Wednesday! What a concept
biweekly antics - wk of 09/01
Hey hey, hi, hello internet friends,
A good interview feels like coffee for me. Wakes me up, lights a spark, helps me go about my day with a little sum’ extra than I had before.
I don’t really care where I find interviews. I might seek one out or stumble upon it, like last month’s Hot Ones interview with Daniel Kaluuya.
In it, the host, Sean Evans, called back to ‘accessible excellence,’ a phrase Kaluuya coined in a previous interview.
“I had this term accessible excellence, because I thought a lot of excellence is inaccessible,” Daniel Kaluuya said, “[the Jackson 5] had ‘ABC as easy as 123.’
Bob Marley had ‘no woman no cry.’ Like, you know…say it simply.”
He talked about translating simplicity into cinema, specifically through what he brings to his performances. But even beyond cinema or music, there’s a sort of universal beauty and resonance to accessible excellence in any art form.
He says a bit more about it below (the video’s already set to the point, FYI).
I’m reminded of Langston Hughes's frank and uncomplicated, though often transformational poetry.
Yoooo, I’m even thinking of Lion King, one of my childhood favorites. I didn’t need to understand the complexities of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to be moved by it in my youth.
Art, simply. Unfettered by the cakey caches of our ego. Art, that’s found a way to deliver itself in your language, and theirs and hers and his, all at once.
There’s magic in simplicity. And simplicity does not mean easy. It doesn’t mean the artist didn’t go on a treacherous journey through introspection and personal evolution to share it.
I think a lot of us artists get caught up in this idea of simplicity. We misunderstand it. Complicate it.
We do too much to show the world we are great because who among us doesn’t seek validation? And our more honest messages, or more relatable truths, get lost in the flaunting of our ego.
I’ve done it. I still do it. I’m always catching myself mid-paragraph to find I’d just been flexing. For no good reason! Noticing I’d left not even a trace of vulnerability or truth in anything I’d just said.
And is not the most powerful art the kind that speaks to your spirit without need for explanation? That takes no dissecting to feel?
Do we, as artists, have to show our work like a math equation? Or can we simply deliver our message and allow the person experiencing the art to feel their way into and inside our voyage?
I’ll say it now: I have no respect for high-brow vs low-brow. I think it’s bullshit. I think it’s an arbitrary distinction promoted by elitism, classism, capitalism, blah, blah, blah, etcetera.
But I do think there is a distinction between
art that is honest
art that is not.
I think we all feel it, and I think it’s the most important difference to behold.
And if the experiencer of your art doesn’t catch your meaning, then maybe it wasn’t for them to catch?
And I suppose that’s a question to the artist, too. Who are you creating your art for? And what is the value of an artist who intentionally only creates for the elite?
I don’t actually have the answer to any of this, but I think these are good questions.
For me to ask myself constantly, always when I’m creating. And maybe for others to ask artists more often and to ask themselves.
Moving on…
You might have noticed that today is, in fact, not Thursday.
I know.
When we started this thing, I waxed poetic about whimsical, fantastical emails every other Thursday afternoon. Thursday. Not Wednesday.
If you met this email with a disconcerting question mark, I do apologize.
It was never my intent to confuse or mislead. And before you go thinking, “What’s next, emails on Sundays? Mondays?”
Trust that I feel these are absolutely blasphemous choices, and I would never.
However, Wednesdays. Lovely, chill, midweek-Wednesdays sound real cute to me for our new communion.
First of all, they feel more fun? Perhaps because they’re smack dab in the middle of the week like a donut hole or intermission, or bridge in a song —all things I have s had an affinity for those. Maybe because hump day is an actual thing Wednesdays are called, and how sweet is that?
Maybe it’s a spiritual thing.
Wednesday is ruled by Mercury — the planet of communication and expression. And here I am writing to you, interacting with your innermost thoughts, hoping to connect in some small way.
Who knows why I’m more drawn to Wednesdays.
Sometimes my instincts nudge me in strange directions, and I tend to listen. So yeah. Here we are. Happy Wednesday.
These past couple weeks have been ones of revisiting. Music, thoughts, books, dreams…
I gave D’Angelo’s Black Messiah a replay. Got lost all over again in the bubbling up of soulful melody he does so well. Like ice-cold sweet tea for weary, weathered senses.
D’Angelo is one of few artists I know who can insight chills with a harmonic whistle. C’mon, a whistle?! I’m refreshed.
I remember the day he returned with music after 14 long years of finding his own peace. I was working for (insert wElL KnOwn PUbliShEr in New York) at the time.
I’d just been tapped to write some hollow article about what white people can do for the Ferguson protestors as the only full-time Black writers on staff.
Cue: Black Messiah.
On repeat. Again and again through earphones at my desk. Drowning out everything else.
Then, just moments after that unsavory request, the only other Black writer on staff (a freelancer and one of the most skilled editors in the place) pinged me via Google Hangouts with three magical words:
“You listen, yet?”
She had no idea I was fixing my fingers to ask her the exact same thing.
“GIRL!”
We took an early lunch to rave about each and every track from top to bottom. How we both got chills in the same spots, how the day flew by quicker somehow because of this music.
It became more than an album for me then. Black Messiah was a collective experience. A coming together for Black people who wanted (nay, needed) a break. (Speaking of, this funny though very real video came out not long after that.)
Yeah. That’s what music can do. I’m moved all over again just remembering.
And once again, I’m reminded of a word that’s been following me around much like a song.
Sankofa
(pronounced SAHN-koh-fah)
SAN (return)
KO (go)
FA (look, seek and take)
African in origin, Sankofa literally means it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.
I’m struck by this word. Drawn to it like a mushroom to moistened earth. It fascinates me, encourages, and even galvanizes me and my writing.
I don’t quite have the words yet to delve into how deeply this word influences my work. But I do have this poem I hope begins to illustrate its power.
On that documentary
Pretend It's a City
she
had much to say
about those who seek books that reflect
themselves
she said
I read to become someone else!
I read to get lost in someone else’s reality!
What luxury.
to never have to read to remember
P.s: I never wrote that article. 😂
We love small victories over here.
Anyway
Thank ya’ll for reading.
I genuinely appreciate it.
Jasper <3