Intro

Okay, maybe I should start by saying I’m a bit out of touch. I’m studying Black culture in school, but I’ve been avoiding social media somewhat religiously because I am in touch enough to know that maybe it can mess with you. Maybe you (or just me) can’t quite think in the same way if you’re on it all the time. I want to be able to think in my own way, and I know that there are so many creative people online who still are creative, even though they’re online, but I’m realizing that maybe it still isn’t the healthiest place for me to be.

So anyway, I say that to say sometimes (often) I’m late to things. I watched the first season of Stranger Things years after it came out, and it was incredible, and I felt like I was the first person to have seen it out of everyone I knew (I wasn’t). And I wanted to talk about it, and I did, and everyone was like, “You’re late,” and I was like, “Yeah, okay, you’re not wrong.”

I’m late to things. I sometimes have takes that everyone on the Internet has already said. For example, I saw the movie Friday for the first time recently, and I thought it was very funny. I realized my whole childhood people had been quoting it all the time, and now I knew why. After I saw it, I told people: “Have you seen Friday? It’s really good,” and they said, “Yeah, it’s been really good for almost thirty years now. You’re late.”

That happens a lot. I find I’m usually averse to trendy things (maybe the Scorpio in me) and like to come to pop culture in my own time. But the thing is I’m studying culture (Black culture specifically and American culture in general) because I love it. I love art. I write fiction, and it means the world to me, to be able to do that, to be able to make something out of nothing no matter how good or bad it ends up being.

I want to talk about art, but two things I don’t want to do (though I get why people do them) are criticize or influence. I read art criticism often for school, and I am very easily influenced (I got a Nintendo Switch after a cool Black cozy gamer said I should). I get why people do those things, criticize and influence, and I respect people who do them well, but I know how hard it can be to make art, especially good art, so I’m not here to say what they could’ve done better or differently. I also know how easy it is to buy something because someone convincingly told you to (though no regrets about the Switch), so I’m not here to promote things I’m personally invested in (either because I’m getting paid or because I know the person who made it).

I just want to write—once a week—about something that I loved interacting with. Sometimes this might be a film (film is a big part of my research) or a TV show, sometimes it might be a song or a book, a short story or a poem. I just want to get better at writing about good art. I want to focus on what’s good about it because even though there are cultural critics that I love and influencers that I like, I think what scares me about the Internet and social media and engaging with it is it feels so full of that kind of thing: buy this or don’t buy that. I know that cancel culture has made a lot of helpful things happen, but I think it has also made us stiff, especially as artists. I think we’re forgetting how to be transparent. So though my research is sometimes on what’s problematic (I study representations of Blackness in contemporary American culture, so there’s definitely still some room for improvement), I want this to be a space where I focus on what’s good. Something that pulled me in and made me feel engaged. Something that I felt was done well. I’ll tell you why I thought it was done well. I’ll tell you why I liked engaging with it. And you might disagree with me, and you might find something glaringly wrong with the art, say that I should’ve researched more before advocating for it, and that’ll be fair because here’s the thing, on this blog, I might advocate for things that aren’t always made by pristine people. I might advocate for things that have some blind spots. I want to be more open in general. I want to forgive sometimes, and not people who aren’t sorry, but people who realized they messed up, people who want to change, to be forgiven. And sure, that doesn’t mean supporting their harmful actions, but it also doesn’t mean only hyping people who have never done anything that I wouldn’t do. That said, I will try to be careful with you and your feelings and what you might stand for. I’ll also try to think of me (a hopefully more good than bad person) and listen to my gut (which hopefully is more on than off).

Anyway, long, rambling intro, but I just want to try this out. To engage with people online in some way, if not in the fast paced, chatter-filled way of social media. I’m slow to process and I get things wrong, but yeah, here are some things that I loved.