UPDATE: the upcoming one-day solo show indicated below has been rescheduled for October 13th. Details anon!

This post is in response to all the wonderful people I haven't been able to keep up with this past year. I really do adore you. Here's what my world consists of these days, and why your mother was right when she told you to never, ever marry an artist:

Yes, I know time is a construct. It's something we can all agree on... until we can't. Death proves the existence of time, and we eventually learn that it doesn't matter if time is a construct or not. It is incontrovertibly how we process existence, and it is thus, for us, as real as the things that really are real. 

My homeless friends living on the street face a dilemma I simply cannot relate to. Theirs is the problem of having too much time. For my adult life, my issue has been the opposite. It's beyond being unable to remember the last time I was bored; I have trouble recalling when I last relaxed. I don't know when I last came home, pulled a book off the shelf, and stared out the window with a bliss untarnished by the rumblings of impending obligation.

I dreamt of graduating from school because I couldn't wait to have control over my own schedule. I waited twenty-odd years for the moment to come, and now, nearly a decade after walking out the University's art school doors for the last time, that control– that freedom– remains elusive, or at least feels like it does. Of course, all of us has all the time in the world (we just choose how we fill it up, as the saying goes); I've been careful to protect mine, but I've loaded it such that there's no room to breathe. I always feel like I'm getting close to breaking free, but I never get there. It feels like a prison, all the harder to escape because it is a claustrophobia not of space but of time. No matter which direction I reach, I can't find what I'm looking for, and it's my own passions that are in the way. Do you know what I mean?

You might say I have two full-time jobs. The first eight hours of the day I spend on art.

9 A.M. to 5 P.M.:

Every day I attempt to progress at least incrementally on all of the following:

• Film editing. Reviewing takes. Pulling selects. Experimenting with scene constructions. Revising. Consulting with colleagues. Backing up hard drives. Studying concepts from older films. Film theory. Getting pasty (and pastier). 

 

• Photography. Scanning negatives. Archiving. Getting rolls processed and developed. Preparing for shows (two are underway; one, a permanent installation of pieces I'll never see in the residential floors of the Good Arts Building; the other, a solo show for Georgetown's October 13th Art Attack, a major undertaking with a twist– details await). Shooting, choosing, and making prints; deciding upon presentation and procuring materials for framing (usually a trip to three places: the lumber store, the hardware store, and the acrylic store) and executing on those decisions. 

 

• This blog: reviewing notes and drafts. Writing and thinking, writing and reflecting, considering, stepping away... rinse and repeat. Staring at the screen for forty-five minutes, working on the last paragraph, searching for how best to translate my thoughts to words, what it is I really wish to say. Working on drafts for future posts. Alternating longer stories with shorter ones, contrasting themes and tone. Using Facebook Developer to scrape and post the stories; coordinating with The Urbanist, the wonderful policy and urban planning site where my stories are also posted. Mark Twain said that all art is trying to be music; I'm trying to do that with the least musical medium of them all, the finite ones and zeros of written language.

 

• Korean. I'm on level 8 at City U now. This week it's the suffix that indicates the act of experiencing something (-은 적이 있어요; generally expressed with a verb), and another suffix (-어 본 적이 있어요) indicating the act of attempting to experience something. The latter is usually used to indicate positive or neutral experiences (have you tried going to Korea; have you attempted the act of eating Indian food), whereas the former, lacking the implication of willful attempt, can be used to describe negative experiences as well (I experienced the act of getting my TV stolen, rather than, I've tried out the experience of getting my TV stolen). We also learned 33 new words and phrases this week (I have a stomachache; the cost of living in Iowa is cheap) in addition, and completed a homework and did a reading assignment.

 

• There's also a major surprise that myself and several co-conspirators are working on that I can't wait to share with you, and which is far too big to mention as an aside in this humble post; look for an announcement shortly! It involves an enormous amount of focus in reviewing, reorganizing, presentation and more. I think you're going to love it, honestly. But– as it should be– it's a lot of work. I like to get things right. (When this is done, there'll be time for more blog posts. When the film is done, even more. If the Korean class cycle concludes, even more! Apologies for intermittent posting of late. Know that I'm always working on something for you!)

Don't get me wrong. I love all of it. I surround myself with the best artists I know, and then struggle to keep up. I'm aware there are worse life problems, believe me; I see them up close nightly. I'm thankful for these incredible opportunities. But that doesn't stop them from being exhausting. I love each so much that I can't cut anything out. The problem isn't that I hate what I'm doing; it's that I love everything I'm doing. 

