Fragments

Reflections on a Modern African-American Life

Note: This is an old story/lyric essay I wrote awhile ago. I dunno really what it means and writing about writers is boring most of the time but I figured it would be fun to post. The only other thing to say is that this story is definitely to be read in the fall.

I wake up again. The sunlight is gray. It pokes through the small single window of my room. I begin to read. And then I write. Another Black man was murdered by the State a few days ago. There is little else to do these days apart from doom scroll.

Let me introduce myself first though, my name is Narrator. Well, I think I am the Narrator. I am unsure sometimes. My identity shifts, ripples and flows depending on the hour, the week, or the decade. Sometimes, I am narrating. Sometimes, I am just along for the ride. It's like when your parents or your friends or your Uber is driving while you just watch the cars just float by. But I am the Narrator. And I present to you, a fragment of an essay concerning the complicated relationships I have with my phone, reality and the death of Black culture among other things. Fragments of ideas. Fragments of dreams. Fragments of reality.

So much of my life these days is travel. So I read Langston Hughes short stories on the bus as I commute to wherever I need to be. I wait for the train, stumble and breathe in the era of live-streaming legends like Kai Cenat. I wonder if anyone in an thousand years or even five years will remember that name. But I think that's fine. I don't seek to romanticize a past that I can only imagine through books. But oh, I do love Langston's stories. They are marvelous. They take me to another time. Not a better time but a different one. Better is relative. Difference is a constant.

Harlem in a moment where the Black intelligentsia was it's height. Sounds of laughter. Glasses tinkle. There are debates about the differences between the political programs of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). A brother moans a weary tune on trumpet as the drummer lazily taps at the ride cymbal. The few white onlookers are treated with a mix of interest, curiosity and disgust. Smoke fills the room. The upright bass hums. Everyone was in Harlem, then. Everyone is everywhere now. But that was a different time. And now, I watch YouTube shorts about dating culture as the bus creeps along.

In all reality, I am struggling to make sense of my place in American society. I read a book that told me that African-American literature is irrelevant because the Civil Rights movement was successful. What place do Gwendolyn Brooks or Richard Wright have in a moment where white children on the internet can consume our music, our words, our language, and our culture like candy? Perhaps, we should just be Americans. But that is also wrong. As every political poet knows, the American project is intent on killing Black people. This is not news, though. Even the white poets at this point write about racism, I think. I’m not at their readings.

But also this is the basis of the critique by the author who does not think highly of contemporary Black literature. We are too fixated on the past. And that makes sense because nothing is ours anymore. As I walked home on a cool September with my friend, a brief breeze whistling past our bodies, he told me that the trajectory of Black culture is extinction. I don't know if he's wrong.

I walk around my neighborhood on occasion when I am not writing. It's a historically Black neighborhood. That is changing now. My neighbors play songs by Fantasia, Beanie Sigel, Megan Thee Stallion and the O'Jays. I sit on my porch sometimes and listen. The drums on these songs massage a certain part of my brain. The neighbor who lives on the block adjacent to mine plays Ed Sheeran. He is not a gentrifier. I decide to go inside.

The Narrator I mentioned earlier has a serious problem when it comes to telling stories about race these days. Everything is representation. There are Black superheroes now. Netflix specials about non-violent resistance produced by the Obamas. Everyone who writes is some sort of Afro-Futurist. He isn't against representation or Afro-futurism but it lacks an incisive critique. It lacks a sharpness. It's too easy. But he also feels that that his own stories are too weak in this regard. Employing cultural references that only a handful of other Black young men will understand seems to be a lazy way to write. So he works in fragments. I mentioned these fragments earlier and that's how the Narrator writes. He skips between ideas like you skip through a record or playlist to find your favorite song. And then he repeats. He could listen to the same song thousands of times. His ideas are much the same. These days, it seems the Narrator's work is always political despite his annoyance at the political poets.

There's been so many stories written about gentrification at this point, I don't know if I have much else to say. Comparing the gentrifiers to zombies, vampires, or other useless fantastical analogies is boring. I don't know if I've expressed it in this essay but I hate political poetry and most political writing because it relies upon making the reader feel bad about things we already know that happen. The new buildings all look the same, white professionals with their Teslas are starting to move in, the rents rise and the world keeps spinning. I keep walking and sitting. My roommate says she wants to move. I need lunch.

To make money to afford my lunch, I make TikToks about Black history for a non-profit that is funded by a combination of some Foundation and sympathetic white folks. Back in the day, they would've called this type of thing “selling out”. These days, we call it Black excellence. Consumption of history to be listed in a grant application. The TikToks have started to enter my brain. I am dreaming constantly of five to eight second videos, I can't escape content creation even in my sleep. I used to read lot of cyberpunk novels but they are less fun to read now that my dreams are filled with social media ads. I really need some lunch.

The Narrator in a story is supposed to tell you what is happening. But I don't know what is happening. The story doesn't seem to be clear. The plot does not thicken. Instead, it spoils like milk after you leave in your room for a few days. And if I'm the Narrator, surely the end of the story would be my death. Or perhaps, nothing as grand or romantic as a death. Just a continued confused and contrived existence in a city where people are equally as lost as I am.

