Out

We hadn’t been there long, in the house my wife and I bought on the Southside of Chicago with our two little girls and big dreams. A couple of years, while I struggled to get a steady job to supplement my wife’s income while still chasing my dream of being a minister and having a church of my own.

Next door was a Ghanaian family. A house full of boys shepherded by a kind mother and a dad who I only saw going to work, never coming home while I was outside in our meager backyard after my daily travails or even going and coming while running errands. The boys were full of energy and yelled and screamed and sang their boy song, but I never heard her yell. It seemed like a house full of love, even though I couldn’t imagine the dad being at home much.

On the opposite side, there was a huge vacant lot, where wild grasses grew and feral cats stalked birds and other small critters. On the other side of that lot was a couple who we happened to meet in our first couple of weeks in the house, after we’d moved our stuff in and was still figuring out where things went. He was tall, she was short, and they seemed nice enough. My wife listened closely as they talked to us about the neighborhood; the school in the next block that wasn’t very good, the apartment building across the street who had comings and goings at all hours.

But me and the husband started talking music, and everything I shared about my love for jazz, he’d mention a name or an album that I was motivated to find, or listen to. I loved Miles and Crane, and when I said so, he looked at his wife in a gesture I later took to mean as permission, a “can I?” She smiled at him and nodded, and despite my wife’s subtle nods, I was pulled into a conversation about music in heneral, and jazz specifically, that had me reaching for a piece of paper to write down the names and titles he had mentioned. He laughed ant my looking around, and said that he’d give me his number so he could just text me the stuff he was talking about.

Anyway, we didn’t hang out after that; just texts inviting me to go record shopping or something he thought I’d like. Once, apparently, they went somewhere, and the wife dropped her phone on the street while getting into the Uber. He texted me to ask me to pick it up and to keep it when they got home. Hours later, we answered the doorbell to a visibly relieved wife, thanking us over and over again for finding her phone and keeping it.

Truth is, Chicago wasn’t working out at all, job-wise or church-wise, and a friend ours advised s to look at Florida. The tax situation was great, and there was a small church, just built a few miles away that needed a pastor. God surely was speaking to us!

So we moved. I had my head down with the details of moving; furniture, moving trucks, utilities accounts, and I didn’t tell anyone that we were going. The Ghanian mom saw me one day amidst boxes and packing tape, and asked, and told us to go with God and all the blessings and all of that goodness.

I didn’t see the other couple at all. DIdn’t really think about them, really. In the summer, they would sit outside on their back porch and drink brown liquor and smoke cigars, and I would wave and yell hello, and they’d wave and say hi back. This was winter though, or fake spring, and they were nowhere to be seen. I had bigger things to do, like shepherding my family to a future that was warmer and with bigger upside.

He did text me once when we were gone, to ask what was up with the For Sale sign. I told him that we had moved, and while we had no issue with Chicago (we actually did) we found a better situation in Florida. He texted me back that he was sorry to see us go, that he wished us all the best of luck.I thought that was it.

A bit after this, my real estate person told me that we had a buyer. In our haste to get south and to make it so the agent could show an empty house, we moved a lot of stuff into the unattached garage. We had to go get it, so we told the girls that we were going to put them at their gram’s house for a few days while we took care of things without them underfoot.

We got back to Chicago in an empty uHaul truck amidst a heatwave. We stayed in the hotel during the day while the sun beat down, enjoying adult time and rest, then as the sun started to dip with the temperature, we headed to the old house. Only a couple days, we told ourself. We had forgotten what all we’d stashed in the tiny, one-and-a-half car garage.

I don’t know why I was surprised, and I don’t know how else to react, but I look up while hauling a rug to the trash and I see the couple sitting out back, sipping and smoking. I said nothing. No hailing, no “hey, just cleaning things out”, no nothing. And they didn’t try to get my attention, say anything at all to mark our return or point out the inevitability of us leaving again.

A friend of mine who plays a lot of online video games told me of a thing he finds funny and so awkward. Every now and again, he pairs with one or more players who seem to get along well, who experience a good run of success or memorable play, and inevitably comes the time where it gets late and someone begs off. “I have work in the morning.” “My girl’s been calling me for a while, I should go deal with that.” “I’m hungry, and them chips and Mountain Dew ain’t cutting it no more.” Everyone will say their goodbyes, languishing in a session that was successful. They’ll go offline, their indicator going from green to dark.

Ten minutes.

*bloop*

They’re back online again.

And here I was, back “online” after leaving, albeit without the good-natured farewells.

I never caught their eye as I toted things back and forth to the uHaul, but I know they saw me. They decided to remain silent as I had, smoking and sipping while faint snippets of their music reached me as I climbed into the cab of the truck to get to the hotel; we would hit the road early in the morning.

I heard Miles’ trumpet and Trane’s sax serenade me as I pulled away.

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More bookstore ruminations.

I’m a sucker for all things South. I admit that, and can do so in print or in pixels. A cover of some barn or plantation house or cotton field piques my interest. A location referenced, whether it be Jackson or Vicksburg or Nashville or Charleston makes me reach. “Y’all” is a soothing tang of a sweet glass of Kool-Aid that welcomes me to flip to the back cover.

I am interested, nay, vested, in stories about my adopted homeland. The unique people, places, and things. The coming to terms with a region that has, from its beginnings, have signaled low intellect, great food, thoughtful and kind people, and mosquitoes the size of small birds. A region replete with its risks and joys, consequences and politics, sauces and crops.

I am hungry for stories of all kinds. The coming of age story. The retirement story. The big city story, of Memphis and N’Awlins and Little Rock and Richmond. The small town, with red dirt and unpaved lanes and the general store run by an affable old guy or the city girl come back to run it after a time being the black sheep of the family. I need that in my eyeballs.

And, eventually, maybe I’ll write my own story. Of the city boy who visited a small corner of his mother’s Mississippi, and all of the family and Walmart’s and Jitney Jungles and Piggly Wigglys that were involved.

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HELLO FREN

I like to think of myself as a good judge of character. I don’t surround myself with bad people, or people who need to be convinced that morality, openness, honesty, and empathy are good things to have in their package of humanity. I don’t have people in my circle who stress me out, or make me question their intelligence, or cause me to make decisions that impugn my own morals and what I believe is right and important.

While I am thankful for all that, for having these people being comfortable parts of my life in the abstract, I am also very happy when it’s not so abstract.

In the past month alone:

-I bought two tickets to the Kendrick/SZA tour stop in Chicago, and my wife couldn’t go, and I knew who to call. A good friend of mine, as deep in the music as I am, was my first call. We had an absolute great time, and there’s a special kind of circumstance to have someone in mind when things happen.

-I was invited to dinner with another friend, and we ended up eating at a tapas spot. While we sat and talked and drank and people watched, she came up with a thought that became an essay that she sent to the New York Times and, well, it got published. In it, I am mentioned, so I can say that, in a small way, I made the New York Times.

-I’ve mentioned that I enjoy my back porch, and sit there whenever I can. What is amazing to me, and wholly appreciated, is when friends come by and share that space with us. Easy conversation, loud laughs, drinks and cigars and music. It is the kind of thing that makes great memories, and to have a roster of people who’ve come over and who wants to come over is a blessing.

-Some time ago, I went down a rabbit hole and found the existence of Carolina Gold rice, a historic foodstuff that was said to be a foundation of the antebellum era. I talked in mixed company about such, and, unbidden, someone sent me some! I cooked it the old way and loved it; you can do it like a risotto or bake it with salt and pepper. Just me going off on a tangent was enough to inspire this friend to investigate it for herself and decide that I should have some.

Friends are blessings.

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Hero origin story.

So, today, I had a Christmas Story moment.

At a bookstore close to where I work was an author event. Damon Young, author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, was in conversation with Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and a number of other books, to promote Young’s latest book, an anthology of Black American humor, called That’s How They Get Ya.

The event was delightful; there was a reading, there were jokes, there was introspection. While waiting for the event to start, I read the introduction and a few more pages, and I had to try not to laugh out loud in the store. It was funny, it was poignant, it elicited a response I hoped my work would.

After the reading and Q&A, there was a line to get the books signed. I got in line to get my book signed by Damon, and , well, I’m not proud. I had a total Christmas Story moment. Minus the shooting your eye out, of course.

