: lower black pain.

Hyperthemesia sounds exhausting. It’s exhausting to say, quite honestly.It is the rare ability to accurately remember nearly every day of one’s life in absolute detail - what you wore, ate, saw, said, and did. Every day.Of course there are days that I remember…well, pieces of days. Mostly glimpses: brief sequences - photographs, edits. My memories are clearer and more distinct when associated with an object - a favorite shirt or beloved comic book - but at their strongest when paired with either an odor or sound. I cannot tell you what I was doing 40 years ago today, and there’s probably a photo in our library of what I was doing 25 years ago, but still I do not remember it.But I can tell you, with confidence, exactly what I was doing 54 years ago during the summer of 1972.I was listening to music.The top hits of 1971 lacked... empathy, somehow. And 1973 was too showy - too variety-show-ready.It was 1972 where I absorbed everything that I love about music. Check out a playlist of hits from that year: they are awash with cacophony: rich strings with rhythmic horns with toy pianos with overdubbed harmonies and the occasional cheeky Hammond organ. There is so much MUSIC in this music.And the variety. Lean On Me by Bill Withers, American Pie by Don McLean, Heart Of Gold by Neil Young, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack, The Candy Man by Sammy Davis, Jr, Take It Easy by the Eagles, Song Sung Blue by Neil Diamond, Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations…For me, these songs are visceral. They are hypnotic, time machines, siren song. And I discovered them all through the combination of Kansas City’s stalwart Soul and Adult Contemporary radio stations and a bright orange Radio Shack™ FlavorRadio™. It was amazing - you could hear music in the yard when you were trimming the sides of the grass, or in your room when you were (supposed to be) cleaning it or AT NIGHT when the world was (supposed to be) asleep. And for FREE. Miracle box. Thus listening to music is what I was doing that summer.The story my Mom tells is that as a tiny baby I was much so much soothed by music that she put a radio in my crib with me (at a safe distance).As a single parent, she couldn’t always “sleep when the baby sleeps”, and no one had yet invented the “let the baby piteously cry itself to sleep” strategy, so the radio solved two problems by allowing her to get me to sleep quickly and then use the time to do the dishes and boil the bottles and get a little sleep of her own. However, it did have one down side.R&B, rock and roll, and classical music all made me MORE awake and volatile, resulting in either fretting or dancing about (in a prone little baby position). The key to relaxation was country music.“Oh, come on little baby, now listen to this…” she would say, tuning to Bach or Smokey Robinson - to no avail: I was calmed only by the twang of a steel guitar. Even if she tried to change it after I’d fallen asleep, I would immediately stir with concern.So a few years later, when she discovered a super-affordable plastic radio WITH AN EARPHONE JACK, it seemed that God had heard her those many nights she lay in bed, unintentionally learning every word of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, and had offered her a transistor-powered solace.So I listened to every radio station. I kind of knew there was a Black one and then other ones, but I listened anyway.My favorite songs of 1972 were “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “A Horse With No Name” by America (my favorite horse song until “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey (sp) in 1975)……and number one - “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts (not to be confused with Sid and Marty Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf fame).I liked this one so much that my mom actually bought me the single. I remember listening to it over and over, watching it spin around and around on the record player, trying to work out the lyrics.Even at that young of an age, I knew that most of these songs were about love, which seemed nice, but was a bit confused when lyrics became poetic and metaphorical. (I actually appreciate that now: the 1972 lyric “makin’ love” would be replaced in today’s music with unmistakably graphic step-by-step instruction.)What confused me most about “Summer Breeze” was its referrals to jasmine, mentioned in the song seven times. I had already been confused by Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” references to “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme”, which the nuns played on the guitar sometimes during chapel at school. I didn’t understand the “Herb / Love” angle, though it did make Thanksgiving more exciting, since that’s the only time I saw all of those at once.But jasmine notwithstanding, I clearly remember standing at the edge of our console record player, staring at the revolving turntable, singing along with both the lyrics and the strangely satisfying notes of the twangy guitar solo. And I did feel fine.Songs of 1972 Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

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

Commencement speeches are engineered to inspire those beginning a new phase of life. They are meant to be epic, a benediction offering direction, courage and motivation, an address to the fresh battalion, a manifesto unique to a specific group of people and moment in time. I’ve been watching a lot of them online recently: movie stars, scientists and comedians dressed in colorful and entirely unearned robes and mortarboards, reading words most likely written by roomfuls of America’s most lauded professionals. O, how the young near-graduates laugh!About three quarters of the way through, these speeches always turn serious, offering heartfelt pleas to “always be yourselves” or “don’t let the b******s get you down” before rising to an inspirational and lightly tearful summit. We get one these speeches the end of high school, maybe a few more if we choose to go to college or graduate school, but that’s it. We deserve more of these. They are admittedly wasted on anxious young people mere minutes away from the freedom to not follow anyone’s advice.That being said, I did not remember who spoke at my own graduation. I had to look it up. It was Stephen J. Gould, zoologist, a very accomplished Harvard professor who wrote numerous books concerning evolution, stood against cultural oppression, spoke five different languages and loved baseball, books and light opera. A leader in science and history, the Library of Congress described him as “a living legend”. I do not remember a single word he said at that ceremony. I also did not remember the then-president of the university’s closing speech (I found a quote online from the school newspaper):“…our experiment in creating a republic of virtue passes to your hands…the civic ideal in America is your conception to grapple with, for better or worse.”Well, I should have paid more attention to that. Though now it seems a bit of a lazy hand-off, a toss of the national car keys with a tepid “…it only takes premium gas and there isn’t a spare tire…but, y’know, good luck with it.” Lest you now believe I am just a fanboy of ceremonial oratory, I must explain that what I’ve sought from these speeches was comforting, useful advice from people older than me, who were “there before me”, in the style of Yoda, or Uncle Ben, or Mr. Miyagi, or any role played by Morgan Freeman.Problem 1 - there are so many fewer people ‘older than me’ now. It’s hard to find anyone on my subway car who might have seen “Gilligan’s Island”.Problem 2 - it’s impossible to have been HERE before me because NOBODY has been HERE before. This time and space is bananas. We live in a combination of Wonderland, The Matrix, and wherever Milo’s car went when he entered The Phantom Tollbooth. At school, I had been carefully prepped to take on the world that existed at that time - at the end of my graduation ceremony I threw a hat in the air and stepped bravely into a whirlwind of what I believed to be predictable instability. What possible advice could anyone have offered on that day that would have successfully charted a course through the internet and smart phones? It would be petty to blame the hyper-genius zoologist, who very likely said something super useful like, “Evolve!”… but I wasn’t paying attention.Now I’m Morgan Freeman. I’m the old person. In a mentor role I speak calmly to expectant faces who look to me for virtual pins to drop in the map app on their metaphorical life-phones: direction, paths through the chaos. I do not have a room filled with WGA writers, so “don’t look down” is the best I’ve got. Back when everyone was taller than me, I used to look up more than I looked down - classroom blackboards, movie screens at the multiplex, the sky outside. I held the books I read in front of my uplifted head, never down at my belly. And I didn’t just look up - I looked out, away from myself, navigating the immediate challenges of physical space rather than the potential dreads of an endless digital universe. Don’t look down. No matter what your life brings, meet it eye to eye. Live where you are. Ok, well, even back then I didn’t pay attention all the time, but at least my head was filled with my own memories and experiences. For instance, once I was stranded on a desert island with a movie star, a professor, and this girl named Mary Ann… Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

They were freebut did not knowBut they were always freeuntil somebody kidnapped themtransported them by seaand took their language, names and historyand held them in captivityuntil December 1865 when that was legallyabolished and prohibitedacross the USAgood news for alllaw of the landpeace in our timeall bonds releasednew national realityno human would be propertybut they did not knowbecause in some remote locationon a profitable plantationsomeone heard this news andsimply did not pass it on.a legislative victory which now seemed doomed to failin areas where words sat stagnant like unopened mailso they were free,but did not knowfor knowing was the keyto unlock rusty shackles of the past two centuriesbut stories spreadword gets aroundand through the sonic undergroundthose last to hear were finally foundgood news for ALLLAW of the landALL BONDS RELEASED Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Allow me to begin by firmly stating that every day is a “loving day” at our house, a so-pleasant stream of consideration, kind words, pleases and thank yous, and (very often) unsolicited cups of tea. Which is all very nice, but during this exact time of year such Loving shines a bit brighter, as we collectively remember that the legal right for our family to exist in the United States is one and a half years younger than I am.In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a married couple, Mildred and Richard Loving, who nine years earlier were arrested in their own house for the crime of being a married couple, which was illegal in the entire state of Virginia (which was their home) between any African-American and European-Based person (which they were, respectively). Punishment for this crime ranged from one to five years in prison, but the Lovings received a light sentence of just a few nights in jail (even though Mildred was pregnant) followed by absolute banishment from the state of Virginia for the next 25 years…so, 1992.But they persevered, and made their case, and nine years later Loving v. Virginia was heard in the Supreme Court, who decided in their favor with a decision that not only made interracial marriage legal in Virginia, but in all the 15 other states in the U.S. with comparable laws. The couple was able to move back home with their children and re-unite with the rest of their families, without fear of further litigation. The Virginia win was particularly symbolic as a law of this kind had been active in that state for over 300 years. So, you know…older than the nation itself.In 2007, Ken Tanabe, child of interracial couple, decided that remembrance of this historic case should be an annual tradition. So every year, on June 12th, a national celebration of the striking down of the legal ban against interracial marriage occurs. It’s called Loving Day, the world’s largest celebration of multicultural families. There are picnics and get-togethers and meet-ups and whatnot all over the country.This year is the 19th celebration, and the 58th year since the verdict. Again, I am older than that court decision, yet live everyday in its glorious benefit.And I in no way take lightly that we got married in 1992, the original date the Loving’s banishment was to finally end - without their fight, our story would never have begun.A smooch on the cheek should not feel comparable to grand larceny, yet Loving Day reminds me and mine of how lucky we are that there were brave and noble warriors who were determined to make “us” possible. In fairy tales, heroes battle for magical rings or enchanted swords that hold the power to move mountains, destroy evil, or transcend time and space. All of the miles that they walk, puzzles they solve, and giant spiders they avoid or defeat (there are always giant spiders) are part of a quest for something ethereal, timeless, and for the most part unobtainable by the normal human/hobbit/wizard/scoundrel.In real life there always seem to be battles going on, and certainly within those battles are heroes, brave and true, but I sometimes find it difficult to identify the ring/sword/key/prize of it all, save the end of the actual battle. So often folks fight for FREEDOM!™, which sounds like a glorious prize demanding a parade of long colorful banners and golden trumpets, but more often represents the protection of our quietest moments – where we sit on a specific spot, or read a book, or hold somebody’s hand.At the end of the day, that’s what’s worth fighting for. Every birthday cake, folded sock, homework assist, and Friday Night Kitchen Dance Party holds deeper weight when I consider that it could just not be there, that the wonderful random circumstance which brought us together could have been swallowed by social madness had not heroes quested - not for riches or for power, but for each another.Thank you, Mildred and Richard. The very idea of ‘Loving’ means more now because of you both. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t know if you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis, but your disbelief can calmly hover regarding the existence of time machines because I have one - and this week, I’ve used it to bring my very first guest to this column: Judge Cordell D. Meeks Sr. : my grandfather.My Time Machine is the cassette tape. Back in The Day we’d use it to curate a completely original 60, 90, or 120 minute experience, then physically hand it to another person to decode privately on their own tape device. The simplicity of its technology allows the cassette tape to capture sound as well as its surrounding context: the background noise and echo of a room, the voice of a DJ coming in at the end of a song recorded from the radio, even the age induced increase of hissing and pops enhance and define the moment captured on tape.In this case, in 1984 my mother assisted my grandfather as he rehearsed a speech written for the Elks Association’s annual convention; she had the idea of recording it, which he did several times. The cassette ended up at our house with all our other tapes, which I (of course) saved in various shoe boxes stuffed in a quite large trunk. Last month, while constructing an archival website about my grandparents, I found the tape and used software to isolate my grandpa’s voice. I could say “…the text of this speech is so relevant thatmy grandfather could have been written it today. “I could say that. It’s actually true. The craft of the writing is crystal clear, classic, still feels contemporary: apart from the specific “current” references, the rest could have been written yesterday. So again, I could say that.But it wouldn’t be entirely accurate, because my grandpa ’s writing style, however superlative, is not the sole reason the piece feels contemporary, for while my grandfather could have written this piece today, it may have less to do with my grandfather and more to do with today. 42 years is a long time. There’s not that many topics one could write a speech about, then just repeat that speech after nearly half a decade. Anybody wanna hear about how I played Tetris on my Tandy 1000 computer?At the time of this recording, my grandfather had retired from the bench; he was enjoying a life of reading and fishing and community service. I would call him exactly a month later to tell him I was going away to college. My grandfather was easygoing, focused, and empathetic, having navigated two World Wars and the entirety of the U.S. civil rights movement.This speech was not in complaint, it was a battle cry. It was a torch being passed down to someone. But SURELY not the audience - men at least as old as himself, most of them also retirees. So who was this supposed to inspire?Time Machine. I believe that the men in that room heard a speech that he had already given, on this cassette tape, to me, as an anchor for a time when the legislation of human dignity, carefully constructed from the experience and will of the public, was in danger of being dismantled. What follows is an excerpt from the 1984 speech “Fight For Right”, from our first guest writer, The Hon. Judge Cordell D. Meeks, Sr.“…as we pause and reflect, we discern that our inventory of rights and freedoms may be dwindling and eroding to an alarming degree…Today, not only are affirmative action programs being challenged in the courts, but the United States Justice Department is joining the challengers… Some of our greatest gains in the Civil Rights Movement have come through the courts. But just recently it has been suggested that the power of the courts be curbed, so that they will be limited, if not prohibited, from making decisions affecting civil rights. If that should happen the cause of human and civil rights could be set back for a century.But we must not let that happen. We must not let that ever happen. We must resist that and all other moves which would set us back. We must not suffer our children or our children’s children to face an uncertain future of re-segregated schools, of discriminatory housing, of unfair employment practice, and the denial of the freedom to register and vote. We shall not slide back into the cesspool of social, political, and economic slavery. Our backs will never again bear the bloody welts of the ugly whip of racism. We shall not sit in the easy rocking chair of complacency and watch our freedoms fade away.To avoid that disaster we know that mere words are not enough. There are those who think that working at our jobs, paying taxes, and obeying all the laws will guarantee our freedom of first class citizenship-but being just a good, honest, law abiding citizen is not enough. Being hard workers in our occupations and proficient in our professions is not enough. So if we are to turn back the tide that attempts to push us back into the place we found ourselves after the Civil War and Reconstruction days, after World War I and World War I!, if we want to keep what we have, recover what we had, and gain what we deserve, we must come together for the common cause of freedom. We must work for the total eradication of the last vestige of second class citizenship.As a prelude to the accomplishment of those goals, we must carefully choose our leaders in both public and private life.We need strong leaders upon whose characters the most stinging envy can find no stain. Leaders who will be bold, fearless, and uncompromising. Leaders tough enough to weather the storm of temptation. Leaders who will ask “What’s in it for us?” and not “What’s in it for me?” Leaders who will fight for right. We must use the powerful weapon of the ballot. We must support those public officials whose records clearly indicate beyond a reasonable doubt that they want freedom for all.If we follow that course, I believe that through our prayers, through our work, through our unselfish dedication to the principles of fair play and freedom and our unfaltering faith in almighty God, we will succeed.” Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I realized this week that there is a story I have skipped, a fixed point in my timeline that was seminal to my understanding (such as it is) of the world. Given the “generational grimoire” intent of this column, I will tell it now. Perhaps the telling will reveal the reasons I took so long to tell it. Let’s see.Velcro. I loved it in high school. An engineering miracle. Velcro was a piece of The Future that was part of your wardrobe, like wearing a LASER. The fact that, every so often, the loop side would get stuck in my hair in no way disenchanted my fascination with the stuff. It could fasten a shoe, secure a watch to your wrist, and (most impressively) effectively seal the flap of a waterproof polyester winter coat, like the one my mother sent me freshman year of college.The coat was cranberry red, had a special pocket for a tape cassette Walkman™ and a built-in channel for the headphone cord to travel to the hood without exposure to the elements. SO. COOL.I wore it with pride. It had something like 12 pockets. No one had ever seen anything like it. I called my mom to thank her, and was surprised when she apologized.“I know they must be wearing fancy coats up there…I wish I could get you a camelhair coat.” she said.I didn’t know what that was. There wasn’t an internet for me to look it up on, but what I imagined was more Bedouin than Burberry.My mother has always admired two styles of “formal” coats. One is the trenchcoat, the London Fog™ brand.The other is the camelhair coat, which she finds very fancy.* First of all, it is light colored, which means you have to have the sort of lifestyle where your coat doesn’t come in contact with anything that could possibly put dirt on it.* Then, it isn’t really all that warm, which means you have to have a lifestyle where you go from a hot car directly into a warm building all the time, so no parking and walking… this coat is strictly chauffeur-driven.* Third, it isn’t really waterproof, which means you have to have the sort of lifestyle where if there’s rain outside, you’re not going to come in contact with it.A camelhair coat is not for putting groceries in the car, or shoveling snow, or even getting the mail. In her eyes, a camelhair coat is more than an elegant piece of outerwear, but stands as a clear indicator that one’s lifestyle is quite a few steps above merely comfortable.All that being said, I really, really liked that Velcro coat.In the interest of time we flash forward 10 years. Zoe and I have moved to the east coast - she’s in school in Westchester and I’m sharing a railroad apartment in the East Village while holding down an entry level secretary job in a midtown ad agency. Times being what they were, and salaries what they weren’t, I quickly learned necessary skill sets for survival: dinner at “happy hours” where the purchase of one (discounted) cocktail allowed access to buffets as vast as they were middling. I kept a box of Ziploc™ bags at my work desk, having been inducted into a secret society where, after a sumptuous client meeting, we would each receive a call to hurry to the abandoned conference room and scavenge the leftover lunch items. Filled with the sparkle of youth, I happily walked the 37 blocks to and from work to save on subway fare, and once a week I would get that one slice from the corner pizzeria… no, not that corner, the other one with the really good pizza.A block from that pizza place was the Tile Bar. We just called it that…at the time there wasn’t a sign or anything. Given that my roommate’s financial situation was a great deal more liquid than my own, she frequented the spot, meeting associates from work there, university chums, etc. It was a very small space, but with its golden lighting, large windows and glass door, Tile Bar presented a 1930’s party spirit, where everyone in there was happy.One winter night walking home with my roommate we happened to pass by, and she wanted to stop in and see if anyone she knew was there. I waited outside - peering in the doorway like a Charles Dickens waif, when a gentleman from the far side of the bar saw me and rushed toward me, hands outstretched.I couldn’t possibly owe him money because I didn’t have any to lend, so I didn’t have any idea why he - “…you’re Jd Michaels!”“I am.”He grabbed me by the lapel of my coat (still polyester), pushed me outside the door and slammed me against the bar’s outer wall. “I saw you in school. You did everything.”“I probably should have done less and studied more…” “No, you weren’t afraid of what people thought of you. Were you? WERE YOU?”Again, he had a WWE wrestler grip on my lapels.“No”, I honestly replied (though under considerable duress). “What are you doing now?”I told him - secretary at an ad agency, no money, wife upstate at school… “Are you happy?”“Yeah - but look at you! You look fantastic.”And he did. In fact, he was wearing a camelhair coat. I tried to calm to tone of the conversation.“So, what are YOU doing?” “Wall Street. It’s b******t. We work 20 hours a day but I’m only doing it for the money for 10 years, but they say it’ll take 30 off my lifespan.”“That sounds awesome.” It did not sound awesome. “It’s not.”I did not know who this man was, but I decided, given the circumstances, to be fully transparent. “Dude! I LITERALLY have nothing! I live down that street behind you with the friendly drug dealer on the corner in an eight by ten room! You are the dream. My mother would applaud for 10 minutes straight if you walked off the plane instead of me! Your haircut is worth more than my grocery budget!” “But you’re happy.”“You’re not happy?” “Come here -”Not giving me much of a choice, he let go with one hand and pulled me to the glass door with the other. “See that girl?”“The blonde movie star girl?” This was an accurate description. Her hair was a miracle, her coat entirely impractical, her perfect teeth evident from 50 feet away. “Yeah. She’s my girlfriend.”“Oh, well…that’s cool, right? That’s gotta be nice.” “SHE doesn’t LOVE me…I couldn’t afford to even talk to her if I wasn’t at this job, and I hate this job! Does your wife love you?”Yes, she did. “Yeah, she does.” “Listen to me: you’re happy. You may not understand it now, it seems like you’re poor or whatever, but you’re happy. That’s what happy is. You made good decisions and didn’t go with the crowd or whatever. You’ve got to keep doing that. Promise me! Don’t let this happen to you!”And there on the cold winter street, in his gorgeous yet impractical coat, he started crying. So I gave him a big hug and said,“Ok, man.”I eventually got a better coat, but I can tell you honestly after 30 years, I have rarely had better advice. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Each night at our home, in those twilight moments betwixt dinnertime and bedtime, I wash the dishes.It’s the end of the day, days long and deep and somewhat stressful, but a wholesome meal and bright conversation at the dinner table have soothed me, and all I have to do is make a clean bridge from that delicate balance to well earned slumber……so I wash the dishes.But every so often, there at the sink, my mind would drift back to the stress of the day, and as I turned off the kitchen light I knew that sleep would be elusive, and fitful, and fretful.So I employed a mollifying strategy - placing my iPad where the water (probably) wouldn’t hit it, I watched re-runs of tv shows I was too young to watch at the time (M*A*S*H), didn’t see all the way through (Gilmore Girls), or wasn’t subscribed to the service they were on (Westworld).This was Plenty Distracting, but I soon learned that the material had to be very specifically curated - exciting enough to keep me from snoozily dropping a soapy glass, simple enough to follow without staring at the screen, and - most importantly - optimistic enough to provide sufficient emotional buoyancy to float my weary spirit off to bed.In the years I’ve been doing this, many shows have competed for the crown, but I believe that I now have a winner: the 1977 science-fiction classic: “The Bionic Woman”, starring Lindsay Wagner.I was only eight years old when The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on ABC - the story of Steve Austin, an astronaut who suffers a terrible spaceship accident, requiring replacement of his eye, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provide him increased strength, speed and agility.Somewhere in his third season he got a girlfriend, who, as bad luck would have it, suffered a terrible skydiving accident, requiring replacement of her ear, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provided her with increased strength, speed and agility.Lindsey Wagner’s guest starring role as tennis pro turned reluctant superhero Jaime Sommers was supposed to be a limited deal, since her character died at the end of the two episode run. But THOUSANDS of letters were written, so she became the first female lead of a sci-fi tv show in history.Soon, her worldwide ratings outpaced that of the Bionic Man, because her show, with the exact same premise as his, just felt different. Where Steve ran after a different villain every week (in slow motion), Jaime had a real job as a teacher and did all her adventuring on weekends and bank holidays. Where Steve was all power punches, Jaime was more of a MARVEL hero, with her intelligence, deductive reasoning, and empathy as her true advantages. Even their metal lunchboxes were different - Steve’s had him fighting Bigfoot on the front, and Jamie’s showed her teaching fifth grade history.She was a bright new story to tell, but it WAS made in the 1970s, so on last night’s episode, Jaime very reluctantly entered a national beauty contest to retrieve a “space age microchip device” (which was the size of a medium apple). There was lots of action, but there was still a swimsuit competition, and for her talent portion she performed the song “Feelings”, North America’s closest ever imitation of a Eurovision entry.Jaime Sommers has always been one of my favorite characters: she was gifted and talented before her bionics, and her kindness didn’t suffer when she got them. She was smart, and she was nice, and she was hard working - all which I was instructed to strive for.But I connected most with the fact that she was consistently underestimated by everyone. As a kid of a specific sort, I knew what that felt like.And one had to admit that while being a he-man hero type was all that Steve Austin really had to do, Ms. Sommers held down a full-time career in primary education and was a superhero on top of all that. Like Jaime, my mother was a fifth grade teacher, plus I had figured out that at least half the things Mom did at home everyday must've traditionally been “Dad” stuff to do, so she was technically triple-booked, and busier than Jaime was.The Bionic Woman lasted three seasons on two networks for a total of 58 episodes, which for me translates into just under two months of KP duty. So until mid-July I will stand at the sink, occasionally making that oddly percussive “tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee” sound to indicate when I’m using my bionic strength, just like Jaime does. Just like I used to do in fifth grade. And high school. And a few times in college, when I was lifting something heavy. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I used to have to read the book before I saw the movie.My prime example is Jack M. Bickham’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a 1975 summer family film that I earned a ticket to upon completion of the paperback. Disney changed a great deal from the original novel (its first line is, “The fact that John Wintle was drunk didn’t matter.”) and I had to discuss, compare, and contrast the two versions of the story with my Mom after seeing the movie.(We did stuff like that a lot. I’m lucky that my last name wasn’t Tenenbaum).The deal only worked for screenplays based on pre-existing books: “novelizations” of screenplays were considered cheating. It was important to begin with the original story before any adaptations were considered.Ok. Tie a ribbon around a finger to remember all that for a minute.I drove through Brooklyn in the early afternoon on this Spring’s first bright, dry and warm Saturday. Fresh from a triumph at Whole Foods (my Prime Code had discounted eight dollars and thirty-seven cents from my weekly total), I felt that I was at last emerging from both winter’s frozen desert and my last six weeks of dire allergy and illness. The universe and I were in some kind of sync again, moving slowly forward.This calmed me, because I’m gonna need all the help I can get this summer - New York is gonna be crazy with World Cup games, a potential basketball championship, and the city’s largest ever “Fleet Week” celebration, where record numbers of maritime vehicles and visitors will celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. Navigation through all of that is going to be particularly challenging, but while the intricacies of international soccer dominate the news, I am personally focused on the sestercentennial.Which is why it seemed particularly significant when, at a stop light, a man walked past wearing a dull purple t-shirt with thin yellow lettering that read,AMERICAIS AN IDEAThere was no modifier for the direct object. Not, “America is a great idea” or “cool idea” or even “bad idea”. Thus, the t-shirt was impossible to refute while strangely non-political due to its unique color scheme which plainly avoided every possible hue of red, white, or blue.At the next stop light I looked up the word “idea” in the OED on my phone:idea /ʌɪˈdɪə / ▸ noun 1. a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action 2. an opinion or belief 3. a defined aim or purpose 4. (from the philosopher Kant) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience.This offered less clarity than I’d hoped, steering my interpretation of the shirt’s message in four different directions: America is a thought suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion or belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience.Hmn.The rest of my drive home was a ponder.The Bicentennial was bonkers. Every magazine from People to Playboy to Time proudly featured a waving flag on their cover. There were collectible quarters, half dollars, and two dollar bills (and soda cans and jelly jars). There were minute-long historical lessons during prime time TV network commercial breaks. EVERYTHING was red, white and blue (ice cream, t-shirts, gum, bathroom tissue, lighters, sport shoes, breakfast cereals, chainsaws...), and the unofficial yet universal tagline representing the event, which we saw EVERYWHERE, read: “The Spirit of ’76”.I have not yet noticed the same kind of enthusiasm regarding this July. I thought it was just me, since when I was 10 years old, 200 years was a vast expanse of 20 lifetimes, and now 250 is just a wee bit over four.Context, perspective, exhaustion - don’t know exactly why, but I just don’t feel the old “Spirit of ’26” (which doesn’t really work because it lacks that self-aware ambiguity of “1776 or 1976?”).There will be fireworks, but there’s always fireworks. There will be bumper stickers and t-shirts, but the “Spirit” of the holiday seems to have shifted in the last (yikes) 50 years.You know. The “idea” of it.So I took into account that full OED definition. America is a thought, suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion, a belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience.Thoughts, opinions, and concepts seem flimsy materials to build a nation out of - very “first and second little pig” architectural standards.Belief, aim, and purpose sound sturdier - solid bricks to form a foundation, and the group of documents known as the Charters of Freedom - the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution - are those bricks for the United States - our original national software.I have only read the Constitution once, decades ago. And despite the fact that I’ve memorized most of the musical “Hamilton”, I have only read twelve of the Federalist Papers. I have experienced more of these works through, embarrassingly, other peoples thoughts and opinions of them. So - The Apple Dumpling Gang.In the next seven weeks, I am going give all of these original documents a fresh read. First of all, it represents a low-level dedication to the concept of citizenship. Second, I owe my mother an apology for making gentle fun of her a decade ago when she spent an entire weekend painstakingly reading the entire iTunes contract before clicking the “AGREE” button to update it, for that is the kind of logic this undertaking mirrors, and the level of concentration I now must employ.Before our sestercentennial I will (hopefully) deepen my understanding of the ideas which form this nation, strengthening my position that America is not “a concept not empirically based in experience”, because our experience IS America, all of it, good and not-so-great. There should be room in these documents to fit those experiences. And once I’ve read the book, this movie should make more sense……right? Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

