Only a Tracy interview can run the gamut of proclamations of copyright by virtue of “the tag overrides the artist”, to the inflammatory politics of block dynamics in the Bronx in the ’70s, to defying Martin Scorsese casting choices on his own live set (on a subway platform… you know how this story’s gonna end). That’s only the tip of the iceberg of what this Vicious Penguin File reveals with Tracy168, the last file of this series.
In looking at the date of this recording, February 13th 2021 I realize we did a double-header that day.
While enjoying his bodega sandwich and chocolate ice-cream with its classic wooden paddle spoon, Tracy covers life before fat caps, his lettering technique for the trains. Always fascinating to me was how his mind processed letters and numbers. We learn the significance of 1, 6, 8, of M C A T, of other hidden names in his possession. And always the racial and respect politics of his block. He also asserts the underrecognized contributions of Latino and general Bronx culture in the birth of Hip-hop. Tracy didn’t like boundaries or uniformity in anything.
We both mess up Martin Scorsese’s name when discussing filming Mean Streets (and it is in these moments where I feel a comradery in upbringing in a specific NYC class and culture with him, where I stumble on words I later recognize my parents also pronouncing incorrectly, or differently, then what you hear in college and those circles). See Tracy’s gentler side as he clowns me on the evolution of the Tooth Fairy.
What I did not expect in readying this file for publication, which meant editing out parts Tracy asked me to, was how this file ends. Outside of an introduction to who Vicious Penguin was, I was somewhat random in the order of what I uploaded of these videos. I didn’t anticipate how this interview, the last one you’ll see both of us in together, ends.
Enjoy the file.
A bonus file will follow, but this marks the end of our “screen face-to- screen face interviews. Where you can see how he made me laugh and how my laughing made him push on more with a bigger smile, making me laugh harder. Tracy loved being social. The streets, the city, was home to him.
In reviewing these interviews I realize how much more we did not capture on video. How many stories exist within the confines of my words in notebooks. The hurried handwriting to catch up with his thoughts that I’d rush to implant anchors to when connecting the dots of his larger narrative, my job in this project we embarked on. Then he’d switch tracks and hop to another train, Vicious Penguin in pursuit. I call such things: wormholes.
We all live, and die, with our own meaningful metaphors.
-Stephanie
BONUS FILE A:
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