Basically, what I wanted to ask was tangentially related to how I work. He name-checked a lot of people who contributed to the anthology, willingly praising them as the best of their genres. “Who would I want to do short stories? She got that covered. Why would I want to do poetry when he’s one of the best at it? Let me find my lane and stay in it.” I wanted to know how he persisted amongst his friend group who were so great and talented; why write at all? How can you manage to put pen to paper when it wouldn’t measure up? What if you don’t know your lane?

Instead, I asked something in such a way that was not what I asked and not what he took the question to be. It wasn’t quite “you want a football? How about a football?” but it was damned close.

But, what he did tell me wasn’t completely useless.

When surrounded by greatness, you elevate your game. Some days, you ain’t got it, he admitted. But some days he makes art worthy of the company he keeps.

And that’s what I’ll take with me.

To Kiese’s credit, I mentioned the town where my mother was born, grown up in, and lives south of the Jackson, MS he knows, and he knew what I was talking about IMMEDIATELY. “Oh, she in the COUNTRY!” I thanked him for putting his words down; I’d never read something like Heavy from someone in my age group, and to know that there were cats writing with the same cultural markers, of the same time period I came of age in, and with such force and deftness made me want to write.

And write I shall.

Posted on by ~tbg~ 0

Losing paper.

Went to see my fellow Comptonite Kendrick at Soldier Field last week, and while I enjoyed the show, what I was left wondering was that, fi I didn’t buy a shirt, would there be any tangible reminder of being there? If I didn’t spend $60 for a T-shirt or $130 for a sweatshirt, was there anything I could point to and say “I was there”? My ticket was electronic, as is what I suspect is the move these days in the live music space.

Going to see Damon Young tonight at an author event. He’s doing a Q&A and book signing for his second book. His first one, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker”, was great, and I’ve reread it more than twice. But it’s an ebook. Nothing he can sign.

I found my old ticket stub book, and while I haven’t put anything into it for years, I can still leaf through the pages and remember shows and games I’ve been to. Tangible memories, of paper creased and folded and smoothed over, bringing up questions. Who did I go with? What did I eat beforehand? Did I stay out the rest of the night, or did I take my ass home afterwards? Next to the pocket of the ticket in a few places, I’ve written some notes. “Homecoming.” “Went to Big Star after”.

We’re losing something with a move to digital. I’ve talked about the move from tangible to the digital in music and entertainment, but this weekend really brought home that there is so much more that were possibly missing, that those records of not only what we own but where we were, what we felt, what we did aren’t for putting into a cardboard box with “Memories” written in Sharpie on the side, but as a folder on our computer desktop.

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“Black fatigue”.

I read this.

And got incensed.

I’ll ignore the non-art application of that term, which I’ve seen in response to Black people being alive in spaces and demanding rights and such – “we are so tired of the Blacks!” – but we’ll move on and drill down to the subject this article tackles, Black art and Black people in art specifically.

The article itself does a great job in pointing out examples of such “fatigue” and the reactions to it. (I personally cannot type “fatigue” without rolling my eyes, reader, so just imagine that as you read.)

With the success, not only monetarily but culturally, of this year’s Met Gala, where Black dandyism was out and in full effect, it is noted that the very existence of Black people is enough to make folks roll their eyes. We are making art, we are contributors to the work..but folk are…tired of us.

And it is not a overexposure of theme, a rote stereotype. It boils down to erasure. Not “I’ve seen this a lot lately” to “I don’t want to see this again.” An instruction to be quiet, to not be so loud, to not be in those spaces anymore.

This isn’t a failure of Black art; it’s a design. Fatigue, in this co-opted sense, is a release valve for market pressure — a justification to discard Blackness when it no longer serves the public’s appetite for righteousness. In this way, the art world’s fatigue isn’t symptomatic of real exhaustion; it’s strategic engineering.

We are decried…until it’s politically expedient, or we cannot be ignored, or we speak up and deny the action. As Zora said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” If we say nothing while we shuttle in and out of “what’s cool” and “what we should pay attention to”, then they’ll have none of our contributions and be free to say “there went an unoriginal, barbaric, primitive people”.

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When there’s nothing there.

I remember visiting my old block.

