“They say that freedom is a constant struggle. They say that freedom is a constant struggle. They say that freedom is a constant struggle, O Lord, we’ve struggled so long we must be free.”—a freedom song
Almost exactly ten years before I was born, a young John Lewis and thousands of others who grew weary of waiting for their freedom crossed the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. With unparalleled discipline, unwavering resolve, and profound love, they refused to be denied. Months later, the Voting Rights Act was passed in direct response to their courageous actions. It chokes me up to think about those sacrifices that allowed me to live half a century without enduring those harrowing battles. No one has ever attempted to suppress my right to vote. Bigotry holds so little power over my ability to succeed that I have largely forgotten its sting.
I can count on one hand how many times I felt someone else’s racism had negatively impacted my life. I have achieved everything I have set out to do with my skin color rarely being used against me.
I’m fortunate.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve immersed myself in the three-volume graphic novel collection “March” by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. This autobiographical narrative reminds us of our nation’s history and the relentless pursuit required to bend it toward the ideals we profess to hold dear. Illustrated in stark black and white, the story unflinchingly recounts how a boy from Troy, Alabama, became one of the architects of the civil rights movement and what it took to even glimpse equality.
“By and large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation.”—John Lewis
I’m fortunate.
This leaves me with an important question: What do I do with this good fortune? How can I repay the sacrifices made by those who had so little and gave so much?
How can I help foster a society where love reigns as the highest virtue?
“This organization came into being when our country struggled with greed, bitterness, and hatred. Those who forged the NAACP knew the forces they faced and how stony the road would be. Many see the flames on our horizons, the rising waters in our cities, and the shadows over our democracy, asking, ‘What do we do now?’ We know exactly what to do because we have done it before and will do it again.”
Despite the suffering, chaos, and anxiety that permeate our world, I still choose joy. I commit to the resolute ideals championed by those who paved the way before me. You can take many things from us, but you cannot take away our dignity.
Those who seek to deny us genuine justice and equality cannot steal my sunshine.
“However difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long… because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
The fortunate may lament going through this administration’s nonsense, but making good trouble in service of those in its crosshairs is how I pay forward what was done for me long before my birth. I would consider myself fortunate to lead a life that echoes just a fraction of the good accomplished by John Lewis and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
María Ampara Escandón loves Los Angeles. More importantly, she understands it. Her novel, L.A. Weather, is about family and the subtle nuances within each relationship. It’s also about identity, the hold that secrets can have over us, and how we handle the crises that can face a family unit in any given year. Los Angeles is where the Alvarados happen to live in this story. This city I love is both the setting and a key player in the plot.
As Storygraph‘s personalized preview of the novel suggested in more polite words: this kind of yarn is my shit.
Throughout the novel, characters describe their visions of L.A.
Compared to New York, we’re like ducks in a pond.
“They glide effortlessly on the tranquil surface, but you can see they’re frantically paddling when you go underwater. […] To survive, you have to keep your cool. Angelenos only sweat in public at the gym.”
One of the Alvarado daughters, who thinks in Instagram captions, believes the city to have been developed horizontally so that it could be projected in Panavision. She goes to the Griffith Park Observatory frequently to remind herself:
“[T]hat because she lived in the wealthiest city of the wealthiest state of the wealthiest country in the world, she had been bestowed with the ultimate responsibility: to thrive in her endeavors many times over on behalf of all the immigrants who hadn’t been given a chance.”
The patriarch of the family shares my perspective on the City of Angels:
“Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what [he] loved most about his city: how it welcomed everything and everyone.”
Threads has become my social media app of choice over the last year, and recently, there has been this regular drumbeat of new residents of L.A. starting conversations in which long-time Angelenos on the app feel the need to step in and correct their incorrect assumptions. I try my best to stay out of these engagement traps. Los Angeles doesn’t require you to love it. Few will demand that you give up your hometown allegiances or suppress that identity to succeed here. I’ve known people who have lived here for 20 years and still claim Chicago, New York, or wherever. And the city is cool with that.
