December 31, 2017 / 0 Comments

Holidays 2017, Explained (Part One)

“This is the school for fools in love. Did I mention? Pay attention!” —Bootsy Collins, Worth My While (feat. Kali Ulchis)

Last May, I mentioned wanting to get back to New Orleans by the end of this year. Our anniversary had just passed, Robert E. Lee’s statue had been removed from Lee Circle, and I was feeling a lot of wistful love for my second favorite city in the nation.

In August, my mom stated that she wanted to take a family trip this year. We were actively considering Puerto Rico, but then there was Maria and my mother’s broken leg (now healed), and so contiguous options seemed the best choice. Tiffany and I had visited NOLA over the holidays before and enjoyed what had, at the time, been a relatively sleepy week in the city.

Sleepy is not the way I would describe Crescent City this time. There was Christmas Fest and the Sugar Bowl. The Pelicans and Xscape. And a more substantial international tourist body than in 2009. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, we went to Greensboro, North Carolina to visit with and my mother-in-law.

Greensboro has a very fancy Whole Foods with an excellent hot bar. We went there the first night. A couple of days later, I made biscuits from scratch to my MIL’s delight. Mostly, though, I sat in her sunroom and caught up on my media consumption. Hulu has all the non-Netflix Marvel shows so I binged Legion and caught up on Runaways and continued to sample The Gifted. I feel a kind of way about Bryan Singer‘s attachment to two of the three but Legion, in particular, was worth the time.

Also, Steven Universe. Mrs. Winners. Greensboro’s changing demographics.

I read Goldie Vance, Volume 1 (very fun!) and A Wrinkle in Time. I stopped reading Wrinkle just before the final action occurs. I didn’t love it. Many elements feel very of the 50s, and I’m curious to see how Ava Duvernay will translate them in her film. I like the bones of the story, though, and think it will likely make a much better movie.

I went through the best end-of-year music lists I could find to see what I was missing. Complex. NPR. NY Times. Pitchfork. KCRW.

KCRW’s DJ lists were the plug in this excursion. Jeremy Sole had the most similar chart to my best-of, and several of the albums from his list fit right in with my sensibilities.

Albums I Missed in 2017

We did leave the house to take in a G-League basketball game. The game was mostly trash until late in the fourth quarter, as were the concessions, but we had great seats.

Then, on Christmas Day, we got on a plane and headed to N’awlins, baby.

To be continued…

December 24, 2017 / 0 Comments

Thinking about 2018

“Even though I tried, it was never enough for running in the same damn place.” – Haim, Something to Tell You

I haven’t done formal plan making for the year over the last couple. The beginning of 2016 was a time of transition. The beginning of 2017 was about pushing back against the dread of the unfathomable.

Looking to 2018, though, as I’ve made it through the seemingly never-ending onslaught of these past 12 months, I want to get back to moving with intent. There’s a war going on for attention, and I’m determined to win it.

I went back and looked at my series of posts from 2015 about living wisely. My core values haven’t changed much. I still hold compassion and kindness in the highest regard. I might add something about my admiration for moral defiance and civil disobedience now. The running theme for me that year was “Make good shit. Every day.”

At the end of 2016, I was fond of the John Lewis phrase, “Make good trouble.”

This year, what I want is to make time.

The 2018 mission

Do the things that make you feel most connected to the world

After taking an audit of how I spend my time (or would like to be using my time), these are the things that are worth it:

Meditation
Working Out
Time with Tiffany
Time with Family
Time with Friends
Exploring my city
Exploring the world
Listening to music
Reading
Cooking
Learning new things
Volunteering
Listening to podcasts
Writing
Basketball

Here are the things that are not:

iPad games
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
Watching TV
Eating Out

Currently, mornings are the best-structured parts of my day and evenings are the worst. Heading into 2018, I intend to better plan my nights filling them with the things I care about and leaving less open space for the time-wasters that take my attention but aren’t adding much meaning to my life.

Now, I’m rarely an absolutist, so this is not to suggest that I won’t still be on social media or watching tv or visiting another delicious restaurant. Of course, they will find their way into my schedule. What I’m hungry for, though, is more purpose and intention with my off hours.

Am I going out to eat with loved ones? Is my social media time deepening my connection with people, communities, or issues important to me?

If not, isn’t that time better spent on other things?

Time’s-a-wastin ‘.

December 17, 2017 / 0 Comments

2017 in Music

“Love. Long as we got…”—SZA, Love Galore

2016 ended in such a discombobulated fashion that I didn’t do my usual annual accounting of the music that mattered. At least not in a blog post. In some private slack channel, Solange’s A Seat at the Table was my most important album of the year while DJ Khaled’s I Got the Keys was my favorite song. I didn’t remark on why things mattered though which is what I’m most interested in when jumping into the way-back machine to remember.

So, let’s take an accounting of 2017. A year that I thought might be dominated by protest music wasn’t. More than anything I loved music that was both adventurous and sure-footed. Musicians and performers who were confident in their vision while taking risks, sonic and emotional. Artists who entered this challenging year and decided to be more open and raw and real rather than more closed off from the world. There’s a lot of melancholy and ennui in popular music these days, particularly in contemporary hip-hop, but that’s not where my ears were drawn. Give me driving rhythm. Make me dance. Lift me up. Swing out, sister. Wake up, brother.

The 2017 Mixtape

The song I listened to the most this year was Big Amount, a 2016 single off of 2 Chainz’s 2017 album Pretty Girls Love Trap Music. It still bangs, especially on my GO! playlist which powers my workouts and runs. A close second is the GRAMMY-nominated Crew by Goldlink. Goldlink’s music dominated the first half of the year. It’s energetic and infectious and is a reminder that the spirit of DC is alive regardless of whoever is spending their nights in the White House.

My Song of the Year though is SZA’s Love Galore. The first bars transport me. I sing along. I shoulder bop and shimmy shake. It stays with me long after it ends. It sounds like nothing else I heard this year. And SZA and Travis $cott make their performances feel effortless. In an age when indie, alternative, experimental rhythm & blues is, by far, the standout genre, this is the standard-bearer.

The rest of my faves are on this YouTube Playlist. You can also find them on Spotify though you’ll be missing JAY-Z’s 4:44 and Family Feud (feat. Beyoncé) in that version because streaming exclusives won’t let us be great.

The Albums

Most of the end of the year lists I’ve seen have had Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. and SZA’s Ctrl in their top five or ten and often as one and two, respectively. While I’ve listened to DAMN. more, Ctrl is ahead of it on my list, but both lose out to Sango’s De Mim, Pra Você for the top spot.

Sango explained, “#DMPV allowed me to seek for more history; more understanding; more roots. We are all influenced by one another.”

This statement could’ve been tattooed on my forehead in 2017. It’s been my mission to seek a stronger connection with my fellow humans, to better understand the how and why of the ways we treat each other, to be influenced and be influential.

De Mim, Pra Você is the soundtrack for that work.

The rest of the 2017 albums that mattered to me

Sango – De Mim, Pra Você
SZA – Ctrl
Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.
Jay-Z – 4:44
Aretha Franklin with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – A Brand New Me
Goldlink – At What Cost?
Jordan Rakei – Wallflower
Demi Lovato – Tell Me You Love Me
Rapsody – Laila’s Wisdom
Ibeyi – Ash
Sampha – Process
Tuxedo – Tuxedo II
Bonobo – Migration
Beck – Colors
Haim – Something to Tell You
Kamasi Washington – Harmony of Difference
The xx – I See You
Migos – Culture
Sylvan Esso – What Now
Leikeli47 – Wash & Set
Halsey – hopeless fountain kingdom
Jonwayne – Rap Album Two
The Foreign Exchange Presents – Hide&Seek
Jessie Ware – Glasshouse
Lorde – Melodrama
J Dilla – Jay Dee’s Ma Dukes Collection
Vulfpeck – The Beautiful Game

Albums from previous years that were new and impactful to me

Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You
NxWorries – Yes Lawd!
Aretha Franklin – Young, Gifted, and Black
Lion Babe – Begin
Lizzo – Coconut Oil
Terrace Martin – Velvet Portraits
Donna Summer – Bad Girls
LaBelle – Nightbirds
Sade – Diamond Life
X-Ray Spex – Germ-Free Adolescents
Andrew Bird – Are You Serious?
Baby Queens – Baby Queens

Shout-out to NPR’s 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women list for being the single biggest impact on my listening habits this year. It pushed me out of a rut. It reminded me how exceptional Jagged Little Pill and Control were and still are. It gave me an appreciation for Joni and Dolly and Dusty. It connected me with Donna Summer and LaBelle in ways I wasn’t before. It presented a shocking revelation: that I had never listened to an Aretha Franklin album before—only her ubiquitous hits—and that I had been missing out, grossly so.

It sent me down a riot grrl rabbit hole that I hadn’t been in for years and left me in awe of the soul songstresses of the fifties and sixties. It made me more aware of the control playlists have on our ears—be they human curated on the radio or algorithmically driven on our favorite streaming service—and that we have to be diligent in seeking out artists and music that fails to break through our collective patterns.

I hope these thoughts and lists send you on some new sonic adventure. If it does, tell me about it, won’t you?

Bonus:

Here’s what Spotify says about my listening habits

And, here’s the data Last.fm collected

December 31, 2016 / 0 Comments

To 2017

“Beyond your darkness, I’m your light.” – Beyoncé, All Night

I’m still here, motherfucker.

I still love. I still laugh. I will fight.

I’m in the gym getting this body right for the resistance.

I’m giving up beef for environmental reasons. I’m taking my doctor’s advice and gonna try to lose these thirty pounds.

I’m in the ear of my representatives. I’m working politically and practically. At home and in states that need it more than my golden one. My money is going to organizations doing the best work for the least protected of us.

What I’m saying, New Year, is you’re going to try to test me, test us. Please know that I’m ready.

Tomorrow isn’t promised. Progress is precarious. The world is worrisome.

But there is joy, beauty, hope, and possibility around every corner.

And, I’m still here.