I hadn’t been back in more than 20 years, but I was back in LA for a high school reunion, and I begged my then-girlfriend to drive me to my old house. I had planned this trip out meticulously; who I’d see, what I’d eat, things I needed to reconnect with after a long time away from the place I was born and raised.

We parked across the street from my old house, in front of a neighbor’s house which had housed a lot of the kids I played with from ages 6-16. Their house was up for sale, I could see, but the lawn I used to roll down was still evident. I resisted the urge to roll down said hill at my age and looked across at my old place.

I took pictures to send to my mother, so she could see that they cut our cypress trees. Had taken down our basketball rim. That our lawn now had a bunch of kids toys on it. I crossed the street, wondering how I could play football on it. This wasn’t the wide avenue of my childhood, it couldn’t be.

We left there, and I was…sad. Sad not for what was, but for what wasn’t. My childhood home now had a family in t I didn’t know making their own memories, and any hint or trace that we were even there was gone.

Evanston, Illinois, has a special place in my heart. Besides going to college there, a lot of my formative memories as a young adult were made there. I met some great people, did a lot of things in an environ that was a great incubator for me.

It’s also where my wife was born and raised, and after we got together, she shared with me a lot of Evanston I had previously been unaware of. The history of its interracial marriages. The mixing made possible by their high school. The places she’d go I had never heard of or couldn’t make it to because I had no car.

And in Evanston were her parents, still living in the same house that she and her two sisters were raised in. It was tiny by any standard, but we’d go once a month to visit her mom and dad and eat and talk and laugh with them, and small or not, I could see that house for its charm and the love contained within its walls.

A lot has happened since then; that may be an understatement.

The house was sold to another family making their own memory. The parents’ bodies are committed to the earth, memory still aflame in the personage of those they lived by and worked with.

We were talking the other day, my wife and I, and she mentioned that she had to go get an emissions test, and she was going to go the Evanston one, since it was off the beaten track, not many people know of it, and it takes less than 20 minutes.

She sighed, and said “There’s no one left to visit up there anymore.” And we got incredibly sad.

Trips to do stuff on the north side of Chicago or on the North shore was an excuse to drop by and see her parents. Even as they endured their last physical days, were still in the area making hospital visits and runs to their senior living apartment.

Now, no more. Her folks weren’t there any more. Her house was someone else’s house.

We’re not one to visit their graves often, and all the business that we had to take care of is long settled. What now? What is there besides memories, the old joyful ones drowned out by newer, rawer, sadder ones?

What is there?

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Hitting a moving target.

A few weeks ago, I began work on another edition of my newsletter. I usually start with some subject headers I want to talk about, then come back to them and fill them out as I’m thinking of them and thinking what to write. Rough outline, then more specific, you understand.

Of course, I wrote about the very large effect our political reality is having on our lives right now.

I went back to it last night, and those concerns I so lightly touched on, so delicately brushed over…are now moot. We are in a fresh NEW hell compared to just two or three weeks ago. That I was concerned about in the last of March now is cookie dough ice cream compared to now in the first weeks of April.

This is untenable.

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An afternoon on the other side of the city

Woke up with the thought to run around the city a bit, but decided to go back to my old neighborhood. After my divorce, I got myself a one-bedroom apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, a densely populated area with a ton of retail and public transport options on the north side of the city.

I ended up walking about 4 miles today, and as I always notice when I’m up there, I enjoy the vibes and what I’m able to do while I’m in the vicinity, but the reality is that those kinds of resources don’t exist on the south side where I live.

I had a list of things I wanted to do, but three were most important. One was to find a bottle of bourbon we can’t seem to find on our side of town. Two and three were more of my vices, namely, going to Unabridged Bookstore and visiting the Chicken Hut, both on Broadway.

I lived in that neighborhood for three years, in the days before Apple Watches and even Fitbits, and while I have no idea how many miles I walked, I stayed fit. The Belmont el stop was about three quarters of a mile away, there was a Walgreens two blocks away, a record store down the block, and a Chipotle on the corner. It was kinda perfect.

People who live there are very jaded with regards to having access to the stuff they have access to, but the old adage of “you don’t miss it til its gone” is pretty stark.