Somehow, amongst all this, are the chores we all do, like

• Cooking.
• Scrubbing kitchen counters (I have a tendency to start doing this in the middle of the night, before bed, for reasons beyond me).
• Going for groceries– an activity I find oddly therapeutic, because it reminds me of childhood.
• Washing my car– another activity I find oddly therapeutic, especially when done late at night.
• Doing dishes while listening to music– another activity I find oddly therapeutic... actually, all menial tasks done alone that don't involve immersive, intensive creative consideration while under deadline... I find oddly (and okay, delightfully) therapeutic. Such as:
• Brushing my teeth, often for longer than normal.
• Compulsively sweeping the kitchen floor.
• Rearranging the– but wait! There's a show to hang! A graphic designer to call! An audio engineer to get back to!

Then I go to Metro-Land.

5 P.M. to 1 A.M.:

You can understand why I find driving buses relaxing. For eight hours, I only have to think about bus stuff. How fabulous. Who needs a therapist, when you can just putt-putt along to the rhythms of the road, practicing patience and listening to other people? The perspective, distraction, reorientation... all invaluable. It forces me to pay attention to my physical health, reminds me how much more there is than my little quibbles, and allows me to touch the glorious and irreplaceable feeling of reaching other people– reaching them without an agenda, and among all walks of life. 

Art made by an artist who does not also live life is not interesting. Driving the bus forces me out of artmaking and back to where it all matters.

Then I rush home and sleep, because I guess we're supposed to, before waking up to do it all over again.

1 A.M. to... 1:05 A.M.??

I haven't mentioned any space in the day where I might engage in some of my favorite activities: reading and watching films. When there's a break between Korean classes, reading becomes possible. Most recently was Tom Hardy's 1874 Far From the Madding Crowd. It's quite good. Example excerpt:

Then there's the matter of finding time to watch films. It's important. Not enough young filmmakers know the canon, and when the oldest movie you've seen is Pulp Fiction, it shows in your work. Plus, I love the medium. So potent, watching someone else's dream....

Most recently rewatched at home: Michael Mann's Heat (1995), a somber epic of interiority and self-awareness, and a favorite. Playtime (1974), Jacques Tati's near-silent comedy of modern motion; Antonioni's La Notte (1961), in which I particularly noted the hard lighting and intriguing staging of figures in space; and Bergman's Persona (1966), wherein I reflected on the effect of being shown the final monologue twice from two different angles.

Most recently at the cinema: Eighth Grade, as bruising, intimate, personal and anxious as the grade itself. Magnificent. Blindspotting– not as engaging, tonally consistent or artistically daring as the other American independent film by a first-time director about black life in Oakland currently in theatres(!), Sorry to Bother You, but still worthwhile with its two hugely likable leads, several great dialogue exchanges and a strong third act. I have a soft spot for films about friendships; they're less common than you think.

Other Actual Humans

Speaking of friends. I generally don't get time to read or watch films. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is barely 300 pages, and I've been "reading" it for over two months. What about the humans I love even more than my beloved passengers? When there's a show to hang, another show to prep, a secret project to perfect, Korean to practice, a film to complete? 

As a child I had a habit of starting projects– an illustrated bird book, a painting series– and abandoning them. I've since learned that artists who accomplish a lot of projects– the same ones you see giving speeches at parties and clowning at socials– spend most of their time sitting in rooms working their buns off. Now I finish my projects. But at what cost?

​Most of us love most what we cannot find; for me it is peace. Calm. I can almost touch it, it is so close. But it is not here. I really do love my friends, my family. I want to say yes to your every invite: to lunch, to films, to picnics, dinners, parties, plays, performances, hikes, walks, dates. An afternoon with friends; the beach at night. Of course I want to do those things, and with you.

But there is an urgency that drives me. Various philosophical schools postulate that the motivating factor for all human action is loneliness; love; death. For me it is time. The urgent and pressing lack of it. 

Milan Kundera wrote, in his book Immortality, that humans desire to assert their existence on earth in a way that will outlast them. The primal and psychological urge to defy time. Many people do that by having children. I do it by making art. It is not a desire for me. It is a need. I turned twenty-five and something clicked inside me; I turned thirty, and it clicked again. It was only a whisper, but I hear it every day:

There is not a lot of time.