This time of year is CRAZY busy, with May Day and Mother’s Day and Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo and our anniversary and Eurovision and Beltane and Free Comic Book Day… the days are just packed.Mixed into this is the birthday of this column, which is technically the second Thursday in May, which means that this is the week we mark the completion of four years of :lowerblackpain, together. Somewhere a medieval Warner Bros. cartoon herald is playing one of those long gold trumpets.Thank you for your time, and your company.Let’s review:I am still actively archiving that box of videotapes:* https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/that-boxful-of-magical-time-ribbons, with the humbling understanding that No One Cares, Or Ever Will. I am not Barack Obama or Ernest Hemingway and my memories and bric-a-brac will never be stored at the perfect humidity and temperature behind glass under tasteful lighting. It’s…just not that kind of party for me, and I accept that.However, I am still trying to USE all these bits of time, like a magpie trying to build a nest from branches, twine and Starburst™ wrappers. I realize now that I may need to move into the realm of fiction writing in order to gain a more generous canvas. In the province of imagination, my card tricks and science experiments can dance jauntily to the bossa nova soundtrack I’ll make on that tambur I brought back from Istanbul. Where IS that thing? Hold on……found it. I have zero idea how it’s supposed to be tuned, but I haven’t approached it in years because I didn’t have time to properly learn how to play it and wanted to show one of the world’s oldest instruments the respect it absolutely deserves. Ah, the stalwart determination of the Young.Feh. No time for all that nonsense now. I’ve got to get started on my third act. I’ll just make it up. Ok, maybe I’ll look it up on YouTube. I enjoyed the singing so much for this year’s Halloween Costume -* https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/life that I actually finished a song and sang it live for an entire room of classmates at a school reunion earlier this year. It reminded me how much I like to just belt out a tune, and how punishable by local law that is in Brooklyn apartment buildings. But there’s always the car, where the whole family can join in, and the good folks at Apple™ provide an endless cornucopia of musical choices. While Queens of the Stone Age is the family’s official favorite band, for in-the-car sing-along purposes my daughter develops these dynamic playlists of artists like The Jackson 5, The Cure, Dee-Lite, Stormzy, BTS, Chase and Status and Becky Hill, and David Bowie. It’s fun.I may have mentioned at some point that The Partridge Family was a seminal influence on my grade school life, and for a fleeting moment as a little kid I dreamed of growing up and singing with my wife and family. But then I saw The Sound of Music, and thought, well, maybe not.I would like to be able to say “that my kettlebell is going well”, mostly due to the rhyme scheme, https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/the-winter-of-this-content, but it hasn’t taken off quite yet. There were various Winter illnesses to contend with and a bit of confusion as to the proper technique. My family pointed out that most of the kettlebell enthusiasts online look like inverted squat isosceles triangles with a little circles on top for heads. I might be able to rock an inverted trapezoid resemblence, but don’t think I can rock that Tolkienesque Dwarf Warrior build. Maybe if I grow my beard out, like, a lot.Well, THANK YOU once again for dropping by. You’re always welcome. Next week I’ll be starting the fifth year (yikes) of :lowerblackpain, and for a guy who writes about the past so much, I’m actually really excited about the future. Meet you there. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Dorothy Parker is my favorite writer. She was born in 1893; by the 1920’s she was one of the most famous writers in America, with an unmatched rapier wit and seemingly endless supply of clever verses.Much of her work was famously collected in “The Portable Dorothy Parker” a rather thick volume covering the majority of her fiction and reviews. I’ve had five copies (I gave two away as gifts).She moved to Hollywood in the 1930’s, where her work garnered two Oscar™ nominations (including her script for the Judy Garland version of “A Star Is Born”).Then before WW2 she spoke out against fascism and got blacklisted and no one hired her anymore.But her books were still steadily being read. Particularly the Portable.In her will, she left the entirety of her literary rights to Dr. Martin Luther King (whom she had never met) to assist in his national fight for civil rights. Upon the death of Dr. King, again at Ms. Parker’s request, these rights were transferred to the NAACP, who receives royalty checks from her body of work to this very day.That’s it. That’s the story of my favorite writer. And I must admit, when I found out about the Dr. King part, I liked her even more, even though someone at school said it was just to get back at Lillian Hellman. If so, sick burn.My first Parker story was assigned in college, presented as a breezy distraction between the more weighed tomes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The way that she depicted people who felt very deeply yet expressed themselves in extremely shallow ways made me very very happy, so I went straight to be bookstore and bought my first “Portable”.See, I’d always wanted to be a writer. From the age of four it’s what I told everybody: teachers, preachers, other people’s parents, girls I was dating or wasn’t… I had no alternative employment plan or career path narrative, save maybe someday teaching at one of those colleges with old stone buildings.And I did write. A lot. I had LOADS of extremely very bad writing, and was looking for someone to teach me how to make it better. But when I finally got into an English composition class, I found that many students had already spent summers at “writing camps” with famous author seminars and inspiring lectures, at sunset, down by the lake.These kids were in that Writer’s WORLD already, and some of them hadn’t even written anything yet. I was late to the game. I explained all this to a girl who saw me reading my Dorothy Parker in the grass, giant Sears Optical glasses on as my near-fro attempted to waft in the wind. She was intrigued by my choice, but later admitted that she’d assumed I might be what today is called a “performative male”. A bit of conversation convinced her otherwise, and we spoke all evening.We agreed that the assumed “baseline experience” at a college like this was socio-economically impossible for a vast minority of the students attending, regular kids who “summered” the same place they “wintered” and “falled”. I mean, there were lakes in Kansas City, but all I was gonna get is mosquito bites hanging out there.“Well, you should just consider Dorothy your personal teacher.” my new friend told me. “She never took any of these people seriously - neither should you. Just keep them all in your head, and write about them later.”To follow Dorothy Parker’s footsteps, I later visited the The Algonquin, the famed Manhattan hotel where most every weekday of the 1920’s, one could find the New York’s premier literati surrounding their Round Table, enjoying another long and somewhat boozy lunch. Dorothy Parker was a key member of this group, I had learned. It was also the hotel that my grandfather stayed in when visiting New York as a young county commissioner from Kansas City. I appreciated the gentle luxury, as well as the fact that my grandparents had been welcome here in the early ‘50s. The concierge asked me if he could help me. I told him I was a student studying - “- the Round Table? Of course. Would you like to see it?” “Um, sure?”It was between meal services: the man walked me into the dining room just off the main lobby. A large round table was in the center. “This isn’t the actual table” he told me. “It was that one.” he pointed to the slightly smaller round table in the corner by the door to the kitchen. “People want to take a photo of the Round Table, but that one is 80 years old, so we keep this one…” he again indicated the table in the middle, “polished for pictures. I bet you actually want to sit over there.” “I feel I should tell you now that I can’t afford to buy anything.” I told him. “Don’t worry about it… do you want some coffee? Water?” “Water would be awesome.”I sat and drank a glass of ice water where my new literary hero enjoyed many hundreds of liquid lunches.Technically, that’s what I was doing too.Due to an incredible true story, Dorothy Parker has been buried two and a half times. Her (final) resting place is now in a plot with her family in New York City, under a memorial inscribed with cleverly appropriate lines from one of her poems. I haven’t visited: for me she either lives in her work or at that table in the back of the Algonquin dining room.I would love to pay the inspiration I have received from Mrs. Parker forward. I’m not quite there yet, but I feel lucky to have the opportunity to keep working at it. I’m a little bit more optimistic than she, but she paid close attention to the human condition, and I am grateful to carry her torch of polysyllabic empathy (if not sympathy) a bit further through time, because Dorothy Parker is my favorite author.Yes, I am a fan. But I want to be the kind that feeds a flame. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

The CORIOLIS EFFECT is a scientific principle describing how one object on Earth can be accurately propelled to meet another object on Earth while both objects, the air around them, and the Earth itself spins at 1000 miles an hour.The coriolis effect also explains why, even though the Earth is in constant motion beneath us, we can’t just hover in helicopters to travel long distances or jump in the air and land half a mile away. It’s a science of moving objects, similar to the prediction magic involved in shooting a rocket into the sky toward where the moon WILL EVENTUALLY BE. In practice, the coriolis effect is chiefly important to those whose professions involve ballistic trajectory: cannons, missiles, etc. But I have found this a terrific theory to philosophically explain “What I’m Doing” to my mother, wife, and daughter, reframing what may seem to the untrained eye as “Warner Bros. cartoon madness” into a unique example of logistic strategy.Or to quote Pee-Wee Herman, “I meant to do that.”It started at a picnic just after high school graduation. I had an interesting conversation with a kid that I knew that was also heading off to college: he wanted very much to study something called “computers”. It was 1984. We weren’t even a decade past the pocket calculator and most people still had a TV set with a physical knob that changed the channel. But this kid was SO EXCITED; he had a natural affinity for computers, and loved working with them so much that his science teacher had strongly encouraged him to study “programming”. But, the young gentleman had been firmly steered away from this field by his family, as computer science was (at the time) a somewhat obscure career choice with no obvious path to employment. Now, today, perched atop the summit of Hindsight Mountain, one might assume that if the young man had pursued this interest and moved to where his teacher told him all this was happening (California), he would have been on the absolute cutting edge of a worldwide cultural evolution, with the opportunity to buy first round Apple stock from a happy bearded fellow in a San Jose garage.But back then? This was all crazy-talk. Computers? Bru-ha-ha. Programming? Balderdash. California? Ballyhoo.A future where all that made sense was pure science fiction. So this young man soberly aimed his life directly at targets well within range. Measured choices. Smart decisions. Good sense. Birds in hands. From here to right over there.In contrast, my personal trajectory from high school was seen as random, ill-conceived, naive, and somewhat feckless: I was rocketing myself toward a future I couldn’t see, that no-one could see, well understanding that it hadn’t been created yet, since my personal goals were not as clearly defined: I wanted to be Jerry Lewis in The Bellboy,I wanted to be an orchestral composer for film,I wanted to be an author, and a college professor,and most of all I wanted to be a guest on the TV show Match Game, but I just couldn’t figure out a clear line from completing my math homework with a Bic™ pen on a little bedroom desk in Kansas City to scribbling clever quips on printed blue cards with Sharpie markers, sitting next to Charo™ in L.A..There wasn’t any major for all that, at any college. My mother was confused but incredibly supportive: she didn’t want me to waste my time or money, so she advised me to cover the basics:* be empathetic and polite -* always keep working really hard -* and learn how to learn.“Facts change.” she told me, “Every so often we need new globes, new schoolbooks… people keep ‘discovering’ history and inventing incredible new machines. But when you learn how to learn, you’ll be able to add anything new to what you already know and keep up with whatever’s going on.”Three. Two. One. And liftoff.How are any of us supposed to have clear paths to the future? I was launched from the social instability of the 1960’s toward the bullseye-in-a-whirlwind present. From J. Edgar Hoover to Obama. From 8-track tapes to streaming. From pen-pals to FaceTime. Where’s the clear path?Thus my affinity toward the coriolis effect. Aiming is not as vital as momentum. I’ve always felt that I’ve been headed somewhere (if not exactly somewhere more specific than that), but after a while I realized that who I was became more important than where I was going.And after decades moving at breakneck speed, I still don’t feel that I’ve arrived at the future yet. It’s such a lovely trip, I’ve taken tons of pictures, but I’d appreciate a chance to clean out the cupholders and top off the wiper fluid. And now there’s a new generation; how best to pass on the maps we’re plotted and the cautionary tales we’ve survived? What would we have studied in college if we knew that laptops were coming? the internet was coming? cell phones were coming? Can I offer ANY valid advice to a teenager growing up in a world of posts, stories, and edits? What is she supposed to wear if I can’t predict the weather? I’ve given up on predictions. She’ll just have to make do withbe empathetic and polite, work hard, and learn how to learn.That way, no matter where she flies, she’ll be the steadiest arrow in the sky. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Coming from a family of diabetics, I never really ate a lot of sugar, but sometimes my mother would buy Thompson seedless grapes and put them in the fruit bin in the refrigerator. Since they were a little bit expensive, we would very carefully ration them.But grapes have a bit of a half-life (though not quite as severe as avocados, which seemingly are able to morph from solid to liquid as fast as ice cubes), and after an undetermined number of days, one would blindly place their hand inside the cello bag for a frosty treat – only to be greeted by a slimy cacophony of decomposition.So even though we didn’t want to be gluttons, we had to carpe diem and gather our rosebuds and make hay and whatnot before the grapes’ nutritious, delicious promise could no longer be kept.This spawned the family metaphor: “Don’t save your grapes.”, meaning don’t hide away that which is important to you for too long or you might miss the moment that it intersects with opportunity.This week my daughter discovered about 40 pages of old ideas written in the “notes” app on her computer. She reviewed them, saving only the few that she thought she could write about later.“It’s so weird to see all this stuff I wrote when I was young!” she told me.I am not generally known for understatement - I mean, I can do it – but it’s usually not all that impressive. But here, in response, I subtly smiled and slowly nodded in agreement as I said, “Yeah. I know exactly what that’s like.”That, was an understatement. My own “notes” app has roughly 800 pages in it, and I just thinned them out THREE MONTHS AGO. In comparison to me, my daughter is a precise and focused laser, while I am a rotating disco ball, flinging ideas hither and yon with no clear path at all. And these ideas are now my Thompson grapes - a once fresh collection, gone to mushy seed.Of course emails would have been the best place to start a springtime computer clean-up, but I do that every year, and I don’t actually care about the emails.But every one of these notes evokes a place and time and artistic intention that I actually (embarrassingly) thought was important enough to jot down at some point.The reason I mention this is that they go back 15 years.It was a different world, 15 years ago. A younger world, one that skipped through a lush field in short pants, holding aloft a pinwheel in one hand and one of those lollipops that looks like a spiral in the other. A world that could never imagine the world we currently live in, much like Maria Von Trapp from The Sound of Music cannot fathom the roar of Godzilla.My old ideas were from that world, that time. Jaunty tales of stalwart heroes and female presidents. I would extrapolate, but to be honest the majority of what I wrote then as wild fiction seems naive enough for my daughter to have written at nine years old. You know, back when she was young.Thus my notes app has become a cello bag of grapes past their prime: tales that missed their time, where most of the denouements depended on people in power felled by their keen senses of shame, embarrassment, or empathy. Aw. That’s precious. Now, I suppose I could complete them as science fiction.I am more careful with ideas now. I try to collect them less and use them more, grateful for the opportunity to create, to imagine. I am metaphorically eating my metaphorical grapes. But haven’t deleted the old notes yet. They’re little pencil sketches of myself as an enthusiastic quadragenarian ingenue, gleefully typing into my iPhone 4 with a sense of adventure, a lush head of hair, and a bloodstream entirely free of COVID antibodies. Look at that little fella. No idea Godzilla is coming. Precious. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Fisher Price makes toys for small children. An American institution since 1930, the company is most famous for their line of “Little People”: colorful, nearly indestructible 2 inch tall figures depicting different occupations.Long before hoards of mega-achieving Barbie™s dominated toy store shelves, these Little People represented “real jobs”, and as a child, these career options seemed very feasible – particularly since pocket sized toys had been able to accomplish them.Fireman? Check.Policeman, Doctor? Obviously.Builder, Cowboy, Ballet Dancer? Uh…guess so, yeah.Ok, we weren’t so sure about the ballet dancer…we could all turn around really fast on the playground, but we knew it was much harder to do well. Also, we already knew ranchers and farmers because we lived in Kansas, so cowboys weren’t really all that exotic. And, I mean, we COULD be a doctor, if we HAD to……but the one that EVERYONE wanted to be was the astronaut.The longest I’ve spent in a space vehicle was three days.My grand-aunt enjoyed buying me random items at her local thrift store and giving them to me after church on Sundays. My mother gently questioned the congruity of these items with the interests of an eight year old boy, utilizing polite statements like,“He really doesn’t need a (broken) 8mm movie camera.” or“I don’t know where he’s going to use a (broken) electric blanket in the summertime.”My grand-aunt would aloofly flip one hand in the air while shoving the item into my arms with the other and declare, “Oh, he’ll find something he can do with it…” adding a direct stare into my eyes and the somewhat threatening question, “…WON’T you?”“Yes, ma’am.” I always said, then set my mind to imagining what I could do with the thing.One summer Sunday, the item was a HOOVER™ Portable Cleaning Center Canister Vacuum, a turquoise blue 2 ft. tall suitcase containing a long flexible hose and an assortment of attachments. Surprisingly, it was NOT broken, and as luck would have it, we had just gotten a new washing machine, which had been delivered in a rather auspiciously sized cardboard box.Kismet.A rocket went to The Moon this week, carrying the same amount of people I usually ride the elevator with every day – in approximately the same amount of space – for a 10 day cruise at unimaginable speeds. No warp drive, no hyperspace, just gravity and math (and science and lots and lots of money).Following the takeoff, as the line of cloudy exhaust reached miles and miles higher into the sky, I had to ask myself “Could I do that?”Well sure! with enough training: I’m a quick learner, and have proven willing to endure just about anything for work. But I did not go to flight school, or the Air Force, and they really didn’t need a poet / magician on that particular mission.Perhaps, on a long-haul flight to Mars, some haikus and mildly astounding card tricks would be just the thing to lift spirits and while away the quiet hours.I could also bring my banjo (it weighs less than my saxophone).Ok, I may not have the exact Right Stuff, but I do believe that NASA would have been proud of that homemade HOOVER rocket ship.I used the hose of the vacuum for air (of course), the cord for “power” (since I wasn’t allowed to turn the unit ON), the wide attachment as an antenna on top, and the smaller ones for various necessities. Ever the engineer, my mother cut a round hole on the side, through which I could view the Earth and stars and she could tell me it was time to eat dinner (and make certain I could breathe in there). I brought a couple of books, and a light blanket and pillow, and the (broken) film camera to get good shots of everything. Our dog was alternately my co-pilot and a mysterious alien creature on an uncharted planet. At night my mother gave me a flashlight to read with, and even got in for a while to join in the mission and play a few games of Chinese checkers. I was even allowed to camp in there a few nights; Mom slept nearby on the couch as Mission Control while I drifted through the cosmos, safe in my corrugated capsule.Anyone can go into space now, but that doesn’t make them an astronaut. I understand that they paid a great deal of money, and were weightless for a minute, saw the curvature of the Earth, and took a couple of iPhone selfies, but that’s just a fortunate tourist, not an astronaut.An astronaut is a scientist that goes to outer space and does research and experiments there that can’t be done on Earth. Their spacesuits are actually fancy lab coats. Those Fisher Price characters included a teacher and a clown and a king and a train engineer, but not a clear SCIENTIST – except for the ASTRONAUT. I remember my teachers telling us what we would have to study to be considered for that job. Again, there seemed a clear path, a straight line, from being a kid to being ANYTHING back then - just Hard Work and Good Grades and maybe some vitamins and exercise and BOOM, you were the best of the best, just like those Little People. I would never give up on a dream, but in the spirit of Spring Cleaning, I’ll finally let myself off the hook of maybe someday being a fireman, train engineer, ballet dancer……or astronaut. But hey, I’ve already had my turn. Though maybe I could still be a cowboy. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