But, as Escandón seems to know, magic happens if you fall in love with this place—with the parts of it that truly make this city and county shine. This place and its people will love you back. You will find a home. You will find family. You will believe anything is possible when we come together.
L.A. Weather is L.A. County Public Library’s summer read. If you’re a fan of women of color writing about complicated families, intriguing women, and how they make their way through seemingly impossible situations—usually with wit and humor—this is also for you.
On my 20th spin of Not Like Us, I figured out why Kendrick Lamar‘s latest is so electrifying. The last time LA hip hop was up was Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap at the GRAMMYs in February of 2019. His death a couple of months later, followed by Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several others less than a year later, turned the city and the music melancholy and insular. The pandemic would soon follow, and the LA sound has rarely found a reason to celebrate since then. You don’t take the lap when the victories are rare, fleeting, or pyrrhic.
The energy is different today. As I walked around my neighborhood with that Mustard beat blasting on repeat and Kung Fu Kenny going dumb with his South LA accent turned all the way on, I had this vision of people opening up their windows, poking their heads out, smiling, putting on their house shoes, and coming out to step to this. It’s not merely a diss record. Not Like Us is a West Coast rallying call.
The song is the fourth diss track that Lamar has released this week in his ongoing battle with Drake, though the consensus is that he won. Not Like Us includes strong bars covering the scandalous accusations many people glom onto. However, it is overwhelmingly an indictment of Drake as a culture vulture. Besides the rapping, which you always expect to get from Kendrick, the structure and vibe of the record are about showcasing what’s possible when you are of a place, people, and culture.
Before Not Like Us came out, I saw parallels between Lamar’s strident stand for morality and authenticity and his strong beliefs about racial identity, manhood, and parenthood with those of August Wilson. I’d been reading Patti Hartigan’s biography—August Wilson: A Life—while this back-and-forth between the two rappers has been going on.
Wilson had his diss battle of sorts in the 1990s. The playwright gave an influential and controversial speech called “The Ground on Which I Stand” in 1996, hitting some third rails in the theatre community and the country. Robert Brustein, a theater critic who was rarely a fan of Wilson’s, took the opportunity to challenge his positions.
They went at each other in the press, on TV, and in speaking engagements until culminating in the equivalent of a rap battle called The Big Event. Wilson’s battle with Brustein was fairer than Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake. The playwright and critic were both about something. They cared passionately about their craft while coming from two very opposed points of view. They were both well-read, adept with words, and had real animus.
In 2024, Drake doesn’t measure up, so he lost before it began.
August Wilson, who was biracial and fair-skinned, always identified as a black man. His white father was absent and abusive, and thus, perhaps it is no surprise that much of his work centers around what it means to be Black, a man, and a father in America throughout the 20th century.
Wilson never understood hip-hop. The blues was the music that moved him. He’d have found a kindred spirit in Kendrick Lamar, though.
While a conversation between the two is not in the cards, I’ll twist my fingers into Ws and dance it out to these K.Dot hits while interrogating the lyrics like I might a signature speech in one of the plays in Wilson’s cycle.
I’m currently in Bedroom Jail. I can no longer count myself among the NOVID crowd as I tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday evening. I probably contracted it on January 1st. Happy New Year!
I’m not alone. My case has been mild so far, with two rough nights of sleep (last night was better) and a fever for about 36 hours (currently on about hour 31 of an average temperature unaided by medicine). It’s day four. I’ll retest and hopefully get home release tomorrow, allowing me to move about the house with a mask next week.
I’m thankful for getting my fourth jab back in September (along with my flu shot). I’m four months from that shot, so protection has started to wane, but it is likely assisting in making this a smooth bout with the illness for me.
While isolating, I finally added an LA County Library card to go with the LAPL one I’ve had since I was eleven. The Libby app optimizing my hold decision-making across library systems is a game changer.