My active life is half over. I've got work to do. I believe human connection is the most important treasure, and it may not seem like I value my friendships as much as I say; but I'm working on figuring it all out, learning how to balance what I feel urgency toward, and what is truly important. I'm thankful for every second of it. I will get there one day. The cacophonic fallacy of accomplishment will have died down, and you and I will be leaning back in our chairs– in a cafe, at home, at the base, under a tree, under an umbrella– and in the delicate silence between words we'll pause, and smile, gently. We will know its name without having to say it.

Peace.

​We knew each other once, intimately. The trim figure, the vivacious brown eyes and half-smile that just about screams vitality, even when silent. Many people merely repeat the headlines they've read; she was different. She could give a reason for every word she blurted, no matter how unconsidered they appeared. She had complete ownership of her thoughts.

I'll refrain from describing her appearance further except to say the boys always had a word and a glance for her, and she knew exactly what to say to every last one. Street smart and book smart, spirit strong with a lot left over. 

Here she is tonight, wrapping up her swing shift, a figure in the dark ready to go home. I tilt my head in a smile. Am I glad to see her? Of course. We've drifted apart in the intervening years, sure, but it's been amiable. That takes two, and I'm thankful for her graciousness. You take care of the people who were dear to you, never mind that they're no longer part of your life; they were once, and they're still kind, and that is enough. You give them a safe space, put in a good word; you let them down gently, because they are softer than before you came. 

"Why is it every time I have a shitty day I'm visited by an angel?" she asks rhetorically, opening a smile for me. She's explaining her groan of a response to my pleasantries. Tough day for her. I extend my arms out for a hug, reminded of a night two Novembers ago:

The 2016 presidential election had just been lost, and Seattle was devastated. People were hugging each other in the streets, sobbing in the arms of strangers, clusters of disbelief. We were hanging on to what we thought we knew about the innateness of human decency, despite the wake-up call on every news channel: there are people out there who just don't care. 

Not even the most cynical depressive could have believably said in 2015 that we would have child concentration camps proposed in our American future. That citizens in the 21st century would fail to see an inconsistency between "pursuit of happiness," "liberty and justice for all," "all men are created equal..." and forcibly separating families who believe in those ideals, endorsing assault toward other Americans, implementing laws designed to disadvantage women and people of color, misinformation disseminated with impunity, and redistributing wealth with an eye toward reducing the living standards of the middle and working class. 

The Trump win was most potently a win for apathy. With the possible exception of certain morally unjustifiable wars in the early and mid-2000s, it unequivocally represents the crowning low point in postmodern American consciousness, and reinforces the country's defining trait in a landscape where individuals feel ever more powerless to effect widespread change: complacency.

By now we know that the Trump win was a minority opinion, a result of 77,000 voters in three swing states. That paltry figure was enough to decide a nationwide election due to an obviously flawed electoral system, and the fact that system hasn't been overhauled since is as compelling an example as any as to why complacency rules; complacency* is the opposite of hope, and it's what you do to survive in a system you believe you cannot change.

But 77,000 isn't a majority. Nor is nineteen percent– the amount of the country's total population who voted for Trump (26% of the voter-eligible population). It isn't just that he lost the popular vote by a healthy 2.9 million, as we now know; that's borderline misleading in its suggestion of a close race. It was never a close race.

My concern here is not who won, but whether or not Trump's prejudices represent the American consciousness, and 9.7 million against 231 million does not a majority make. The Trump win only felt like a win for apathy. It was a win for gerrymandering, swing states, and the electoral college. Remember this, when the night is dark:

There is no actual American majority represented by Mr. Trump's views.

We didn't know it at the time, though, and we felt worse than we needed to. On November 8, 2016 the lady above and I barely knew each other. I saw her walking home alone, crossing the street in front of me. Like many of us inside the bus and out that night, she was crying. Ours was the mood of the city, the country, the collective who'd become accustomed to tolerance, stunned that greed and selfishness could have such traction as virtues.

I write above that our society is structured to minimize the ability for an individual to effect widespread change. That's not to say it isn't possible, but even more importantly: isn't the most potent impact we can have on others always and only ever the personal, the one on one? 

I tapped the horn lightly, opening the doors where she was. We looked at each other. I'd never hugged her before.

I said, "do you need a hug?"

Red lights were made for this. 

We embraced tightly, searching for words of comfort. Loss, failure, triumph; these are the things that make us one. "I'm so glad I ran into you tonight," she said, a wan smile beneath her mascara-streaked cheeks. 