So I went through my closet and drawers for spring cleaning, but there isn’t all that much there that I don’t wear… save one specific category I realize I may have legitimately grown beyond.I had three years of wearing slacks and now I’m kind of doneI bought them all online, on saleThey weren’t all that much fun.Up ’til then, trousers were a breezemy grown-up job required easy-fittingnewish dungareesand ties just for emergencieswhen clients happened by. You see,I’d been an artist, more or lessin companies that let you dressthe way you wanted, and I guess(although I never looked a mess)my individualitywas (on my outside) what you’d see -I’d feel a skosh of true self-loathingwrapped in carbon copy clothing……back in grade school, as a kidwe all wore uniformsbright light blue shirts and navy pantsfor eight years was the norm.Right after that I quietly sworenot to wear navy anymore:thus, in the four-plus decades henceblack 501s just made more senseuntil three years ago when I set out to do some goodin places where a well-established dress code said I shouldpipe down, fit in, and not offendhead low, eyes high, discreetly blendand wear the pants we tell you to(which didn’t seem that hard to do)so I dut-i-fully secureda pair for every weekdayand paired them with a collared shirtfor grown-up business cosplayas Dockers™ mean securityand represent maturityin roles with deep obscuritybut they did not “spark joy” in meand slowly as the time went bytheir fit became much tighterbecause I’d set the dryer on high(large load / all cotton / extra dry).Then one by one they lost their sheenand sported dark grey tonesas each leg sleeve shrunk farther upabove my anklebonesuntil one day they didn’t fit.I can’t imagine how, butI could barely fasten them.My daughter wears them now. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

It’s Spring Cleaning time, which must be like Black Friday for the famed home organizer Marie Kondo. Her books fly off the shelves at this time of year as hoards of us peek out of the dusty doorways of our winter shelters, squint at the newly blue skies, and resolve to simplify our closets, basements and garages.Her “Konmari” organization method, where one throws out any object that does not “spark joy” within them, is the most hardcore decision-making strategy imaginable, yet her hit television shows and social media numbers serve as proof that many are brave enough to give it a try.I see the appeal: the desired result would be a home with clean sight lines and an open appearance – with all rugs visible to the very edges (sans shoes, socks, and corrected homework papers folded in half) – where all books are VERTICAL on every shelf – and every well-positioned noun reflects a blissful tale of warm sentiment. Room upon room exquisitely representing the proverb that there really is a place for everything.So, Spring Cleaning. Throw open the windows before all the pollen starts blowing and get some fresh air in: wash the curtains and wax the table and fluff the cushions. Those are all the the fun verbs, but the one that lurks behind them, the one that’s much less fun to say yet always implied this time of year, is purge - a word so dreadful that it’s now the title of a series of scary horror movies and somewhat-less-scary television shows. Purge: the dark, grim circumstance of NOT SPARKING JOY. I have never met Marie Kondo, but I do know an artist whose wife is her friend. When I asked him if their house was always tidy – just in case she came over – he said “no… I mean, we try, but there’s only so much you can do.”I do not imagine Ms. Kondo would like me very much. I feel that I would be the Maria from Sound of Music to her Mother Superior of Feng Shui as I am of those flibbertigibbet to whom nearly EVERYTHING can “spark joy”. But I’ll try. I will, earnestly, try.My approach to Spring Cleaning this year is a bit less draconian than the Konmari method, but wider in scope.I am not merely choosing a weekend to clean, but approaching the entire season as an opportunity to sift, trim, refine, and distill. Not only objects, but habits, beliefs, philosophies, styles, memories, worries, and unread e-mails. Twelve weeks to clear a wilderness and uncover fields to plant with new ideas, new plans, new goals. Week One:* I began with the desktop of my computer. Shift. Click. Sort.* Moved on to the floor of my little office. Toss. Dust. Stack.* Found a load of procrastination, right over there. Made some calls. Wrote some letters. Sent in some forms.* Had an entire unopened box of irrational optimism in the pantry that was way past its date. It’s a shame to waste it, but you know how it is when you get things in bulk.* And the malaise! Where’d all THAT come from. Yikes!(If you know don’t know this, it grows like wild ivy.)I discovered that I, at what I’m going to very generously call the beginning of my third act, have amassed a great deal of potential joy .For instance, I collected a selection of books that I was convinced my daughter would absolutely love: the thought of her feverishly poring through these with a flashlight under the covers brought me joy. However, these books did NOT spark joy in her because they are largely about children in the 1930’s solving petty crimes in upper class suburbs with no telephones or comfortable clothing. These can probably go now.There is another new category of very useful items that I am not very likely to use. This is a more surgical delineation, as all the circuits and diodes in my Radio Shack carrying cases aren’t easily replaceable, and the full spectrum chemistry sets (obtained by subscription during the COVID lockdown) may be relevant through the end of my daughter’s junior year of high school science.However, I do have TWO Lite-Brites. TWO. My wife, a bastion of both patience and aesthetic, has drawn the line not at the cases of electronic components extensive enough to build my own C-3PO or the cardboard boxes of sulfur, ammonium nitrate and heavens knows what else stacked about the house - but here, at the Lite-Brites.She admits that they are fascinating. We have enjoyed playing with them in the dark, creating fascinating artwork, together as a family. She GETS the Lite-Brite, as a concept and a light entertainment. But I purchased a vintage one on eBay before I realized that my mother had kept my old one saved in its original box… thus, TWO – with BOTH boxes displaying different painted illustrations of fascinated children, their eerily frozen smiles and raised eyebrows expressing the glee of incandescent illumination.“You can only keep one. Both are disturbing. Please choose the one that’s least disturbing.” She was right - one the boxes had an image a bit more off-putting than the other. It was unsettling to look at, like a black velvet painting of dogs playing poker. It did not fit in with the rest of our home, somehow. It most certainly did not spark joy. So now we have ONE vintage Lite-Brite on display, and one that I am listing again on eBay, hoping that it will spark joy in some other family, and not be eventually passed along like a cursed monkey’s paw in a year or so once the illustration begins to disturb them too. What is most interesting is that it wasn’t the object itself, but the LACK of it, that sparked joy in my wife……I find that a fortunate encouragement to continue, and perhaps, a cautionary tale. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

For the last two hundred weeks, I’ve written an original American humor column in what seems some of the grimmest times in the history of this great nation.It was to be a salve, a balm, an analgesic to relieve the legacy pressure of undeniable, inescapable, and unavoidable identity. It was to stand as proof to the next generation of those considered exceptional yet disposable that history, though quite often written in blood, may also be captured in tears of joy.This has not been accomplished.That is the achievement of a novelist, a scholar, a person with less action figures displayed on their desk, walls, and bookshelves. Someone with pajama tops that match their pajama bottoms, with a full Mahler symphony occupying the brainspace I use for theme songs to classic television programs and old commercial jingles.I have not, in the last 200 weeks, created a comprehensive argument guaranteeing All People perpetual basic dignity in every circle, community and circumstance. I have, instead, told stories about my childhood, observations from my youth, and the revelations of advanced age from my perspective as an African American living a lifetime straddling two quite volatile centuries. So much fun! Honestly! But if you are a reader, I hope that you interpret :lowerblackpain as a consistent and intentional rhythm of appreciation; a lift, a pause, a bit of time-space where you can relax every seven days. I hope that Thursdays at 3:00 PM [EST] mean something new, and you feel I’ve approached your attention with respect and humility. I appreciate that the world is ever faster, attentions and patience grow swiftly shorter, and there is SO much on Netflix to catch up on with those new Korean soap operas that look so incredibly soothing and all those back seasons of Gilmore Girls. So thank you, for your time. This is the longest I’ve ever done anything that is not a metabolic function. It’s almost time for Spring Cleaning, and this year I am not just tackling physical objects, but tidying up memory, habit, and sentiment. It makes me kind of nervous how I can find something that was at first a miracle which is now obsolete - our original iPod for instance. Of course, I’m never throwing that away because it’s in the only thing in our house that is also in the Museum of Modern Art.There’s a IKEA cube filled with all of the cords used to connect old technology to even older technology. Every year this collection degrades a bit more. Surely some of those little metal ends must fit into something I still have plugged in somewhere. Alas.But I already know where I’m going to get stuck this year, and that is the piggy bank. It is filled with pennies, and for those of you reading this in the distant future, this is the When where the American one-cent piece was discontinued from production after 232 years. The chief complaint is that the coin costs more to produce than the materials it is made of are worth. Considering that, one couldn’t buy a penny with a penny.It is fair to say that the entire currently living population of the USA grew up with pennies. I collected pennies, learned to flip and use them as tiddlywinks, and for most of my early childhood was paid with a handful or so for the completion of my household chores. That was, to be fair, back when one could purchase a delicious candy bar for 15 of them, or a comic book for 25.Pennies are heavy. My numismatic wistfulness will not justify a fifty pound barrel of copper-plated discs. I’ll keep some made before 1982 (when they weren’t made of zinc) but then turn the rest in, just to hear that crazy casino sound of the coin counter at the bank, one more time.What I am most worried about are the phrases. I won’t give those up.Back when I didn’t have two cents to rub together, and I didn’t have a penny to my name, I had to become a penny pincher… because believe me, living in New York costs a pretty penny, but if I was in for a penny - I was in for a pound, and since a penny saved is a penny earned I pushed ahead, relying on two bits of advice: don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, and if you see a penny, pick it up (but not if it’s tails).There aren’t that many great expressions about dimes.The American penny has become part of our culture and language. People have combined pennies with resin to make interesting flooring and tables. The artist Shay Rose made a chain mail cocktail dress out of pennies. For some reason, Batman has a giant one in his cave. The idea that they are worth less than they are worth is mind twisting because finance has never the best way to valuate anything.I want to keep enough pennies to be able to reach in and pull out a handful. That will never feel worthless to me, because I remember when my hands were much smaller and I could only grab maybe 35 at a time and I felt rich. I was proud to have earned them, and proud to have saved them, and everything purchased with them took on a special significance, because it was mine, bought with these tokens of hard work accomplished.And I still remember that feeling, and I want to be able to keep it, because it’s worth way more than just a handful of pennies.But that’s just my two cents. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Johnny Carson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Ryan Reynolds were all born on the same day of the year as me. My daughter thinks the Ryan Reynolds part is cool, as she believes this might indicate a mysterious source of Deep Rizz that I may be astrologically heir to, and perhaps could still emulate…someday.But the big news for me this year is the return of my lunar zodiac sign, the Fire Horse. It only happens once every 60 years, due to, I guess, math. Let’s see: the animals (12 in total) change from year to year, but the elements (there are five of those) cycle around every two years. That creates a 60 year cycle, so in a typical human lifetime, a person may be lucky enough to revisit their birth sign year once.This is my once, now.In natal astrology, my birthday directly straddles the signs of both balance (Libra) and extremes (Scorpio). That’s fun. I do think a perfect weekend is going to a classical ballet on Friday night and a monster truck rally on Saturday afternoon. Which we did, once, and it was amazing. And I guess I’ve been described as both balanced and extreme (if not “extremely balanced”).But the Fire Horse year holds a darker heritage. In 1682, a 16 year old girl accidentally set fire to (what is now) Tokyo during a plan to reunite with the temple page she was in love with. Shortly after that it was thought that folks - particularly women - born as Fire Horses were bad news - so much so that birth rates in Japan dropped by over 25% in 1966.So even though Fire Horses are supposed to be active, independent, headstrong, and dependable, th e year itself is to be one of Great (and not entirely welcome) Volatility.I mean, 1966. Not to get all “We Didn’t Start The Fire” about it, but the Vietnam War was raging overseas, civil rights were being fought for in the USA, the ATM and the videogame were invented, and the national arts were elevated in New York City by both the opening of The Metropolitan Opera House and the holiday premiere of “The Yule Log” on WPIX. And though the legendary albums Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys) and Revolver (The Beatles) were released that year, they were surpassed in weeks at number one by the self-titled debut of The Monkees. Which I know is supposed to be some kind of travesty, but I mean c’mon…it’s The Monkees.But otherwise, definitely volatile times. Absolutely.Astrology makes us associate ourselves with total strangers that happen to have been born around the same time that we were. It’s a little weird. Where my Fire Horses at? I see you, Ms. Janet Jackson! What’s up, Helena Bonham Carter? Never givin’ YOU up, Mr. Rick Astley!There’s also a writer/actor from the UK named Mark Gatiss: he turns up in all kinds of things and is always inspiring… I was pretty happy about that one. But my second-favorite random name with fame born in the same year that I was? Mary Chapin Carpenter. The year after I graduated college, her music was the soundtrack of my cross-country train trip: the heartfelt soundtrack to Every Single Little Town. Still, it’s hard to see any real connection there. Though I did just attend a “birthday reunion” party of classmates from college, where most of us are Fire Horses, and I have to admit we all still seemed like troublemakers, even if we now preferred to get to sleep by 10:30.Whatever. There’s still plenty of trouble to be made in daylight.My absolute favorite 1966 association premiered a little over a month before I was born, at 8:30 PM on September 8th.Eventually called “television’s most successful failure”, Star Trek did not do well at all in the ratings, but it worked hard to hold its own for three seasons…and then 13 films, 18 more original tv series, 850 books,and now over 6 decades. I guess that Star Trek is the Fire Horse I feel most closely aligned with. Kind of weird, sentimental, a little cringe here and there, but filled with true emotion and courage and humor and respect for the dignity of other people (even when they weren’t people). I wouldn’t mind being championed by Lucille Ball, or watched every week by Martin Luther King and his family, or to say things that hold true through three generations. So like it or not, this is my year. Gangly artist vs. legendary volatility and mythical instability. I’ve only got one shot at this Fire Horse thing, so it’s ahead full gallop, mane ablaze: and if I’m walking down the street getting the funniest looks from everyone I meet, my goal is to be too busy singing to put anybody down, live long, and prosper. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve never completed a marathon, but I imagine it’s running without the luxury of choice - one can’t pause for a quick cappuccino or afternoon film matinee. Exhausted and bedraggled, one is driven to complete the activity due to the pressures of publicly expressed determination, earnest self-promise and significant financial investment. Plus the fact that new technologies allow friends at home to follow your progress on their phones and “cheer you on” from their living rooms, where they are undoubtedly having brunch, including those toasty little brioche things you like so much and that jam that they know is your absolute favorite.So one relentlessly must press on. Until you cross that finish line, there is no freedom; only willpower, intention, and the stamina required to continue forward motion.Yeah. The last two weeks of Winter are like that for me.The last two weeks of Winter are not Spring.They Are Winter, which this year has been impressive in its old-school authenticity; sub-zero temperatures, feet of snow covering yards of black ice, the works. Plus, this weekend, the United States enters Daylight Savings Time, when all clocks must be set grimly forward in a dismal ritual of temporal larceny.“But you’ll get that hour back!” you say. “In November! You get to sleep an extra hour!”Do not mind my scowl. It is not for you. I’m just blaming the messenger, and you’re right, this year I get an extra hour of Halloween Night. And it’s on a Saturday. Wonderful.But I need that hour now. My watch is scolding me for not sleeping correctly - it gives me a numerical health score every morning, the current sum of which is an average so distasteful to the device that it has stopped encouraging me with exclamatory phrases like “Let’s try getting to bed earlier!” , and now only offers terse, stern statements:“Your time awake last night had an impact on your very low sleep score. Make adjustments to improve it.”It’s like an A.I. parent-teacher conference.I’ve enjoyed the soups. And the stews and the extra blankets and those weird wool socks that I should be allergic to but somehow am not. I’ve enjoyed wearing my snow boots because they make me ever so slightly taller but outside I still feel like a giant. I liked the cookies and crocheting snood scarves and the stars on clear nights. I’m not a hater, by any means (make certain that Snow Mizer knows that). Winter is great.I’m just tired. It has nothing to do with anything inside my apartment, but there’s these leaks where dread and mayhem blow in through these screens on our walls and desks and laps and wrists. I’ve lived long enough in Brooklyn to effectively ignore the sounds of planes, trains, and the engines, brakes, and enhanced stereo systems of most automobiles - but inside my head is a sub-audible grind of the news updates and pull-quotes I either cannot avoid or feel irresponsible ignoring. And that’s what keeps me awake at night, which of course is worse when the nights are very, very long.Even my sweaters are tired. My favorite used to do that thing where I could push the sleeves up and they’d stay above my elbow. Now they “flomph!” down to over my wrists unless I hold my arms tight at my sides. Washing dishes, I look like a cozy suburban homemaker Tyrannosaurus-Rex.And the days are getting longer, but do I need more Bright Cold? Powder blue mornings where all light filters through precipitation? I’d love to apply an anticipatory optimism to the situation – lie on my back on the frozen grass to see what shapes the endless cloud cover is making… Look! There’s a large wool blanket! Look! There’s an IMAX movie screen!Ok, ok, it’s only 14 days from now: then birds’ll tweet and pollen will float and the weight of my work slacks will be appropriate for the weather again. In 14 days we replace the snowmen on the bookshelf with bunnies and eggs. In Spring, we engage all the plans that we made in Winter. In deference to the slumber scrutiny imposed on me by my magical timepiece, my chief plan is a series of elegant naps, and resuming my long walks at lunchtime.Oh, my watch’ll love that! Maybe it’ll raise my grade point average. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Popular media in the 70’s and early 80’s did not uniformly reflect a kaleidoscope of cultures - the most prominent and consistent staple being a popular family comedian who shall no longer be named. The watershed moment came in 1977, when ABC aired the mini-series “ROOTS”, based on the personal genealogy research of author Alex Haley.Everybody watched that. I felt kind of exposed the day after each episode, coming to school and having my pre-the-invention-of-the-internet classmates ask me follow-up questions, because I didn’t know my family history past who was at the table at Thanksgiving Dinner.The book and the television event sparked a flurry of interest in family trees, where soon many folks discovered that history was a dangerous playground: relative after relative was newly discovered, the names stacking to create a game of DNA “JENGA”, piled higher and higher until CRASH!, they hit a super embarrassing fourth uncle that did something incredibly illegal or stupid.But Alex Haley’s family was brave and engaging and excellent television; while the show was clearly a dramatization of informed yet imagined scenes, no one assumed (as they might today) that he just made the whole thing up. It was an historical drama. I mean, I was only ten, but it never occurred to me that anybody could “make up” history, because there were black and white movies of it happening, and pictures, and books, all the way back to stone tablets. History could be interpreted, maybe re-told, but you couldn’t “make up” something that already happened! That was absurd. Even with a TARDIS.History is pretty straightforward: right after any event happens, we immediately tell the story of it, then move forward in time, away from the event, until only that story remains. I assumed that the world had come to terms with history: it wasn’t always fun, necessarily, but you couldn’t just ignore it. That would be like saying “yesterday didn’t happen”. Which would be nuts.While the basics of American l’arnin’ are readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, it turns out the most important field of study could indeed be history, which perhaps didn’t make the opening lineup due to its lack of a “r” sound at the beginning. (Art is also missing from the list, which is incredibly mysterious as it sits firmly within the “r” sound family.)In terms of societal hubbub, writing and math cause less trouble than reading, which has always been a flashpoint in some parts of the world (who is allowed to, what are they allowed to, etc.). Yet, of all common core curriculum, currently the study (or even mere mention) of HISTORY can spark the most deeply intense and fury laden reactions, culminating in the surprising idea that we might not need it at all. Amnesia as generational therapy.“How bad was it?”“I… I can’t remember!”“Well, that’s you sorted then. Two hundred dollars.”Imagine that… History, taken permanently out of play, just warming the bench with Art. And Science (who’s also missing that “r” sound).I mention this because here in the States it’s the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, the celebration of which inspired the establishment of this very column. I have, by virtue of my age, celebrated all Black History Months and 10 Negro History Weeks, back before 1976.The whole thing was started by Carter G. Woodson, prominent scholar of the early 20th century, who absolutely loved history. He studied it in both high school and university, eventually joining the prestigious American Historical Society, though he couldn’t attend the meetings in person. And by couldn’t, I’m implying that he wasn’t allowed to. And by implying, I’m actually just telling you that they wouldn’t let him in the front door or even on the stoop in front of the front door, because it was 1915 and he was African-American by heritage and tonal hue (they did let him pay the full dues, though).Unsatisfied with this experience, Mr. Woodson started his own historical society, founded an academic Journal (that’s still being published to this day) and wrote many history books.This man, whose parents had been slaves, became the second African American to get a PhD from Harvard (W.E.B. Dubois was the first, if you’re playing along at home). Carter G. Woodson, widely known as the father of Black history.Never heard of him. They absolutely never told us about him in school. I knew SO many things about the peanut, but honestly, nothing of Mr. Woodson.Stories only work when we hear them.Categories of Black History Month stories that I DID hear:* The First Black [insert profession or achievement here] This was never my favorite group of stories because it was depressing; clearly reflecting what the experience of being Black felt like - demonstrating that it was exceptional to be able to do what someone else had already done if one considers that the first achiever had NOT been burdened with the experience of being Black. It always reminded me of the description of the often under-appreciated Ginger Rogers, who “always perfectly performed every single dance move that Fred Astaire did, only backward and in high heels” (yaas queen).* Perseverance. This was the family staple - tales of men and women who might not have been able to take many steps forward, but stood their ground and didn’t move back. I was taught that this was a key element of our family crest, along with gratitude, humor, and kindness. * Inventors. The BEST. All the household objects and incredible machines and technologies that Black people had engineered - a lot of those objects the direct result of the experience of being Black; less money, contacts, and resources meant they had to be super clever. Now I identified with this - still do: the closest I ever came to being in a society of Black Mad Scientists is when I was asked to speak at the 50th anniversary of MIT’s Black Union. Four literal rocket scientists were in the audience… from NASA. It was like Wakanda up in there.But the most important category was* Family. My grandmother was filled with cautionary tales. Between the long lists of who not to meddle with and who not to talk to and who to watch out for were glimpses into how she and my grandfather forged their identities in direct opposition to their given societal roles. Then my mother told me all about growing up with siblings through the 40’s and 50’s, which was fascinating, and always made me super extra happy to be an only child.That first Negro History Week must have been rough. But without someone determined to tell those stories they would have been lost forever. Yet after a full century, such stories still need to be protected.What happens when a segment of society becomes disconnected from history and disinterested in legacy? Are they truly free from the past? And how far back does that go? Does that mean that everyone is going to forget the thing that happened when you were seven years old and stop bringing it up at family functions? Do we forgive parking tickets after a year or so?ROOTS will be 50 years old next year, and due to its subject matter the show might spark deep controversy if it was aired today: not so much because it’s Black as that it depicts history.Maybe we could call it “hist’ry”. At least it would have the apostrophe.In 1977, Alex Haley rolled through Kansas City on his book tour and stopped at our church because he was (big surprise) related to someone there. After church there was a reception at the relative’s house, and he signed books, and he took photographs with people. My mother found the picture of me, my grandfather, and him. I was wearing my Sears™ Optical Department glasses and an exciting new shade of beige and I wanted to be an author. Here I was, standing with an author who had written a real (and really thick) book. I was a little overwhelmed. But I would never give up who I was then, and all that’s happened since. I recognize that I owe the fruit of my labor to the stability of my own roots, and the journey from there to here, where I’ve learned from my mistakes and built a narrative for not only my future, but someone else’s. That kid turned out ok. Though I should get writing -…I think I owe him a book. 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I don’t think he ran the race to win, I think he ran to tryto show 2 million kids like methat weshould never shy awayfrom being inthe human race,and that our faces weren’t forbiddenor a burden orexceptions as we all could be exceptional. I think he ran to hold a doorthat he would not walk throughbut had opened first by Douglass,passed to Phillips,Chisholm,Fauntroy, then to one midwestern resident who was at last called President.Although he did not run to win,and few assumed he would, he demonstrated to a generationthat we could eventuallypush lines which seemed immobileinchesand then feetas we all yelled “I Am Somebody”down on Sesame Street.he could not smooth the roads aheadcould not hold back the tideor turn the head of every average Joe with hate insidebut he still ranstill stood his ground with grace, impressivelyto hold a spacefor one of us to finally say“that’s me”.Thank you, Sir, from Somebody, for your example; I…don’t think you ran the race to win.I think you ran to try Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Back before we had a kid, I didn’t take a vacation for a little over seven years.Sure, there were times that work was supposed to be closed, like Christmas and New Year’s Day and weekends and nights, but I ended up on some phone call or finishing a project or had to show up in the office anyway. My wife found the entire situation distasteful, though she did appreciate my somewhat maniacal dedication to a role as a family provider.She began to plan a proper trip for us, far enough away from work that my brand new portable cellular telephone (wow so fancy) wouldn’t be able to connect with the office.Due to her extensive research and exemplary budget strategies, the whole thing went extremely well. I saw things and ate things and slept seven hours in a row. It was pretty neat. So she set a goal that we would travel to somewhere every two years or so. I was absolutely no help, as it was now clearly established that I didn’t understand the “work/life balance” thing.Zoe’s trips are always to places that are engaging and intriguing, rather than “relaxing” in the strictest sense. That’s why I always found myself in the absolute middle of a bustling city where I neither spoke the language or understood the street signs.Again, pretty neat, but a little scary too…up until 2009.Now, I don’t want to be in any way inappropriate, but to tell one story I very quickly have to tell another.I once took a bus across the American southwest from Kansas City to Los Angeles, and on the way there was a rest stop at what appeared to be a long forgotten adobe fort. It had a little snack bar with soft drinks and vendors selling random jewelry and key rings and whatnot and a newsstand and of course, restrooms. I didn’t need a newspaper or shiny new bracelet, so I went straight to the restroom.We all waited our turn, standing silently whether in line or already engaged. When it was my turn I proceeded to stare pensively ahead (as is common practice), when the African American gentleman to my left turned to me and LOUDLY said,“DR. KING!”There was no way to pretend he wasn’t talking to me, he was just a foot away.“I’m sorry?”“I GUESS YOU GET THAT ALL THE TIME. BUT IT IS AMAZING.”“Dr. King?”“YOU LOOK SO MUCH LIKE HIM! IS HE… “ and then just a…tiny bit softer, “ARE YOU RELATED?”“Y’know what? I don’t… I really don’t think so.”[Bear in mind the location and circumstance of this conversation.]“WELL, IT IS INCREDIBLY INSPIRING. IT’S LIKE HE’S RIGHT HERE. MAN!” He turned back to the wall. ”I CAN’T WAIT TO TELL MY BROTHER!”Later at the sink, washing hands, he gave me a slow, respectful nod in the mirror. One not meant for me, but for the pioneer of social justice he saw within me. Or on my outside.“TRULY AMAZING.” he said.I don’t look like Martin Luther King. I just checked, just now, in the bathroom mirror. I’m… alright lookin’, but I’m no Dr. King.But that guy was so happy, and it meant so much to him, that I felt a teensy bit of pride as I left the restroom, for absolutely no logical reason.…now, 2009.Zoe took me to Turkey, and points East. We touched the continent of Asia and had frozen yogurt there. We walked streets which for thousands of years had been trod upon. Again, neat.But there, half a world away, in one of the crossroads of human civilization, surrounded by visitors from across the planet, I did not experience the feeling of total isolation that other such instances had generated. As soon as we hit the street, they seemed to know that we were from New York City, because of all the black clothing, but most importantly they recognized that we were from the USA.And for me, this recognition had a universal response. Groups of young men, grandmothers sweeping their stoops, busy street vendors at kiosks a hundred feet away would see me, point excitedly, and then say “Obama!!!”.Ok, the first time this happened, I didn’t have a response. It was three boys walking past us… but now their eyebrows were raised and they were nodding expectantly. I chose a slow nod with a thumbs up and replied, “Obama!”Cheering. They sort of jumped up and down a little. Still waving, they excitedly spoke to each other in Turkish as they walked away.At the Hagia Sophia, as we were coming down the gigantic steps, a group of 12 students from Norway stopped me. One of them stepped forward.“Are you from America?” they haltingly asked.“Yeah, New York City.”“OH!!!!!” Ok, that was a little bit of a flex, but it was true.“Can we take a photo with you?”“Oh!” Now I felt bad about the flex, because they obviously thought I was Somebody. “I’m not anybody, I’m just here… I’m just… nobody.”“But you are a Black African American.”Well, yeah. “Yep. Yep, I am.” No flex there - that was just a fact.“Is it ok then?”Inside a nearly 2000 year old building, it was super strange to be the focus of anyone’s attention, but sure… my wife took their camera and we all stood to take the photo, and when it was time to smile one of the kids said, “Everyone say Obama!”And we all did. No, I do not have a copy of that picture, because though it somehow made sense of them to take a photo of me, it still felt unsettling for us to take a picture of some random college students from Norway.It happened at least five more times during the trip, and then on trips after that. And again, I do not look anything like the former President, but this time I understood that wasn’t the point.I was an ambassador of a place whose chief representative projected an attitude of goodwill that somehow elevated my own identity. And this reflected rizz was intercontinental, where differences in language, age, and culture did not diffuse its impact.I have to admit, I walked a lot taller on those trips. I felt like a Cub Scout again, in uniform, where everything I did was indicative of a larger whole. I was so polite and excessively tipped and said “please” and “thank you” in six different languages. It was the closest I will ever be to famous, and a unique experience where my first impression was welcomed and celebrated.Which was also kind of a vacation, ‘cause…that was neat. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

The genesis of this column was a desire to alleviate my daughter’s legitimate angst regarding her annual recognition of Black History Month, which she found heavy with legacy.Yes, I said. You’re absolutely right, I told her. It’s not a pretty story, and we don’t just tell it every year, it’s written in our eyes and our hands and our skin.But that is not our only story. We have marvels and miracles, hilarity and harmony, and so much joy within our perseverance. We are a mathematical impossibility, from property to President in under a sesquicentennial. We hold the nation’s dreams in our ability to hold high notes and throw a perfect spiral; we steer the public good by standing up and staring down. As we endure, we invent; as we’ve suffered, we’ve uplifted; as we have buried - we have planted.“Yeah, I’m 10.” she said. “That all sound’s nice, but it’s a really sad story.”Thus the very first :lowerblackpain column https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/672-hours-of-funexplains my initial predicament; how best to pass along the significance of Black History Month without making the experience overwhelming for a middle-schooler. And an old guy.I ended up telling her that everything she does is Black History by definition, as she is an African-American (Black) and it’s in the past (History). In fact, my own stories and those of my mother and grandparents (and even their parents) might provide meaningful context to the flood of historical data.“What if I tell you more about stuff that’s happened to me?”She didn’t exactly roll her eyes… more of a respectful averting. “I already know everything that’s happened to you, you’ve told me like a million times.”“Not…everything. I have some more fun stories to tell you.”“That aren’t about being old?”“Well, no. A lot of them are about being young. Like, your age.”“But my age in the old days.”She had me. “Yeah. But some are funny.”“Like what?”Unprepared for a command performance of light entertainment clarifying the entirety of Black achievement through personal anecdote, I kind of froze. These columns are the result; a family grimoire of tales both cautionary and only marginally consequential. Yet halfway though this column’s fourth year, I do realize that I may have strayed a bit from the original directive. I asked my (now 14 year old) daughter for guidance.“Is there anything about Black History that you’d like to…y’know, ask me?”“I already get 100% in Black History. It’s the same every year.”“Martin Luther King?”“Yep. ‘He was awesome, then he died.’ Pre-school, grade school, and middle school. I always know way more than the teachers do.”I was proud about that last fact, but then again, the bar seemed pretty low.“Is there any story that stands out to you?”She thought about it. “That picture that’s always on your desk, of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. That’s a nice story.”There is a picture that is always on my desk, of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe.The story goes that in the spring of 1955, The Mocambo - a popular Los Angeles jazz club - did not want to book Ella Fitzgerald because the club owner said she lacked “glamour”. Marilyn Monroe loved Ella, and contacted the club owner, and told him that if he booked Ella she would sit in the front row every night and bring other celebrities.All that is true. And that is where most versions of this story end, leaving one to believe that the photo is of the two women in the front row of the Mocambo during that historic run.While the picture does capture the two women sitting at a jazz club, a little research reveals that it is not during Ella’s run the Mocambo.The two were friends - that is true. And Marilyn did, in fact, secure that job for Ella, and got Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland there on opening night. But Marilyn was in New York City working on “The Seven Year Itch” at the time and was not able to attend any of the shows, which didn’t prove necessary, as the run sold out due to Ella Fitzgerald… y’know, being Ella Fitzgerald. The thousand words this picture tells are poetry rather than journalism.But in that turbulent age when empathy and alliance with those less privileged could cost careers or much, much more, the most famous woman in the world at the time used her power to help her friend. Which is a nice story, particularly for all those times when I forget how powerful kindness is as a weapon against ignorance and greed - a sword nigh indefensible as long as there is a hand brave enough to wield it. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Getting older is fun, but feeling older is not my absolute favorite. Quite often there are aches, and sometimes pains. My grandmother used to call them “miserys” (miseries?) and was proud to tell us when she wasn’t experiencing them. I’m not quite that dramatic (ok. well.) and I do understand that my specific physical experience, while admittedly disconcerting and exhausting, is mild in comparison to the concerns of others.Yet and still.A great deal of my body issues are audible, which lends a kind of performance art feel to them. My back makes a series of dull snaps! whenever I sit up straight (signaling that obviously I need to do that more often); my tummy positively roils (which is a great word, but uncomfortable in practice), and my fingers crack when I reach for anything like I’m dropping a handful of 4th of July bang snaps. I am a mobile foley studio, which the winter months exacerbate.In the morning, I get out of bed with the exact flexibility of a leather jacket frozen overnight in a meat locker. My ‘lil bones randomly pop-pop-pop from head to toe all the way to the shower (which I like to imagine as a Fountain Of Youth™ – so to fortify that harmless fantasy I splurged on some special soaps with ridiculous ingredients and ludicrous scents (right now I apparently smell like MARVEL’s Iron Man, but Ravenclaw is still my favorite)).I never make a formal New Year’s resolution to get in shape, but this is the time of year I am more aware of myself - since I seem to be stuck inside with myself so much of the time. Outside the world is quiet, city noise muffled with a thick blanket of snow. Inside, I can hear my shoulders moving.I normally walk a great deal, but it’s not the season for that yet, so I’m trying to find more ways to “stay active” in my “golden years”. The “Golden Girls” on tv were all supposed to be in their mid-fifties, so I am doing what I can to keep up with Bea Arthur and Betty White. I would love to be that person who takes the stairs up to their office everyday in a spirit of raw vigor, but my new office is on the 18th floor, so I’d be completely vigor-free by the time I got there. Vigor takes you eight, nine floors, max. After that it would be Determination (floors 10-14), followed by Necessity (15-16) and then Embarrassing Desperation(17).I knew a fella who bicycled everyday from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan. Amazing. So fit. But damp. He was always kind of damp. I think that would make me sad, a little bit. I may not be in the best shape, but I’m dry. Little victories.I bought a kettlebell. You might remember when I bought a “chin-up bar”. Yeah. That was fun too. There it is, right on my door. I do pull up on it from time to time, raising my chin along with the rest of me, but it hasn’t become a determinated habit. I did what everyone must the first time I tried it… I counted off three sets of 10 and then kind of rolled my shoulders back (“snap! ka-pop! krik!”).I imagined how after one week I’d feel it, after 30 days I’d see it, and after three months other people would slow clap when I got in the subway car.It only took one day for me to feel it, because I was an idiot, and I did not start slow enough. It took one week for me to stop feeling it, which fostered ambivalence toward the “chin-up bar”.So I bought a kettlebell. It is not as clumsy or random as a barbell, but an elegant exercise accessory for my more civilized age. Most of the movements engage the core, which is great because it reminds me that I have one. I am starting very slowly, as the first exercise is to pick up the kettlebell. I have not yet mastered the first exercise, because I’m overthinking it. My hands grasped too tight, and my back was GI Joe straight as I bent over. I found a kettlebell master on YouTube with over 500,000 views who was very helpful, but very pronounced, muscle-wise, much like an inverted pyramid. It would be accurate to say that he is bulky. I do not wish to be bulky. I wish to be flexible. And dry, I guess.The kettlebell has enhanced my fledgling exercise routine by intensifying that Tai Chi series I’ve been trying to memorize since lockdown. I have combined the two efforts, using the time to meditatively try to do just one thing. To monotask. But my mind drifts and drifts again, and there’s no un-stressful place for it to land, so it just re-fuels in the air like a fighter jet.But we’re half-way to spring. I can make it to spring, when my body’s noises will be joined by the trill of songbirds and the blossoming trees joyfully trigger my assortment of seasonal allergies.See? There’s always something to look forward to. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I enjoy making hot chocolate. Ironically, I can’t drink it, as I’ve developed a myriad of late onset allergies, but it’s incredibly satisfying to whip up in the winter for the family, and always brings at least three levels of happiness.* First the audible “Oh!”- eyebrows raised in happy surprise, * then the reach with both hands to take the warm mug, * then the closed-eyes smile as marshmallow steam rises to the nose. Mmmm. Then hopefully it tastes good as well.I don’t have a secret to my recipe, but if I did it would either be the touch of vanilla extract or the maple syrup instead of cane sugar. Or the melted dark chocolate pieces. Or the cardamom. Which is also ironic, because growing up our traditional family recipe was provided by my yodeling aunt, Swiss Miss™, who was nice enough to provide pre-packaged individual servings.My mother loves chocolate, and was never really satisfied with the store bought pre-mixes. She would toss a few chocolate chips or a spoonful of brown sugar - make certain the marshmallows were fresh and plentiful. Hot chocolate was a cup of luxury in our tiny little apartment - never failing to make us feel special, and slightly fancy.As a midwestern student at an Eastern college, I often felt that my life experience was a bit plain when compared to that of my more photogenic classmates from larger cities - in particular the kids from California, a land I had only seen on film. These were fit and tawny folk, who always seemed a bit windswept, even when indoors.As a junior, I was lucky enough to be housed in the special counselor’s space located on the freshman campus, where dormitories framed a full city block with a gigantic green in the middle. There was one apartment for men and one for women: we were supposed to attempt to perform the role of “rational guiding force” to the younger kids. Many of my roommates took this directly to heart, offering advice, holding back hair, and listening to tales of woe and adventure.But on November 18, 1986 it was my turn. About 3PM the skies grew dark, then darker, and then it began to snow.I was right by the windows in our common room, studying on the couch. I looked up from the textbook I was reading and thought “Snow.” I knew I had work boots from K-Mart that almost fit (as long as I wore two pair of socks) and a long blue wool coat I’d bought for $10 at a SOHO thrift store. I started reading again when the yelling started.One by one, kids were running outside to the middle of the green. They seemed to have no clear destination, just… outside: running in random patterns like untethered electrons. “Whee!” they yelled. “Look!” they exclaimed.I watched them from the window. First there were five, then twenty, then when the number grew to about eighty or so I noticed that most of those participating were decidedly tawny. And wearing shorts. And well fitting white t-shirts. Some of the young men were not wearing shoes of any kind. These students, from hometowns with beaches, had never seen snow before.And they were frolicking. That’s the only verb capable of describing it.The snow intensified quickly, it coated the ground completely - some of the kids made impromptu snowballs and attempted to fling them at each other. A few of my roommates saw the fun and ran out to join them. Someone placed the speakers from their stereo to face out of their window and played “Let It Snow”. I plugged in my electric teakettle. In fact, I plugged in all of our electric teakettles. It was on the “suggested items for students” list - so every parent had provided their child with one.Downstairs the glee continued. I found all paper cups left over from our makeshift Halloween party.And just as the water began to boil, down on the green, the tallest and most strapping of my West Coast freshman colleagues yelled out,“Hey!” Then, in a bit of a panic, “It’s COLD!!!!”And that’s when I opened my Value Sized Box of hot cocoa packets, distributing half an envelope of powder to each cup, and poured in the water. I ended up with about 18 servings: put them on a tray, and after putting on my coat, brought them down to our entryway.Gratitude. Oh, eyebrows were well-raised, and frozen hands reached quite impressively, and blissful smiles were all about, but my favorite reaction was from the giant football player fellow wearing no shoes who had shortly before discovered what “temperature” actually was.“What is this?” he asked me, chattering excitedly.“It’s hot chocolate!” I told him. He took a sip. “This is INCREDIBLE! Did YOU make this?”“Yeah.” Watching all the slightly blue faces thaw in the heat of their beverages, I was actually quite proud of my work.He was very impressed. “How did you think of this?”“Oh. Dude. I didn’t INVENT it… it’s a thing.”He stared blankly at me for a second.“I’m from the midwest.”“OH!” he replied, as if that actually explained anything.Later, heading out to dinner, those same kids put on the “winter coats” their parents had bought for them in California and Texas. Stylish, distinctly beautiful and elegant, they each proved entirely useless below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That weekend most of those same kids ended up going into Manhattan to pick up a thrift store wool coat for $10.For all my love of the beverage, I am no longer the family’s official hot chocolatier - that title now belongs to my daughter, who has even created a hot non-dairy allergen-free drink for me. Now it’s my turn to be grateful, my “OH!” and outstretched hands and cozy smile, because a hot beverage in the depths of winter will always be a special thing, and still makes me feel kind of fancy. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Brinks aren’t great. Edges are already suspicious, but brinks are just the worst.Except for those money delivery trucks; each of those is a minimalist Recreational Vehicle filled with Pure Dreams (tainted only by a measure of grand larceny). But every other brink? Terrible.And all of that teetering. No one ever frolics or languishes near a brink, it’s always TEETERING. And never toward ice cream, or low interest loans or a smoked brisket sandwich - folks endlessly teeter toward the brinks of insanity, bankruptcy, extinction, and the unfortunate favorite, war. I do try to stay positive, but…heavens. All this teetering.Everything seems just a little bit much right now. And Winter’s a bad time for distraction - too cold to take my long walks outdoors, while indoors is filled with funny little screens that kind of hate me. I can’t eat or drink my worries away because the math to do that would mean there’d be no food in my refrigerator and I’d be living comfortably in a rehabilitation facility. I bought a kettle ball to get more exercise, then promptly sprained my back cleaning out my office at work, so that’ll have to wait until Spring.Enter my family, who can always be trusted when teetering looms. Their ingenuity has resulted in a new therapeutic strategy that has kept us all going.About once a week, my family sits on the couch and listens to an entire album. All the way through. Sometimes we listen to two.We eat popcorn sometimes and sketch sometimes and sometimes we look at the words and are surprised that we had them wrong, but don’t really correct them in our heads because that’s the way we’ve been singing “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones for the past 45 years.My daughter plays both contemporary artists as well as a surprising amount of classic funk and rock. My wife plays 90’s goth and shoegaze standards as well as drum and bass. I play everything else: children’s records from the 1940’s, jazz icons, orchestral soundtracks from rarely screened movies, the best of pop music’s 3 and 2 hit wonders.Sometimes we relate to our daughter our memories regarding the music we choose, or a brief history of its relevance in our lives.“This is the one that Dad danced to in high school at the one party that someone finally invited him to.”“I know.” she replies, “You told me that when I was eight, but it does sound a little bit sadder now that I’m actually in high school.” While it is comforting to bring context to the music, our shared experience re-listening together frees our perception to hear the music through our current ears. Subtleties we never caught before rise to the surface. That Jane’s Addiction album might actually be a little toxic, masculinity-wise.Many new artists my daughter introduces us to seem to enjoy the endless musical potential of heartfelt profanity. On principle, we have never played censored versions of songs. When an inappropriate lyric came up while driving in the car with our young daughter, we would just both sing gibberish louder than the radio. As she is older now, we all just sing along.“Is this a love song?” I’ll ask her. “Not really. It’s more an assertive statement about who she is.”That seems good, right? A powerful alignment of art and spirit. A good thing to be a fan of. At her age I was deep in the throes of Yacht Rock, and doubt that the North Star of my identity was in any way fashioned by Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” or everything by Hall and Oates.It’s good this time, spent together. We don’t have to talk. We don’t have to watch anything. It pulls us back from the brink, which the OED defines as the point where something (typically something unwelcome) is about to happen, or the verge of a very unpleasant or dangerous situation.What wonderful news. We’re far past that! We have, ALL of us, obviously traversed the brink, since we are deep in the land of the unwelcome, unpleasant and dangerous! Huzzah, I say! We teeter no more as we have been pushed in and are now swimming!How incredibly delightful. I do hope there’s a bar at the edge of the pool.Next week, Sam and Dave. Soul Man.‘Cause that’s what really matters. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

We, are simple folk, with little need for the fancy or extravagant. A grateful family of humble artists - days without drama, foods without gluten, we push ever onward finding delight in what might seem mundane or insignificant.For instance, a certain movie trailer appeared this week for a film that will premiere (no joke) eleven and a half months from now. Yet due to careful world building, inspired casting, and a lore so deep that is goes back nearly eight decades, to us a year doesn’t seem all that long to wait.We watched the trailer together on the living room couch, cheering at all the appropriate places. We must’ve looked hilarious.But we love great movies. Zoe’s rule is that a movie needs to be an experience to remember, not a mere story being told. “Good or bad, if you can remember watching the movie, it did its job.”Used to be that we watched most films with an audience, before Blockbuster and Netflix and HD TVs, and that made the experience unique because no one else would watch this exact film with this exact group of people. (Of course, that was before all the trailers telling us to shush and zip it or they’ll throw us out of the theatre. Honestly, the very nerve.)It was a tradition in college each December for sophomores, juniors, and seniors to take freshmen to the annual screening of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the 1946 masterpiece of hope, community and empathy. “It’s a classic!” they all said. “It’s the beginning of the holiday season!” they all chimed.What it actually was: the sound of about 300 freshman crying their eyes out. All the pressure of three and a half months of college, mixed with the homesickness and a couple of pre-cinema cocktails, caused pent-up emotion to flow right out of all of us the second George Bailey came back to that bridge, at which point the upperclassmen who brought my group distributed Kleenax to us all. I DO remember seeing THAT film.They’re aren’t all that many left, but the Drive-In is a tradition I adore. There was only one left operating within driving distance of San Francisco, so one late 90’s summer night we piled in a pickup with friends a couple of cartons of shrimp stir fry and headed down to see “Blade”, the only-very-slightly blacksploitive vampire kung-fu action movie starring Wesley Snipes.Somewhere during the movie’s attempt at exposition, Zoe saw a kitten walking past the truck. It stopped and mewed at her, dimly illuminated by the giant screen’s reflection. She took a tiny piece of her shrimp and tossed it over the side, then turned to us.“There’s a little kitten over here! You guys have to see it!”I sat up and looked over the edge. “Oh! It’s a little grey one!”She was confused. “No, it’s striped.” She looked where I was looking. “Oh! It’s another one!” she said excitedly, and threw another piece of shrimp over the side.Onscreen, Blade the vampire, having completed his lengthy backstory, was now creeping through dripping tunnels looking for the villain. The parking lot plunged into darkness.Our third friend was a bit slower getting up, but finally did look. “I don’t see anything” she told us. “It all looks like rocks…but they’re…moving?”For an absolutely perfect illustration of what happened next, you could go to 1:00:20 in Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, but I’ll just tell you - the ground around the truck began to undulate, in a seasick fashion. We found a flashlight in the glove compartment and flicked it on to find at least 30 cats surrounding the truck, milling like pigeons to a spread of birdseed.“What should we do?!” I asked, panicking. Zoe was already trying to feed them more shrimp, throwing little pieces farther and farther from the truck like a line of breadcrumbs leading toward the Subaru hatchback in front of us. But the urban feline pride was not deterred.“You have to stop feeding them! They’ll get bored and wander off!” our friend said, confidently.And they did, because someone eventually spilled some popcorn a few cars away. I’m not really sure what happened in the movie, but I do remember seeing, you know, most of it.We’re not The South, but summer in New York always includes one day when it is so absolutely miserable that the sun’s radiation penetrates all concrete and steel to somehow still broil the skin. In 1995 this day occurred on a July Saturday, driving Zoe and I to the cinema multiplex. We knew we could only afford one film, but due to the absolute dispassion of the disaffected teens staffing the theatre, we (and about a hundred other people) slipped unnoticed from one screen to the other all afternoon.I believe we started with “Clueless”, then may have wandered into “Judge Dredd” before landing (pun intended) in “Waterworld”, the Kevin Costner vehicle about a post-apocalyptic world where the oceans rise to envelop the Earth, and human beings must adapt to a kind of Wet Mad Max society.It wasn’t great. It was weird, and we like weird, but this wasn’t a good weird, and most of us were only in the theatre because it was 18 degrees cooler than outside. Some folks were sleeping.But seated directly behind us were two women in their eighties. It became very apparent during the trailers that one of them couldn’t hear all that well and one may have left her glasses at home.“What does that say? I can’t read it.” one asked the other, loud enough for her to hear.“IT SAYS ‘COMING SOON!’” came the booming reply.They were like that the entire film. It was amazing, an unintentional blessing of MST3K level performance, as they - along with the rest of us - tried to figure out what was happening. Eventually, and I don’t feel like I’m ruining this for you - consider it a kindness - the reason that Kevin Costner has survived where others have not is revealed to be the hidden gills he has somehow personally evolved.“What’s wrong with his ears?” one asked.“HE’S A FISH!” replied the other.Then there was a love interest. Alone on a battered raft, adrift at sea, Mr. Costner and his female co-star tended to their wounds and then began to kiss.“What’s going on now?” one asked.“THEY’RE GONNA HAVE SEX! YUCK!” replied the other, and the entire theatre burst out in applause.It must have been eighty degrees in there, but we couldn’t have had a better time. And hard as I’ve tried to forget that particular movie, I am very proud to say that I’ll always remember watching it. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Happy New Year!Used to be, long ago, that I was “in advertising”, deftly mixiting key wordses and imagery like an Ibiza DJ, building the hype of the crowds ’til they were uncontrollably driven to purchase soup, or perhaps very high-end non-basic cable television add-on channels. Heady stuff.I remember once, in my youth, speaking to an old-timer (probably younger than myself now) who told me that the two most used words in the history of the industry were “new” and “improved”.Improved always seemed more impressive - something you loved made better, based on the fact that whatever it consisted of originally had been either added to or enhanced in some way - the taste was tastier, the comfort more comfortable. But underlying this proposition was a lie - sweet could not be much sweeter without being cloying, soft lost structure once it was too soft. Improvement that wasn’t fixing something wrong was just based on MORE, not better, and MORE is indeed better until it surpasses ENOUGH.But NEW. New is always perfect.New has no past and is all future.New shines like the gleam of a shiny thing on the sunniest day backed against the clearest of clear blue skies.New not only looks good, it smells terrific - New Car Smell, most likely a just-below lethal symphony of gasses and toxins, is extremely highly regarded as both phrase and scent. In contrast, “car smell” is not.When something is NEW it is by default DIFFERENT. New is the opposite of OLD. New is the opposite of USED. New is the byproduct of Unique, the incredibly attractive secret cousin of Contemporary, the only truly non-terrifying part of The Unknown.New is not a compliment, it’s an undeniable state of being that must be marked. “Are those shoes NEW?” we ask. “Is that a new hairstyle?” We, of course, know the answer - the shoes are spotless and the coiffure seems to be moving in slow motion, waves of perfect cut and color cascading with every head turn. But we must ask, as we haven’t put anything in context yet because they get extra points right off the bat if they’re NEW. New is perishable, and must be enjoyed promptly.Today is the day Gregorian calendar fans seek a fresh start, a chance to turn their ships around, start the race, plant the seed, begin the quest. Today is Page One of the unwritten novel of another year, the studio credits at the beginning of the film of the next twelve months.It’s not perfect. It’s both too cold and too warm (depending on where one is on the planet), and the challenges of the day before have neither dissipated nor resolved.It’s not ideal; it’s the middle of the workweek, and doesn’t necessarily improve on any aspect of the weeks or months leading up to it.But today is NEW, because our calendar has exhausted its pages and is itself new, and everyone on the planet agrees that it’s new, and they’ll say that to you when you’re out at the grocery store. “Is that a New Year?” they’ll ask.“This?” you reply, with a cocktail of surprise and humility. “Well, yes, yes it is.”“Looks good on you!” they say in a tone that is warm but ever-so-slightly jealous in its undertone.And they’re right. That New Year does look good on you. You simply MUST tell the rest of us where you got it. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been to a few baby showers, and no one brought the baby little stones, though that is the story of Christmas, that there was a magnificent child whose first gifts were all rocks of some kind. Well precious stones and aromatic resin that kind of looks like rocks.Then there is the tale of the little drummer boy, who brought music. That was always my favorite, what a great gift, so much more meaningful, no disrespect to Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar.But yesterday I was on a work video call and one of my colleagues had her 9 month baby and as soon as I saw her face I started ooo-ing and “wubby wubby wubby” ing and that kid just smiled and clapped her hands and I completely forgot about the annual report. We were all working on Christmas Eve, the bailiwick of Ebenezer Scrooge, but the situation looked brighter when that kid started grinning.I know that would have been me, two thousand twenty five years ago. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I think my gift would have been to (try to) make the baby laugh. The drummer boy’s performance got a smile, which was more than the fancier gifts got, according to reports. Admittedly I am ignorant regarding the value of precious stones and incense in the ancient world, but music and a smile, while hard to wrap, can soothe and lift where riches and scents cannot.So the last gift on my list to Santa this year is just that - music and levity. Again, I’ve asked for things I already have, so it’s really just a list of gratitude and appreciation and besides, I kind of bought myself that 20th anniversary super limited-edition pressing of my favorite White Stripes album from eBay a few weeks ago. But I didn’t open it yet, because it was too close to Christmas.Christmas at our house is all about music. Not all of my friends celebrate this specific holiday, but we can still share a few of the songs - mostly the ones about weather - snow and cold and winter… those are universal-ish.For about ten years I held an annual winter holidays lunchtime celebration for the creative production team I was in charge of, which we called Christmahanasolistwanzaa”. I also created an original carol for the event every year, which was mostly impressive because it’s such a difficult word to rhyme. These songs were very tongue-in-cheek but very heartfelt, and some of the folks I worked with still text me that they hear them every year on their holiday playlists.I thought that it was high time to make a little new one, focused on the weather, applicable to anyone in the Northern Hemisphere. I refrained from using our old holiday moniker to make it a little easier on myself as I only had three hours to do it because I worked all day Christmas Eve. But I did get that smile from that kid. Totally worth it. Happy Christmas.And if you’d like to hear the song, please click on this week’s narration. Sniffles and sneezesfrom Nor-Easter breezesare nothing to look forward toSkies are not complementaryWhen mixes are wintryBut they seem much warmer with youTrees are bare but I’m wearing six layersAnd something’s in the airEverywhereWell, I can get by the weatherIf iI can just spend my December Together with youYes, I can get by the weatherIf I can just spend myDecember togetherwith you. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Santa comes but once a year, like your birthday, but somehow it seems longer between Christmases than birthdays. December feels like it has 72 days rather than 31, with the 25th kind of always just out of reach, like that dolly zoom Hitchcock used to do where the thing in the middle just lurches through space. Sakes. I haven’t sent my letter yet, but as previously stated, it is short, with mostly a thank you and an ask after the family and Jack Frost. (I have been a good boy this year, and even an OK man, from time to time.)Gift No. 3. Patienceif in this world(which is somewhat adrift)i could give my child one ideal Christmas giftthis year i would choose an activity long pastholding a life lesson which I hope would last.it isn’t expensive or fancyin factat its heart is a simple, plain household object from which I learned a strategy of how to cope. What is it?A self-addressed stamped envelope.it’s NOT the perfect gift, you say?well understand, back in MY DAYyou wanted something really greatit’s possible you’d have to waitsay, if you had exciting plansto join a cool club meant for FANSyou’d have to deal with writing cramps(they didn’t waste their cash on stamps)you get 2 envelopes (no less)on one, you put on your own addressthen take the next (a bit more wide)and put the first one, stamped, insidesend all of that to where they askand then you face the hardest taskwords in the fine print - hard to see“allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery”today, that’s a truly significant gap from the time you want something ’til it’s in your graspbut this was a late seventies paradigm: we paid for some things both in money, and timeat this point, we had no choice but to simply waitand after few weeks achieve a keen stateof true patience.a zen-ish faiththat all was good, knowing that it would show upwhenever it wouldand then (in the most meta IRL thing)one afternoon your friendly postman would bring youA LETTER FROM YOUstuffed with little surprises(impressively small due to restrictive sizes)but whatever the prize they had started the buzzit was rarely as good as the wait for it wasample space to imagine, guess, and lightly fretas to what you eventually were gonna getnow Chronos and all the Norns suffer neglecti think that they all deserve much more respectin our age of “right now”s, where not much is tactilei believe the best present is “after a while”. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

A Christmas list is a bold statement - the idea that you deserve something, much less the entire contents of a manicured list, is a brave stance to take, particularly when you’re young. And then bringing that list to a man you only see once a year and not spending your time catching up or asking about his family but instead reciting the list to him in full expectation of his timely delivery of said items is… extremely presumptive.Yet Santa listens, and smiles, and nods appreciatively, and takes a picture with you, and instructs one of his elves to give you a lollipop. Amazon™ does not give us lollipops, or photographs, or empathetic smiles - only boxes.Having never been allowed to sit on Santa’s lap -(see: https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/gifts-of-thwipmas-past ) my relationship with him was more mature. I stood next to him, man to (little tiny) man in thoughtful, respectful discussion. I always thanked him for what he had delivered the year before, and only brought him one request, and then only if it wasn’t too much.This year I am respectfully asking Santa for gifts that don’t cost anything. There are more than one, but he doesn’t have to wrap or deliver them, so I’m hoping the resulting carbon offset equals everything out.Gift No. 2. Dignity. “The state or quality of being worthy of respect” In Two Acts.(first act: tragedy)The next to the last straw in leaving my long standing corporate job was a comment by company leadership regarding the saying of “hello”.Our business had experienced a series of financial downturns, resulting in a total overhaul of work space: the majority of private spaces were demolished in favor of an open floor plan. Shared upscale picnic tables with a long corridor in the middle led to the only remaining offices on the perimeter. In these offices were important C-Suite talent.So obviously to get to these offices, company leadership had to walk past a sea of employees, busy at work in the 36” by 24” space they had settled into that day. Complaints were lodged that as they passed, they would only greet a handful of those who said “good morning” to them, most often acknowledging the same few employees every day.That complaint came to me, as the executive responsible for inclusion and benevolent cultural interaction. When I spoke to leadership about this, I was told (in a chummy, “you understand” kind of way) that since we could no longer offer raises and bonuses as incentives for diligent dedication, attention was being used as a substitute.“Dignity is a human currency.” I was told, in what felt like confidence due to the lowered volume, slight narrowing of eye and leaning inward of head. “We can’t just give it to everybody. People should feel it’s something they need to earn. We have to give people something to aspire to, and worry about.”And that was it for me, because parceling out the simple dignity of acknowledgement, flagrantly disregarding every person’s intrinsic value in order to manipulate those under your management is… well… bad, I think. At that moment I knew it was time to find somewhere more generally aligned with my “you should just kind of try to be nice to everybody” policy.Again, I think this might have been told to me in confidence. Hmn.Ok, well, don’t tell anybody.(second act: comedy)I directed a play in high school written by a cast member of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus comedy troupe, a sendup of the kind of murder mysteries written in 1940’s UK boys adventure magazines. None of this coordinated with my existence as a 1980’s black kid in Kansas City, but I thought I could adapt the material a bit.That didn’t really work, so I went the other way, adding a surrealist slide show with odd musical choices between scenes… like a live-action Python episode.I was actually cast in the play as the irascible old grandfather, who predictably is the first to get murdered. Due to some silly plot point, the characters are not allowed to move the body, so it is covered with a tablecloth until the police can arrive. I would be able to run the projections from the balcony if I could just find someone to switch with me during the blackout. Since my hands were visible from under the tablecloth, it had to be an African-American someone.There was a guy… in my class, just about my size, probably the smartest guy in the school, and the only other person besides me to use duct tape to hold his glasses together from time to time. He was not interested in the theatre, but found my proposal intriguing - slip under the tablecloth while I leave the stage, stay there for about 17 minutes, then come out and take a bow with us. The simplicity of the whole operation amused him, and he thought it would be a fun fact to add to his transcripts for college admissions.Everyone knew him, but only peripherally, as, well, that smart guy with broken glasses (from time to time); not a football player or a cheerleader - his identity was stable and entirely free of controversy (or dare I say, drama).So, Iike most of us in high school, he was underestimated. And that is what led to the most significant moment of public adoration I have ever been a part of.We were required to perform each play for an assembly of the entire school. Mine was the second of two one-acts performed that day. For a midwestern high school’s reception of a student-directed surrealist rendering of a post-war British farce, things went pretty well.At the end, all of the main characters are murdered and covered with tablecloths (it’s a comedy): so for our curtain call the last cast member standing (the chambermaid) takes a bow alone, then one by one takes off each person’s tablecloth for their bow. When she finally reached where my character was sitting, I walked out from the side of the stage.The audience was visibly and audibly confused. I responded with a furrowed brow, looked behind me, turned back to them as if to say “Oh! That!” and walked over to pull the tablecloth off my double, bespeckled, in full makeup, who strode to the dead center of the stage with his arms raised triumphantly above his head.It was absolutely deafening. Every student, every teacher, instantly on their feet, cheering madly. It lasted for almost a full minute… the rest of the cast did the thing where we all stepped back and held our hands out facing him, like he was the conductor of the orchestra we didn’t have in the pit.And amazing as that moment was, it was afterwards that made the difference, when people were giving this kid high fives in the hallway, all the freshmen knew his name, and teachers randomly patted him on the back. He walked a little differently down the halls, yes, with dignity, but not because someone has given him a little respect, but because they acknowledged that he had been worthy of it all along, and they just never knew. Everyone had been impressed with how smart he was, and thought they had him pegged, but he defied their definition and did something brave and unexpected. Cool.The play didn’t inspire even one person to ask me about groundbreaking British comedy, but watching that kid, I absolutely didn’t mind. 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Sure, you can give presents at the holidays, in boxes, like everybody else, but the real challenge is always to find something UNIQUE, isn’t it? Something no one else would ever think of? Something fun to give that inspires happy surprise in the give-ee.Well, the best things in life, I’ve heard told, are free. And while most of those are impossible to wrap, it is generally agreed that their impact greatly outshines that of any, say, tiny mechanical “life-like” dog from the internet.So my list for Santa this year is unique in the fact that he cannot actually bring the requested gifts to my house. They are not objects, but concepts, thus they all just have to happen, Deus Ex Machina style, like I was a character in a Netflix™ holiday movie who keeps running into a kind old stranger with twinkling eyes and a full white beard that I somehow, even though it’s December, entirely fail to recognize.No. 1. Learning.I love learning new things - and here I am leaving off the most obvious and descriptive three words of that sentence… at my age. I mean, we’re supposed to learn when we’re young, that’s our job. And there is so much that we are experiencing for the very first time - every interaction we have with the world is some kind of lesson - - and then we begin recognizing PATTERNS - and then we end up amassing INFORMATION - and our experiences compile into bits of WISDOM - and then, later on, one day we go to the bookstore and look at the shelves featuring our favorite authors and realize there are more books that we’ve already read than ones left to read. Yep. That’s where I am.So to gain NEW stories, experiences, and facts is especially exciting to me now. Sure, there are online courses and lectures and how-to manuals and cookbooks, but Wikipedia is bananas. In just a few hyperlinks, your entire world can change. That’s what happened yesterday.For almost 30 years I worked in Advertising, making my living by being creative. During that time I was told by many people how rare that was. Didn’t seem rare, there were tons of us doing it. Yet, some suggested that I in particular was at a social disadvantage. Some saw the exact opposite. Yet all seemed keen to remind me that I was, culturally, a communication pioneer. Black Shackleton; unique, alone, and perhaps curiously… doomed. Can’t blame these folks: they lacked the same history that I did. As I clicked through Wikipedia yesterday researching protest music and peace anthems, I came across an old classic advertising jingle:“I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…”made super famous when Coca-Cola collected young people from around the world on a hilltop in Italy to create what was, in 1971, the most expensive commercial ever made. An international chorus, united in a song that culminated with the musical slogan “It’s the Real Thing”, referring to love and peace and (of course) the product in the bottles they were holding.It was a hit. I mean, it was an actual hit - the jingle was extended into a song, re-recorded twice and went gold around the world - quite a feat since a commercial had never before experienced such commercial success.Two clicks later I discovered that the original tune was from a record called “True Love and Apple Pie” by British hitmakers Cook and Greenaway, which had been extensively rewritten for the ad by the songwriters, legendary ad exec Bill Backer, and US songwriter Billy Davis.I had never heard of Billy Davis. One more click I learned he worked at McCann Erickson in New York as their SVP Music Director, writing music for ads like “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer” for Miller and “Coca-Cola Adds Life…Have a Coke and a Smile”. I KNEW these songs, I sang them in the grocery store and around the house, never suspecting that a black person had anything to do with them.In a general sense, does that matter? Probably not, but it would have back then - giving me a clearly possible goal to focus on. I made up little songs all the time and wanted to do that for a job, but try telling that to your mother. And it’s important to me now, as evidence that the work I accomplished in that category was part of a specific legacy of professional experience, and not an independent or isolated spark. Blackleton No More.And it might sound a bit crazy, but I feel that learning about Billy Davis yesterday has somehow, across time and space, influenced that little kid I used to be, sending a bit of encouragement back 50 years and across 3000 miles…Hey! Kid! Keep being a wierdo! Keep memorizing Monty Python sketches and reciting them in loud voices in the backyard! Keep learning how to make up songs and write stories and build things. I know it sounds impossible now, but grownups like you actually make things you like, and someday you can get a Real Job with all that in New York City! Seriously!But while you’re at it, you might just want to keep a sharp look-out for an old man with a long white beard and a red shirt and a twinkle in his eye? He should definitely be around there somewhere. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

You know there’s more pie, right?I’m so glad you’re here, but … pie. I don’t want to distract you. Priorities and all.If you do have a minute, I’d love to tell you a little story. It’s not very long, but right after you really should go back to that pie idea.The “Give-a-Show Projector” : basically a D-cell battery flashlight with a plastic lens on it so that you could project filmstrips on the wall in the dark…the very dark (‘cause it wasn’t that great a flashlight). The Kenner company sold tons of these from 1958 on - and like the 3D marvel toy “ViewMaster”, “Give-a-Show” brought images from tv shows and movies right into your house… no sound of course, but in a pre-video time you could experience the same still-frame cinematic thrill as audiences of the 1880’s. Anyway, I got one for maybe my seventh birthday (I love it and I still have it) ; it was given to me at my only birthday party where grade-school classmates actually came over to our apartment. And our neighborhood.Let me set this up: my mom wanted me to go to the best school possible so I wouldn’t become one of those urchins with a pageboy cap and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth calling everybody a “wise guy”. So three weeks before my very first school year started, my pediatrician suggested Mom check out the school his daughter was in. Mom loved it, took me for an interview (I was three and a half - I’m sure I was scintillating), then she super-quickly secured a new teaching position that allowed her to drop me off in the mornings, and I was given some third hand light blue shirts and navy pants. Boom: we became proud members of a new community.It was only the second year this school had allowed boys to attend, as it had traditionally been a Catholic girls school (which perfectly tracks with my alignment with all things “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”). Also, in a spirit of the peace and love 1960s, economically challenged students who normally wouldn’t be able to consider this school an option were welcomed at a discount. As well as we browner children.Thus this birthday party was a fascinating array of the socio-economic dynamics of 1973 Kansas City, ranging from, well…us to my friend who lived in a mansion. Maybe it wasn’t a mansion… how big are mansions? It was like the house Steve Martin has in “Father of the Bride”. Like that. We had been there once for a PTA function - his bedroom was as big as half our apartment and he had the GI Joe with the tower that has a zip line so Joe could slide from the top of it down to his Jeep™. I mean, dude.That same kid came to my party, in a town car with a driver. This was absolutely not congruous with my neighborhood’s esthetic, which was in no way destitute, but I don’t think anybody would leave a limo on the street overnight.Anyway, this young man was OVERJOYED by my Give-a-Show Projector. When his mom (and their driver) came to pick him up, he took her all around MY little room, showing her my yo-yos and posters and harmonica and comic books. Before they left, his mom asked my mom where she found all these unique things.“Oh! Uh… well, they were down at K-Mart.”“Kay - Mart.” she wrote it down on a little pad with a tiny pen. “Really! Now where is that?”“Well, they have several of them. One’s out on Metcalf Avenue.”She put the tiny pen back in it’s leather loop. “Well, thank you. Such interesting toys. Wonderful.”After everybody left, I asked my mother about it because I was confused as to why a kid with everything would be at all interested in what we had. I knew that they didn’t sell fancy toys at our stores, but it never occurred to me that they didn’t sell our little toys at the more expensive places.“When it comes down to it, it’s just how much you appreciate what you’ve got.” Mom said. “You could have more than us, or fancier things, but if you really don’t love them they don’t feel special. But we have this –”and here her arm stretched out in sweeping display, like Vanna White,“and we are very grateful for it. So it feels to us like we have all we need.”We ate more birthday cake, giggling at the idea of a limousine pulling up to a discount store.And that kid with the mansion grew up to use his wealth and influence to help others and to make the city better. Good job, kid. Anyway, that story is kind of why I never have just one thing I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving, I’m always kind of thankful for everything. The sun and the rain and, I guess the appleseed… and you, reading this. I really appreciate that.Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful day.[now… pie!] Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