The revelation that the app could handle multiple library cards came to me via Threads and the Books/Librarian community there. Another conversation with “Movies Threads” participants got me re-invested in Letterboxd (find me!) and has me eyeing Serializd, though I’m already committed to TV Time. I’ve also had chats about Cringe Entertainment and Stanley Cups, two things in popular culture I get the sense that I’m now too old to “get.”
I like Threads. It’s been part of what’s kept me from going stir-crazy in Bedroom Jail.
When you first enter the back exhibition halls at the Resnick Pavillion, you are met with Hank Willis Thomas’s “A Place to Call Home (Africa-America).” It is a map of the Americas with the continent of South America replaced by Africa. It is also a mirror. As you take it in, you see yourself in the piece. At my height, I appeared dead center of the hybrid continent. This is not just history. It is your history. Not in the abstract; these displays are about you, specifically. Experience it as such.
The Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibit at LACMA is a powerful and thought-provoking display of art and culture that explores the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the African diaspora. Curated by Robert Farris Thompson, the exhibit features a wide range of works from artists of African descent, spanning centuries and continents.
Scheduled on a lark by Tiffany, the visit felt serendipitous, as if guided by otherworldly forces. To spend nearly two hours with these works during the same week that I was reading and, candidly, struggling through Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts felt heaven-sent even to my apatheist heart. And that’s not to mention that we arrived before the heavy rain and the LA crowds looking for something to do during a downpour. Thank the ancestors.
Living in the wake of slavery is haunting, and to experience this haunting is to be nothing less than traumatized.
This “haunting” was my primary challenge in making it through her graphic novel before I spent the morning with these works. The exhibit features pieces I’ve seen before from Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, and Betye Saar, along with many artists from Brazil and the Caribbean that were new to me. It was overwhelming to walk from room to room, each with its theme meant to make the enormity of the black experience in the Americas digestible. Digestible even if it goes down bitter. Digestible even if you have to swallow hard.
Americans are myopic and self-centered, and I am no different. When I grapple with the realities of slavery, I think of it as a uniquely American problem, a United States of America problem. This curation, though, makes plain that the impacts of the transatlantic slave trade were similar and terrible throughout both North and South America. This horror-as-commerce, of course, rippled back to Africa and the countries that brought themselves into the modern world on the backs of Africans for hundreds of years.
While Wake’s tagline sells the graphic novel as a deep exploration of the women who rose against these supposed enslavers, these stories are unavailable. Historians of the period seem biased against the idea that women could do such a thing. Perhaps they would kill their masters in a domestic dispute but lead an insurrection? Arm and inspire dozens or perhaps hundreds of others? Surely not!
To which, and this is not a joke, can someone get those old codgers a copy of The Woman King?
Hall and her illustrator explore the idea of captured Dahomey warriors on a slave ship and how they would have taken advantage of being underestimated.
Or invite them to the Afro-Atlantic Histories portrait room, where Dalton Paula’s Zeferina is on display. Zeferina was an abolitionist leader who joined with formerly enslaved people to lead a rebellion, killing enslavers to establish an independent community of free black people. She was executed for her crimes against the Portuguese crown. A woman king, indeed!
We must use our haunting to see how black life truly is and see how it could be otherwise.
The closing chapter of Wake is titled Ancestry in Progress, referencing the Zap Mama album I loved at its release. It’s playing now as I write this. I feel the throughline of the graphic novel, the art, and being a descendant in my bones. Staring into artwork that demands you reckon with these horrors—our shared history, even if you don’t yet recognize it as such—has had me on the verge of tears.
But I am here. Many of my ancestors survived these incomprehensible circumstances and found ways for their spirits to thrive. To swing out. I am here with Zap Mama singing along as we make it past the rain to the sun on Ca Varie Varie. I am here with portraiture that conveys all we might be as we exist today. We are our past and our future. And sometimes, I am overwhelmed by how improbable and beautiful that is.
To crib a bit of how Firelei Báez describes one of her paintings, black joy amazes and I will not relinquish it.
