Goals.

I am trying to be more purposeful in the media I consume, and try to drag myself out of the doldrums of watching others create and not doing myself. I am trying not to scroll IG or Pinterest, tagging things I want to draw that other people already have in an attempt to learn or mimic or re-interpret. I am trying to be more…driven to make.

My habits, as far as visual arts go, have been honed over a lifetime on the internet watching other people make awesome things. As far as the literary arts go, I’m usually reading a book and can’t easily pull out or analyze what I’m reading to inspire my own writing.

Then I read this, and it reminded me, much like when I listen to some great rap bars or an exquisitely turned simile, what I want to do with my own words.

I sent it to a few friends, and one called it “chaotic”. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the style, but it at least evokes a reaction more pointed than “this was all right” or “I ain’t reading all that.”

 Love for a poet resists justification like a canyon resists being captured by an iPhone camera. There’s a fugitive hugeness.

I mean…yes. I get it . Why don’t my words come out like this?

Some might call this a hallucination induced by modern fandom, an effect of the parasocial phenomenon that’s been observed ad nauseam.

I would think of these words…eventually.

But this paragraph here is the pinnacle of this article, which, I will admit, I was not intending to read because of my avarice to its subject matter:

It’s the common mistake of talented people to believe it’s they who possess the talent and not the other way around. Talent is a tenant that collects rent. I don’t say this to undercut her abilities. It’s the opposite: She is talent incarnate, manifestly representative of its boons and its Faustian bargain. Talent reduces you to a host. Your best stuff visits you while you fumble haplessly for pen and paper to take dictation. Your worst stuff? It’s when you try too hard. When you interfere. It’s a cruel arrangement. You are a secretary at best, a captive at worst.

GotDAMN.

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Past bedtime.

Once in a while, I stay up past my normal bedtime so I can make things. On either Friday or Saturday night, I stay up past 10 or 11 with the plan to draw and make stuff.

The thinking behind this is simple, and has proven itself to me over and over again.

There is a voice in the creative’s head that basically tells them that they suck, and that the thing they are making sucks, and everything pretty much sucks. Some of us battle that voice pretty nobly during waking hours some of the time, but sometimes that battle is too taxing to deal with.

But as you get more and more tired, that voice starts to wane. The volume not so high, and then one can get in some work. It may not be the best stuff, or most impactful, but sometimes the issue is just getting stuff out on the page, on the screen. Free of that voice telling you that your work sucks, it’s prime time to do some work.

But there’s a drawback. While your inner art critic clocks out, another kind of critic can pop up. In the quiet of the night, your personal critic can clock in.

I discovered this recently, and while I’m not too happy about it, and caused me to abort an otherwise productive night, it got me thinking.

If everything isn’t going well, or right, a voice pops up and ignores your art and goes straight for your personal jugular.

You know your friend is mad at you.

You may have been too hard on that worker that got your order wrong.

Your mom is really disappointed that you haven’t helped her with her phone.

Your girl would rather watch TV without you.

And so on. In the still of the night, your creative brain is cranking, but it’s also busy making shit up. Exaggerating, embellishing, and you’re in a prime position to listen. You may be putting down some good things on the paper, but your brain is dumping a lot of toxins into your subconscious as well, making that time normally frutful for creativity a really ad time if things in other areas of your life aren’t the best.

So, when this happened, instead of pushing through it, I sighed, closed my sketchbook, and went to bed. Tomorrow’s another day, and God willing, the more positive voices in your head will clock back in, assess the damage, and work at getting you back from the precipice of self doubt and overwhelmingly negative thinking.

Besides, sleep is great.

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Of a World Series, and sports fandom.

I am a Comptonite, born and raised. I am a Los Angeleno, a Californian, an African American, a human being.

I am not patriotic in common ways, but I am loyal to where I come from. I remember growing up in a city that was a neocons’ worst nightmare. All these Black and brown people running around, a militarized police force, an attitude that we needed to be policed and corralled and ignored. I grow up and move to Chicago and lo, the same thing.

But we loved our own. We loved our heroes, we loved our sports teams, we loved our city. I was lucky enough to come of age in THE golden age of sports in Los Angeles. World championships in three sports. The Olympics. All amidst a backdrop with its soundtrack of gangsta rap and using sports as an escape.

This year, when my hometown Dodgers faced the Toronto Blue Jays, I saw it as fun and in no way an indictment of my loyalty. I am a big fan of Vladimir Guerrero Jr, having watched his dad toil in nearby Anaheim for many years, and so wouldn’t have minded Toronto winning.