Tonight, lifetimes later, she has hardships once again, but of a more personal nature; family troubles. She's waiting for an important phone call, and fills me in during the interim. I've seen her only in passing for ages now. Somehow we've managed to bypass the awkward stage, the post-mortem of hurt and clawing insecurities. 

There is just the easy comfort of a person who once cared and still does, in a healthier way. Let them down gently. Lord knows how many times I've failed to do so, but I learn from those with more patience, or less, than I. 

Eventually her important phone call came, and she withdrew for the remainder of the ride, relaxed, safe in my space, the Nathan 49 Living Room.

She rose to exit, still on her phone. Into it she said, 

"Hang on. Lemme say bye to the bus driver. He's a good friend of mine."

I sighed with gratitude and hugged her tightly, again. She'll never know how much those lines meant to me. Kindness after a relationship has already concluded has no agenda. It is simply kindness, genuine, given for its own sake, because it is consistent with who we are. Is there a bigger relief then being so accepted, after everything is over, by someone who knows your every weak point? 

Love. We do what we can to help each other, and to get by. The answer to despair is never reason.

---

Note: That's someone else in the photo. It's less an individual I wish to celebrate here than a sensibility.

Sources and further reading–

For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them? (The New York Times)
What Affects Voter Turnout Rates (FairVote.org)
Voter Turnout Infographic Shows Women, Older People Most Likely To Come Out On Election Day (The Huffington Post)
Characteristics of the typical American voter (Angelo)

26 Percent of Eligible Voters Voted for Trump (The Mises Institute)
Who Were Donald Trump's Voters? Now We Know (Forbes)
Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters (Vox)

Poll: More than half of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (NBC)
Donald Trump will be president thanks to 80,000 people in three states (The Washington Post)
The Election Came Down to 77,744 Votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (Updated) (The Weekly Standard)

Trump's Lies: The Definitive List (The New York Times)
100 Ways the Trump Administration Is Harming Women and Families (AmericanProgress.org)
Trump migrant separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas (BBC)
Trump’s tax-cut scam will only deepen racism and inequality (The Washington Post)
The Muslim ban ruling legitimates Trump's bigotry (The Guardian)
The Day the Music Died (ruminations of my own on driving on election night)


*Congressmen with consciences- we humble plebians can't do much, but you know you can. You don't get in the history books by passing legislation or making a lot of money; people haven't been eulogized for their wealth since the days of Carnegie and Vanderbilt. No one cares. You get eulogized for kicking out unprecedented presidents using unprecedented means.

The guy has his qualities, I'm sure, but being president isn't one of them and we all know it. There's no reason for him to still be in office. Look to Section IV of the 25th Amendment for some pretty solid boilerplate language designed for just such circumstances. How convenient. Then guilt-trip your colleagues with a choice quote or two. Here's one from Ella Wheeler Cox for starters: "To sin by silence when we should protest doth make cowards out of men."

There's a lot of time to think when you're driving a bus. There shouldn't be, what with the incredible amount of mental multitasking involved; but you get into a rhythm, and no matter what task you're working on, there is room to daydream. I heard his voice and my mind took off, and by the time I landed I felt altogether better, able to see things from a healthier slant. The places you can go sitting in stopped traffic. It began with a few words from one of our grizzled street brethren, seated behind me on an evening 7:

"I don't steal. That's why I panhandle. I prefer to ask people than steal from them. They know I could steal. But I'm not going to. It's like you ask the driver if you can ride the bus. They're required to say yes. It's not up to them to eject you, that's the job of transit police. But you still ask anyway."

It was another day of vibrant, immediate life, lived moment to moment to moment. He'd been impressed with my attitude upon boarding, and mirrored it with his own, burgeoning forth. His voice was enthusiastic; compelled to share the above to the neighbor seated beside him, for reasons of bubbling well-being neither he, you, nor I could articulate. 

This is the good work we do everyday, by being ourselves. Bringing out our better angels, together. We tend to define self-worth by accomplishments we can measure; awards won, income gained, status markers achieved. We forget the larger thing. Character. Who you were in the dark, when no one else knew. How we treated others. 

That person is the center of their own life, and you were kind to them. That is the lasting and final act of being human. It isn't what we did, or made, but how we were. All else is secondary.


---
This is a companion piece to this story, another brief moment of principled street gesture.