BLACK IVY: A Revolt in Style by Jason Jules and Graham Marsh is a coffee table book. That’s precisely where it’s been in the year since I received it as a Christmas present. I’d browsed the photographs several times over the year but had yet to stop to read the accompanying words. Until now. I’m mad at myself for not getting to it sooner because it was a delightful and inspiring read and a fitting first book of the new year.
I’d put the book on my list for Santa in the fall of 2021 after reading several articles that used it as a jumping-off point to discuss masculine fashion in broader or more contemporary terms. I’m not a fashionista, but I think about my outfits, the pieces I like, and what goes well together. One of my seldom-used boards on Pinterest is called Sartorial Game. I save hip sweaters and shoes that come across my Instagram feed in a collection. I get dressed for work even when that means taking just a few steps into my home office.
Through BLACK IVY, I can contextualize the clothing that resonates with me and why it feels so cool. I love a short sleeve button-down popover shirt. I prefer a cub collar on my full-length dress shirts if I can find one. Give me a beautiful sweater with a visible tee poking out of a collar. I want to pair these items with fresh sneakers, though the style’s originators would’ve likely preferred a hat as their touch of flare.
I felt both affirmed and encouraged by the stories and clothing of those civil rights-era cats. I wrote notes to learn more about Ted Joans, Noah Purifoy, and Jacob Lawrence. Images of Dignity by Charles White will likely be another read shortly. Thelonius Monk will be my Throwback Thursday music this week. I sought out the A Great Day in Harlem documentary.
I’ll soon be re-injecting Malcolm X (in both book and movie form) into my veins. I’ve got a date with Jazz on a Summers Day this Sunday, which will be a fitting end to my winter break.
And as I return to my routines next week, I’ll be thinking about which pieces go together. If clothes make the man, what is in my closet representing all shades of me?
Dave Chisholm‘s graphic novel about Charlie Parker’s time in Southern California is the first book I’ve read released during the COVID-19 pandemic. It acknowledges that timing in the foreword by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jabbar—the long-time Angeleno—wonders whether much has changed between Jim Crow in Parker’s 1940s America and last year’s Black Lives Matter summer of anguish. My gut reaction is to say, very much yes, even through the book’s lens where Bird must stay at an all-black hotel and permission to book an integrated band is seen as a great gift or concession. But a character in the story—a white one, no less—extols us never to trust LA cops, and 2020’s refrain of “defund the police” rings in my ears, and I question my gut’s optimism.
Chasin’ the Bird provided a new kind of door for me. The first chorus is told in Dizzy Gillespie’s voice, and he gives form to what it was like being a jazz cat in 1947. The book makes that Los Angeles and that club real for me. He name-checks a few songs, Salt Peanuts and Koko, and visualizes what it might have felt like to hear Bird blow his horn in person for the first time. I immediately went to my preferred music streamer and pulled up a Charlie Parker playlist. My toe began tapping. My eyes closed for a while, and then I opened them again, hoping to have been transported. I wanted to be looking around the darkened smoky room, searching for someone else’s eyes with which to lock. I’d shake my head as if to say, can you believe this? We’d chuckle together. I’d wipe my brow and return my attention to the stage, enraptured.
The story continues from there, taking on the perspectives of several others who encountered Bird during his time in my beloved city. Ultimately, the goal is to unravel the mystery of what happened to the man in Los Angeles, especially during his six-month-long disappearance from the scene. What we don’t get is the man himself in his own words. While Parker casts such a long shadow over the music of his time and what followed, he didn’t make it past his 35th year. He never gave himself the chance to tell his own story.
And while that’s a loss that this story can’t fill, it hits all my other sweet spots. It’s an LA story. It’s noir. It’s moody and sexy and a puzzle. The art sings. There are pages—the outro most intentionally so—that I’d swear I could hear. And the words are just as mesmerizing as the visuals and the jazz.
In Coltrane’s section, the illustrated Bird says to him:
The Universe we live in don’t waste nothin’. Everything has existed eternally. Every piece of energy is recycled. Every piece of motherfucking matter. You know what else is eternal?
“You shoulda been downtown; the people are rising.”