But, as I said, I am loyal.

I was certainly aware of the parallels between this World Series and the events of the past two years between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick is the hometown hero, a poet savant who simply pointed out that this Canadian dude wasn’t on his level and was faking a lot of culture bonfires which, in a genre that prides itself on rules of culture and some measure of gatekeeping, resonated in the chord of “A MINORRRRRRR”.

I was prepared to laugh this connection off; after all, neither Kendrick or Aubrey were putting on hats and adjusting batting gloves in facing down 98+mph fastballs and splitters with 15 inches of break. Neither was I. But I started to notice that not everyone saw it that way.

“We gone beat they ass like Drake did Kendrick.”

This bold statement, as wrong as it is, activated the hater in me. The latent hater, dormant since being reminded that all I ever wanted was a black Grand National last year, awakened, and it was ANGRY. ‘

Every Dodger win was proof that Kendrick was right. Every Blue Jay win was pointed to as proof that, somehow, Drake was better and more relevant and indeed won a rap war that culminated with Kendrick going in front of the world at the Super Bowl halftime and reminding him that a lot, A LOT, of people don’t like him.

So, with a Dodger win, and the marketing efforts of Nike and Major League Baseball are going to lead to another few weeks of charting for Kenfdrick’s knock-out punch “Not Like Us”, and the hater can rest again.

For now.

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Dementia, you cruel motherfucker you.

It was the Air Force talk that snapped him back to lucidity.

As my uncle and brother-in-law swapped USAF stories and acronyms, something…slid into place for my father. I watched him go from quiet and withdrawn to actively participating. Listening, talking, laughing, remembering.

That lasted about an hour.

This is the same man who was my hero for years. Who knew a little about everything, whose library contained all manner of books; military strategy, nature, Black history. Who was at his happiest being outdoors, mowing his lawn or walking his property, even as I couldn’t get a hold of him because cell phones were yet to be a reliable leash to the people you loved.

But now we reached a new chapter. His care isn’t cheap, and to try to deal with his affairs from 1000 miles away is not working out for my sister or me.

But he’s taught us a lot, most importantly two things. Take care of your business: fill out a will, talk with your family about what you want and how. No one likes to talk about death, but it’s coming. It’s gonna happen, and you might as well prepare the people you love for it, emotionally and legally.

Secondly, is to LIVE. I can boast about how long my dad worked in the plant and how much blood, sweat, and tears he game for the Company, but in the scheme of things? That don’t mean shit. What wisdom did he impart? What funny stories do I have of him? Instead, I have three closets of never-opened suits, shirts, ties, and shoes to try to pass on to people who will wear them. He was prepared for a retirement of travel, and every day he was retired and didn’t go anywhere was to his detriment. He thought he’d be able to catch himself, to know when the curtain came down on his show, and he wasn’t.

And now he’s in the cruelest timeline. Scattered memories, doesn’t know where he is, confused. When I’ve shown up, he remembers who I am for now. He’s called my sister the names of his sisters. And he leaves a mess of land ownership that has taken us the better part of three years to get straight.

Physically, he’s in great shape for a man of his age. Men in my family live into their 90s if they can make it past their 70s, and he’s on that trajectory. But to live that long in a universe with constant shifts, where the faces are changing, where the short term memory of when you last ate or showered is obliterated 20 seconds afterwards, is its own unique brand of hell on earth.

In the meantime, we just keep him comfortable and safe and healthy. That’s all we can do.

The man whose name I bear is no more, but his physical form sits there, quiet and absorbed, and he’s thankfully forgotten by now that I told him I was going to go use the bathroom and never came back when we dropped him at the facility. Otherwise, he’d have wanted to follow me out, to “go home” to a house he’s never going back to, a home he built in the woods of Arkansas where he could be recluse all he wanted.

Life is a series of choices, but you’re not the only one who has to live with the choices. Be mindful of that.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep my father going for as long as he can, in a world of his own.

Posted on by ~tbg~

High schoolin’.

I was talking to a friend of mine about the fact that my high school class didn’t have a reunion this year, which would have been our 30th. (I’m old; shut up.)

Since we were a small class, and (I thought) relatively tight knit, I thought something was going to happen, or something would be planned, I would get the notice, and I’d fly out to particiapte. That was a no from them, dawg.

So I talked to my friend (who I went to high school with) about why and how this happened.