I walked into Unabridged with joy in my heart; I really enjoy bookstores in general, and I really enjoy that they cycle in art books and graphic novels, and their numerous placards explaining why a staff member likes some book or another litter the shelves. It feels like it’s run by people who like books, want you to like books, and will probably be first on the chopping block when neocon assholes decide to target independent bookstores that won’t bend to this anti-intellectualism/anti-“DEI”/anti-queer wave that’s permeating political America.

Anyway, I took my time there, and ended up buying a book and a tote bag with a great pen-and-ink drawing of the distinctive front of the building the bookstore is located. What happened next really made me happy…and sad at the same time.

Outside the front door, is a bench. An actual bench. An actual space where I could sit and rearrange my bags. There is a growing paranoia in urban areas that free seating attracts homeless people; how dare he homeless want to sit down! How dare they be outside! The side effect of this was that no one could sit, no one could rest without buying something in an establishment and basically buying the right to rest.

So I got to sit on that bench, unbothered and unfettered, and I thought about my present. Here I was, years removed from my home being a few blocks away, years removed from Obama and a new uncertain for me in a ton of ways. But my present is also populated by being cognizant of circumstances that made my present possible. Why are there so few benches? And to my wonderment, why can I not have this where I live now?

I got up after taking a breath, and went to Chicken Hut. Chicken Hut is on the corner, and specialized in roasted chicken served with a side, some salsa, and hot pita bread. My half chicken with fountain drink costs $18, and I sat and watched a Spanish broadcast of some soccer game. The fountain machine had Pepsi, and I had multiple cups of a fruit punch/pink lemonade mix.

It was the same meal I had had many times years ago, and when my parents came to visit me, I proudly paid for their quarter chicken with rice meals. It was a link to my past, and it was completely nourished my stomach and my soul; sometimes the good guys win, and in a neighborhood where the Chipotle is gone and a number of avant-garde spots have popped up, their success makes me happy.

As I rode home with my wife’s Chicken Hut order, traveling down Lake Shore Drive through downtown, I am thankful for the opportunity to do what I do, move how I move, and how I got to this point in my life.

Posted on by ~tbg~ 2

The Art of War

Explosions rocked the grassy terrain, kicking up huge clods of dirt and plant bits and critter offal into the air. Jeremiah’s tanks rolled on unaffected, taking up a flanking position to infantry on the ground advancing in the west. Behind them, artillery boomed, huge things that belched smoke and fire.

Jeremiah watched from his perch high above the fighting. He was curious as to the nature of war and, for all the books he had read about it, it seemed easy. He remembered Jonah, the bully in his third grade class, who had told him something totally meaningful. “It don’t matter how much heart you got, or whatever it is grown ups say,” he spat through three missing teeth. “It’s how hard you punch the other kid in the face. Heart don’t have shit to do with that.”

As Jeremiah looked upon his army, he noticed that he indeed had the capability to punch the other kid in the face pretty damned hard. He had read about flanking, and feints, and shock and awe. He listened as his dad, a veteran of what he called “The Keyboard Wars” wax poetic about psychological warfare, and of being right all of the time, and all of the wars he had participated in and won.

But here before him was war. Bombs and bullets and some lasers too. He imagined the drone jockeys in some far off bunker remotely controlling instruments of death from the comfort of their own work-from-home chairs.

He remembered a time where he had scrimmaged against his older brother Dion, who had moved on to greener pastures to civilian life. It was only once, but it had left a huge mark. Dion had left his army in shambles after only a few tactical maneuvers, putting his younger brother on the defensive quickly and tragically. Jeremiah remembered being angry in the moment, then wondrous, then accepting that he had much to learn.

But those lessons had a indelible effect. And now, while pitched battle raged below, he sat satisfied as divisions of man and machine plowed their way forward. 

So intent was he on the battle unfolding below that he didn’t hear the person coming up on him. Finally sensing someone else, he jumped and whirled around.

“My, you’re really into that,” his mother said, hugging him and getting down on the floor with him. “You playing war again?” She took care not to sit on any of the green plastic army men, the plushies, and assorted Legos. She did notice, however, a few of her hair rollers and a rubber ducky that had gone missing some time before had second lives as members of Jeremiah’s army and air force.

“Yeah!” Jeremiah exclaimed, eager to show his mother of plans well laid and battle well met.

rev2 – 3.12.25

Posted on by ~tbg~