— Anderson .Paak
What did you do in 2020 that you’d never done before?
I wore a mask on days that weren’t Halloween or Halloween-related. I ran in the park in a mask. I wore a mask to the laundry room and to take out the trash. I wore a mask in the grocery store, the pharmacy, the doctor’s office, and the optometrist. I wore a mask to pick up take-out and get haircuts.
The few times I saw my parents and sister, I wore a mask. The few times I saw a friend or two—outside, socially distanced, and ever so briefly—I wore a mask.
Sometimes, alone in the car, I wore a mask.
The few times we had furniture deliveries or maintenance in the house, I opened some windows and wore a mask.
Today, I’ll wear a mask. Tomorrow, I’ll wear a mask.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t make resolutions last year. I did hope to visit Chicago and Atlanta and Greensboro and Omaha to see family & friends and catch some WNBA games in cities I hadn’t been in in a while.
In early March, those plans were dashed. I did see some of those family & friends on Zooms and face times but not in physical presence and not sharing the same air, which, in this year, could’ve been disastrous.
I saw no basketball live this year but watched more WNBA games this season than I ever have, thanks to the #wubble and nearly every game of every team airing on television or streaming.
I miss our seats in STAPLES, though, and the crazies we are privileged to scream and cheer with nearly 20 times a summer. I hope we can get back to that in some way in 2021.
Did anyone close to you have a child?
Not that I’m aware, but I got this wrong last year. My cousin Tiffani had a new cutie pie in 2019.
Did anyone close to you get married?
There were a few postponements that I can think of but no virtual ceremonies that I remember.
Did anyone close to you die?
It feels weird to say in such a year of loss but no unless we count the collective mourning of Kobe and Gianna Bryant’s deaths by this city and the world.
There was death, to be sure. News of family members of current and former colleagues succumbing to COVID became far too familiar. And family acquaintances or distant relatives also passed. Still, the constant worry was a dreadful call or text about someone contracting the virus, entering the hospital, and never coming back out alive.
I did not have that experience this year, and I am grateful.
What countries did you visit?
This year, it may be more appropriate to ask which counties? I only left Los Angeles County twice this year. Once in January (Broward County) and once in very early March (New York).
What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
Handshakes, hi-fives, and hugs.
Going inside someone’s residence other than my own.
Shared experiences that allow me to be anonymously or collectively loud.
Lingering in a space. Meandering from place to place.
What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
“Rudy Gobert’s status for the game—it was bizarre; he was listed as questionable just 30 minutes before tip-off. Then I saw the Thunder’s head doctor, Donnie Strack, come running off the bench, literally seconds before tip-off—the ref’s already got the ball in his hands. Players are lining up in a circle, getting ready for tip-off. I see Donnie Strack running out, and I knew right then and there: Something’s going down.”
What was your most significant achievement of the year?
I’m alive. I didn’t make anyone sick or kill anyone by being cavalier in my response to the pandemic. Every day, I tried to think about how hard it is for all I encountered and chose to give whatever I could when asked: time, patience, forgiveness, cover, space, cash, quiet, candor.
I may have been my most humane in 2020.
What was your biggest failure?
Excuse my french but fuck a failure in this most abnormal 12 months. Surviving and not harming anyone else was the only requirement in what NPR Music has called The Fugue Year.
Oddly, this is probably the healthiest I’ve been in many years. I switched doctors, and she got my hypertension under control, put me on some vitamin D, and has me thinking much more deliberately about my choices.
I’m sleeping better.
I did have some soreness in my right knee for a bit that was more than a little bit annoying, but some self-care and wearing an over-the-counter brace for a few days solved that, and it hasn’t returned despite an increase in cardio/aerobic exercises over the last few weeks.
What was the best thing you bought?
I’m in love with the bookcases that got recently delivered and that I framed and hung lots of wall art. I get a little spark of delight every time I see them.
I’ve also become a robe person in the last month or so, snuggling into a flannel one every morning.