It’s been pointed out that the Eskimo culture has many words for “snow”. In my family we have two. One is “snow”, which we use when there is snow. The other is “frost”. It’s “family thing”. You’ve got them, with your family - chosen or domestic, that collection of words or phrases that mean something to you because you share the story behind them. Here’s the story behind “frost”:I’d been working 12 hour days for seven months, then nearly 18 hour ones for about three weeks – finishing a gigantic project. I was a wreck. Also, I hadn’t actually taken a vacation in seven years. Given the state of me, Zoe decided that we should get away, and booked a trip for us.The year was changing from 1999 to 2000, eve of the new millennium: Zoe and two friends of ours planned a holiday voyage to Italy. My mother questioned traveling abroad on New Year’s Eve that particular year, but Zoe wanted to be in a place that had functioned fine for centuries before electricity, just in case we found out at midnight on Dec. 31st that we really weren’t going to have any for a while.We didn’t have any money to speak of, so Zoe and our friend had meticulously worked out arrangements to share a little place to stay. This was an incredible challenge in such an ancient age (pre smartphones or the modern internet) as we all lived in different cities, yet she expertly engineered timetables with spy novel accuracy, allowing each of us to purchase the absolute cheapest flights available.However, due to their incredible value, none of these flights landed right at our actual destination, so to complete the plan it was necessary that someone kind of drive around and just pick up everybody.That someone, I soon discovered, would be Me.The plan was that we’d* fly to our affordable airport * rent a car,* run around and pick up our friends at their affordable airports* and then drive to the place we were staying.Besides, the car was a great investment. No train fare for four people. We could go to the grocery store and then cook for ourselves. That is Pure Savings on four wheels.These were The Facts. I knew The Facts. I’m super good with facts.What I didn’t ask about were the details. Those were… fuzzy, like Chewbacca-after-the-sonic-torture-device-in-Cloud-City fuzzy.I probably agreed to it. Who knows. At that time, I hadn’t really slept in about a season and a half. I was pliable and amenable. I agreed to many things.I dimly remember standing in the kitchen being assured that Italians drive on the right side just like in the US, so I could drive there if I wanted to. This bit of trivia soothed me, but only to the shallow depth produced during conversations one believes to be entirely theoretical.I got home from work about 11PM the night we were flying out, showered, grabbed my suitcase, and we in hopped a cab to the airport. Our affordable tickets had us taking off in the middle of the night and then landing in the middle of what I assumed was different night, where we immediately traveled to a budget hotel straight out of a Wes Anderson fever dream – there was a shower but no tub or curtain, just a mysterious drain placed in the dead center of the bathroom floor.It was awesome. Vacation had begun.I am a good driver, but my grasp on reality and motor functions hadn’t yet returned, as any sleep I’d picked up on the plane or in our mysterious hotel had been countered by an understandable amount of jet lag. We went to pick up the rental car and purchased a detailed road map. “Where are we now?” I asked in poor Italian. The gentleman made a circle on the map. “And where is…” I showed him the address of our destination. He looked a bit shocked, furrowed his brow slightly… took the map, flipped it over, and drew another circle that was a good twelve inches below the first. MY brow furrowed slightly. My wife took my arm and sped me off to the car.We set off through the empty morning streets, trying to find the entrance to the highway.“Hey, uh, why are those circles so far apart?” I asked her.“We’re in Milan.” she answered.“Oh.” I remember replying, trying to connect her answer to my question.“And where are we going?” I asked.“Florence.” she said, pointing at the second circle on the map, “It’s just right over here.”I drowsily thought about Florence Henderson, the actress who played the mom on “The Brady Bunch”. That episode with the tiki doll was kinda scary. We found the highway and began driving. After about an hour I realized we had been driving for about an hour. I’d been busy learning how to downshift instead of braking and trying to determine what speed everyone was going in kilometers, which seemed a great deal faster than 55mph.My wife had been navigating and telling me stories, looking more and more tense.“Are we there yet?” I asked. “Let me check.” she replied. She looked out the window at the road signs, did a few quick calculations with the map. “We’re looking good.” she finally said. The plan was solid, but timing was very tight. And again, her answer didn’t really answer what I was asking.I didn’t ask the right questions. I see that now. But Zoe has a singular talent for these kinds of arrangements, where everything always works out perfectly in the end. Still, at some point, probably before I started driving, I should have casually asked how far it was from Milan to Florence. That casual answer would have been “almost 200 miles”.Running around to pick up people? I had imagined that the airports were like in New York, where LaGuardia and Kennedy and Newark are all ten miles away from each other. Ten miles is a “run around” distance. I would have experienced extreme apprehension (leaning into absolute dread) at the idea of a 200 mile road trip my first time driving in a foreign country.All of this came to light, bit by bit, during the next hour. Many more cars were on the road, but unlike holiday traffic I was used to, they all seemed to be going faster.“Well, you’re more than halfway done now. There’s no big deal. You’re doing fine!” Zoe said in a really encouraging tone. “From here on it’s a straight shot down this road.” “I finally did the math and I think everybody’s going about 90 miles an hour.” “Then it’ll go even faster.” she said, smiling.I took it in stride until the road turned white. “Is this…snow?” I asked her.“I don’t think so.” she said, completely convincingly. I looked ahead of the car. “Are those mountains?”“No. Those are the hills.” she emphasized. “They have white peaks.” “Probably clouds.” She dialed the radio to find more music to listen to.It was at this point my adrenaline finally conquered my jet lag.“So I’m not, like, in Italy, driving a stick shift rental car going 90 miles per hour on a snowy road in the mountains?”“That’s not snow.” she said, with an air of pure transparency. “It’s frost!”“There’s an inch and half of it.” “It’s heavy frost. Just keep driving.” And I did, and her plan worked out perfectly, and we all got where we were going had a lovely and value-centered holiday. But “frost” is now a family thing meaning “don’t look over there…you don’t need to look over there” ; a signal to just trust one another and keep going, a hybrid of “I’ve got your back!” and “don’t worry your pretty little head.” “Hey! Is that smoke coming from the kitchen??”“Nope… heavy frost. Dinner in ten.”So, now you know. Welcome to the family. 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I remember getting less than five spankings.After the first one, I really did attempt to avoid them.As my only present parent, my mother usually held the exclusive monopoly on even the threat of spankings, but I did get one when I was three years old from a babysitter when I totally bit a bully (total fluke – I’d probably never do that now), and a very memorable one was administered to me by my grandfather - a man so inherently and elementally fair as to be an actual district court judge in real life: never raised his voice, neither hemmed nor hawwed, and was a great role model whose example I normally followed to the letter. He didn’t even really want to do it, it ends up.It was a complication of science, experimentation, and curiosity: a misunderstood boy, betrayed by both his grandmother, genetics, and (albeit inadvertently) the very nice people of the Proctor and Gamble™ company.My grandparents lived down the block from us - when my school was out but my mother was still teaching, I would stay at their house.My grandfather was in court most of the day, so my grandmother would watch me. Somewhat.I was eight, and normally I had lots of books to read, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to just read books all day, so we would watch television. I know that sounds weird but no, you’re right, that does sound weird. Anyway, this fateful day was very hot, and as the early summer heatwave wore on, my grandmother thought it a good idea that I cool off with a bath. She also knew that this was a good way to get a little time to herself, as the bath was a watery theatre to me, where I would make up stories and have adventures: all she had to do is yell out my name occasionally when I stopped talking to myself.My grandfather had built a little bathroom right off the kitchen, complete with a bathtub. It used to be a breakfast nook, so it was a bit cramped, but I liked it because it was supposed to be for “guests” and I always felt fancy when I was in there.It had fancy soaps in the shapes of little fruits (which we couldn’t touch) and fancy hand towels (which were not for drying your hands on) and Dixie Cups™ (totally just for show - which is why the dispenser always full) and lightly scented powder blue Charmin™ bathroom tissue.I remember exactly what happened because I had to explain it all to my grandfather. I remember standing in front of him as he stared at me intently, eyes narrowed, lips tightly pursed. This is pretty much exactly what I told him:I was in the tub and everything was ok and I hadn’t touched any of the things I wasn’t supposed to touch, but then I had something in my eye and my hands were wet and I wanted to wipe my face but the towel was over by the door so I got a little bit of the blue bath tissue and wiped my eye with it,but the water make it melt and it dissolved in the water. So I got another piece of paper, this one was bigger so it would stay together, and I wiped my eye with it, but it started to dissolve too, but then I noticed that the dissolved paper just stayed floating on the top of the water, and when I put my hand under the water and pulled it up it would cover my hand with blue.But I still hadn’t wiped my eye yetso I got another piece, this one was actually pretty big, because I was blinking a lot because my eye was kind of stinging, and I wiped my eye. But I couldn’t reach the trash to put the paper in and I didn’t want to clog the toilet so I kept it in the tub and I knew that Grandma wanted me to answer her when she called so I listened very carefully even when my head was underwater and I jumped up and answered her every time.Then when the bath was over I ran my hand over the top of the water a lot to make sure I had gotten all of the dissolved paper and it wouldn’t clog the drain and I squeezed all the water out of it and then put it in the garbage can in the kitchen so that I wouldn’t mess up the bathroom.And that was it.And that WAS it. Except those times I had ducked underwater to be The Man From Atlantis™ (7PM Thursdays on NBC) meant (of course) that my head dipped below the surface of the water : and every time I emerged I embedded dissolved Charmin™ paper pulp into my totally authentic 1970’s AFRO.My grandfather later admitted that his expression during my confession was not due to the severity of my crime, but the fact that my entire head was now bright blue and he was barely holding in his laughter. After my bath, I had gone to the kitchen to have a cookie, waiting for my grandmother to be proud that I’d cleaned up so well, which DID happen but was interrupted by her full throated scream at my Accidental Smurfification.She tried to comb it out. It wasn’t happening. Spray paint would have been less adhering.She said she’d just have to cut all of my hair off, and she would have too, if I hadn’tta made a run for it (the power cord was only so long) –– and in the end, that’s what pushed her over the edge. The running. That’s when she decided that my grandfather should give me the spanking.My mom was going to be there in a little bit, but Grandma was absolutely apoplectic, so in a spirit of “happy wife / happy life” Grandpa told me to go out to the backyard TO CUT MY OWN SWITCH.I took a few psych classes in college. I’ve watched various PBS specials, read a little bit of Freud, a little more of Jung. Never in all my studies have I seen this particular process properly broken down and examined for the truly hellish mind twister that it is. Having been warned to “get a good one”, I measured every merit of the twigs from the bush I was sent to. Too thin would certainly move FASTER, and too thick would feel like a baseball bat.My grandfather said that he laughed silently on the porch, tears streaming down his eyes, his eldest grandchild awash in horticultural terror in his backyard, blue hair blazing in the late afternoon sun.I came back with a two foot long choice with few burrs, prepared to meet my fate. I got one swat and was sent to apologize (again) to my grandmother, who was mostly fretting about what to say to my mother when she arrived.But my mom was already used to me at this point. Together we had conducted a series of experiments about solutions where we dissolved salt and sugar in water, then suspended a string in the sugar water and made rock candy. So my fascination, and my explanation, sort of made sense to her.She looked at my hair a bit wearily and was very glad it hadn’t been cut off completely, but we went home she cut it a bit shorter, and then I sat on the floor in front of her while she meticulously used the smallest comb in the house to tease out as much of the bright blue as possible.It was summer, after all, and no one was going to see it.Except maybe the folks at church. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

5/13/73It’s Sunday, after church.My mom and I are in the back of my uncle’s car, heading to the fancy cafeteria that the family visits on Mother’s Day so that:* Grandma won’t have to cook and* we can celebrate her publicly as our Center Of Attention (which is always her second favorite gift, right after “cash in a plain, white envelope”).My mother has a car, but she’s left it at home because:* it is too small for four people and* there’s a national energy crisis going on: gasoline is being rationed and we’re all supposed to carpool as much as possible.and I can’t help with all the driving, as* I do not yet own a car and* I’m only 6.The weather’s lovely, there’s little traffic, and church let out a little early so that everyone could make it to their own cafeterias, then get back home at a decent hour.As we were head over the Interstate Viaduct (a REALLY fancy name for our local bridge over the Kansas River) my uncle turns to his wife in the passenger seat.“Honey?” he asks her, “What time is it?”“OH!” my mother says from the back seat, hurriedly trying to free the face of her watch from the tight sleeves of her Sunday clothes, “I think it’s about - maybe two o’clock?”“…no, no, no, no - I’m asking HER.” My uncle turns to his wife again, “Can YOU tell us?”My aunt smiles, looks at her wrist and pauses for a moment, then announces “It’s 2:14.”At last my mother succeeds at shoving her unbuttoned blouse cuff back far enough to make out the time. “…yeah, I’ve got about two…eleven?” That’s how she missed seeing it right away.“Mama! Look!” I say, excitedly, as my aunt holds up her wrist to reveal a new golden watch. It is SQUARE; with a tiny golden face that has NO HANDS on it, just a tiny black rectangle in the middle, and two shiny buttons on its right side.“What IS that?” my mother asks, as my aunt presses the top button, and tiny red lines blaze to life on the watch, in the rough shape of the numbers 2, 1, and 5.“Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?” my uncle crows, having proudly provided our first glimpse at Wearable Technology.The answer was no, we had never seen anything like that in our lives. The Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury books that my mother adored as a child foretold possible futures filled with space-age wonders, but the current world outside was still oppressively analog, powered by gears and smoke - no flying cars yet, or antigravity belts, or two-way video phones.…but here is this new thing on my aunt’s wrist, this…?“It’s a DIGITAL WATCH!” my uncle explains. “There’s a tiny computer inside it that tells the time on this little screen…”My mother assumes it’s radioactive: you can’t have a battery next to your skin like that, it’s dangerous. I assume that it’s expensive: it doesn’t look real.My aunt then pushes the second button, and the numerical date appears in the little window.She pushes the first button three times, and the rough words “I LOVE YOU”, followed by HER OWN NAME, appear on the screen.It was the greatest Mother’s Day present I had ever seen. I had only gotten my mother a Hallmark™ card.If I was to play this moment out,both my mother and I would eventually get digital watches in about five years, once they made it to K-Mart and the price came down precipitously,and we’d watch the world around us transform into a version of the future that Asimov and Bradbury predicted (along with Gene Roddenberry, and maybe Aldous Huxley),and then I’d be HERE, now, writing these very words on a glowing miracle box from a company named after a fruit:but I don’t think that’s how time works.If time was one straight line, then that watch from 50 years ago, viewed in modern context, would not be all that impressive, and I shouldn’t feel any jolt of awe when thinking about it now.But I still do. The memory of that moment carries with it the pure emotions that I felt in that car, at that time.Some memories are self-contained, self-sustaining, still able to make us laugh or cry or fill us with wonder. Complete temporal ecosystems. Snapshots. I have no idea what else happened that day, or what I ate at the cafeteria, but in that car, on that bridge, is where The Future began. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Frank Sinatra isn’t lazy. He’s been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.I’ve only been four of those things, so far. Not because I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t have as many years on me as Frank, and my circle of compatriots and associates is far less comprehensive than his was, requiring less role-based interactions. I have not been a king of any sort, and though I readily admit to a few corporate situations where I was a bit of a pawn, I have successfully never become anyone’s puppet. (Whew.)Look, I’m not trying to play The Sands - I just want to make it from MARVEL movie to MARVEL movie with as little incident as possible: little do I strive to accomplish that crosses kings or conjures strings. Frank Sinatra helped define the time that he lived in, and that time helped shape the person that he became. Can you imagine Frank Sinatra as the lead singer in an ‘90’s hard rock band? Or as a superstar DJ on a festival stage? Or playing the role of King George in Hamilton? Okay, well, that one’s pretty cool… they’d probably have to add a more swingin’ horn section.But none of those would be Frank. Frank is a sharp suit, a half-drained martini glass, a dangling cigarette and a microphone. You could use those items to dress as Frank Sinatra for Halloween, as together, they form a fair representation of his iconography, if you combine all of that with a little bit of charm. Oh, and a tremendous amount of talent, of course, which you can’t get at a costume store.He made it look easy. Well, they all did; Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole and Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin. They all sang songs six nights a week, two to three shows a night, and made ‘em swing. Las Vegas royalty.We don’t have anything like that now, really. Celine Dion, sure… Lady Gaga, Beyoncé. But those are productions - awe inspiring events, with giant screens and costumes and special effects, not just a person and a band and a microphone.Anyway, I was thinking about what to be for Halloween this year, and I had a longer list of what I DIDN’T want to be…* Scared* Tired* Furious* Confused* Overwhelmed* Panicked and* Numb…the seven dwarves that nobody likes.I wanted to be confident but not meglomaniacal, present while lacking pretention, and… fun. I write a humor column for my family. I cannot afford to dismiss the world as merely Grim, Dark, Dire, or Cold, though those were my “spookytime” themes this year, and I can’t make the world all better either. My chief strategy is to offset - there’s always grim news, so create something pleasant; where possible, bring a bit of light to the darkness; fortify hope when all looks dire; and bring warmth, kindness to those overwhelmed by a dearth of empathy… The Cold.Recycle a bottle, plant a tree - actually I did plant a tree in 1972 and it grew to a giant thing I saw 20 years later. That made a fair bit of oxygen for a planted stick we got on sale from the K-Mart garden store. Anyway, here at the end of this seasonal year, I wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Enjoy yourself. Put on a costume. Play some music. Or do both at the same time. Grim? Dark? Dire? Cold? Not you, Baby. You’re swingin’.That’s life (that’s life)That’s what all the people sayYou’re riding high in April, shot down in MayBut I know I’m gonna change that tuneWhen I’m back on top, back on top in JuneI said that’s life (that’s life)And as funny as it may seemSome people get their kicksStomping on a dreamBut I don’t let it, let it get me down‘Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinnin’ aroundI’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poetA pawn and a kingI’ve been up and down and over and outAnd I know one thingEach time I find myselfFlat on my faceI pick myself up and getBack in the raceThat’s life (that’s life)I tell you, I can’t deny itI thought of quitting, babyBut my heart just ain’t gonna buy itAnd if I didn’t think it was worth one single tryI’d jump right on a big bird and then I’d flyMy, myThat’s Life: 1963 by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, arranged by Ernie Freeman Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

72 degrees Fahrenheit is what most of us set our thermostats to, both winter and summer. It’s an ideal temperature; a little cool for a swimming pool, a little hot for a tub of potato salad, it’s seen as, generally, a popular temperature overall. It’s what Los Angeles is. 72 degrees is just perfect.32 degrees has great press: Christmas and winter and even though over half the country never sees a single flake of snow it’s RIGHT THERE ON TV, in cartoons and stop motion animations and romantic comedies about princesses who don’t even know they are princesses until one day a mysterious letter arrives as they are putting the final touches on a four-layer wedding cake in the back of their artisanal gluten-free bakery in a midwestern city. 32 degrees is ice in a glass and frost on the windshield of your car. 32 degrees is frozen.59.Fifty nine.Sweater, right? You wear a sweater when it’s 59 degrees out… a light one, but still. It’s not warm, 59. You’d never say “Wow, it’s 59, let’s go work on our tans!”Nope.59 lacks the crisp bite of, say… 42, but doesn’t approach the reassuring aura of 68. 68 is almost 70. Which is almost 72.Today is my birthday. I am 59 years old. Some of my friends tell me I don’t look a day over a number less than 59 (which is incredibly sweet of them). As a lifelong fan of Steve Martin I aspire toward white hair, and I don’t know how other folks my age are feeling, but I feel like most of my serious wrinkles are on the inside.I’m not really discouraged. I am tired, but not entirely weary, and I greatly appreciate the privilege to live a life that bridges the worlds between Count Basie and Doechii. I stand as a testament to age being just a number, unless I’m actually on the ground, in which case I stand slowly, as a testament to the fact that it takes me a little longer to stand up than it used to. (I thought for a while I had unknowingly become significantly taller and the new dizziness upon rising was a sudden shift in altitude.)Fifty nine is not sixty. I will feel younger at sixty. I will feel like George Clooney at sixty: salt and pepper hair and that thing where one eyebrow is always slightly higher than the other, a wry yet gentle smirk on my clean shaven yet subtly textured face. But that’s NEXT year.This year I am “almost sixty”. This year people will ask me what my plans are for my next birthday. Over eighty percent of them will expect that I am going on a vacation, somewhere interesting.Probably somewhere warm.My birthday is in autumn, and I truly am an autumn child. True story: I had always thought I was a Thursday Child as well (“far to go”) but I just this week realized that I was in fact a Sunday Child (“bonny and blithe”). So I’ve got that going for me.A week from Halloween, my birthday is “spooky adjacent”. Not quite close enough for a skull cake or a costume party, but always accompanied by leaves on the ground, pumpkin decorations, and a deep-sweeping chill in the wind. There was always a pile of coats at the birthday parties I was lucky enough to have, and the air was special - lacking the harshness of December or the earthy-sweetness of November, it was just clear and cool and incredibly appreciated by kids with pollen allergies.I have celebrated my birthday near the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Missouri River, but never once have I been somewhere warm, like with a beach, because I actually love WHEN my birthday is, and specifically the typical North American midwestern weather patterns during this time of year.Fifty nine is not warm. It necessitates a coat, but not a winter one - a jacket I can wear a sweatshirt underneath to provide plenty of pockets for all my comic books, yo-yos and playing cards. It’s cool enough to feel the air enter your lungs but not panic them. A brisk walk will warm you right up, and a mug of hot cider won’t overheat you too much. It’s not sixty. It’s not. 59 knows it’s not. 59 isn’t fancy. 59 is proud to be the endnotes of my “maiden” phase, if not the back cover. 59 is a little rounder, a little more careful, and sleeps always for some reason in the slightest draft. 59 aspires toward a more comfortable 72, and even has dreams of the balmy mid-eighties. For now, I will just put on a sweater and keep going, comic book in hand, yo-yo at the ready: not quite a grown up yet, but getting warmer. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Dangling. Helpless. Fingernails dug deep into the bark of a fragile branch threatening to splinter and snap under the weight of the struggling, desperate body which swings from it - eyes mad with dread, awaiting the inevitability of plummeting, plummeting, into the abyss.This is a description of the world’s greatest and most celebrated motivational poster. It’s been hung in the highest halls of Congress and office break rooms everywhere. Millions of prints sold, not counting the various ripoffs, tributes, and copies. It is Victor Baldwin’s 1964 black and white photo of a siamese kitten barely clinging to a branch of bamboo, milliseconds from falling: a frozen moment of mammalian anxiety.The poster’s headline?“Hang In There, Baby!”Rosie the Riveter, Uncle Sam, and Simmy the Kitten - three images meant to inspire a weary nation.Rosie’s strong arm poster encouraged us, with the words “We Can Do It!”.Uncle Sam pointed straight at the viewer, exclaiming their crucial value to the defense of freedom, saying - nay, practically shouting “I Want YOU!”.But Simmy was silent. She was too busy to speak, she was attempting the impossible, reaching beyond her limits, going into uncomfortable territory, challenging herself. She wasn’t touting confidence, heavens no… she was exhibiting the highest aspiration and deepest vulnerability, allowing you see her effort, experience what was certain to be her failure, and through that, better understand your own dreams and struggles. Simmy gave up her ego to bond us all together, as if she psychically knew there would be throngs of exhausted workers who needed a boost after lunch under florescent tube lights, at formica tables with metal tube chairs which scraped the floor with a din that tears at both ear and soul. She dangles, as WE dangle, with no alternative but to pull ourselves up with all the strength we can muster, or be brave enough to fall into the unknown. I mean, I’ve taken pictures of my cats, but they just kind of sleep most of the time, and when they do cute things it’s usually too fast to capture on film. Simmy was perfectly safe, by the way, as the photographer loved animals of all kinds, and enjoyed taking photos of his four cats in between shots of such luminaries as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.It is a testament to art that a frozen moment, captured in 1964, can accurately reflect what I felt like yesterday afternoon, and probably tomorrow morning. We are a world dedicated to dire circumstance.Our “amusement parks” have “thrill rides” that drop us from the sky at terrific speeds. We do that for fun.A majority of our movies are filled with maniacs, creatures and zombies. We watch those to relax.Millions have been invested to prove the fatal effects of drink, smoke, and drugs - yet we spend billions to imbibe in them, even though we are clearly aware of this research. We do that to alleviate stress.And the endless videogames where the predominant point is that people are trying to kill us, with guns or with swords or by giving us spectral cooties as we gobble up little yellow dots. That’s where I finally drew the line, turned my back on conveniently packaged panic and derision: many decades ago when exploring the latest edition of an incredibly popular series I discovered that extra points were given for spectacular cruelty, and just…stopped playing.“Whaddya do that for?” a competitor asked me. “They ain’t real!”“Yeah”, I told him, “…but I am.” If Rosie’s poster was to come to life, she’d just be silently smiling at you, flexing.Uncle Sam would be a somewhat awkward septuagenarian. But if little Simmy’s poster sprung into motion it would be… well, a cat video, and you know how awesome cat videos are. Something’s happening in her poster, and something is definitely going to happen. Simmy’s poster isn’t just a stationary platitude, but a dynamic manifesto: what must be endured yet cannot be sustained can’t last long…time is ever destined to defeat imbalance. Rather than “Hang In There, Baby!”, the poster should read, “That looks pretty bad, but it’ll definitely either be better or worse in a minute.” Or maybe, “…this too shall pass.” Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

Around the time of my daughter’s second birthday we went camping at a park that had Airstream™ campers instead of cabins. I adore Airstream™ campers and aspire to someday own one, though most likely I will never be able to afford a driveway to park it in.We arrived in the afternoon, and eventually the sun set (as it does) and the lack of streetlights and buildings left the outside world a pristine shade of nothing. All the windows of the trailer were pitch black. My daughter had never before experienced this. She is a Brooklyn™ child, free range and urban oriented. The silence (which also was new), mixed with the absolute lack of light (as if the sun had closed its eyes), precipitated a sound in her that we had never heard before, a kind of low trill, like a rumble, or a gentle waking snore.My wife was extremely excited about this trip; she was raised in California™ where “the outside” was always somehow closer to “the inside” than where I grew up, in the American Midwest, where we employed the clever technology of “screen doors” to protect us from “the outside world”… although most of the year this proved far too permeable a barrier.“Let’s go outside!” she said in her best and most enthusiastic Mom voice.The deep creak continued to emanate from the child. It grew not louder, but perceptibly more intense. She somehow was able to make the noise both while inhaling as well as exhaling. “It’s awful… dark out there, Sweetie.” I said. “Yeah, it’s great!” At that my wife opened the door of the trailer and stepped out, walking into the night. It took about seven steps before she was out of the glow of the trailer’s ambience, and disappeared completely. I agreed that seeing the stars might be fun, but thought we might begin by turning off all the inside lights and looking out the window, then maybe braving going out and looking all around. “C’mon!” her disembodied voice called from the void.My daughter’s rumble was now paired with a widening of the eyes and gentle stiffening of both legs and arms. “Whatssamatter??” my wife called again. I thought the situation was clear. That was my mistake. I felt that the idea of explanation at this point was not only moot but unnecessary. But people are different, built from a world of experiences, and the gift of true friendship is welcoming alternative perspectives.“I… think she’s afraid of the dark a little.” I said to the inky nowhere.There was a pause. “Why?” Now I responded with a pause of my own, as I had never personally considered the logic behind what-I-had-always-assumed-to-be universal opinion. There I stood, in the middle of the woods, at the open door of a fragile aluminum tube I would be sleeping in that night, contemplating the very root of fear. How best to sum this complex primal instinct?“Uh… it think it’s ‘cause you can’t see anything.” Genius. The words, indeed, of a poet, an intellectual, a true thinker of thoughts. My wife was understandably underwhelmed. “You’ve gotta let your eyes adjust! You can see the stars!!” I turned to my daughter. “Ok, Mama is really excited about us going adventuring out there. You remember what it looked like before, right? Well it looks just like that right now, only we can’t see it so well. But I’m gonna give you this -” and here I handed her a flashlight. A good one, with that beam that looks like a lightsaber…“ - and you can light stuff up. And then we will look at the stars, and then we’ll come back in. Is that ok?” Rumble. She held the flashlight, considering it.“I’ll carry you the whole way, okay?”At that, she agreed. I picked her up and walked carefully down the folding aluminum stairs into the night. She pointed the flashlight beam ahead of us, finding her mom by the two wooden lounge chairs a few yards away. Fascinated by the power of the flashlight, my daughter lit up trees and grass and our car parked beside the rented camper. Then she looked up. “You can’t really see them with the flashlight on, Honey. C’mon, trust Mama.”My daughter’s trill stopped. She took two deep breaths. Then, she CLICK!ed off the flashlight. As if by magic, suddenly above us were galaxies of light. Z pointed out different constellations. The light we had left on in the trailer seemed very far away from us. After three minutes, the flashlight clicked back on. My daughter had heard a noise of some kind in the woods. I myself could not immediately identify it.“I think that’s it for now.” I said. We all went back inside. We turned off all the lights in the trailer, and through the illogical safety of the window screens, looked outside at the endless stars. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