P.S.– In response to the Comcast piece below– I've found a new home at CenturyLink! No contract, a locked-in lifetime price without random increases, a cheaper rate for faster internet, a friendly and knowledgeable face installing the goods... comparing favorably to Comcast isn't exactly difficult, but it sure is hugely appreciated!

We become accustomed to the state of things as they were when we were young. At that time we're not so aware of the world’s constant state of flux. It transforms more easily than we do; upon aging we notice the world we knew as youngsters drifting away, bastions of childhood one by one fading, a bewildering relegation of everyday realities to treasured memory.

I remember sodium vapor lamps. I recall textures of normalcy I no longer know the names for, may never have known the names for: the printers that printed with that scratchy-back-and-forth sound, onto those green and white sheets of paper that had the sprockets on the sides. The plastic preschool chairs with the three holes in the back. Color schemes left over from the seventies, ochre and yellow and orange and brown. Overhead projectors with the roller sheets of plastic for writing on. Floppy disks. Wood panelling. The need to remember where pay phones were, and to carry quarters for which to use them. Film.

Those are the generationally specific ones. There are also the universals: your elementary school, now demolished and rebuilt; the trees under which you played, now withered stumps. An Astroturf soccer field that was once dirt, unkempt and sandy, just the way you liked it. The inconveniences which are no longer necessary but which you take pride in, because they once gave you character.

Logically, you can see it isn't just your generation who faces this issue. But because this is, for each of us, our very first time living life, it feels unique. Why are the bright stars of our landscape dying?

This is where a certain breed of despair takes root. Pile on our contemporary politics and environmental concerns, and you've got a recipe for teetering psychological disaster. It is a terrifying void, that existential pit. The exhaustion of having to continue adapting and acclimating on so many levels, the way we did so naturally as children, doesn't make things easier. We fall short of our earlier selves.

What to do?

Paul Schrader's new film, First Reformed (watch the trailer), is about a pastor (Ethan Hawke) wrestling with this dilemma on an intimate and profound scale. The spiritually vacant megachurch near his tiny parish certainly comes up short on answers. I had to see the film twice before realizing the first action we see the megachurch pastor perform is a corrupt one, so casually is it executed. Schrader's portrait of megachurches in all their sterile, corporate glory is quietly damning, but it's a sidebar. Taking aim at the religion-as-team-sport ethos is almost too easy as the main subject of a film this probing. Schrader, who wrote as well as directed, has larger concerns on his mind, and his protagonist's existential crisis is beyond the purview of what faith systems are able to answer. The pastor's conundrums are those we've all had, a confusion based on the original human question: Why?

There are many elements I love about this rigorous, unsparing and rather perfect exploration of the bleakness of blackest despair and what to do about it. One is its implication that we often already know the answers, but have to come around to them before we know them fully. As Tolstoy wrote, much philosophy is thoughts you and I have already had, just expressed in better language.

Another is the ruminative directness of its language. It's no surprise Schrader loves Dreyer and Bresson (at only 24 he wrote a seminal book on them and Ozu). First Reformed is a companion piece to his 1976 screenplay Taxi Driver in more ways than I dare reveal here; suffice to say both are about lonely men writing in diaries about worlds which they no longer understand. Conversations– notably a ten-plus minute barn-burner of conflicting ideas exchanged between our pastor and a young depressed environmentalist early on in the picture– run longer, deeper, more probing than movie conversations normally do, with not just one point to make but several.

Formally speaking, there are a few aesthetic components Schrader here employs which make the film a different experience from anything else released this year (film critics almost never have filmmaking training: you'll find better writing about First Reformed's themes elsewhere, but you've come to the right place for a discourse on its aesthetics!). 

One is planimetric staging. I know. You've never heard of it, but you've seen it. Wes Anderson is its most famous progenitor: the action is staged parallel to the picture plane (lens), often in front of another parallel element, like a wall. From Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (left) and The Darjeeling Limited ​(right):

Basically a square, it stands out from the rectangular compositions we've become used to in cinema. Faces and bodies fit into it differently, and different things get emphasized. It's a touch claustrophobic. Its narrowness means usually only one visual item of interest can occupy the screen at any given time. Andrea Arnold, who also uses the ratio, calls the academy ratio more “intimate”: 

From her ​Wuthering Heights (top row, lower left) and Fish Tank ​(lower right):

First Reformed also has a lateral tracking shot that shifts to the right– I won't spoil which one it is– but this time the lonely person in the frame moves with it, and the "hallway" isn't empty, but involves an important character beckoning him, the one who will have the answers. In this way it's more hopeful than Scorsese and Schrader's 1976 vision.
​
These and other stylistic elements combine to articulate a very interior, subjective environment of our protagonist's psyche. There is something profound to me in watching what Schrader calls the "man in a room movie;" the eternal question of a (wo)man alone in a room, with nothing but their own thoughts.Small wonder the guy likes Bresson and Dreyer; we can find antecedents in Bergman (Winter Light comes to mind), and Schrader's own Light Sleeper and others.

