Back To Thinking Hard In 2009

"After watching the umpteenth white guy on the tube tell me
what black people were thinking, I had to go direct."

This phrase, contained in the very first post on this blog, summed up the sentiment that led me to joining the blog world. It was this sense of frustration with the limited points of view defining the perspective of the major media outlets that had me furiously emailing my friends and family a year ago, just so they could have enough real information in front of them to really think for themselves about what was going on, instead of relying on news readers and talking heads to tell them the truth.

They called me anyway, though, to ask my opinion.

And over the months that followed, this site slowly changed from a information disseminator into an opinion column, partly because we started running out of weekly primaries and partly because I was getting to like telling people how I saw things. I have become the enemy, it seems - seduced, like a lot of the nation's pundits are, by the idea that what I write is important to an audience.

I talked to a buddy of mine, who is originally from Alabama, earlier this week. "You've gotten a lot better at your blog lately," he said, his voice pausing for a second, "a lot better than you used to be."

There have been a lot of days, especially since the election, when I felt the "brown man thinking hard" title of this blog was misleading. I figured it should have been retitled "brown man living hard", or "brown man running Congress out of town", or "brown man exasperated as hell", or "brown man watching too much football lately."

And I remember quite a few days where the "brown" in "brown man thinking hard" could have been dropped completely as I adopted the role of an Everyman observer who championed the universal human condition.

Even though these things are true, I still like the name of this place. If you live in the town where a certain soft drink giant tried to change the name "Coke" to "New Coke", like I do, you are keenly aware of the need to leave a good thing alone when it seems to be working.

2009 is going to be fantastic. A certain brown skinned man on a Hawaiian Christmas vacation will be moving into the White House. Brown skinned people all over this country will still be holding their heads high. Many of us will understand, for the first time in our lives, why we have got to stop patting ourselves on the back about integration and start initiating collaboration.

And the Brown Man himself will be back to thinking hard.

Ciao!

Starting The New Year On A High Note

I got a guitar for Christmas. A few cigars and bottle of cologne would have been fine, but I will have to admit I was pretty surprised.

Three days later I have acquired a matched set of sore fingertips, attained a certain level of appreciation for the art of tuning a stringed instrument, and discovered a complete inability to contort the fingers of my left hand into any chord position other than the G Major.

Maybe, I mused while cracking my fingers yesterday before giving it another try, this was really a gift that had more metaphorical intent. Maybe it was like that symbolic broom people give each other to "sweep clean" before the new year. "Start the new year on a new note" might be the message. Or maybe it was a way to subtly suggest that I try to spend a little less time on the internet.

So I asked S. – “why a guitar?"

"Well," she said, "you seem pretty introspective – I just figured it would be something good for you to do. You did talk about getting one years ago, remember? And, if you get good enough, we can play together."

S. plays the piano. S. reads music. S. was on the band in high school.

Brown Man has done none of those things, and can often be found dancing at a tempo that is slightly off from the beat.

It is amazing, though, once I’ve gotten the thing tuned, to pluck the bottom string and hear the deep, rich "ooohhhmmm" reverberate through the whole body of the guitar. And I can now slide my sore index finger up and down the frets on the bottom string and the top string quick enough to establish a kind of rhythm with a constant tempo.

In the same vein, I hope the fine-tuning this blog has gone through over the last couple of weeks will allow my posts to have a deeper resonance with my regular readers and the larger community in the coming year.

So take these last few days of 2008 to call up the memories of those events and accomplishments that have resounded positively in your life over the last twelve months. Let your mind run up and down these recent high points the way I let my fingers crawl up and down the neck of my guitar, and you might just begin a cadence that will take you into 2009 on a high note.