And unlike the wraparound collection, it was two shelves. It was about 48 inches wide, one shelf on top of another. So I was like, "Okay, well, this is still really cool. I'm excited to see what they got." But I noticed there weren't CDs and there weren't vinyl. They were dubbed tapes. And the dub tapes didn't have names on them. They only had place, locations. So a tape might say Senegal, for instance. But there was no individual artistry acknowledged.
28:50 Speaker 06 I remembered something Mom told me about the erasure of names that happened when West Africans were brought to the Caribbean. The erasure of names that happened when Thaino and other native populations were decimated by smallpox and violence. I had always thought the erasure of names was something in the past, something historic, like centuries ago stuff. But it was present tense.
29:27 Speaker 06 And my heart sank, seeing those unnamed tapes. And the thrill was gone. I kind of fell out of love with music.
29:41 Speaker 06 The thing that had used to remove me from the weight of the world just now had begun putting the weight of the world on my shoulders. So I dragged myself, like a good student, into senior year and I heard Wynton Marsalis was coming to town. My aunt told me, and she knew the trombonist in the band. And she was like, "He's gonna sneak you into rehearsals." So I had to cut class. But I went to Woolsey Hall and I sat in the very back row. Wynton was in town for 10 days to rehearse his new jazz oratorio that he was then going to go premiere at his new endeavor in New York called Jazz at Lincoln Center.
30:23 Speaker 06 Now Woolsey Hall is the crown jewel of Yale architecture. It is massive, like this space we're in. It is ornate, everything in gold leaf. The pipe organ alone looks like the Manhattan skyline. And I just disappeared in the back for about four days, cut class for four days straight, and just listened to a different genre of music, a different practice of music. And on day four...
30:53 Speaker 06 He was like, "Hey you, in the back row." "All right, come on, come on." "Yes, Mr. Marsalis? I hear you're a music composition major, so do you have good penmanship?" Well, I did have good penmanship because my aunt had taught me musical calligraphy, how to be very meticulous and careful when writing a note. He said, "Well, Cassandra Wilson is coming in 10 minutes, and she's very unhappy with the state of her charts. So you can, can you copy this chart for her quickly?" So I did, I copied the chart quickly, but carefully, so that the calligraphy looked neat and pristine. I handed him back the corrected chart, and he gave me a $20 bill. I returned to my corner in the back, and Cassandra, this regal jazz vocalist,
31:36 Speaker 06 this woman is as centered and grounded and rooted as a tree. She gets onstage, and this is the first time they've run through this song because she hasn't arrived until today. And the song is "God Don't Like Ugly." And it began, and it was a really nasty, ugly, conflicted, angry song. And her voice sank into that conflict and nastiness like thorns, like barbs. The spirits in that song were angry. And my heart,
32:20 Speaker 06 the density and the intensity of my heartbeat shifted. The intensity of my pulse shifted, and I could feel that nastiness in me as music was restored to my body.
32:39 Speaker 06 Well, the day before the dress rehearsal, Wynton Marsalis asked a kid, "So, have you ever written a piece for trumpet?" I lied and said, "Yes, Mr. Marsalis." And he said, "Great. Bring it tomorrow. Bring a tape recorder, and we'll play it at the end of rehearsal." So I stayed up all night. I pulled the all-nighter of all-nighters at college, and I came the next day with my new slash old trumpet piece and my tape recorder. And I gave him his chart, and he put his chart on his stand, and it was for piano and trumpet, so I brought
33:17 Speaker 06 my chart over to the piano. He adjusted his mouthpiece. My fingers were trembling. And it starts with a two-bar piano intro, and I was just really just trying to breathe into my fingertips so that they would just steady themselves and play the notes. The tape recorder was going. I play, and this note comes out of his trumpet. That's like molasses. It's so lugubrious. I had written a very, very sensual piece. Like if you've ever run your fingers down velvet and seen the little tracks it leaves behind, or if you've ever had someone you love just smoothly run their fingers tenderly down your back.
34:01 Speaker 06 That's kind of what the piece was like. So at the end, we finished. He said, "You know, that was really beautiful. You've got some talent, kid. What'd you guys think?" Because this whole jazz orchestra had been watching this thing. And his alto saxophone player said, "That girl's bad."