Kendrick. Was that him? Even twenty miles an hour can seem too fast, what with all the glass and foliage in between, not to mention our opposing movement pathways and his distance from my bus. I was gliding north on Rainier, nearing the Ethiopian Community Center, when a shadow beneath the trees caught my eye. I know that gait. A figure glancing past on an evening sidewalk, long shadows now, just getting to where I could make out his profile. Yes, it was him. 

I honked softly, a tap two times. He turned– my hand in the air, a salute– and it landed. Our eyes locked at the last possible moment.

The next day he was waiting at Holden Street.

"Mister Kendrick,” I declared, like an MC announcing his guest. “How's life, man?"
"'Sup, how're you. You still modelin', bro?"
It took me a moment to put together that he was referring to the ad campaign* I’m featured in. “Ha! Somethin' like that! Somebody takin' pictures of me out there, I don't know who…"
"Just like that, kickin' it! Gettin' it said! Guess what though. You deserve it."
"Man, I appreciate you sayin' that. I hope that's true."
"I know it's true! I want everybody to prosper, bro. Prosperity is for everyone. That mean sooner or later I got the prosperity."
"Exactly, it's an additive thing, for all folks. Everyone deserves it."
"Everyone deserves it, just like that, man. E'ryone should get a turn. Iss good to see you. You blew at me the other night, bro."
"Yeah! I was like, 'that's my guy!'"
“You know what," he said. The sharing voice. "Some things touch your heart. Tha' touched my spirit, man.”
“Thank you so much. We gotta look out for each other,”
“I know man, tha's what we got, bro! That's all we got, man. We have to coexist–”
“Exactly. We have to figure out a way to make this whole thing work." Hafta. Our words, molding themselves into the regional vernacular, of their own accord. There’s a linguistic fascination in ‘hood cadence being comparatively consistent throughout most metropolitan U.S. areas;** I picked it up from my days in L.A. The sort of thing that sounds truly awful if you try to fake it, but which rolls right off the tongue if you’ve lived a certain somewhere. I feel like I have to hold myself back sometimes. They don't know where I'm from.

“Jus’ like that," he said again. I'm sensing a catchphrase here. "I can’t wait to, I wantchoo to meet mah little girls, man.”
“Oh yeah, bring 'em on!”
“Ah got three daughters, and they as cute as a bug. Paradise, Yum Yum, and Kennedy.”
“What's the middle one's name?”
“Yum Yum.”
“Yum Yum.”
“Tha's her nickname,”
“I love those names! Paradise, Yum Yum, and Kennedy.”
“Jasmine is her birth name, but as soon as tha doctor put her in my arms, we jus' instantly bonded, I said that's my Yum Yum.”
“That's beautiful.”
“She as cute as a bug, maaaaann… you know what? It's good to see a... it's good to see a good… man.”

He chose the final word with care, and said it with emphasis. “You a good man, bruh.” I had an idea of what he meant. It isn’t the first time discussions of masculinity have come up in the ol’ neighborhood. The discussion in more monied circles these days is rightly focused on the need for equal treatment of women, and the urgency, at long last, to take women’s voices seriously. Kendrick and others are highlighting an element that won’t become part of the cultural conversation*** until later– the flip side of the coin. What does it mean to be a good man?

Is there such a thing? How should a man function in a society where men have long been expected to be in control (though most of them never will be), fix everything, to not take part in communities but rise above them, who are raised and encouraged to be out of touch with their emotions, and who generally feel emasculated by the impossible expectations they’re held to?****

Perhaps by admitting we don’t have all the answers; embracing the vulnerability of letting down our guard, sharing in the “uncool” emotions of joy and fear and wonder we only pretend we don’t feel; recognizing that equality is not a zero-sum game but is instead additive, as Kendrick alludes to above. Prosperity shared helps everyone. It’s okay to celebrate something sensitive, and call it out as beautiful; that’s what our friend K-Money, ruffled black denim and voluminous black print tee to match, bald head shaved over a chain necklace– that’s what he was impressed by. 