It’s pretty grim. I mean, “things” are. Or they look that way. Things seem pretty grim. Somewhat. Depends on where you look, I guess, and other variables. For me, it’s worse when my eyes are open, so while that’s happening, I point them in friendly directions in attempts to “de-grim” the experience, somewhat.I find grocery shopping soothing. Plenty to look at that’s pleasant to see. Vegetables are soothing (frozen vegetables a bit less so). The part of the store where they have all the bottled water…very soothing: so many variations of tall green glass bottles and skinny clear plastic ones. Yep. And the cereal aisle… big boxes with happy colors and friendly characters. Nothing grim there. Nothing at all grim about being a healthy part of a balanced breakfast.But here we are, Spookytime™, when all about is “Boo!” and shadows haunt and lurk and everything is supposed to be somehow scarier, except that a very high bar has been set in that area recently, so the traditional spooky efforts seem kind of… quaint.And in my experience, nothing defines that specific gap between truly scary and kind of quaint more dynamically than the General Mills Monster Cereals.Dracula, Frankenstein (’s monster) and his bride, The Werewolf, The Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Phantom of The Opera. It’s likely that those names evoked images from the classic series of monster films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930’s: black and white “fish out of water” tales (save the Creature, who was in) where society either invades the monster’s quiet home or frowns on their habits of dining on townsfolk. Dark, quiet nights, where clouds of fog obscure feeble gas streetlights suddenly become torch-lit mob scenes filled with angry villagers brandishing pitchforks and other farm implements. Scary.I grew up with these movies, and these characters, and understood that, in real life, Transylvanian and Egyptian royalty rarely met, and neither hung about with unlucky Welsh shopkeepers, even on full moons. But Hollywood seemed to assume that these monsters knew one another, as they showed up in “monster rally” films – stalking Abbott and Costello, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin… and they had a band as well called the “Groovie Ghoulies” that I absolutely adored (that one was a cartoon). The monsters’ association as friends (or at least acquaintances) became part of their general lore.Which is what the General Mills company leaned into in 1971 when introducing their three new cereals: Franken Berry, Boo Berry, and Count Chocula. I don’t want to waste your time or insult your keen skills of deduction, but the “pre-sweetened” flavors were strawberry, blueberry, and chocolate. They had a bit of a rocky start, as the early formula for Franken Berry “included an indigestible pigment” that, well, remained bright pink enough to… panic parents. Besides that bit of shock, the cereals represented a new version of these classic characters that lived in the daylight, right on the kitchen table. Quaint.In sixth grade I got to try Boo Berry at someone’s house. My mother wouldn’t buy any of the “monster cereals”. I thought it was because she judged nutritional value by the color-of-the-food’s proximity to anything in nature, but later on, Fruity Pebbles proved inexplicably acceptable.And I don’t think they do this anymore, but a breakfast cereal box used to be more than just a product container - each one represented an engineering challenge of increasing difficulty.Level One: a game printed on the back of the box that I could play (using pennies as the tokens).Challenge - eat the entire box of cereal and then (carefully) cut the game from the box. Oh, and find someone to play with (only child).Level Two - same as Level One, except that a paper six-sided die pattern (a little box) was also printed on the back.Challenge - (carefully) cut out the little box pattern, fold the low level pressboard together enough to define but not collapse each side, glue tabs A into slots B, wait for it to dry, then find someone to play with, etc.This never worked because the weight of the glue created a paper version of “loaded dice” that would roll the same number over and over.Level Three - a plastic toy (in what was later discovered to be the exact shape of the human throat) was placed in the ACTUAL BAG OF CEREAL at the bottom.Challenge - I could NOT pour out the cereal and put it back in the box, and as the inner bag holding the cereal was glued to the bottom of the outer box, it couldn’t be pulled up separately and flipped over (we tried that). Nor could the box be turned upside down, as the only closing mechanism on the box was on the TOP. FIENDISH. DIABOLICAL.They stopped doing this due to choking hazards and began to place the toys in individual plastic bags inside the box but NOT inside the inner bag, which could be lifted, prize obtained. JUSTICE.Which brings us to:Level Four - The Flexi-disc - a PLAYABLE PHONOGRAPH RECORD is PRINTED ON THE BACK OF A CEREAL BOX. Holy crap. I remember staring at it like a safecracker, studying the box stability to determine how I could -Challenge - (carefully) cut around the record’s circumference and gently lift it from the box, without nicking the inner liner.Total fail on the Bobby Sherman single, but the excitement of The Jackson Five became a family project. It was Mom who discovered that the manufacturers had actually PUT A DOT OF GLUE right where the middle of the record met the inner liner, making clean retrieval impossible. DIRTY POOL.Anyway, I like cereal boxes.So that’s me, a grown man, staring at a wall of cereal, pretending I’m going to buy more than these organic gluten-free fruit loop substitutes. I don’t even shop at a store where they sell fun novelty food anymore, but they are such a core part of my culture that even these all-natural brands hold a bit of comfort. And that’s all I need right now, little tiny bits of comfort to get me from one crazy scenario to the next - strength to face the grim, and bear it. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

It’s all moving so fast.The world’s always changing. I seem to be getting older, like, almost every day now. My daughter’s baby clothes don’t fit her any more now that she’s in high school. Zoom. Zip.We are SO CLOSE TO THE FUTURE. Cars talk and can drive themselves, but they don’t fly quite yet, and that’s “The Future” benchmark: the second a Volvo leaves the pavement we will be knee-deep in The Future, full stop.Well, not full stop, that’s the point; the modern world is an endlessly flowing event horizon, constantly churning like a temporal Niagra Falls, brutally battering the present with newer and newer new stuff, some of it seemingly beyond imagination.Which is impossible, of course, since imagination is all that exists beyond what is currently known, so anything beyond it is still technically it.And it’s the “currently” that’s exciting to me, because that means that something imagined now might actually be known in the future. That’s why Walt Disney froze his head (allegedly), although we can’t ask him that directly.Yet.A few days ago, the good people at Apple updated some software. They sent out a casual email announcing that now their earpieces – already impressive for mysteriously staying seated in the ear without glue, tape, or velcro – can instantly translate spoken French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish into English. Instantly.Like a fish.Not a REAL fish, a BABEL FISH, the invention of a science fiction author about 45 years ago. Douglas Adams’ sprawling adventure titled “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” solved a fictional problem of direct communication between all creatures with the invention of tiny fish that, when Inserted into the ear, translates any form of language for its host. Did I want one? Yes. Did I try to stick a fish in my ear? No, I was a dreamer, not a maniac - but some other dreamers took it upon themselves to make this actually happen, and here we are in a world where I can at last enjoy the intricate torture of Vogon poetry.Now, living in NYC I hear a great deal of languages every day, and I can’t understand them, but I don’t really need to, as those people aren’t speaking to me. I’m not planning on traveling anywhere very soon and most of the films I want to see that aren’t in English have been subtitled. It occurs to me now, on the day that this dream is a reality, that the second more important part of the dream was the traveling through space and meeting interesting creatures to talk to part.This is like getting a fancy cup holder without a car. As a companion piece, I need a more adventurous lifestyle, or a multi-national Zoom call, or a quest that sends me deep into Queens to negotiate a mysterious treaty of some kind. Communication has never hinged on just what is possible, but is mostly rooted in what is necessary.A few years ago someone released an app that said it could translate the speech patterns of dogs and cats… it did not sell well. It was obvious that the inventor of the app did not own a pet, as most people already understood the phrases “I’m hungry” and “I want to go outside” in both Modern Dog and Traditional Cat, and “I love you” was just as easily interpreted. We didn’t need that technology.Now the new “babel fish” tech is going to be incredibly useful eventually, but just as its fictional counterpart it may cause as many arguments than it resolves. I’m still going to try it, just to see it work, but if I don’t sound appropriately excited, it’s because I’ve been disappointed by new communications tech once before.The MEGO Star Trek Communicators were plastic walkie talkies in light blue with the logo of the Federation of Planets on the flip up cover. We had a one present budget for birthdays every year, and my mother found them at K-Mart and put them on lay-away. I opened the package and went bananas. I could already hold my fingers in the “live long and prosper” Spock position, so I was all set.I stood at the very front of our little apartment while my mom made her way to the back room. 60 feet seemed miles away since we couldn’t see one another. So exciting.“Hey Mama! Can you hear me?”“Yes.” my mother replied. “Can you hear me?”“Yes!” This was amazing. There was this moment of wonder, looking at the little box in my hand.Then we both realized that we didn’t have much more information to share at the moment. My mother prompted me with a question.“What does it look like out the front window?”Newly inspired, I investigated. “There are a few cars parked on the street and …”“zzkzkzzzkzkzkzkk!! uh, what’s your 20?”It was not my mother’s voice.“Heading South, good buddy! Hitting that stop on the I-70.”This, also, was not my mother’s voice. For a moment I thought we had actually dialed in to a passing star cruiser.“Checking out that new lot lizard?”“Well, let me tell ya -“ and then came a pretty steady stream of some really high quality profanity. My mother rushed from the back of the apartment to the front to wash my mouth out with all the soap that had ever been produced in the world, but found me slack jawed looking at the toy, not saying a word, while authentic trucker lexicon boomed from both our units.And back to K-Mart they went. She was given a full refund. She wasn’t the only one who had returned them.Now I have a cell phone. It is, technically, cooler than the Star Trek communicator because it has pictures and plays games and all that. It’s great, really. Very very cool. I love it.To be clear, i am absolutely not holding a 50 year torch for some basic toy with a frequency mishap. But a great lesson was learned on that birthday, incorporating what we want versus what we really want, the power of communication versus the right to privacy, language and culture, and what grown-ups really say when kids aren’t listening.The next weekend, and this is absolutely true, my mother and I made a “tin can telephone” with taut string stretched through the apartment, which was just as fun (even though we could see each other). We told each other jokes… they worked great, were very affordable, and did not include the risk of random vulgarity from passing strangers. I drew a Federation of Planets logo on each of the cans in permanent marker, and we honestly couldn’t tell the difference. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

In 1902, a man went hunting in Mississippi. The man loved hunting a great deal – had created a 1000 creature “Museum of Nature” in his room at 12 years old (mostly insects), and adored the outdoors so much that he became one of the first people ever to be known as a “conservationist”. He had hunted his whole life, all over the place. He just loved it.This particular trip wasn’t very fulfilling, as he hadn’t found anything really huntible in the woods after several hours. But his hosts wanted him to have a good time, so they found a bear and tied it to a tree for him as a surprise.Here, the story actually branches into two different versions: in one, the bear was very old and somewhat feeble; while in the other, the hosts actually found a bear cub. Both of these options are more likely to be simpler to handle, as tying a healthy fully grown bear to a tree can prove a considerable challenge.But when the man got to the tree and found the bear, he ordered its release. In just a couple of years this same man would embark on an international nine-month-safari, so you don’t have to feel sorry for him or anything… besides, this incident actually changed the world forever, in its own small way.Talk of this seemingly unimportant vacation fail spread like wildfire, partially because it was a tale of great compassion, but mostly because the man was Theodore Roosevelt, who at the time held the position of President of the United States.A political illustrator, Clifford Berryman, created a cartoon panel depicting this great restraint. He drew Mr. Roosevelt with his back turned away from the animal, arm up in a “talk to the hand ‘cause the face ain’t listening” position. The bear was depicted as a little bit confused about the entire affair, rope around its neck with a largish fellow pulling him back into hunting range. The cartoon was captioned “Drawing The Line in Mississippi”.A Brooklyn shopkeeper saw this, and was so touched that he sewed a 3D approximation of the little cub, which he stuffed with fluff, and gave to his son. When many of his neighbors requested that he make more for their children, he wrote to the White House to ask permission to use the name he had chosen for the toy, “Teddy Roosevelt”. That permission was formally granted, and the toys became known as “Teddy’s Bears”.This cuddly invention quickly became a cottage industry, and the shopkeeper decided to start a new business which he called “Ideal Toys”. Within five years the teddy bear was so popular that they began to outpace the sales of baby dolls (which some community and faith leaders publicly considered a direct threat to the maternal development of young girls). In 1907, a popular tune was written titled “The Teddy Bears Two-Step”, and 25 years later lyrics were officially added to that tune:* If you go down in the woods today,You're sure of a big surprise.If you go down in the woods today,You'd better go in disguise.For every bear that ever there wasWill gather there for certain becauseToday's the day the teddy bears have their picnic...An enduring, beloved childhood icon, born from an act of empathy and compassion. Beautiful story, with a great deal of luck all around, as the hunted object could have been a crocodile or another less cuddly prey.In a spirit of acknowledgement to all sides of an event, one might observe that while this specific incident proved incredibly sporting, it holds a minuscule ratio against Mr. Roosevelt’s full lifetime of hunting expeditions - the aforementioned nine-month-safari trip alone resulted in over eleven thousand individual specimens, of all kinds.But this is not a life story, just a retelling of one single moment, unburdened by context, where a man’s specific empathy for one single creature resulted in millions of children clinging to a soft rendering of that empathy as an icon of love and security. In the last hundred years, billions have held to their chests a miniature version of a wild and dangerous animal that somehow, without detailed explanation, universally signals comfort.But the song… confuses me.Clearly, we are not invited to the teddy bear picnic - in fact, we are meant to avoid it at all costs:* If you go down in the woods today,You'd better not go alone.It's lovely down in the woods today,But safer to stay at home.For every bear that ever there wasWill gather there for certain becauseToday's the day the teddy bears have their picnic…It is fun for the teddy bears, as they will have “marvelous things to eat and wonderful games to play” until “their mommies and daddies…take them home to bed” at 6PM.Mommies and daddies? No wonder they don’t want us around; in the world of this song we have torn them from their families, homes and traditions - no matter how outwardly pleasant they may present themselves, it seems mathematically inconceivable that they do not hold deep resentment and might eat us on the spot.I don’t think this song was written by a person who had a teddy bear. Or children. While hummable, it is a mean song, full of mocking spite and prickling envy, penned by a man obviously denied the cozy care represented by its subject. But while the song isn’t accurate for beloved toys, it does seem super instructional for gatherings of ACTUAL BEARS, although it presupposes their diet and traditional bedtimes. To be perfectly honest, I find it all a bit confusing . Comfort from hunting? Dire warnings about soft toys? It seems incredibly random that one thing can come from the other. Crazy, right? I mean, it makes you think, “Wow! Where does an immersion blender come from? The Renaissance?” Cause and effect don’t seem anywhere near one another.But that is the reason I find this story encouraging. I spend a lot of time trying to see “where things are going”; where causes are complex and their effects overwhelming, yet here is Theodore Roosevelt, whose most lasting legacy is not all the choices made at his incredibly significant day job, but the enduring echo of a single moment of mercy. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

As I get older, I’m becoming a great deal more and much, much less adventurous.* “Never heard of orange wine!” I heard myself say once, many years ago, “…sounds interesting!” I told the cashier as I purchased a bottle.* “We’ll just rent a car, because driving in Europe is probably the same as driving at home!” said a man who looked exactly like me, only younger.* “Now this cat looks like he needs a lot of love… what does “feral” mean, exactly?” spoke a previous version of myself, a short 14 hours away from bloodied hands and arms.My youth, and a great portion of whatever came directly after that, operated on a general philosophy of “appreciable risk”, where… sure, there was risk, but how much risk does it take to make something risky?50%, I thought. - That cheese sounds good. - Those rides look safe. - This date is going well.Experiences were worth the risks, so I had experiences, lots and lots of them… and then all new ones, with new risks attached. Thank Heaven I didn’t get to that point where it flipped and I became one of those people who just sought out risks for risk’s sake; instead I began to curate my experience/risk ratio.Today, I identify a lot less experiences as “worth the risk”. * Severely overcrowded subway train? Let it pass by. * Cello bag of green beans that got lost at the back of the refrigerator bin from two weeks ago and are curiously glossy? Don’t cook ‘em. * Calls from an unknown number? Voicemail. My keys are latched to my belt, I keep the gas tank full, and I haven’t indulged in mysterious hors d’oeuvre at parties in over a decade.My risks seem less jarring now: how late can I stay up working before the next day becomes a bleary, unnavigable haze? 9:30? 11:15?My risks seem tiny now: how do I find the current barometric pressure on my phone without seeing breaking news pop-ups?And my risks seem necessary now, as it feels so often that the only way forward is over rickety bridges and through dark forests. Metaphorically.The majority of my current risks fall into the category of “unavoidable”. No longer am I courageously choosing the paths least chosen, it’s just that all the other elevators are stuck on the 13th floor and not moving and there’s no way I can walk up 18 flights of stairs while holding these boxes so I have no choice but to take the one that ever so often gets stuck between floors for a couple of hours.The world today changes with unrelenting consistency, few days like any other, a walk through a funhouse or a Dali or Escher painting. My job is to adapt as quickly as possible, keep moving forward, and try to put a positive spin on the whole thing.My latest challenge? 5:30 in the morning. A new school year with new school schedules means that 6:30 alarm I relished ignoring has moved back an hour and is now a rule rather than a guideline. To compensate, I have begun going to sleep around 10PM. To be honest, the first day we got up at 5:30 I had absolutely no problem being in bed by 9.I repeated Ben Franklin’s adage:“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”Vague, but worth a shot. Let’s play this out and see how it goes. Those are three great things…could be worth it.I started out strong the first few days: eyes somewhat bright, world lit by a fresh sunrise, the excitement of a new schedule……but a few days later the sun wasn’t up at all when we got up. Then it began to get really cold at night, the kind of cold that’s more than cold because it’s humid as well, and makes one want to stay in bed.And then the coffeemaker broke.I have the flu now, as it turns out. And we have to fix the coffeemaker, which even though we’re doing it ourselves represents a pretty significant unanticipated spend. Thus, I am not healthier, nor am I wealthier, and by the tone of this very rant I believe you would agree that excess wisdom has not been bestowed on me to any significant degree.But I will valiantly keep at it, mostly because I’m an adult and this is the time we have to get up now and it’s (close to) Autumn and the days are getting shorter and I can just wear thick socks to bed and pile on more blankets until Spring. The circumstances change, but we are all moving forward, and as long as we end the day somewhere ahead of where it began (even if it began before sunrise), then whatever the effort, challenge, or risk, it’s worth it. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

A calendar year seems kind of random - the length of time between one page and a page 12 pages after. I used to find it poetic that the year began in the deep of winter, then blossomed outward toward summer - only to pull dramatically into itself in autumn, like a Martha Graham dance. But then I learned of The Southern Hemisphere. Wasn’t ready for that. Winter in July. Santa on the beach. Spiders big as dinner plates. The world gone mad.The School Year seems more stable. Its scheduling is in no way standardized, just somewhere between Memorial Day and Labor Day in the US, with monthly holidays dispersed like marshmallow bits in a breakfast cereal and sometimes (if you live in the right geographic area) an occasional snow day as the prize at the bottom of the box. The school year was always comforting to me because it held a promise: by the end of it, I would know something new, something that I did NOT know at the beginning. Buildings full of people were paid real money to make absolutely certain this promise was fulfilled, not just for myself but for millions of young people. This was cool, because there was no industry supporting or steering how tall we were getting or any other changes we were experiencing, yet the Basic Skill Sets in our heads were upgraded year after year, for over a decade, whether we wanted to learn anything or not. (Oh, sure, I could have dropped out of school and put on a leather jacket and dark sunglasses and grown a beard and gotten a motorcycle and explored the open road, but it would have been hard to afford my comic books and I don’t know how I would have carried our pekingese dog along with me unless I bought him some kind of special sidecar.)School year learning was always a bit of a blind bag prize operation: we all knew that algebra was math…of some kind, but we didn’t know if we were going to like it until we were in the class already. Then subjects we already liked might be thrown a spanner if the teacher was in question, like the one with the WWII uniforms (Axis, not Allies). He chose odd poems.Still, we were smarter, somehow, at the end of every school year. We all had this Voyage of Discovery in common, which was slightly bonding, and new names to call ourselves - freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. Such fun. Did I learn a lot in school? Yes, yes I did, but honestly the classes were only half of it. There was How To Talk To People in grade school and How To Get People To Talk To Each Other in high school - social lessons not on the printed menu that often had a more lasting impact than the scheduled board of fare. In high school I also learned How To Take A Punch, How Not To Get Punched, How To Get Out Of A Shut Locker From The Inside and What People Really Mean When They Say Things. Sadly, these were also valuable lessons later on.My best college class was the Prog-Rock seminar a roommate gave all of us during senior year. I believe it was around his birthday, he was turning 21, and had a big weekend planned. Months before he had gathered money from us for a surprise event, which he only revealed the weekend before at a private seminar in his room. He used his own albums and CDs to give us a crash course in the history and importance of Progressive Rock: the eclectic instrumentation, epic arrangements, virtuosic solos, mystical lyrics - he spoke for quite a while but we were each allowed a beer and the songs were long and I was kind of sleepy.Then he revealed that one of our events was going to see Yes, who I only knew from their 90125 album, with the big MTV hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart”.This level of familiarity classified me firmly as a moron, which I was blatantly told by our ad-hoc professor, who assigned me extra listening homework before the concert. It was a hard class. But it wasn’t the lectures that stood out, it was the field trips. The crowd at Yes was a lot different from the James Taylor show I’d seen that summer. Since I hadn’t heard all of their other albums, many songs were new to me. It was all kinds of fascinating for reasons both artistic and sociological. Then came Saturday. At 5PM we all got in somebody’s car and drove 40 minutes to see the band RUSH. Good grief. They were like electric druids. Something changed in my very soul that weekend, and even though this work wasn’t counted in my cumulative GPA, I am very proud of what I learned there.Now I am an adult, very nearly an elder one, and can learn whenever I want, or more to the point whenever I can find the time. Which is ironic, as all my time as an adult is spent working, at a job, which was supposed to be the actual point of school. We spend over a decade learning every day in order to get Good Jobs where learning is rarely we are paid to do. Well, as a new sort-of-elder American, I am standing in defiance. Or I will here, in a minute… this chair is really low and I’ve been sitting in it a while. Oof. There we go.This “school year” I am creating a curriculum for myself. I saw online that people can learn Mandarin in 127 days. They brag about being able to order in restaurants. I don’t really need that flex, so I’m going a different direction. I bought a new book of rock guitar licks, a full course on advanced slight-of-hand coin illusions, I’m going to write three short stories and a one-act play. By May. We even renewed our subscription to Masterclass™, so I might become a tennis pro or international diplomat. Next summer I won’t be an acrobat or an EGOT, but I will know something I didn’t know today. I don’t know when I plan to squeeze this all in, but if there’s one thing I have learned, it’s that there’s no such thing as spare time. P.S.: You’re not gonna believe this, but I actually found recordings of the EXACT SHOWS I SAW. I just got the cities mixed up backward.Yes: Rush: Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