34:22 Speaker 06 So I didn't walk back to my dorm room. I floated back to my dorm room. That was the best compliment I'd ever received. And I wanted to hear the tape. What had happened? It was almost like an out-of-body experience, so I pressed rewind on the tape player, and it didn't budge. It had run out of batteries.
34:40 Speaker 06 So I got some new batteries, put it in the tape player, rewound it, though I noticed it hadn't made it very far, and I pressed play. And I heard the first two bars of my piano intro with one or two note mistakes, but it was all right. And then the tape had stopped recording before he played his first note. And, you know, I feel like in any other moment in my life, my reaction would have been like, "No!" But I swear, it was this exhale and a little laugh, and I felt the universe just pushing my shoulder blade a little bit. I didn't know why. It had something to do with ephemerality and how nothing lasts forever.
35:24 Speaker 06 Anyway, later that year, Wynton Marsalis premiered his jazz oratorio "Blood on the Fields" at Jazz at Lincoln Center and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Not to worry, my aunt and uncle, the musicians, they ended up later that year recording my piano and trumpet piece, and I still have that recording today.
35:50 Speaker 06 And gradually, I stopped chasing the notes. I let go of music, and I started chasing something different. I started chasing the stories. I had been surrounded by all my life, and I started writing them down and putting names on them. When my plays went to Broadway and won fancy prizes and went to Hollywood, people would ask, like, "Is that your dream come true? Oh, my gosh." But the slightly embarrassing answer is like, "No, it's actually cool, but it's not my dream come true. My dream was, and still is,
36:34 Speaker 06 to tell our stories, name our names, have them go on a library shelf that's eye level and that's wider than 48 inches, and that I know and trust really deep in my heart, long after I'm gone, is going to get wider and wider and wider and full of more names." Thank you.
37:02 Speaker 02 Kiara Alegria Hudes. Naming the names.
37:08 Speaker 01 Kiara Alegria Hudes is the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Water by the Spoonful, the author of a memoir, My Broken Language, and she wrote the script for the Tony Award winning Broadway musical In the Heights. She's the co-founder of Latinx Casting Manifesto and Emancipated Stories, a platform where people behind bars can share one page of their life story with the world. Hudes now lives with her family in Washington Heights. This music, by the way, is her composition from the story called Counting My Blessings, and it's performed by her aunt Linda Hudes on piano and her uncle Rick Albani on trumpet.
38:20 Speaker 01 In a moment, our final storyteller from this live hour, Led Black, tells us about traditional masculinity when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
38:35 Speaker 01 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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40:48 Speaker 01 You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. We're wrapping up this live hour from Washington Heights in New York City with Uptown native Lead Black. But first, here's your host, CJ Hunt.
41:01 Speaker 02 And with that, I will introduce our final storyteller of the night. When asked what makes this storyteller feel home, they said, family, food, and laughs. Put all your hands together for Lead Black.
41:24 Speaker 08 Thank you. I didn't know I was poor until my freshman year at Bronx Science. I was the only kid at PS 143 in Washington Heights that year to make the cut to attend the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. In Washington Heights, everyone I knew was just like me. We were the children of the working poor that made NYC run. At Bronx Science, I realized there was a whole world outside of Washington Heights, and I felt profound culture shock. These kids weren't better than me, their parents weren't better than mine, but they were better off and it really bothered me. I did not know I was the other until then. I hated the feeling of being less than.
42:07 Speaker 08 On top of that, I had to take three trains from the hood just to get there. I took the 1 from 191 to 168, then the A to 145th, and then the D to school. They'd reverse and repeat that in the afternoon. Latinos have a saying, "No hay mal que por bien no venga", which basically means something good always comes from something bad. What I started to notice on my way back home is there was always a group of girls at the 168th Street Station seemingly waiting for me.
42:41 Speaker 08 For those that don't know, 168th is one of the deepest underground stations in the whole subway system, so it gets really hot. I mean mad hot. You heard of mad hot ballroom? This was mad hot train station. And it would get crazy crowded because the elevators were ancient and they hovered between operational and out of order all the time.
43:06 Speaker 08 On a bad day, you could be down there for what seemed like an eternity, but somehow, every day, those girls were there. Then one day, one of the girls come up to me and says, "My homegirl Aline is digging you and you better talk to her because we're tired waiting for you every day at the hottest train station on earth."
43:28 Speaker 08 Aline wasn't like, like the, a lot of the uptown girls I knew. She had this whole Dominican goth thing going that I found super adorable.