When I'm not making TikTok content, I walk to the grocery store further west of my house for the lunch I mentioned earlier. It's run by Africans or Arabs. I am honestly unsure. I peruse the food. It is largely junk but the meat is well butchered, I'll acknowledge that.

I can never bring a backpack in to the store because they are worried people with backpacks are there to steal. A few days ago, my homie and I witnessed an argument in that grocery store where one of the Arab guys who works there accused an older Black woman of stealing.

“She's acting fucking crazy.” I overhear one of the Arab store-owners or maybe he's just a security guy or an employee say to a Black woman in a hijab working the register

“I just fell on the ground, why are you accusing me of stealing?” the older woman asks as her husband tries to convince her to leave

“I saw you put those peanut butter bars in your pockets.” replies the Arab guy. He's wearing a Nike sweat suit.

“I don't got no reason to steal.” She says. Her tone indignant. Her husband is pulling at her.

“Then why'd you do it?”

“Call the police, then. Run the surveillance tape back. I didn't steal nothing. You just discriminating against me. I swear I'm gonna sue ya'll.” She says as she finally walks out of the store after which she yells something Islamaphobic that relates to Sharia law. This makes even less sense than the accusations of stealing since the city I live in has one of the highest percentage of Black Muslims in the country.

“Oh yeah you got a lawyer?” he replies with a smirk

Instagram info-graphic content creators have been recently quite concerned with POC solidarity these days. In my neighborhood, I don't think solidarity is even a passing thought for anyone. I bring a canvas bag to the grocery store instead so I am not accused.

The Narrator finds himself in settings often. These settings range although I think for the purposes of my story, I find myself mostly in my own room. The Narrator tries to read writing advice on the internet and the solution that most of the writing advice gives is “Just finish it”. This is difficult for the narrator as mentioned earlier, he already struggles with the plot not thickening. The settings he finds himself within apart from his room are filled with mundanity. The zeal, beauty and crackle of urban life is replaced with the glowing iPhone screen as someone orders DoorDash, installs a Ring camera or takes a video of a concert that they will never watch again.

My ex has re-followed me on Instagram. I wonder what the significance is. The reality is that small interactions over the digital space matter in some ways. They feed chemicals inside of the big juicy gray thing that is encased in our skulls. This is the confusing part. My likes, shares and follows shouldn't mean anything. They are just zeros and ones on a app designed to keep us addicted. But they do. The YouTube shorts I mentioned earlier are often concerned with how to win these para-social social media games that we all are playing.

I wouldn't have a cellphone or social media if I didn't need them for work. But there's no where else to promote my writing/podcast/rapping/livestreams/content/FanDuel. Perhaps I am just as addicted as everyone else but remain in denial. And well, no one reads anymore. That's what my homie says when I told him I was starting a podcast. The communist baddie I met on hinge two years ago told me that making a podcast makes more sense than being a writer if you want to be a public intellectual.

I buy a steak, oatmeal, frozen fruit, applesauce, milk, and some store brand chocolate chip cookies. They taste just as good as the real ones. Sometimes when I get tired, I like to eat. Sometimes, I just sleep. Then the hunger gnaws at my belly. It is hard to write on an empty stomach. When I was hungry and struggled to cook, I used to order chicken from Popeyes. Unfortunately, things have been so expensive lately I've been forced to start cooking my own chicken.

The Narrator faces tension within his own cultural community. If he had been living during the Civil Rights movement or Black Power, he would have been writing alongside people like Jimmy Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry and Amiri Baraka. To be clear, the Narrator does not view himself as competitors with these folks in terms of skill to make it clear to the reader that the Narrator does not possess so much hubris. However, the Narrator sees himself in conversation with these writers because he hardly reads anything contemporary. He is unsure what his writing means in a moment like the historical one we are within. People have replaced Malcolm with whatever current social media influence is hot that week.

In an earlier walk to the store, there was a woman who works at the Popeyes nearby the grocery store. She told me that Philly is turning into New York in terms of how expensive it is getting here. I told her I hate how many white people there are in the neighborhood now. I make a joke about voting. She tells me she wants an option where no presidents exist. I tell her I'm with that shit.

My roommate (one of best friends) is looking for new housing. My roommates (a couple who are not my best friends but are cool people) are looking for new housing. My friends around the corner are looking for new housing. I am looking for new housing.

I am consistently confounded with my place in the world. Thousands of years of history lead me to this particular moment where I live in a city being wrecked by developers in a country that was wrecked by colonizers. And I don't even know if the cultural landmarks I hold close exist in any way beyond a romantic fragment in my memory. I sit on my porch again. The Ed Sheeran has stopped. I watch the raccoons that live in my neighbor's roof. They are out for adventure. I read. I write my stories. I feel my eyes begin to close. I return to the warmth of my bed.

The Narrator struggles to rest. The Narrator struggles in general. That's life though. A struggle. There is a struggle against the Narrator's own decaying body. Struggle exists as the classes push and pull against one another over the decades. Struggle exists as the Narrator seeks to finish the last word of the sentence so he can finally go to bed.

I am a fragment. My day is a fragment. But the fragments slip and mix together into a full picture of a life in small moments. Most of the time, the fragments do not make sense. But when they do, I am in that cafe in Harlem.