So there’s this thing you can do with masking tape, where you make a little loop over two fingers and fasten it together and then put one of those loops in each corner of a piece of paper in order to place it on a wall. Though not recognized as an acceptable form of professional art handling at any major museum or gallery, in the late part of the last century this strategy did hold sway as the preferred method to display the carefully curated poster collections of young people in bedrooms across the American Midwest.Other places had tacks, I’ve heard. Some even used frames (in Beverly Hills, most certainly!). But regular old beige-ish masking tape was my go-to, however dubious its ultimate sticking power, and in complete disregard of its tendency to sort of melt in the summer heat, leaving square grease spots on both wall and artwork, reminiscent of butter pats on slices of hot broiled toast.My first poster was a 4-page fold out from Dynamite Magazine, a Scholastic™ publication with a popularity rivaling that of TV Guide, Rolling Stone, and the just-published People Magazine, but for schoolchildren. One issue featured a 4-page fold out of The Fantastic Four, the Marvel Comics family of superheroes. This remained on my wall until I went to college, and years later, I mounted it on card stock. And years after that, it’s in the room I’m sitting in right now.It looks a bit rag-tag, with its tattered and “butter-pat” stained corners, but the original dynamic Jack Kirby illustration (of the team virtually leaping from its flat surface to face down danger of some dire kind) is as vibrant as it was in 1975. Which was… ok, let me figure this out… carry the one…Wow. 50 years ago.Technically, that’s vintage. And that’s not just my opinion: one of these posters just sold on eBay for $40. There’s another available for only $20 from someone in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota (just two hours southwest of Minneapolis).I could go on and on (and on again) about the staying power of the image and the characters and the legacy of storytelling it all represents, but I’m more impressed with the power of paper.In the year 1455, Johann Gutenberg inaugurated a new invention, the movable press.Although he reproduced content that had been published before, Gutenberg’s production method generated a version that could be perfectly replicated and distributed, transforming one of literature’s most powerful works into one of the most significant objects ever created, the first printed book.That very book, the Gutenberg Bible, is available to view at the Library of Congress, with other copies on display around the world. Each is over 500 years old.Somewhere, Gutenberg must have a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, a child of our DIGITAL AGE, whose heritage keenly bridges that of physical rendering to digital storage. She probably worked with me at an advertising agency as print became the word “print” with air quotes around it, as technical skills such as paste-up and kerning were interpreted by algorithms, and the simple Xerox™ machine became 4 color, then accurate color, then extremely high resolution, and then FAST.To be honest, I appreciated all these miracles; they made my job easier and more interesting and allowed me to do more with less. But every “New Point O” technology was like a crab in a barrel, each one eventually crushing the other. Thus, I have, in a drawer right over there, a SYQUEST disk. If this does not “ring a bell”, you are either too old or too young to have heard of one, neither of which you should feel bad about, because they were only relevant for an instant. I also possess three different sizes of floppy disk, a ZIP disk, an optical disk, a CD-ROM and a DVD-R, each digital storage medium invented in the last 50 years, and none of them valid today.I have moved thousands of files of artwork, literature and information from format to format for the last four decades, ending up with my current hard drives that are so bleeding edge that last month I had to replace two of them after only three years of use. Because they are slow now, and don’t hold nearly as much as hard drives one fifth of their size.It only took one decade to transform the world from Johann’s to that of his (many many times) great-granddaughter, but the miracles of her age seem fleeting, dependent on electricity and technological relevance that is both constant and unpredictable, like a beach ball tumbling on an “up” escalator.Add to this mayhem - the production and distribution of music, and the storage of photographs and moving images. Go ahead. Crazy, right?But an old shoebox filled with photos beats an old shoebox filled with 3.5 inch disks any day. Particularly when the only thing you need to decode the pictures, is enough light. My friend has a book from 1785.Last time I was at her house, I read it. No problem.Our most incredible monkey’s paw is social media, which is as intoxicating as it is exhausting. At our most noble, humans produce art to convey emotion, hoping it will drive someone, inspire someone, to action. This is a gentle enterprise, rooted in metaphor, beauty and tension - subtlety and empathic nudging toward awareness.Social media is not that. It’s a whisky shot with a pickle juice chaser. It’s a red carpet filled with paparazzi right after one of those eye exams where your pupils have to be dilated with those drops. It’s a loud sound in the middle of the night that you get up to investigate but end up stepping on a stray LEGO piece in the dark. It’s built of stimulus, like an iced triple expresso with Red Bull™ instead of water. Social media feeds the world to us with a soda straw, allowing no control over the experience. It is overwhelming, and completely unstoppable -- and then it’s kind of gone. Forever. Even if I do remember to click that little button to save something, I RARELY revisit that list because there’s a new world of everything every day - but none of it is tangible. None of it occupies the same world that I do.So while I may not be able to tell a book by its cover, I do appreciate the covers, because they remind me where I am, inside the book. When listening to a vinyl album, the tone arm patiently marks time on the needle’s path. Photographs take up space in your hands, in your life - and they weigh exactly what I think a memory would weigh - incredibly light individually, but then mysteriously heavy in combination.I shouldn’t be able to carry tens of films and hundreds of albums and thousands of photos in my pocket. And I don’t, I carry their shadows, and like shadows they are entirely ephemeral - their very essence dependent on whether I remember to charge my phone battery or not. Without power, they are all gone.Whereas, roughly half the days of the year, in my latitude, if I’m outside - I can read any book by the light of the sun. With a candle, I can read 24 hours a day, all year long. I could even write a letter.A cell phone without power is not even a good shoehorn. The world of Gutenberg’s grand(x7) daughter is filled with wonders, but I can’t put most of them on my wall, and much much less than 50 years later, many will be at best obsolete and in the worst cases, inaccessible and/or forgotten, while card stock and laminated paper are still crushing it.I love the future. It’s great here… I’ve been waiting for it and it is in no way dissapointing. But I do appreciate it in context, because for over 50 years, a simple piece of paper has made me smile almost everyday. No battery required. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

We’re celebrating the beginning of a “new school year” because at least one person in our home is going “back-to-school” in a few weeks. This means that the rest of us get to glom on to their excitement - purchasing our favorite pens, boxes of artisanal pencils, and the occasional odd-sized notebook that we absolutely do not need as we haven’t yet filled up last year’s notebooks with particularly compelling pencil or pen marks.As part of this pre-academic nesting, our household shared a mutual end-of-the-summer cleaning push, pulling everything off our shelves and out of closets to sort through, culling what was needlessly stored to prepare for The New. But this exercise backfired for me, as deep in my closet I discovered a fabric IKEA box filled with poorly labeled videotapes.Of course, the only way to get rid of them was to go straight to eBay for an old VHS player and convert them to digital format.Of course, this procedure added even more things to the house… but only initially, as I’ve tossed about seven of the tapes so far. This was a project I’ve wanted to tackle for many years, and the box really was a mixed bag. None of the tapes were accurately labeled, and in an effort to use the tapes to their full capacity, each ended up a crazy jumble of clashing 1990’s recordings:* full episodes of Late Night with David Letterman* a rehearsal tape of the southern rock band I sang with after college* an interview with my grandfather from local television* a performance of the song “Purple Haze” by the Kronos Quartet* and me, singing in a talent show (1994), shot the second week of my first job in New York City: proud to say I was the audience favorite, but after the show the judges pulled me aside and told me that I couldn’t win, as that would be politically detrimental for me, as the hurt feelings of certain company veterans would quickly sandbag any career I was hoping to cultivate at the company. Instead, my new boss pulled folded cash out of his pocket and handed it to me like I was an influential head waiter at an uptown restaurant. That was my food money for a month. I didn’t even remember it had been taped. The song was actually pretty ok.That show also opened the door for me to speak to the Big Boss at the ad agency, who at that time was James Patterson. He spoke with me for 20 minutes in his office, asking what I was into and what my plans were. When he heard that I wanted to write, he revealed that he had just that month sold his very first book, after writing for seven years at five in the morning, everyday. He soon retired from advertising. I hear he’s doing very well.Another tape was the 30th Annual Grammy Awards (1988), live from Radio City Music Hall. I was there, actually, backstage, so my mom’s husband taped it for me in Kansas City.My college roommate at the time was from a LA showbiz family. He had been invited to work on the show, but as it was a week-long gig at the same time as Spring midterms he thought it best to not to do it. Somehow he offered the job to me. I did not consider Spring midterms and immediately took the train to the city, staying uptown(!) on the couch of a friend that had graduated the year before, and taking the subway to midtown(!) everyday, with no idea where any of these places were.I worked with the dance crew, who that year were staging two numbers - the opening with Whitney Houston (my mother’s then favorite singer in the whole wide world) and a medley with George Benson (another family favorite), Cab Calloway, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, Lou Reed, RUN-DMC, Billy Joel, and Miles Davis, who showed up to all the rehearsals just to make out with random dancers, but decided to skip the actual show. Michael Jackson was there too, but absolutely no one was allowed to speak to him. I, in a very “me” move, got completely turned around backstage one afternoon and kind of ran right into him on his way onstage. He was very tall. I snuck down to the house and ninja-crawled on my knees through a row of floor seats to sneakily watch his rehearsal (which no one was allowed to watch). Cautiously raising my head, I found that lots of people had snuck in to do this, including loads of celebrities. We kind of bonded, because all of us were not as famous as Michael Jackson.But Ms. Houston was the highlight of the entire experience, her voice flawless even when sitting right next to her on a piano bench. Early on I did something that she found particularly nice, and so she was particularly nice back to me the entire week, even signing a copy of my college graduation announcement for my mother - “You must be so proud! Congratulations! Whitney.”Out of respect for my friend I tried to show up early and stay late every night, pitching in wherever I was asked. When the other PAs headed out after rehearsals for drinks, I stayed behind and stacked things and pulled old masking tape marks off the stage. And so I found myself all alone, center stage, at Radio City Music Hall, with a fist full of old masking tape and what I saw as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.I sang the end of the national anthem, from “oh say, does that star spangled banner yet wave…”, as well as I could, and at the top of my lungs. I figured it wasn’t illegal or anything, and no one was there. Let me just tell you, the acoustics at that place are great. As my last little note echoed, someone at the back of the house clapped and yelled “Play Ball!”. I gave a little bow and ran offstage.Did my midterms suffer? Well, yes, obviously, but I haven’t really used my grade point average since graduation. Yet, when I began actually working in show production, I did use what I’d learned that week in New York: that if I kept my head down, and spoke politely with confidence, most folks assumed I was someone with authority, because no one is really sure of who anyone else is backstage.That evening was my Fanciest Night, hands down: deep in the basement of music’s Downton Abbey, peeking through curtains at expensive clothes and extremely familiar faces that I’d only seen in two dimensions on little tiny screens or great big gigantic ones. The funny part is that the full show isn’t online anywhere, and since I was working, I didn’t get to watch the broadcast on TV, and never would have seen it if I hadn’t found that tape. So I will sift though the rest of this mountain of magnetic ribbons, holding no expectation, as I’ve already found images of great historical significance on the same tapes as Milli Vanilli music videos. I’m excited to discover if I can learn anything new from this black plastic stack of Old Time. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I have always enjoyed a good comic book - it’s a portable, colorful adventure. I have even been described as a “comic book kind of person”. Quite a few times. Hmn. Anyway, comics are great, but they are not my favorite kind of book.Of course, NOVELS, who doesn’t like a thick, engaging novel to get lost in? Or POETRY - inspiration to the very soul, essential expressions of the human spirit! I humbly respect all forms of the literary arts, but there is one category I find the most intriguing, most mysterious, and most fulfilling. Instruction manuals. Not the ones that come with new appliances, I mean the books filled with “do-it-yourself” instructions, the “how-to” books that demonstrate how to repair things or build things with little pictures and diagrams. I absolutely love them.The trend really got going in the 1950’s, when home improvement became a craze across the US, inspiring thousands of weekend carpenters and mechanics. The good people at Time-Life Publishing fueled a nation’s dreams of more abundant shelf space and superior rain gutters and finished basements. Our copy of “The Reader’s Digest Do-It-Yourself Manual” was a buffet of multi-level self-sufficiency, unraveling step-by-step the mysteries of simple plumbing, basic electricity, and the inner workings of a full stable of home appliances. These books balanced capitalism’s ever-present seduction of acquisition with a desire to create on one’s own, reminding us that things could not just be bought, but built. We have a book containing full instructions for building an entire house from scratch, from the foundation to the roof - all you need is the raw materials. And the land, permits, heavy machinery, and a willing crew.Easy as making Jell-o™.Beyond the subject of home construction, I have collected how-to books on electronics, knitting, filmmaking, magic tricks, farming, cooking, first aid, fine art, and science. I have been a subscriber to both Martha Stewart and The New England Journal of Medicine, and always enjoy putting together new IKEA furniture because that little man shows me just how to do it in that newsprint pamphlet included in the flat pack box.“There is always something to learn!” my mother used to tell me, and still does today if any conversation steers that way. Thus I have always tried to learn something new or get better at something, and these books are a part of that.I have repaired our dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, and kitchen sink, along with the vacuum cleaner and the oven. I mean, we live in an apartment building where there’s a guy who’s supposed to do that, but it takes three weeks to get an appointment. I never attempt to repair anything that could be dangerous or in any way ultimately litigious, but a new toilet float here and there isn’t that big a deal.I’ve got books describing much grander projects, but I’m never going to build a pyramid - I just don’t have the time - yet the general principles are useful when making stacks of books on my bedside table or interesting cupcake arrangements for PTA functions.While enjoyable to read, there are many things that a how-to book cannot effectively teach. One of those is how to play the guitar. As a youngster, after a non-encouraging introductory lesson at the local music store, I opted for the Mel-Bay™ series of manuals, along with their newest offering which included a cassette tape to play along with! But even after completing the course I did not feel that I could actually “play the guitar” as my personal music taste veered more toward Michael Jackson and less toward “Michael Row The Boat Ashore”. I used the chord charts to figure out how to play other songs, and eventually wanted to progress to the majesty of an electric guitar.In the musical temple of “Big Dude’s Music City” was a Yamaha model that caught my eye. Yes, Yamaha, the trusted name in dirt bikes and outboard motors, had produced an electric guitar that was, unsurprisingly, available at a tremendous discount.I paid 20 dollars a month for it on lay-away for almost a year. I finally got to take it home. I took it out of the case and played it.plink. plink. No sound. plink. plink.I could not afford an amplifier, but thought I might be able to pick one up later on, maybe as a high school graduation present to myself. plink. plink.I tried to learn scales, followed all the diagrams, but the sounds were just a series of varying degrees of plink, offering neither the smooth tones of late ’70s soft rock, the comfortable twang of country hits, or the gnarl and crunch of early ’80’s punk.plink.My grand-aunt used to gift me odd finds from her local Salvation Army store, and had recently left us an old electric blanket. Out of musical desperation, I hooked up one of the control units to our living room stereo with the input from the guitar fed into the other end. There were still no cool effects or distortion, but with the volume turned up ALL THE WAY, I could JUST hear the guitar amplified through the speakers. I was blissful.slightly louder plink. slightly louder plink.I feel it appropriate to express gratitude to all powers, influences, and entities involved in the intersection of electricity and dumb luck at this point, as this could have been an unmitigated disaster and the most bizarre lawsuit the Yamaha Corporation had ever been tangentially associated with. A friend of a friend saw me practicing scales, and asked if he could see the guitar. As he stood there playing like a lost Van Halen brother, I realized that I not only lacked an amp, but his fingers. He bought the guitar from me (at a tremendous discount), but later that year sold it back to me to get the money to buy what he must have identified as “a real guitar”. I resumed my practice with dedication, but little real gusto.I blame this slight disappointment in my youth for my mid-life crisis slash COVID lockdown action of purchasing an actual Marshall™ amp and an assortment of guitar pedals. And a better guitar.The problem with how-to books is that they are, for the most part, purely theoretical. One is not doing the thing, merely reading about doing the thing. Instructions do not equal instant accomplishment, whether in cookbooks or The Constitution - and mastery of any skill set requires focus, trial and error, and a significant amount of practice, even with the directions laid out right in front of you. As it would happen, the how-to book I am currently reading is “The Best of Jimi Hendrix”, and yesterday I, for the very first time, successfully played an entire song from this volume, through my real amp, and in his authentic tone. All it took was that songbook. And 40 years worth of practice and gear. As the last note faded into legend, I felt extremely satisfied to have stuck with this whole thing long enough to finally have reached my post-plink era. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

I hum a great deal. Not really humming exactly, there’s a rhythmical aspect to it, kind of a “bum-ba-dum”.Bum-da-dum dum dum dum dum…Going up the stairs to work, filling out forms, waiting in grocery lines, cleaning the house. Bum-ba-dum. It’s a bit like having a personal soundtrack.In many cities, this would be considered a problem. I’m lucky enough to live where we gently ignore one another, automatically assuming that people who seem to be speaking to themselves are either on the phone or listening to music - without accusatory questioning.Sometimes my colleague at work begins to hum a tune and I join in, though this kind of thing is not inherently communal. Bum-da-dums are short in nature, just a phrase or a chorus meant to bridge a particularly harrowing gap from one moment to another.It could be any tune: pop song, classic rock, jazz standard, traditional hymn, classical favorite, but the best are soundtracks, tv theme songs, and musicals.At one point I was going to write movie soundtracks. That was going to be my job, to grow up or whatever and then write music for money, earning enough to eat and purchase a most tasteful little bungalow somewhere.So I wrote a lot of music. For my birthday, my mother bought me an “As Seen On TV” box set of Disney albums, and I played The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Robin Hood over and over and watched every musical I could, which meant they had to be on TV in the 1970’s, so they were either* black and white films where Mickey Rooney and sometimes Judy Garland got their friends together and “put on a show” in an old barn (that they always seemed to have free access to) in their small town, or* CinemaScope spectaculars practically made of colors, where streetfuls of extras in full costume danced energetically in ever-widening crane shots.Music men, funny girls, British nannies and feuding New York City street gangs filled our cramped little screen, the peal of soaring brass and inspiring voices coming from the portable set’s three inch speaker. It was magical.Then I hit Rogers and Hammerstein. The Sound of Music was on every year, and I attended a Catholic grade school whose nuns spoke of Maria as if she were a MARVEL superhero. Watching in 6th grade, I finally understood who all those soldiers were, due to my history class’s recent WWII unit… information that, for me, made the most hummable movie in the world much less hummable. Alas, Rogers and Hammerstein were not my brand. I still feel that Carousel is more disturbing than Sweeney Todd.The absolute bottom for me was Seven Brides For Seven Brothers due to another history class, this one in high school, where we learned the full story of the Sabine Women, a distinctly un-hummable tale that soured me on the whole genre for a little while.I found my way back with How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, which a local station must have purchased the rights to for a year because it played every month. And then, my local PBS station was proud to present Singin’ In The Rain, which, for all practical purposes, became my Hamilton.My mother wanted me to have an actual job, but she was very encouraging about the whole writing music stuff. As previously mentioned, it was my grandmother who actually composed music, and she was distinctly NOT encouraging about the entire category.My grandparents often traveled to other big cities in the U.S. as delegates, sometimes meeting congresspeople or senators or Vice Presidents. They had a selection of knick-knacks from all over - most of them painted lumps of ceramic, and the most treasured of which was their “hula-girl” made with a hidden spring in the middle.A couple of these trips were to New York City. I was incredibly proud to learn that they stayed in the Algonquin Hotel, my absolute favorite due to its association with Dorothy Parker. It was during this trip that they were gifted front row tickets to one of the hottest shows in town, starring talented unknowns Ben Vereen, Melba Moore, and Diane Keaton, and it was a musical.Grandma wanted to play Carnegie Hall. I believe, though she never admitted this, that her dream was to stand in front of an orchestra and conduct her original works. If her dreams had been realized, she might have lived in Sugar Hill, Harlem as the most square of the zoot suit set, the modern day female African American Tchaikovsky. So to be in that room with the live band playing music, before that curtain went up, must have been a heady moment.The musical was Hair, and you most likely have heard the music, but there are several reasons they haven’t performed it at your local summer stock or you didn’t catch the movie on tv. Skipping its heavy political content, at the end of the first act the entire cast sings a rousing and life-affirming ballad, then promptly takes off ALL of their clothing, standing naked in the spotlights, right at the edge of the stage.How different my life might have been if my grandparents had been gifted tickets to West Side Story. I learned about this experience as an adult, but always had wondered why– my Grandmother had refused to teach me piano,– only begrudgingly acknowledged my singing,– was totally against me moving to the East Coast after high school,– and mentioning the word “Broadway” in front of my her seemed equal to taking the Lord’s name in vain. Actually, slightly worse.For 15 years I worked two-and-a-half blocks away from Times Square. Sometimes during lunch I would go take sideways peeks at my childhood dream.Then I learned how expensive it is to heat or cool a giant four story room every night, and pay the electricity bills, and other key aspects of Broadway economics. I also became familiar with the full spreadsheet of costs involved in creating a motion picture, much less those necessary to distribute it.You can write songs in your bedroom, play them to folks at a coffeeshop, record a full album at home and distribute it on the internet for almost nothing. With staged or filmed musicals, all those songs and dances are still mere frosting on a cake made of Pure Business.So I’ve composed a great deal of performance intended music, but none marketable enough to pay the rent on a midtown theatre or hire an army of cinema union workers. But they’re good to hum, which is what I do, walking through New York streets, jauntily “bum-da-dum”ing my little tunes, soundtracking my own life, if (at present) nothing else. I may not be wowing the masses, but neither am I morbidly shocking scores of little old ladies, so that’s a kindness. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the time for bread and wine as the year moves steadily on, days now getting shorter, summer both in full swing and ever-so-slight decline. Many of us can’t help but look past the sweltering days ahead of (and just behind) us with keen anticipation of the autumn and winter holidays, already anticipating how thematically unified those pumpkin-orange shoes will be, or the pretty of the streets with the houses once again covered in lights.But first, summer. The other half. The half when it’s actually too hot to go to the beach, or even outside. The half when we’ve had enough popsicles and that fan we leave constantly blowing is starting to accumulate “too much” pet hair. That half when the drugstore packs away its flags and plastic snorkel sets and puts out the back-to-school items. It’s a wistful-er half, perfect for heat-exhausted reminiscing.I got all mine in early this year, as I once again visited my ancestral manse for a bit with my daughter, smack dab in the middle of the midwest. Because this year, she wanted to see my high school yearbooks.“It’s just me with odd clothes and a giant smile.” I told her. “You see that a lot.”Yet she insisted, so the volumes were excavated. She took them enthusiastically, with my grade school yearbooks as well.I wasn’t underplaying it: they were all filled with black and white photographs of people even I didn’t know, and then a few of me, most often wearing shirts with unflatteringly large collars, smiling in a spirit I now recognize as “pragmatic”.Oh, there was laughter. I feel very fortunate that it couldn’t be accurately described as “uproarious”, but it was long and loud and hearty and steady.“I was not cool.” I felt pressured to admit.“Aw, sure, you were ok… I mean look at everybody else, you’re all just old.”“Well, we weren’t then, we were your age.”She seemed not to agree, as in her lap was a double spread monochromatic visual buffet of early 80’s hairstyles.I haven’t changed all that much. There was a moment when my face sort of looked like “my face” and it’s stayed that way ever since. My collars are smaller now, but my smile is still pragmatic, if not a bit wearily so.All my daughter’s school pictures are fantastic; the photographers encouraging the children to jump like Phillippe Halsman or spin or laugh… the only verb that we were offered as children was “Smile!”, a strange command which, when spoken, instantly negates the ability to do so in any authentic way. We tried our hardest.As camera film was expensive, for much of high school the only images I have are these yearbook photos, one and a quarter by one inch greyscale reductions of an entire year of my life (minus the summer). Through digital photography, kids today will capture enough frames of themselves to print massive flip books, displaying their memories in real time. They have tools to perfect these images, and a library of pictures that would have taken a thousand shoe boxes to house is carried with them in their pocket. Where my changes are chronicled from yearbook to yearbook, she will have an archive of every micro-phase of her growth. Finally, she looked at the pages inside the front and back covers. There were handwritten messages from other students; enthusiastic, friendly, cheeky, and a few that could actually be interpreted as somewhat torrid. I did not have a memory to go with every message, though I did remember a few in startling detail, but wouldn’t admit which ones were which.“So you WERE popular?” she threw at me.“No, I was interesting, the exact same way you are. Weird and kind and kind of interesting. I didn’t make lifelong friends, but I didn’t really judge people, so I didn’t make lifelong enemies either.”She accepted this answer and tried to keep reading, but the 20th century secret code called “cursive writing” befuddled her.Life offers a great deal of change at the beginning. Seeds transform into saplings and then magnificent trees – one not at all like the other, each requiring a different name. Humans change even more than that, and it’s impossible to predict exactly “what we are going to be” from our newborn selves (whereas if you buy a packet of seeds, there’s a photo of the eventual results right there on the envelope). We are units of constant change, and when we’re young we document it a great deal. But then we figure we have enough pictures of ourselves, and look - we can still wear that jacket from 10 years ago and don’t need a new one, and this is must be the longest we’ve ever lived in an apartment, and all that change that used to be dynamic from year-to-year can become occasional, and then altogether surprising. Even to us. It’s good to remind ourselves that, along with the resiliency borne from our deepest roots, we each hold within us the integrity of the seed and the (inner) flexibility of the sapling. That’s the story of your high school yearbook: we were there and now we’re here, and no matter what our age, right now we’re as young as we’re ever gonna be. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe