Wesley Willis, One of Us

Ever heard of the late Wesley Willis?

No?

That’s because you weren’t touched by the American punkrock scene of the 1990’s. Mr. Willis hailed from Chicago Illinois, was schizophrenic, an artist and…musician??

His art is pen and ink drawings of the Chicago city scape/skyline and speaks to his talent as a creative individual. His music is bizarre, offbeat and well…not even very good. But this guy toured the US in the 90’s playing his Casio keyboard’s auto function and putting spoken word to this crude music. The American punkrock scene that I knew in the late 90’s adopted this guy as their own. Some who didn’t understand called it exploitation, others saw his spoken word as the kind of stuff they might think but was rarely heard said…

here he is at my old teenage haunt some time in the 90’s:

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I was totally thinking of something else when you said one of us.

I had a conversation with my German friend about how Germans felt that our soccer couch used to be their head soccer coach. She said it didn’t bother them. (I’m from the U.S)

I then told her about how mad we get when someone who isn’t even a citizen of the US but just went to one of universities or just works here (like Yao Ming went to play basketball for China that one time for China, where he is from. He might be, but I actually have no idea if he is a citizen of the US or not).

It’s mainly famous people, but I feel like (except Mexican immigrants and some other people sometimes but mainly people from Mexico) we co-opt people. Like oh. You are in the U.S? You want to go eat a hotdog? You are obviously one of us.

People (at least where I live where if you have an accent you are from somewhere else and they are curious. I have gotten questions about my accent before and I am an American who has lived in the US my whole life. I just come from a different region). Lots of people do ask about accents but they aren’t like oh you are obviously not a citizen here. You must either have a green card or citizenship. Once more. You are one of us.

I did that to my art history teacher in high school. He was from Canada and had taught in Korea at least long enough to meet his wife there. I was like, nope. You may still be a Canadian citizen but you are one of us now. To be fair he was trying to get citizenship. But the fact that it was taking so long for him and his family to get around the paperwork just blew my mind. He lives here.

It’s kinda like the Borg if you have ever seen Star Trek Next Generation. Not really in a you have to do exactly what we do, (lots of people get persnickety over what language you want to speak though) but we see you. You are in our country. You are obviously chill. We can tell by your shoes/hat/hair style (pretty much anything you are also interested in or like) you are one of us now. We’re having a barbeque Tuesday. I realize that major cities aren’t as much like that though.

I am also guilty of being really surprised that the African guy in my management class wasn’t intending to stay here. I saw him outside of class and asked a question or something about his presentation on Africa (we were talking about over seas management and each group had different countries were were supposed to study) and for some reason where he was going after college came up and he said he was going back to Africa. I might have even said what I was thinking where was along the lines of “What? Nah you should stay here.” (but in a far more polite way, but definitely still in a ‘you are one of us’ way).

To go on an even further tangent I don’t understand the whole ‘ugly American tourist’ thing. I have heard that people who come over here seem to think we are pretty friendly. We probably are really bad tourists, but we are really excited to visit your country. We can’t just take a ferry or train across three different country in an hour. But not in the US. We are a huge country. If you are driving somewhere you are going to Mexico or Canada. Once more we are a huge country so we don’t to a whole lot of that. Except go to Mexico to party. That does make us look bad I think.

But seriously. You are at least a ten hour plane ride away from us, the Euro is worth almost twice what the dollar is (using Europe as an example here). We have planned to come see you for a long time (it does take quite a while to plan out where you are going to stay, how you will pay for everything and all that). We are so excited I’m surprised we don’t try to hug you.

Yes we don’t speak Italian, French, or whatever you speak. If you have read our news or watched our news once you would see that we just don’t have as good of an education system. Going across three countries (if you spent all that money on a plane ticket you might as well) and we probably aren’t sure where to start. Three different countries, three different languages.

I guess we are kinda stuck up like it’s so great here why wouldn’t you want to join us? But I mean, you go to school with them, you work with them, whatever, you get kinda attached. Like, hey. Where are you going? Why are you going back to the U.K? I thought we were going to hang out.

I wasn’t so much like this in high school because there were so many girls from different countries. You knew you would probably never see any of them again after graduation. But college is the time you are supposed to make life long friends. I guess we are kinda clingy.

Sorry that was so long. :frowning: I have just always wanted to talk about that.

Heheh…

That’s cool don’t worry.

There are Africans at my clubhouse and my good friend Jcal, who wasn’t afraid of insulting anyone, used to be all like “What could be so bad about Africa??? Why did you come here??” :smiley:

They’d be like “No, no much better here, much, much better here!”

They were refugee’s from Sudan for goodness sake! Yeah Jcal what could be so bad about Sudan?!?!

Well there is the myth that a lot of the media likes to perpetuate, ‘the poor but upright tribes in Africa’.

There was even an entire movie about it. It showed a small puddle jumper pilot throwing a glass coke bottle out of his window. It feel in the African bush country and someone found it. Everyone loved the bottle because it was good for rolling things out, beating things you wanted flat, ect. and everyone was fighting about it. (The movie made it out like there was no disagreement, fighting, theft or anything like that in the tribe and the coke bottle caused the first ill feelings there ever were in the tribe.) They recognized it was causing problems so they sent one guy off with it to throw it off the edge of the world. Guy meets a white scientist studying lions or something… story goes on.

There is another one I read about a sociologist who put a basket of fruit under a tree and told the children whoever reached the tree first got the fruit. They linked arms and all ran together. The sociologist said it was some sort of awesome African principle they were enacting or something.

I think that it is something in all of us that we want to believe there is a perfect community out there, somewhere. And Africa is a mystery to most of us so that is the easiest place to imagine it. The media preys on that.

Much as I hate to say it, the movie was called “The Gods Must be Crazy”. It was a huge hit when it came out but when I saw it I wondered what all the fuss was about.

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Yes! That was it!

I thought it was a really good movie. Portrayed a harmful myth, but as far as movies being a fantasy world and accepting that for that, I like it.

Wesley used to like touching his forehead to other people’s alot, i wonder if he was touching his pineal to other people’s pineals.

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Thank you guys so much for introducing me to wesley’s music. I love it. Got greatest hits vol 1-3. Also bought the documentary daddy of rocknroll. His songs are exactly what my thoughts sound like.

He is my main hero. I got to meet him just once before he died, he was so kind and pure, we touched heads. I cried for him when he passed and honor him. I have many of his records. I love the documentaries about him. His artwork is beyond wonderful. I want the world to love him. Thanks for honoring his memory. He was too beautiful for this world. I am tearing up now. I sure miss him. He is giant inspiration to me. I hope I can follow his example of love. His childhood was so tragic, I am in full tears now. I wish that he could visit me. I’d like to hug him tight and kiss his head.

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