My high school years were fraught with chronic masturbation, a growth spurt, a lot of introspection, and a stable home life punctuated by hormonal outbursts, but it wasn’t problematic because of high school itself. I learned a ton. I wrote, read, experienced the highs of understanding trig and calculus and the lows of not understanding chemistry at ALL. I navigated the social waters by being friends with all the cliques, and never felt out of place amongst a group of people, from the nerds to the jocks and outcasts. I obsessed over girls, and perfected my need to be liked because, my thinking went, if I was liked, then I wouldn’t go through the hell that was middle school, where a number of people saw it their mission to destroy my self esteem.

Anyway, what has happened in the years since was the realization that a lot of people didn’t have it like I did. I was surprised when I heard from people I had hung out with that they hated high school. My mind reeled; I was there! I was around you for high school! What happened?

Thing is, some people hated the time, not high school itself. Oh, I’m sure there were people who hated high school; the homework, the wondering if one was good enough or belonged in a school where nerdom was the standard rather than an anomaly. But no one said these things to me then.

So, no reunion, and another reason I had to think about; 90% of my class still lives in Southern California, and they can see each other whenever they feel like it. I need a few weeks advance notice; these people can make plans within hours.

Add tot hat a realization that hurts, but, as my friend says, it is what it is. No one is checking for us like that. No one’s checking on us. No one’s thinking about us coming out there. If they see us, great, but no one I went to school with is trying to see me like that. No one’s coming to see you, Otis as the joke goes. And they’re not. And I have to accept that and keep it moving.

I find it kinda effed that the class before us did a reunion (which I happily crashed) and we’ll see what the class after us does, but our makeup and circumstances point towards not being what I thought, or fooled myself into thinking, that we were all friends forever or something.

We’re all adults trying to figure things out, I guess. Nothing wrong with that. But it huts a little bit, you know?

Posted on by ~tbg~

The Air Up There, Issue One.

Today, I achieved something.

On the surface, while our social net evaporates, far-right assholes run around with impunity…my little thing makes no big impact. But to understand just what this means, I have to tell a little story.

Growing up, I was the nerd, to surprise no one. I sought validation amongst my peers, I played the friend, I wanted to be liked. Academically, I was the one who had to get As. Those things combined to make my young adult life overly complicated and very contradictory.

Anyway, the things that typically visit people like me, overachieving minority kids who have the pressure of making it big and elevating others and who can’t understand how that never comes to fruition, was in full effect for me. Procrastination and perfectionism crept in, and the result was, well, a doubt in anything and everything I did. Is this good enough? Is it perfect?

Anyway, I’m older, and a number of factors have occurred to dean that inner monologue. First, the creatives I’ve allied myself are doing great things, and it’s hard to be around good people doing good things and not want for more. You really take a lot from your peers.

Secondly, a number of great people I know have died, and it became obvious that, frankly, I’m running out of time. I have some medical issues, and tomorrow ain’t promised. Doing work, whether it be a drawing or digital upload or a zine will exist after I’m gone, and it becomes a question of legacy. What do I want to be known for? What can I do to make things better around me? One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Arthur Ashe; it’s very simple.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

I may not be able to affect international policy. I may not be able to solve huge societal issues. I don’t have the ears of the 1%. But what I can do is make my people happy. Comfortable. Safe. Show them that the world ain’t all ugly and morose and hopeless. I can write something. I can draw something.

And my zine is me drawing and writing a thing. And I hope it’s a bit of happy for someone.

It’s a beginning for me.

Posted on by ~tbg~

Trying not to be creepy.

Years ago, I was awash in gangsta rap and trying to impress people who didn’t like themselves, much less me. I was afforded a ton of opportunities, and I got to do a lot of things that I wonder now just what had to slide into place to get me those chances to do those things.

One summer, I got to do a summer program, and I made a number of lifelong friends there. One changed my life in a small, but significant way.

I was well versed in indie comics, scouring a couple of indie comic book stores for titles that appealed to me. What I was unaware of at the time was the existence of zines, self-published tracts made by people with something, anything, to share.

I was in this summer program, and a young lady there shared hers with me, and I was taken aback. I don’t have it anymore, or at least I can’t find it, but I had worn it dog-eared from how many times I had read it. And it was just so new to me; she had writing and some drawings and was going through the usual teenage shit I was going through and lived in a completely different city and I was smitten. Smitten in the way that I felt this connection, I wanted to do the same thing and maybe someone else would find their same connection with my stuff that I did with hers. Also smitten in that she was short and had glasses, and I’ve always been a sucker for short women with glasses.