43:36 Speaker 08 Her and I quickly became inseparable, spending all our free time together. If I was in the school or playing ball with my boys, I was with her. Our thing was taking long walks in Fort Tryon Park. Years later, I would propose to her at a spot overlooking the Hudson with a view of the G W B in that very same park. Aline and I are both Dominican Yorques. Children of Dominican parents born in NYC. But I'm decidedly east of Broadway, growing up in the beating heart of Washington Heights in the 190s and Was worth. Aline, on the other hand, live west of Broadway on Bennett Ave, which is more like the Upper West Side. Way more affluent than Was worth.
44:19 Speaker 08 No shade, but you can't claim Washington Heights if you're from Bennett.
44:26 Speaker 08 For the record, the, the area west of Broadway is sometimes referred to as Hudson Heights.
44:33 Speaker 08 But there's no such thing as Hudson Heights. It was a real estate term created to provide distance from the supposed stench of Washington Heights. So remember, Hudson Heights doesn't exist, it's Washington Heights forever.
44:52 Speaker 08 But I digress.
44:59 Speaker 08 Fast forward a bunch of years to the late 2000s and Aline and I happily married with three beautiful young daughters. Imani, Layla and Soraya.
45:11 Speaker 08 Growing up in my little apartment in Washington Heights, I always imagined that I would have the same benefits of Dominican manhood that my father, my brother and other Dominican men enjoyed. As a boy, I lived with my mother and my grandmother, so I didn't have to do anything. When I sat down to eat at a table, a plate with awesome food would appear. When I finished, it would just as magically disappear.
45:35 Speaker 08 I didn't have to do dishes, or chores for that matter. I was a Dominican boy and those things were for the women folk. My dad didn't even have to pick up the phone. The phone would ring right next to him and he would call out to my mom in the next room to pick it up. Nada, el teléfono.
45:54 Speaker 08 And when he got home, it was like an event. Everything stopped and started simultaneously. Whatever you were watching in the one TV in the household was quickly changed to the Yankees game. The man of the house was home for work and needed to be fed and taken care of. That's what I thought I was getting into.
46:15 Speaker 08 I wanted that carefree Dominican man life.
46:20 Speaker 08 No worries being the undisputed boss just because having the women of the household waiting on me hand and foot. I could get used to that. Aileen was having none of it.
46:32 Speaker 08 She, on the other hand, lived with two younger brothers and a father that was a serial womanizer, among other things. Her mom stoically put up with all her dad's nonsense. Since Aileen was the only other woman in the household, she had to be a second mom and had to be at the beck and call of the men of the house. She would not repeat that in her marriage with me. She was the 2.0 version of the Dominican woman. So when she cooked, I did the dishes. On weekends, I did laundry and even cleaning. Can you imagine? My dad ain't had to do nothing.
47:07 Speaker 08 I tried my best to do as little housework as possible, but it was not to be. She would not shut up otherwise. After a while, I realized it was only fair as we both have full-time jobs and three kids are three kids. So we settled to a groove and we were happily parenting our three beautiful daughters. Then in September 2008, I received a call from Aileen and she was hysterical. She had found a mass in her right breast and now the doctors confirmed the worst. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer called triple negative. We had entered what Juno Diaz called cancer planet.
47:45 Speaker 08 I can still recall shaving her long hair off in the kitchen as it had already started falling off in clumps because of the chemo.
47:53 Speaker 08 With every swipe of the clippers, we both quietly acknowledged that we had crossed the Rubicon. Our lives would never be the same again. After the deed was done, we walked into the living room to avail the new look to our gathered family. Everyone stared, lost in their own grief. My then-two-year-old broke the silence when she said, "Mom, you look like a monster." We laughed, and then we cried hard as a unit.
48:21 Speaker 08 That first round of chemo was horrific. She seemed to be wasting away right before our eyes. She was emaciated, and wasn't eating or sleeping much for that matter. At times, she would cough the entire night away as her poor body was ravaged by her treatment. Our future and her outcome looked bleak. The way I coped was by doing chores. I found refuge in doing the little things that kept the household going.
