{"id":321,"date":"2024-08-05T02:34:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T02:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/?p=321"},"modified":"2024-08-07T12:47:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T12:47:57","slug":"on-the-back-porch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/2024\/08\/05\/on-the-back-porch\/","title":{"rendered":"On the back porch."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sit and think with a drink about how I’m gonna win.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may have waxed poetic about this space before in this space, but allow me this indulgence..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash back to 2020, and I was sent home at the beginning of Covid, as the world paused.My wife and I had a small porch in the back, but the area was small. We nestled next to our grill as we sat outside and read and talked. We both realized that outdoors was a great place to be, as we began to get used to this new reality of working from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we contracted to expand our back porch. Construction took two days, and after it was done, we had gone from a small area to something more expansive, something we could fit chairs and a couch and an umbrella. We spent that summer outside when we could, in between Zoom meetings and me running into the office, being an Essential Worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We call it the best investment we’ve made, and we have spent many evenings outside, sipping drinks of various alcoholic content and indulging in cigars. I bought a small speaker and now things were on and popping. Since then, we’ve had friends over and made a ton of great memories. A lot of great conversations. More than a few musical premieres – the Kendrick diss records were first played out here to our delight – and we hid under the umbrella for more than a few light rain showers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a great introspective spot, to read and think. And tonight, while enjoying my cigar and reading an issue of the Bitter Southerner, I took time to think on two articles in Issue #7, published earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one article was the story of documentary photographer Paul Kwilecki, who spent his life in a rural Georgia county and took pictures of its 623 square mile area; its people, its woods, its buildings. His images are considered. vital to understanding not only that place, but the rural South. He’s not a household name, and he’s an ancestor now, but there is renewed interest in his photographs and his writings. He attained a bit of commercial success, so he didn’t die penniless or anything, but he was a known introvert who lived very much inside his head. I identified with that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another article with cover subject Andr\u00e9 3000, written before the release of his flute album New Blue Sun<\/em>, he says the things us fans have heard a million times about the work. How he’s exploring, how he’s excited to do something new. The interviewer asks him about his legacy, and if this impacts his p[lace in the hip-hop pantheon. And he says a thing that resonated so hard with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A lineage lets me know I’m human. My life meant something. My trying times, my fucked-up times in this world has meant something. I wasn’t just here.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kwilecki was a man who spent 60+ years documenting his hometown and its environs, and is largely unknown outside the region and in a very specific genre of photography. But he existed, and contributed. He wasn’t just here; he MADE things. He left a legacy. He did great work worthy of study, and it sounds like he was satisfied with that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know Dre 3K; also an introvert, but his music reached every corner of the globe. Two very different men, different impact, but both men created a legacy. Both men were not “just here”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And every day, I’m trying to do the same. Leave a legacy, if not of work, but a cadre of people who can tell others that I was here. That I did, or said, or was something that lives on after me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t be “just here”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sit and think with a drink about how I’m gonna win. I may have waxed poetic about this space before in this space, but allow me this indulgence.. Flash back to 2020, and I was sent home at the beginning of Covid, as the world paused.My wife and I had a small porch in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}