Aaron was an incredible player. He lived a long life. And he got his due, his accolades, his recognition, while he was alive. That is good. So many Black players from the Negro Leagues never did. Those Black barbers from my boyhood knew more than I did.
Ahmad Jamal never gave a bad performance. I remember one critic called a performance I attended bombastic. It was a late set, and a lot of musicians were in the audience. Maybe he wanted to play for them. Perhaps he did flaunt his technique a bit but it was all right with me.
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.
Scrolling through social media, I am reminded that today marks the fifth anniversary of the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. And suddenly, I realize that the heaviness I felt upon waking is not only fatigue. It is anxiety, not the kind that anticipates the future, but the kind induced by the knowledge of a past that refuses to stay past.
It is the most underrated virtue in this culture....
My friend is a little witchy, a little woowoo. She gets “feelings” before something happens.... Does precognition exist?
Slang is those half-hidden words, code intended only for certain circles, or what our parents used to call “the in-crowd.” “Six-seven!” seems unique in that it has nothing to hide. Past slang involving numbers—the one-to-ten scale of physical attractiveness, the “Five-0” reference to police, the “4:20” signifier for a daily dose of cannabis—all had immediate or even urgent significance. “Six-seven,” by contrast, just sits in its own hollow existence.
I fall for these every time. Did we really have to commodify spontaneous joy?
Of course, living alone has few rules—one of its upsides usually—and nobody said you have to be that quiet.
Anselm Kiefer begged SLAM not to dust, fuss, or try to explain his work. Then he handed them five new canvases created just for this extraordinary exhibition.