So one day I’m bored and look up her name, and we have some mutual friends, oddly, and I’m wondering if I should reach out and tell her thank you, now that I’ve (finally) made a zine of my own. Would that be creepy? Would that be unwelcome? Should I let that sleeping dog lie?

Posted on by ~tbg~

What is lost.

My father turns 84 today.

But he is currently in a memory facility, living out his days confused, under the pall of Alzheimers.

All I would have to say to him – happy birthday, what did you eat yesterday, who am I – would be met with a stare and a questioning look on his face, a face I will grow into if I live to be that long.

There is no need for bringing up memories, or what ifs. No need for reminisces that have been lost in the sands of time to a cruel bitch named Dementia. We have gone beyond the questions every child wonders of their parents and, if they’re lucky, can ask one day.

“Are you proud of me?”

“Did I do okay?”

And the things that well-adjusted kids want to say to their parents.

“You did okay.”

“I’m thankful.”

Even with a man with whom I have…issues with. A man who told me that I wasn’t family, that I wasn’t important, that showed me that being abandoned by those you love is a very real and very possible outcome in life. I can’t talk to him, can’t ask him anything of substance, can’t tell him, at least, thanks for doing his part in making me physically while damaging what he could mentally.

So I’ll wish him a happy birthday from afar, and mourn what was and could have been, and hope for a day where he can sit and find comfort in muddled thoughts. I can hope he eats well, and something at his facility reminds him of something good, something he can’t quite remember, but knows it makes him happy, and he smiles.

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Fun at the MCA.

Now, I love me an art museum.

In Chicago, we have a world class one, and I have a number of opinions on others in other places (the Louvre is overrated, Milwaukee is underrated, LA’s is my first love).

I don’t do contemporary art, for the most part, for reasons I might get into at a later time. Therefore, I haven’t been to the Museum of Contemporary Art in some time, maybe three times in the past 20 years. For comparison, I go to the Art Institute at least once every couple of months.

A friend of mine was in town, and was staying over by the MCA, so we decided to go.

We saw a lot of things, and I maintain that their gift shop is also pretty good, but I was taken by one exhibit in particular that had so much promise and really got across a new meaning of art to me.

So, Paul Pfeiffer does a lot about sports stars and celebrities and wants to examine the connection between us as spectators and them as the watched. The exhibit has a bit of arresting photography and videography; photos of basketball stars edited where they are the only ones in the frame. Videos of the Stanley Cup being hoisted…but with the players edited out. Very arresting stuff.

But what I quickly took a liking to was a work made up of sound. In a work called The Saints, there is a large room with numbers speakers and acoustic amplifiers, and he recorded a stadium of 10,000 people reacting to a soccer match. IN the midst of this huge room, you are the center, you are on the pitch as this raucous, unseen environment resounds around you. We are aware of our great cathedrals of sport, but how many of us are familiar with that sense of being the gladiators competing on the floor of the Colosseum? It was a sense unlike no other, and captured gig tally and in stereo with a number of microphones and played at loud volume, this was unlike most anything I’d absorbed, mainly because this kind of thing is viewed as contemporary art and not, say, avant-garde or other modes of art that are not of the paper/clay/marble varietals.

So, yeah. Sound as art.

Posted on by ~tbg~

South Side Zine Fest.

This will be a rambling, stream-of-consciousness post…

I’ve been working on stories for a very long time. Stories in comic form, to be more specific, and for a myriad of reasons, I couldn’t get it done. I’d post that I was working on it…and nothing would come of it. I couldn’t get out my own way.

So, I went to the South Side Zine Fest today, mainly to see a good friend of mine who I haven’t physically seen since 2020. I am well-versed in the world of zines; been reading them for years, ever since I became aware of them back in high school last century. (Feels weird to say that.)

Hours later, I’m home with a brain bursting with ideas and a license to make things. The vibe was so positive, so whoelesome. People want to write things down and share them, and that’s a lot more fulfilling than a podcast or a video blog. Having to design your words, deciding what to write and how to present it.

I have a list of things I want to say, I want to share, and as soon as I get done with this first thing, this thing I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year, then I’m going to start wokringon that.

Why now? Why won’t this fail?

Because I’ve seen what it is to be DONE with things. To have them out in the world, and meeting some great people, even as an introvert, is more appealing than the alternative. My boy Jeff would have loved it. I am surrounded by people who would support me. Why wouldn’t I do these things? What is the hold up? While bad people stay winning in this political climate, I can be a bit of good.

So much to do.

Let me get started.

Posted on by ~tbg~