48:47 Speaker 08 Then MLK Weekend 2009, we were collectively devastated as one of my wife's many doctors informed us they had found a blood clot in her heart. The doctor insinuated that she was in grave danger of losing her life. That weekend for me was the toughest time of this whole nightmare. After everything we'd been through, I felt like it wasn't long before it was all over. That Monday, I was alone in her bedroom, sweeping, listening to Heavy D's Vibes album when Queen Majesty came on. Queen Majesty is a beautifully worded ode to a woman that Heavy finds way out of his league. And over a lush, classic reggae break, Heavy waxes poetic on his love and admiration for this woman, this Queen Majesty.
49:31 Speaker 08 That song hit me like a ton of bricks. I was on the verge of losing my Queen Majesty and the dam broke. I cried like I've never cried before. I ugly cried. I cried like I was taught a man was not supposed to cry. I realized right then and there that I was not strong enough to handle this alone. I pride myself in being able to take care of my family, but I was powerless with the problem before me. At that very moment, when I was at my lowest, listening to this magnificent record, I felt for the first and only time the feeling of grace. It's like that song put me in communion with something bigger than myself. While I've never been religious, I could feel the presence of God in the room. I immediately felt better and knew that we would somehow get through this.
50:16 Speaker 08 I still can't hear that song without crying. Before my wife's cancer diagnosis, I believed I was immortal. I fancied myself a writer even though I didn't write that much. Her battle with cancer put a battery in my back as I now knew that death was a real concrete thing. If the love of my life could die, so could I. Say less. In 2009, Aileen finished her cancer treatment. By 2010, I became the editing chief of The Uptown Collective. The site was born out of the fierce urgency to get my story and the story of my neighborhood out of my head and into the world. The Uptown Collective began as an homage to our beloved Washington Heights but is now the voice of Uptown Online.
50:58 Speaker 08 I realized that my upbringing, the poverty, the lack, were not liabilities, but they were assets. I had something that those rich kids of Bronx signs might never have. I had grit, tenacity, street smarts. I learned the hard way that the journey is just as important as the destination and out of the many trials and tribulations, a new man was born. One that took the best of his heritage and culture and discarded those things that no longer served us. Aileen's ordeal led her to starting a wellness program at Columbia University Medical Center for the many poor women of color dealing with their own cancer diagnosis. These women absolutely adore and worship my wife. One day, I was walking Aileen to work when we ran into one of these women.
51:41 Speaker 08 This woman literally drops everything and bows to Aileen like she's Prince Hakeem in Coming to America. This woman kissed and hugged and fondled with my wife like she was some type of savior, but in many ways, she is. As bad and as brutal as cancer was, it propelled the both of us to a life of service, to a community that we love and cherish so much. Last September, Aileen celebrated 12 years of being cancer-free, and 10 days ago, we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. This Dominican board is now the 2.0 version of the Dominican man. Remember, folks, after the plague came the Renaissance.
52:26 Speaker 08 Spread love is the uptown way. Thank you.
52:38 Speaker 02 Led Black of the Uptown Collective.
52:43 Speaker 01 Washington Heights' own Led Black is a Dominican-American writer, blogger, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and social media strategist. Led is the founder of uptowncollective.com, a voice for Uptown Manhattan online. Led is the social media manager for The Manhattan Times, The Bronx Free Press, The New York Latino Film Festival, and The West Harlem Development Corporation. He's also working on Nutcracker, Inc., the documentary on the infamous street cocktail, and a left-of-center film on the history of Washington Heights. To see photos of Led and his family, you can visit our website, themoth.org.
53:29 Speaker 02 Thank you so much. We hope you come talk to us online about what you love and about what is next for all of us. And from everyone here, we hope you have a great day. We hope you have a great week, and we hope you remember to go chase those good notes. We'll see you soon. Take care of each other.
53:48 Speaker 01 That's it for this live episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from The Moth.
54:09 Speaker 01 This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Catherine Burns, who also directed a story. Our live host was comedy writer and director C.J. Hunt from New York City. He is also the director of The Neutral Ground, a documentary about breaking up with the Confederacy, and a field producer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. Other stories in the show were directed by Sarah Austin Jenness and Jody Powell. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluchay, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant,
54:51 Speaker 01 Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Special thanks to Mike Fiddleston and the team at United Palace, Nerea Leva Gutierrez, Michelle Orsi Gordon, and the team at Noma, Luis A. Miranda Jr., Sarah Elisa Miller, Owen Panachary, Carmen Rita Wong, and Sharon Salzberg. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift, other music in this hour from Bill Orkut and Heavy D. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
55:33 Speaker 01 Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese-Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
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