“Right back atcha,” I said, “especially like, talkin’ 'bout Father's Day and stuff,”
“Jus' like that man, thank you very much." He paused. "So whatchall… what route you was drivin’ before you came back to drivin' th' 7?”
“Yeah I was gone– doin' the 41, 65, lil' bit further north,”
“Okay, goin' through Lake City?”
“Exactly. And those are fine, but man, I had to come back here. It's just, I don't know how to explain it. I feel… this is where I belong, you know? Where it all makes sense. I feel right comin' out here.”
“I appreciate tha’. I'm tellin’ you man, you will always prosper, bro. ‘Cause two things that you are: you are so humble, and you are so thankful.”

Effusively thanking him, I added, "humble and thankful– you know, I remember you and me talking about that one night like those are the two things–”
“If you keep– those two things, I promise you. In time all things wi' be revealed. Ey, what time you leavin’?”
“Um, fifteen. Fourteen minutes.” 
“Koo.”
“Alright man. Always good, Kendrick.”
“Al-ways!”

After the alotted time had elapsed, he materialized yet again, this time bearing gifts from the neighboring Rite Aid.

“Donald Duck orange juice,” I exclaimed, as he handed me the bottle. “How'd you know I love this stuff?”
“‘Cause you a good man, bruh. No matter what, you always– the thing I know about you? Is you treat the neighborhood good, man.”
“Thanks, man. I love this place.”
“You know hatta serve. That's next to Godliness, man.” He gazed out the window now. “Servin’,” he repeated, mostly to himself.

I would see him two days later, once again a figure in my periphery as I drove past. Was it too soon to honk hello once more? No. He was off the sidewalk, stepping through a dishevelled front yard toward the main entrance of a walkup. The bus moving past, his concentration elsewhere, my tap-tap travelling towards him, the sound taking form in his mind, given meaning, a signal a salute, him turning, me turning away, his eyes getting closer, his hand pulling back from the doorknob up into the air, knowing before locking eyes who that probably was–

–and there, right there, a fraction of a fraction of a second. We did it. We stopped time. Made it special, a freeze frame lingering long on a warm summer night.

---

*I still haven't watched this video....

**For more on African American Vernacular English, as it's called in linguistics, refer to this paper, especially section 3 (structures in urban AAVE grammar). It has some interesting bits about how rap has incorrectly co-opted certain grammatical elements of AAVE and why, as well as a new tendency toward minimizing certain AAVE grammar in later age, due its now disproportionate aspect as a marker of youth culture. If you don't want to turn your ten-minute coffee break into a 90-minute lunch, try this shorter but still terrific blog post summarizing AAVE history and characteristics.

***It's an exciting time, but it's not a new time. I haven't been alive long enough to live through multiple such movements, and while I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the direction we’re moving in now, I find the perspective from those older than me sobering, and instructive. “I remember thinking the same thing during the Clarence Thomas hearings, that the cultural moment had come and everything would change,” pioneering psychologist Louise Fitzgerald recently said. “But here we are twenty-some years later when people are suddenly rediscovering yet again that sexual harassment exists.” 

In her landmark tome Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Susan Faludi delineates the principal complaints women aired on inequality during the 1970s. They're almost exactly the same as the ones we hear today.  I'll refrain from repeating the line about history repeating itself, because I do believe incremental progress is being made, but having entire generations who've never read The Hite Report and have no idea who Betty Friedan is probably isn't helping. More for the reading list....  

****I wish I could take credit for these insights, but they come from Susan Faludi. I’ve recommended her writing on my blog before (including thirty seconds ago in the footnote above, ha!), but I can’t help it. Anyone with the slightest interest in learning about gender issues from something besides a 101 class and a bunch of BuzzFeed articles will drink up her two 600-page mammoths, Backlash (about the backlash against Second-Wave Feminism in the 80s) and Stiffed: the Betrayal of the American Man (about male emasculation and the assumption of male dominance, with a focus on the 90s). They’re simultaneously devastating, difficult to get through, and impossible to put down. She channels her necessary frustrations into a level-headed calmness of prose that leads to insights our extremized culture tends not to reach.

​Faludi was most recently a finalist for another Pulitzer for her memoir In the Darkroom, about her father coming out as transgender and undergoing reassignment surgery at the age of 76.