Kitsch of July.

We live in a Brooklyn apartment; no basement or attic, so we have to rent a storage unit in one of those huge warehouses that used to be a factory for something. What’s stored there is a point of mild contention - things we thought we might need someday before we actually got to Someday, memorabilia of moments we’ve already forgotten, and tons of books, cds, tapes and tools that have since been replaced by weightless electronic versions.But deep within the melee are the holiday decorations: 12 sturdy plastic boxes of Christmas, 9 of Halloween, 5 of Easter, 2 with combined elements of Valentine’s, Mardi Gras, and St. Patricks, and only 1 for The Fourth of July.Christmas and Yule are all about lights. Tons of them. We have curated the colors somewhat and can no longer tolerate multiple blinkity strings going at the same time, but there are still enough that the room actually heats up a few degrees when we turn them all on.Halloween is EVERYTHING. Early on we discovered that some stores put Halloween items on super-close-out-sale to make swift way for Christmas decorations – if we went at just the right time we could clean up for the next year. This strategy has enabled us to surround ourselves each October with an ever expanding dynamic gallery of curiosities - pumpkin candles and plush screeching cats and REAL science lab equipment and teeny-tiny pirate skeletons and a talking (plastic) crystal ball and strings of orange lights.Easter is mostly plush rabbits. We’ve only bought one each year, but had the audacity to know one other for over three decades, so there are now (un-ironically) quite a LOT of bunnies. In addition, it is now tradition to place one fresh unopened box of yellow Marshmallow Peeps™ in the center of the fireplace mantel, with our light-up Peeps™ garland directly below it.Valentine’s is vintage greeting cards and red lights; Mardi Gras is beads and green, purple, and gold lights, and St. Patrick’s is music - and green lights. Fourth of July is all about fireworks and hot dogs, and we can’t decorate the apartment with either of those. I mean, we shouldn’t decorate the apartment with hot dogs: of course we COULD; that’s a keen example of the very freedoms the holiday represents.Nevertheless, instead of annual decorations of highly processed meats, plastic flags, and strings of red white and blue lights, I have put together over the years a small collection various oddities which at some point a retailer decided were “patriotic” and “desirable for purchase by a consumer”. In most cases, alignment with either or both of these categories was far from achieved, but they warm my heart with their creative enthusiasm.My absolute favorite Fourth of July item used to be our plastic Jell-O™ mold in the shape of the continental US, complete with little state lines. It is 14 inches wide and three and a half inches deep, requiring four boxes of Jell-O™ to fill. We have never attempted to use this item for its intended purpose because none of us are keen to consume twelve full cups of Jell-O™, even in the heat of the summer. Also, the idea of a wobbly USA kind of melting in the heat is a bit matchy-matchy with Right Now - feels more like a piece from the Whitney Biennial. In any case, last weekend it was surpassed by what I honestly consider to be the most fascinating and intriguing representation of national identity I have ever encountered:Two ceramic men, each holding one end of an unfinished cord on which hangs a three letter banner - U, S, and A. The rightmost figure appears of European descent, the other from the African Diaspora. One sports a hat of stars, the other, stripes. Wow, right? What a comment on the true nature of the USA - supported by tension and distance, interdependence on the existence of one another, yet made of a deep inherent fragility that discourages us from coming together. Wow. I told this to my wife, who listened dubiously, but pointed out that while everything I said was true, it was severely undercut by the fact that the figures were actually gnomes. Y’know, like garden gnomes. Tiny patriotic garden gnomes.And one is black. It’s the best 4th of July thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It was made in China. Fantastic. No notes. It makes zero sense and yet I cannot look away, because somebody said “let’s take that gnome machine we use to make December stuff and make some summer cash.” Innovation. Capitalism. MOXIE. That, is America right there. My wife wants the cats to find them. One would think you could classify such an item as “Americana”. Nope. Please do not investigate that term, as even the most perfunctory online search generates a gallery of “African American Collectibles” of a specific sort that ironically has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the word freedom, save to emphasize the overall importance of the concept.That is exactly the kind of imagery my new object negates - its unintentional whimsy stands firmly against crass misrepresentation, allowing my wild imagination to impose all kinds of more positive possible meanings.The most striking is perhaps an homage to the 1958 film “The Defiant Ones”, where Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis portray two escaped convicts on the run in the segregated South - connected by a chain they cannot break, forced to cooperate in order to move forward……except, you know, they’re gnomes. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe