The Oy is real. How about the Joy?
I’ve been asking people in my life for their insights, their joys. A new friend said, “being present with nature” (sounds familiar!). A neighbor at the pizzeria down the street from me said, “have an attitude of gratitude,” which I always impulsively give an eye roll to but should probably try out sometime. I also asked my father Louis, someone who seems to have an uncomplicated relationship with joy, especially now that he’s moved into (almost!) full retirement at age 77. My father and I share many things—a name, a habit of swimming in cold bodies of water, and a love of music. He played drums professionally until he left to pursue a career in environmental policy. I learned from talking to him that we also share a belief in the power of working across lines of difference, be it race, ability, or neighborhood. If we want to make change (or make music) it’s just not the same alone. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
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Lou: How’s your day been?
Louis: Well, I had my coffee, I meditated with your mother, had a nice breakfast, hung out a little bit, and then I started out on my bike ride.
Lou: So how are you finding joy in the oy of this moment?
Louis: Well, I think I have a lot of privilege that I am enjoying at this point in my life. It's like I'm in gym class, I'm in music class, I'm in political science class when I do some work. The oy is more existential and more philosophical and more cerebral, more emotional.
Lou: It's not impacting you as much on the day to day.
Louis: Yeah.
Lou: And you don't get as weighed down necessarily by the existential oy as I feel like I do, or mom does sometimes.
Louis: Yeah, I think that's right. I don't know why that is. I'm unhappy about the oy. I'm frustrated by the oy, and sometimes I'm mad about the oy. But I don't think it has the same impact on my emotional equilibrium. Maybe the point is people have different reactions to the oy. And it can be based on many things, right? People are people. They're different. There's a great difference in human beings.
Lou: Yeah. I feel like that's a big lesson I've learned growing older. When did you learn that?
Louis: You know, when I was in undergraduate, I got very involved in protesting the Vietnam War. And I was very upset over the Santa Barbara oil spill. I had this cohort in college which was both community—having anger at the oy—and action, you know, direct action.
But then I got into music and I just got absorbed in music. The oy was a background to my personal oy, which was trying to survive as an artist. So I would say I was kind of distracted from the global oy.
Lou: Did music ever feel related to any of the political or systemic stuff that you were doing?
Louis: Yeah, it was definitely related. I played in a lot of interracial bands. We called them Salt and Pepper then, black and white, you know? I was sometimes one of two white people in an all-black club. I mean, I was aware of that and I think I felt like I was somehow doing good by just trying to normalize interracial relationships. And it gave me some direct experiences, or at least I witnessed experiences of black people in LA. But it's interesting because that's art, you know, and social practice right there.
Lou: How do you see that? Being together across lines of difference?
Louis: Yeah, you know and in the creative enterprise (this is again art and social practice), at least in the musical creative enterprise, when you're doing it collectively with others and things are really clicking, there's a great feeling. That's what I lived for in music; those moments when everybody was synced up and things were happening together. It was the creative joy that kept me in music so long. And that could be in interracial situations or not, or in all white situations too, having that artistic experience was not confined to one or the other.
Lou: Was there any discussion at the time about racism or the racial inequalities that people in the band or the people in the club were experiencing that were different from your own experiences?
Louis: Well, there was a general recognition of inequality and there were plenty of times when people would complain, you know. The organ player was blind and he had a really tough time. He lived with a woman and they had a kid, and they were looking for services for the blind—there was plenty to talk about, how fucked up the system was. They didn't say, “for black people,” they just would say for us, you know, for me. And I witnessed that and I knew that was happening. But I think there wasn't, in my circle, motivation to protest inequality. It was more accepted, as a fact of life.
Lou: Do you miss that part of your life at all, being on the road with different people playing music?
Louis: No, I don't miss that part. I'm really glad I did it when I did. And I'm glad I found other things too. And that enriched my life, having other experiences and working in environmental policy.
Lou: And then you tried to make systemic change and came upon the hard, hard ways that that can work or not work. What takeaways do you have from that time in your life?
Louis: I think timing is really important. Networking is important, assembling the right factors at the right time to be successful.
One of the first successes I had was on an interracial effort to block a trash incinerator that was on its way to being built in the ghetto in South Central LA. Our academic group at UCLA partnered with a state senator who happened to be Latino, Art Torres. We pulled in the west side LA environmentalists who were white, this woman, Dorothy Green, who led Heal the Bay at the time. And then we partnered with two groups in South Central LA, Concerned Citizens in South Central, run by these two sisters, Sheila and Robin Cannon. Then there was another group by a woman named Juanita Tate. With the environmental and economic analysis we did at school and the pressure from the black and white environmentalists and the leadership of Senator Torres, we scuttled the incinerator. The City of LA had put out a million dollars in bonds already on it. So that was a big victory right away. And it was interracial, it was assembling the right factors at the right time with the right leverage, you know? So that was a lesson learned.
Then that started the modern environmental justice movement. Robin and Sheila Cannon went on to do great things, and one of them ended up working for Mayor Tom Bradley in LA and that really jump started a whole faction, if you will.
Lou: It's always inspiring to me how you had those two careers in your life, and now you're sort of on to your third career of enjoying your life unencumbered. Was it a hard transition to go from working and having such an identity in your work?
Louis: No, it wasn't. For me. Cause it felt like the right time.
Lou: Where does the family fit in with all that or the way that you think of different chapters in your life?
Louis: Well, I love my family. I have two wonderful children. I have a great life partner. It creates a lot of joy. And it creates a buttress against the oy. So, I'm blessed. My immediate family is strong and wonderful and we all get along, I think. I feel blessed. I feel for this phase of my life I've got a lot of joy to combat the oy and I feel privileged and fortunate. And you going to school in that program has made me look at my life and art and politics in a different way, an additional way. Adding another layer. So thank you for that.
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