MY NEGRO PROJECT

February 4, 2022: Day 4 TV on the Radio: Dancing Cops and Gods Person : TV on the Radio   Media : Golden Age Dear Reader, Maybe something simple, today. I'm working on a longer piece for this weekend about Adia Victoria and how it relates loving white men; specifically about how I've never gotten THE FUCK over a guy who broke my heart 4 years ago.  That'll be my last musician, I promise, and then I'll move on to non-musical Black folk who've impacted my life and I think you need to hear about. It's funny, eh? All the pieces about Black people who've influenced my sense of Black identity turn into stories about whiteness.  I'm aware of all this. I, too, have the virus, as Jeremy O. Harris would put it; half-man & half-demon. In that way, and that way in particular, this project already feels like a failure, at least in so much as it is project celebrating Blackness during History Month; that it's maybe more about whiteness than it is about Black...

February Third, 2022: Day 3 Bad Brains: Jah moshes at CBGB Band : Bad Brains   Media : Big Take Over Dear Reader, I'm coming back to punk rock again today [probably not for the last time], because today I want to talk about Bad Brains . But first, a brief detour: I'll start my discussion of Bad Brains in 1859 in Harper's Ferry, Virginia.  Wow, I made until day 3 before I started talking about slavery; cute! If you don't know the story of John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, I'm not going to tell it to you here. I am vastly  unqualified to speak about US Civil War history. What I will tell you, with some moderate degree of authority, is that John Brown has been canonized in American music and culture.  He is referenced ad nauseam, and his insurrection at Harper's Ferry is often treated as one of the most important moments in moving the United States towards Civil War.  I'm no fan of the "great man" version of historical interpretation, but I...

February Second, 2022: Day 2 Charlotte says: You're allowed to be weird, Hun. Person : Charlotte Adig é ry  Media : Yin-Yang Meditation Dear Reader, How do you handle self-doubt or anxiety? Do you feel the need to excel?  How are you being measured? How am I  being measured? Do I even measure up? I've always struggled with self-doubt. For me, it manifests as a "stasis of anxiety": not being able to get out of bed, procrastination, fear, lethargy, etc...  Someone [add link to them later, if I remember] once said to me: "If only I had the confidence of a mediocre white man, think of where I'd be." I don't think non-marginalized people worry about stuff like that. I don't think I did when I was white. I was me, ineffably so. A product of only meritocratic growth. They tell you that kinda shit at Ivy League Schools. "You are the best and brightest. You are tomorrow's leaders." I call bullshit. Where did all my confidence go? Charlo...

February First, 2022: Day 1 You have to Google: "A Band Called DEATH From Detroit," or else you won't find them... Group :DEATH  Media :Can You Give Me a Thrill Dear Reader, A short one today; I came up with this project this morning at 6am, so my energy is pretty well friggin' spent. Since my teens and early 20s, I've been a big Punk Rock fan and still am to this day, despite my inability to mosh or headbang nowadays. In high school (the mid-aughts), I associated Punk Rock with Pop Punk and Emo outfit, which, in many ways, appeared to young me as excoriations of the hypocrisies and ennui of being white and living in middle and upper-middle class America. I guess youthful Ian felt like this  was why it spoke to him. " Y'all don't don't know what it's like, being male middle class and white " sorta shit. Yes, I used Ben Folds to describe Pop Punk circa 2006. Got a problem with that? Fuck you! Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, B...

It's me... I'm tired... The Project: Dear Reader, So, as many of you may or may not know, my relationship to my Blackness is one that’s pretty complicated; I [often] pass, I didn’t identify as Black until I was an adult, and my ability to articulate the experience of American Blackness is fairly nascent, especially given my age.  Often times, I use my feeling a certain “lack of authority” on Blackness as a way to eschew talking about race in public forums; especially on social media. However, I’ve decided to do something a little different for Black History Month this year and, through highlighting and uplifting Black thinkers/artists/business people/leaders, I want to speak publicly about my personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences of being Black, catalogue my growth, and also create a record of my development; how far I've come and how far I need to go. So ya know in a month about Black “history,” let me center my biracial contemporary ass for a moment; I guess th...