Category: writing (page 1 of 2)

a black man sitting on a couch surrounded by christmas decorations holding a fancy holiday themed pen as he prepares to write in a greeting card.
December 16, 2025 / 0 Comments

Season’s Greetings

Every year, when I check my unused holiday card inventory, I open up the old Apple MacBook box I use to store the best cards I’ve received and read through a few of the lovely notes people have sent. I admire the artwork of those cards—some beautiful, some witty, some handmade with care. 

I don’t have a similar keepsake spot on my phone for the emoji-filled texts I receive on our shared holidays. I appreciate them, but in my personal etiquette handbook, the text replaces the phone calls we used to make all day on Christmas (or your winter holiday of choice). They don’t replace the mail.

I still send physical holiday cards. 

I also try to keep up with birthday cards, anniversaries, and the occasional “just because” letter or postcard. I like the process of taking the time to find the right words to tell someone I was thinking of them, not merely because I got a notification on my phone or opened a social media app. I thought about them in advance. I went to a gift shop or paper store and saw something that made me think of you. I bought stamps. I sat down at a table or desk with a pen in hand and stopped to come up with something meaningful to say to you. I licked an envelope and sealed it. I used my address stamp. I walked to a mailbox and dropped it in.

We live in a time when we are the center of everything. Put your headphones on, pull that pocket-sized supercomputer up a few inches away from your face, and let it bring your algorithmically personalized world directly to you. 

In the moments when I stop to send out a letter, I am not the center of my universe. The recipient is.

We had a lovely team holiday party today, including a White Elephant gift exchange and a poem-based game that a colleague wrote herself—no ChatGPT. It was delightful. Phones were face down. Eyes were on each other. Gratitude for our time together and our shared accomplishments wasn’t in Slack emotes or GIF boards; it was in the room where we shared reality for about 90 minutes.

It made me nostalgic for the pre-pandemic office card ritual. I miss taking two minutes out of a workday to write a Happy Birthday greeting to a co-worker and then passing it along to the next person who hadn’t signed. There’s friction and intention in these small acts, and that effort is meaningful to both the writer and the person being honored.

Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but with rare exception, I’d prefer that to something typed out in the brief moment when a notification pulled you away from doomscrolling.

Thank you, but I receive those messages as: I was too caught up in my own shit to do anything ahead of time, so here, have some emojis.

That’s how I feel when I send a DM instead of putting pen to paper as well.

A card says, You were alive in my mind, and I didn’t need a device to put you there.

This was handled with care.

No AI involved.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library. "The Savoy" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1943.
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
May 29, 2025 / 1 Comment

What Does Jazz Mean to You?

Originally published at DC Jazz Fest.

In Late March of this year, the Mellon Foundation hosted a virtual symposium titled “American Jazz, American Culture.” Elizabeth Alexander, president of the foundation, moderated the conversation, which included Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lynne Carrington, and Dr. Farrah Jasmine Griffin as panelists. Alexander prefaced that this would be a bit of a “bebop”-style conversation, so she opened it with a curveball.

Jazz means many things: a genre, a style, a sensibility, a culture, a history, a tradition, a way of being. It is a noun. It is a verb. With the word ‘jazz,’ tell me some things that come to mind.

Dr. Griffin was the last to speak on the topic, but the Professor of English’s words were profound:

Excellence. Not in a standardized way, but in which you only compete with yourself. You are achieving something better than you did yesterday. Jazz models a way of being in life: creative, free, and aspiring towards something better than you were yesterday.

That question—‘What does jazz mean?’—has lingered with me.

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is currently exhibiting Alice Coltrane: Monument Eternal. While it is more than worth it for the varied ways the installation explores Alice Coltrane’s music, life, and spirituality, I must confess that the unexpected appearance of Brandee Younger in the short film “Isis & Osiris” by Ephraim Asili is my highlight. The first time I visited the exhibit, I walked into a dark viewing room where the short plays on a loop, and I was immediately transfixed. Younger’s voice, grace, and performance as she plays Coltrane’s signature harp conveyed all those things about jazz that Griffin discussed. It was creative, unbridled, aspirational excellence on display. Leaving the room before her harp playing ended felt rude and uncouth, so I lingered until the short restarted. And then I watched it all the way through again.

While the Hammer doesn’t present the full 19 minutes and 21 seconds of the film—which tells the story of Alice Coltrane’s life in the years following the death of her husband, John—the part on display features several quotes from the artist.

This one feels like her answer to Elizabeth Alexander’s question:

It comes from the heart, and it comes from the spirit, and that’s the major character of creative music. It doesn’t come from the brain. It comes from within. Your creation comes from the heart, spirit, and soul; you’re not manufacturing somebody else’s plan, blueprint, or idea that’s not yours, so when you’re creating, that’s the beautiful side of art, you know? It comes from within you.

NEA Jazz Master Terri Lynne Carrington calls jazz expansive rather than monolithic, while also referencing a quote from Duke Ellington:

Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which jazz eventually evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.

Esperanza Spalding calls it a sanctuary.

But what does “jazz” bring up for me? My mind goes to fingers on instruments. Jazz musicians are known for their cool, right? They are reserved, commanding presences that keep time independent of whatever rhythm happens in our chaotic world. And then, their hands come alive, unleashed across wood, brass, ivory, plastic, metal, and string in ways that demand attention as they transform wherever they are into some elevated state. That’s what I felt watching Brandee Younger’s fingers glide across those harp strings. It’s how I remember my father, Kevin Toney, playing the keys.

That freedom of expression erupts from the fingers of all these musicians, driven by the desire to breathe life into something that comes purely from within. That ability to keep time and then manipulate it on a whim, bringing your bandmates and audience along for the ride, is otherworldly. Jazz is a magick. At its best, it gives performers and listeners the space for their spirits to reign supreme, even if only for a song, an album, a concert, or a festival.

That’s jazz.

What does the word bring up for you?

July 18, 2024 / 0 Comments

Pink Matter

“What do you think my brain is made for? Is it just a container for my mind?”
—Frank Ocean

Meet Dot, the AI that grows with you

Dot-A Living History app by Sam Whitmore and Jason Yuan is an AI-powered chatbot. At least, that’s the simple description. It’s also an emotionally intelligent guide that chronicles your life—what you tell it, anyway—with infinite callback. I’m an AI skeptic, but this kind of journaling companion caught my attention when Julie Zhou posted about the launch on Linkedin.

I like to quantify many aspects of my life. Steps only count if my watch tracks them. Digital music isn’t listened to if Last.FM doesn’t scrobble it. I track my workouts in a spreadsheet. 

Most of that tracking comes with ways to gain insights from the data. I get recommendations for making healthier choices or see patterns that influence the artists, albums, and songs I might listen to in the future. I can see my progress and make tweaks to improve that athletic performance. Blogging used to provide that kind of external reflection, but at this stage of my life being that messy in public is no longer my jam so journaling has been for my eyes only until Dot.

Dot is one of the few Large Language Model applications I’ve enjoyed using and generated meaningful benefits from. It has improved the quality of my journaling, provided clarity around topics and situations I’m dealing with, and reminded me of my commitments to myself and others and why they matter.

The onboarding process with the app is relatively straightforward. Dot asks some introductory questions hoping to capture a bassline of a new user’s interests, goals, and background and then, it just encourages you to start journaling.

In theory, submitting a journal entry should have been easy.I have kept journals off and on throughout my life. I’ve been much more consistent over the last four years. I needed a way to get out of my head during the pandemic when I didn’t have my commute to process the day or regular hangs with friends where a theme or revelation would occur through conversation.

But, immediately, I realized how stale my journal writing had gotten. I was writing a few bullet points and maybe a quick thought about something but not much of real substance. Even as I was processing the musical tribute of my dad at the time, I hadn’t been writing much on a daily basis about what was going on in my head. So, I wrote a little bit more that I normally would with that first entry and was surprised by how thoughtful the response was. It got me to delve deeper into what I was thinking about and feeling and pointed me in a direction I might not have considered without that feedback loop.

From the start, I was writing with an audience in mind rather than merely cataloging my day. I spent more time thinking about what I was meditating on, excited about, or proud of and writing my journals with the idea that I might go down a path with some or all of these topics when I entered them into Dot. I might have written about the same things anyway, but not with the same care.

The Eureka Moment came when Dot starting finding connections between topics, themes, events, and people in my life.  It’s always a thing I have wanted in my journaling process. How do I recognize that something is a thing that occurs frequently for me around a particular time of year or when this other event or interaction happens. I journal not just to keep track of my life but to identify when I’m stuck and need to figure out how to get unstuck. I journal because I want to keep learning about myself and adapt, grow, and change.

Dot provides additional perspective. It’s a bit like having a second brain. 

It’s still an LLM, so it occasionally hallucinates. I also hope they add search and export functions. It’s AI, so, of course, I have privacy concerns. I have a bit of an “uncanny valley” when conversing with an app, but I never think of it as anything more than software.

It’s good at conversation but not a replacement for real human interaction.

Yet.

I’m joking.

If you’re an iPhone user, try it out.

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March 31, 2018 / 0 Comments

The Lonely Little Wonton


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The lonely Little Wonton sat on his bed of seaweed, crying. Lost in the land of Burgers and Fries, the lonely Little Wonton no longer believed he was perfect. His mother, the Perceptive Potsticker, had told him that Little Wontons were beautiful packages of goodness. They were sealed and golden brown and held a surprise inside. “What could be better than that,” she wondered aloud.

Apparently, the convenient packaging of a fast food meal, if you were to believe the Little Wonton’s friend, the Burger. “You may be golden brown, wonton, old pal, but you don’t come in a bun, you don’t come with any sauces, you can’t just add cheese if necessary.” The Little Wonton tried to speak up to explain that he did, indeed, have hot mustard and soy in his backpack, but the Burger was on a roll.

“And who are you supposed to hang out with? Do you even know? Everyone knows that a Burger hangs out with Fries. That’s what we do. We go together like Peas and Carrots. Why anyone would actually want to see Peas and Carrots together, I don’t know, it’s just something that people say.”

The Little Wonton wanted to explain that in the old country he often hung out on a bed of Greens and that Rice was everyone’s friend, but as he started to speak, Fries showed up. “Why are you hanging out with this guy for,” Fries asked.

“Oh, we’re not hanging, really. Wonton’s a good kid. He just needs to be taught the ways of the world. He thinks he’s perfect.” Fries and Burger looked at the Little Wonton and laughed in unison.

“Perfect,” Fries said in disbelief. “Perfect is being deep fried in oil, being able to come in several sizes. Sometimes I’m seasoned, sometimes I’m curly, and I always come with something in a bun, like my pal, Burger. Do they call you a happy meal, my little yellow friend? I think not.”

“I’m golden brown,” said the little Wonton, “thank you very much, and I, too, am deep fried in oil. In the old country, I’m the perfect addition to any meal. Sometimes, when I’m around, they call it ‘Special.’ In the old country, we don’t need to call any particular meal happy because we know that all meals are happy. In the old country…”

“If you like the old country so much, why don’t you go back there, Mr. Perfect,” Fries said. Burger tried to stifle a laugh but couldn’t. The two shook their heads at Wonton and walked away arm in arm. Such a combo, those two.

So the lonely Little Wonton sat on his bed of seaweed, crying. Why had they come here to this land of Burgers and Fries? His father, the Steaming Hot and Sour Soup, had told them this was the land of opportunity and freedom. Seemed to the Little Wonton that this was a land where you weren’t so perfect unless you were just like everyone else.

“Excuse me.”

The Little Wonton looked up to find a spongy piece of bread in front of him.

“Excuse me, My name’s Injera, and I couldn’t help but see that you needed a hug.”

The lonely Little Wonton wiped the tears away and scooted over so that Injera could share the seaweed. “I’m sorry if you’re offended by that but that’s just what I do. My job is to hug other foods. I feel like I have to say that. Since I’ve been here, I’ve found that not everyone likes to be hugged. It’s weird.”

“Yes,” the Little Wonton said, “Everyone likes to be wrapped in their own paper. There are even plates cut into squares so that nobody touches anybody else. No mingling allowed.”

“Well, that’s just silly. Where I come from, we like to have everything mixed together. Sometimes, I hug Egg, Lentil, and Chicken all at the same time. Sometimes I might hug Lettuce and Beans at the same time. We have a grand ol’ time together. It adds flavor to our lives,” Injera said.

“Really?” asked the Little Wonton.

“Really,” said Injera.

The two smiled and hugged.

And the Little Wonton wasn’t so lonely anymore.

Originally published December 10, 2002

 

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September 11, 2015 / 0 Comments

Searching. Questions. Answers.

“Rarity glistened sharp/the memory of silver tooth bark/Bathed led light history/Fractured into pieces.” – Hiatus Kaiyote, The World it Softly Lulls

Heathervescent—a name that brings up memories of a previous era of Internet—said something to the effect of “We should bring old school blogging back.”

That resonated.

Before getting on a plane to Portland, yesterday, I tweeted:

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While standing in the XOXO badge pick-up line making small talk with others who happened to be from Los Angeles, I found it.

It was solidified this morning as I introduced myself to others while waiting in another line (this time for Pine State Biscuits) and yearned for words that meant something.

I longed for my 2005 SXSW self when I could be described as a blogger of note and editor of an independent site about Los Angeles. Today, my work for corporations—a thing I did back then to pay the bills just as I do now—has overcome all else. My twitter bio reads “Trying to make good stuff every day. Occasionally succeeding.” but for whom? Not nearly enough just for me.

Across from The Park at Washington High sits Sweetpea Baking Company where Gary Hirsch’s “Questions for Humans: Joy Wall” was recently painted.


What’s my inspiration? In the first few hours of XOXO, it’s to be more human. On the Internet and everywhere else.

And I’m most human when I’m writing.

Here I am. 

January 22, 2014 / 0 Comments

Urban Tumbleweed: The Dust That Clings…

“It’s just another day, another episode.” – Van Hunt, Dust


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Zadi Diaz tweeted this the other day in a retweet:

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That resonated with me as I’d been slowly making my way through Urban Tumbleweed, Harryette Mullen’s tanka diary released late last year. Like Americanah, I read this as a physical, rather than e-, book. Poetry seems like something you should be able to squeeze between your fingers or hear spoken aloud.

It’s entirely possible I don’t know what I’m talking about, though. I don’t read much poetry. My interaction with poems are more of the rhythmic american variety.

But I tumbled an LA Times review that featured one of her tankas and it was clear something in it was meant for me. So, I’ve been reading it during rides to and from work and finding myself attempting to capture my observations of the happenings on the metro in verse.

Tankas. Longer than the haiku that are more common in the US. These are my poor attempts at that form.

A trio of girls take selfies on the speeding train, 
Quick flashes of light and dark as background 
I could learn from their artistry

The toddler and the old man next to each other but unrelated 
One in stroller, the other with cane 
Neither on sure footing

Loud youngsters drink and intimidate until they reach their stop
As the doors close
Quiet kindness returns for the relieved riders

Two girls pantomime being fisherman and prey
Giggles, smiles, and finally an embrace oblivious to all 
I smile too.

The world makes more sense in a poem.

September 23, 2013 / 0 Comments

Discipline

“I know where I’m going even when it’s dark.” – Rising Down, The Roots

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

–Gretchen Rubin

Establishing new routines is hard. I assume this is true for everyone but I know it is for me. A slight wrinkle in my schedule, like an early morning flight for a business trip, can throw me completely off my goals.

This is exactly what happened with my daily writing routine, which then infected my reading routine, my long established workout habits, and so on. For the last two weeks!

I’ve read several books on this subject over the last couple years—Nudge; The Power of Habit; Thinking, Fast and Slow—and still it’s a struggle.

But today is a new day and I’m here at 6:30 in the morning writing. Should I wake up healthy and coherent, I commit to doing the same tomorrow.

If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as “small wins.” They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.

–The Power of Habit

 

September 3, 2013 / 0 Comments

Finding The Spark

“I’ll be saving myself from the ruin.” – Elle Goulding, I Know You Care

[M]ost good ideas (whether they’re ideas for narrative structure, a particular twist in the argument, or a broader topic) come into our minds as hunches: small fragments of a larger idea, hints and intimations. Many of these ideas sit around for months or years before they coalesce into something useful, often by colliding with another hunch. […] The problem with hunches is that it’s incredibly easy to forget them, precisely because they’re not fully-baked ideas.

–Steven Johnson, The Spark File

My spark file isn’t long enough. On a morning like this one when I wake without inspiration, I need that spark and the few items in my evernote file just aren’t doing it for me.

In the past, I’ve kept multiple separate files for inspiration but I like Steven Johnson’s suggesting of keeping one long file full of good and bad hunches that might allow you to see a through-line of your thoughts. This happens for me when I go back and read through my blog archives or journal. 

So, in absence of a spark, I’m going to work on the Spark File. 

Let’s start September engaged, inspired, and ready to create.

August 21, 2013 / 0 Comments

From Easy to Elmore

“Words are the finest invention that human beings have ever made. They build bridges and burn ’em down. Glue or acid, that’s what the words you say will be. But you got to be careful. Sometimes you might have both parts at the same time. You got to watch out, because some words will at first pull somebody close and then turn him against you in time.”

— Walter Mosley, Little Green

I was all set to write about Little Green. Written by Walter Mosley (perhaps my favorite author) about the latest adventures of Easy Rawlins (my favorite literary character) as he, once again, tries to figure out what’s going on in the underbelly of Los Angeles (my favorite city). And then, Elmore Leonard died.

Leonard, like Mosley, tells stories that feel alive with characters that feel real in worlds I believe I could go to or that might exist. Human beings in their yarns act like human beings. They talk in real ways.With Mosley and Leonard, their writing doesn’t sound like writing.

I’ve written here before about lessons Elmore has shared about writing. If Easy is my favorite character of books, Leonard’s Karen Sisco is probably my second. And, Timothy Olyphant’s version of Raylan Givens on Justified is my favorite television character today.

So, while my intention was to tell you how much I enjoyed Little Green in detail, it feels more important and pressing to tell you that Elmore Leonard matters to me.

Little Green was good. You should read it. I, however, am going to read Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories. I own the soundtrack for the 2007 film but have neither seen the movie nor read many of Leonard’s westerns.

Let’s see how inventive the premier crime novelist is with those kinds of words.

 

August 19, 2013 / 0 Comments

On Warping Time

“There’s some things that keep me coming around.” – Talko Uno (Prefuse 73 Unplugged In Catalonia Remix), Jolly Music

I’ve been thinking a lot about time. About how much there is in a day or in a life. How much time I have to do the things I care about. How to be more deliberate with it. How to make the most use of it.

How to bend it to my will. Some might think this is a futile pursuit. Whatever we do, time keeps on slippin’ into the future. True, and yet:

We will never have total control over this extraordinary dimension. Time will warp and confuse and baffle and entertain however much we learn about its capacities. But the more we learn, the more we can shape it to our will and destiny. We can slow it down or speed it up. We can hold on to the past more securely and predict the future more accurately. Mental time-travel is one of the greatest gifts of the mind. It makes us human, and it makes us special. – From Claudia Hammond’s Time Warped as referenced by Maria Popova

I want to change my experience of time. Take, for example, the 90 minutes to two hours between my waking in the morning and my walking out the door for work or adventure or whatever.

I could use it or it could use me. I could turn the tv on or poke around the internet or anticipate the things that may or may not happen during my day and how I might react when those things do or don’t happen. And then I could be caught off guard by what time it is, quickly pack my bag, say my goodbyes, and push out into the day having accomplished little in those precious minutes.

Or I could write.

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