But, it’s working appliances that are the best thing I bought, specifically, the dishwasher. Sure, we also replaced our laundry center with the non-drying dryer, but it was the dishwasher that had been the bane of my existence since the dawn of the pandemic.
Our old washer had utterly stopped working a week or two before stay-at-home orders began, and after a few months of constant dishwashing, I had tried in vain to get it fixed under warranty at least three times. Each time, they would replace the same part, and each time it would stop working again after a few days.
So, we bought a very nice replacement. When it arrived, the delivery guy couldn’t install the machine. Our electrical socket in the dishwasher cabinet had to move. A couple of hundred bucks to an electrician, and a few weeks later, it was finally in its place and ready for use.
It’s quiet. It’s attractive. It has a silverware rack.
And, as the daily slog of constant dishwashing was threatening to break me, that it merely works is heaven.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Every person who has left their home daily at risk of a deadly disease because what they do might keep all of us, collectively, alive deserve all the flowers.
Where did most of your money go?
Into this home in a variety of ways. Into political campaigns and charitable donations. Into digital goods and services.
I put my money into continuing paying people whose services I enjoyed in person before the pandemic to work remotely if possible or stay home if not.
And into savings and investing for the future, whatever may come.
What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Biden-Harris victory. That morning of extended joy will be the second day of the year I will most remember.
Perhaps, I am most known for how emotionally balanced I am, but there have been more days of melancholy this year. I remain hopeful and optimistic for a better tomorrow, but happiness has been harder to come by.
I spent more time feeling sad or anxious or frustrated or, worse, nothing. Much of July through maybe mid-October is a blurry haze for me in which I felt the least like me. I’m not sure what broke me from that, but I’ve been better since then.
But there are still more days like today when I woke with my spirit feeling small, quiet, and low on joy.
I suspect I’ll find a smirk or smile or maybe even a full-on song in my heart by day’s end though that’s not guaranteed.
This is new.
ii. Thinner or fatter?
Three months into safer-at-home, I had lost ten pounds.
I’ve gained them all back.
iii. Richer or poorer?
We had a great year financially. I feel sheepish writing that for the world to see but, it’s true. I didn’t lose work. I got a bonus. The stock market—despite volatility—has been lucrative. We were able to make some smart money moves.
I’m grateful that at a time of such a struggle for so many, we are not. The question I’m continuing to ask myself as we head into 2021 is how to be sure I’m not taking my good fortune for granted and “sharing the garden,” as Noname puts it in the Lockdown remix.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Gone outside and explored the natural world.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Doomscrolled.
How did you spend the holidays?
We ordered in for Thanksgiving from Bar Ama, which was delicious. I made banana pudding and biscuits for my family and traded them for a pie and mac & cheese. The fifteen minutes I spent with them during that exchange was not enough but sustained me on my favorite holiday.
Christmas was low-key but fine. A gift exchange with Tiffany, a family Zoom, and all the NBA I could muster made up the day.
We are doing NYE at home, which is no different than any other recent year. I may even be looking forward to dressing up, getting drunk, and dancing in the living room as we say goodbye to The Plague Year.
What was your favorite TV program?
There was nothing I looked forward to more this year than watching The Mandalorian season 2 and Star Trek Discovery season 3 over the last few months. Both sci-fi series have been fantastic in all the word’s meanings and filled my mind with dreams of brighter, more interesting, more inspiring times.
A Democratic victory in the presidential election and Nithya Raman on LA City Council
What did you want and not get?
I wanted Americans to come together in more significant numbers and show their better angels and sense of community to get us through coronavirus with far less unnecessary death.
I didn’t watch many films this year, but I dug The Old Guard and Soul and didn’t hate Wonder Woman 1984 despite the social media critiques.
What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 45 a week after the pandemic became official, and I’m pretty sure I spent it entirely on the couch playing mobile games and coloring with the Apple Pencil Tiffany got me as a gift.
What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
How would you describe your fashion concept in 2020?
Looking great from the waistline up. Thanks, Stitch Fix.
What kept you sane?
The morning is quiet and dark. I remember to meditate. As the sun comes up, I catch the birds and squirrels starting their day in the thicket of trees that make up their neighborhood. I listen to a mix of music and podcasts as I empty the dishwasher and start the coffee. I make myself a proper breakfast and eat it at the table.
It’s the end of the workday, and I treat it as such. I close work tabs and get up from the desk. I go for a long walk. I see the eyes of strangers. I listen to the sounds of the city. I break a sweat.
I don’t bring my gadgets to bed.
Every day I accomplished at least one of these routines, I was a little saner the next.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Everyone but perhaps most frequently, I longed for the strangers on the bus. I wanted to be shoulder-to-shoulder with people on their way to and from work or school. I wanted to be just another slightly familiar but nameless face with my fellow LA neighbors and be in the mix.
Oh, what I would give to feel like just another soul in the Southland, again.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.
I’ve been off from work since Tuesday, and I’ve got two more weeks before I return to slacks and emails and zooms and the pandemic remote work struggle of balancing work and personal time.
“As far back as 1886, decades before it would finally be guaranteed, workers in the United States pushed for an eight-hour workday: ‘eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of what we will.’”
“Ah, let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device.”
Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing opens with a Twitter quote that encapsulates how I often feel when I’ve spent too much time scrolling. Despite efforts to better manage the experience, the algorithms are better than I have been, and I will find myself in the doom loop refreshing and refreshing to find some new nugget that will spark a reaction in me. Joy is rarely the return on investment of that time.
Yesterday, though, I made some different choices with my time. Instead of endlessly swiping through tweets, I read up on the squirrels that roam the trees outside my home office window. That led me down a path to understanding more about the San Fernando Valley ecosystem. Later in the afternoon, when I opened The Wild newsletter from the LA Times, I read it more deeply, identifying things that might help me feel more grounded. Odell writes about having a stronger connection to the physical world around you is more real. It is an actual reality.
Our social media spaces generally lack the contexts necessary to feel real. They present distractions and solicit reactions but rarely in a meaningful way. Odell is quick to point out that she’s not suggesting quitting them all and never returning. “We have to be able to do both,” she says, “to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed.”
Which raised for me this question: what do I go to each of these spaces to do? On Twitter, I most want to interact with my friends and acquaintances. Occasionally, I want to be entertained by digital culture (though maybe I’m getting that dopamine from TikTok more these days) or be in the mix of basketball chatter or Los Angeles happenings or catch up quickly on breaking news.
However, I rarely am looking to do all those things at the same time, and that is the social media platform trick. I come to see what my friends are sharing, and now I’m lost in covid news or trying to understand a meme or reading a trending topic. There’s no context. It’s a noise storm that I willingly walk into and remain for far too long.
I have different specific intentions for other platforms yet haven’t treated them with care or discipline either. I’d love an algorithmic reset button for Facebook and Instagram, but I will settle for revisiting my follows and actively thinking about my purpose when I enter them.
And to get engrossed in more soul-satisfying pursuits, including the act and art of doing nothing.
There is so much more to Odell’s book than merely a discussion of dealing with social media. It’s part philosophy, part history, part naturalist, part adventure. It is not, however, a how-to book.
“I been in my bag addin’ weight. Tryna throw a bag in the safe”
— Anderson .Paak
What did you do in 2019 that you’d never done before?
We bought a house.
There was also the two week period across April and May when I traveled from LA to Miami (first time in the city) to LA to NYC to LA to Mexico City (also, a first) to LA and back to Florida with no more than a day’s rest every time I was back in LA.
That was nuts.
I’m sure there were other firsts, but those stand out.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I remarked to Tiffany yesterday that I appreciated my body lately. My hips are loosening thanks to some focus on my stretching and yoga in that area. And while the number on the scale isn’t where I would like, I like the angles of my physique these days. I have been having some of the longest and best workouts of my life in the last few weeks and broke my elliptical record today.
So, yeah, I did that.
I don’t know that I’ll make resolutions this year. I saw something somewhere—Instagram, probably—that suggested that instead of setting goals, write down what you’re excited about in the new year. I kind of like that idea.
Yes. We attended the wedding of a close family friend in October and delighted in the marriage of one of our favorite Sparks players.
Did anyone close to you die?
There were some unexpected deaths in acquaintance circles, but I don’t think the reaper came to the doors of anyone close to me.
What countries did you visit?
Mexico was the only country outside of the USA I made it to this year.
What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019?
Time. There was a lot of change and transition in 2019. These changes required me to be outside of my routines and comfort zones for much of the last three months. That led to me not making the best use of my free time when I had it and not utilizing my time most optimally when I was on someone else’s clock.
I’m entering the year with a plan to tackle this problem.
What date from 2019 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
What was your most significant achievement of the year?
I got promoted again this year.
I also got invited to interview for a job with a much fancier title than the one I have right now at a desirable place, which was very flattering but ultimately not for me at this time. My work and what I bring to the table being recognized and compensated appropriately felt big this year. As Clarence Avant says over and over again in The Black Godfather, “Life is about one thing, numbers.”
And, you know, I am currently a numbers guy.
What was your biggest failure?
Every time I walked past my unhoused neighbors and felt helpless instead of offering help or a neighborly word.
Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was incredibly healthy this year (knock on wood).
What was the best thing you bought?
The condo.
Every time I walk the three blocks to Ventura boulevard or the two blocks to the grocery store or trek on foot to the library or stop at Trader Joe’s or the mall on the way home or use our kitchen or admire our views are reminders that this was the right choice.
My mom asked if we were getting excited about paying the mortgage every month and watching the number come down. Excited isn’t the right word. Maybe the right word is gratifying.
To know that paying it isn’t a struggle is nice.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Round two for last year’s all-star. Melle continues to do the damn thing. Now under her non-profit shingle.
Where did most of your money go?
Did you know buying property is expensive?
What did you get really, really, really excited about?
WNBA All-Star in Vegas was everything and more, and I was hyped the whole time.
Unequivocally happier. It’s been a grand year in my corner of the world.
ii. Thinner or fatter?
I weigh almost the same as the beginning of the year but feel great.
iii. Richer or poorer?
We still make that paper, and now we own property.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
More time for family and friends. More dates with the lady. More hosting people in our new home.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Idling on the iPad. Tik Tok is addictive as hell.
How did you spend Christmas?
Here in LA. My parents and sister came to the house, and we made brunch together. We had a small but meaningful gift exchange. And the Clippers beat the Lakers.
Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister
The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Avant-Guards, Vol. 1 by Carly Usdin
What was your most significant musical discovery of 2019?
I hadn’t paid much attention to Nipsey Hussle’s music before he was killed in the spring. He was so beloved in Los Angeles, though, that I had to stop and figure out why. It was a revelation.
I get it now.
What did you want and get?
Impeachment even though ain’t nothin’ goan happen.
What did you want and not get?
A resignation. All things considered, though, it’s been such a good year personally and professionally, ain’t no complaints.
What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Nearly the same note as last year: The Sparks did go deep into the WNBA Playoffs this year but flamed out in one of the most head-scratching exits in league history.
I worry the championship window is closing for this team in this configuration, but I’m hoping there’s one more run in 2020.
What political issue stirred you the most?
My interests this year were more local than the national garbage fire that is this current administration. LA figuring out real solutions to our homelessness and general housing issues is top of mind every time I enter our community.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
R. Kelly.
How would you describe your fashion concept in 2019?
I cleaned up nicely this year with more blazers, fancy button-downs, and quality shoes.
What kept you sane?
Reading or listening to the news on my schedule. Keeping my nose in a book. Hitting the gym nearly every day.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Regina King had herself a year, didn’t she? Kenan Thompson’s work on SNL has been next level.
Who did you miss?
Shana. While I’m happy with my current work situation, not getting to talk pop culture and process with her every day was and is a bummer.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2019.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“Bossed up, flossed up, fly like a saucer, live in the moment.”
