The reason I didn't do much of anything last Friday is because I had an incredible time on Thursday. That night at the Cox Capitol Theatre, with Doski Wo and The Revival and Al King and Robot Folk Junkies and Y'all Street and the unfortunately named 2 of a Kind, was a flash forward to where I'd like the Macon social scene to be, and a flash back to time when I drank for fun, not self-destruction.
Having been out of the drinking thing for so long, I over did it, and so, Friday was a day of suffering. I felt fine until after I'd showered. Then I vomited for the next several hours, sometimes screaming through the process, a half-yell, half-yack thing that was truly disgusting and disturbing. Every hackneyed cliché about hugging toilets and praying to porcelain gods rang true with each trip from my bed to the bathroom.
I'd do it all over again if it meant having that Thursday night again.
Hopefully, there is no direct correlation between my alcoholic overindulgence and having the variety of entertainment and people that was at the Capitol that night. But if there is, I will lay down my liver for it.
If you were there, you know why. (And thank you for being there.) If you weren't, you should get your second chances soon. In fact, the following Saturday was a more reserved (for me at least) version at the Tic Toc Room with Riddle and Dirt Dog throwing their second Black Card Party.
From what I gather, it is becoming a monthly event. Right now, it is invite only but it looks like that list is growing so maybe they'll open up for the general (but appropriate) public. The idea is to have people who actually like to listen to music show up. In the paper, I made the comparison to having a wine expert pick out their favorite bottle and giving it to you for free. That's the gig. Riddle and Dirt Dog play what they really want to play. You get the best.
That brings out an interesting crowd. It was as diverse and progressive as anything I've ever seen in Macon. While both those adjectives are absolutely correct, they're also disgustingly liberal sounding terms that mean something good but have an unfortunate pallor of political death about them. What I mean by that is that this isn't a political event. Neither was Thursday at the Capitol. It was just folks getting together without pretense or fear (or at least, getting together despite their pretense and fear). It was getting together because the function was too good to ignore. THAT is what we need more of.
In between both, Angelic and Riddle took me out to Twiggs County—WAY the hell out in Twiggs County... so far into Twiggs County I wasn't sure we were ever getting back to any place that wasn't in Twiggs County. Anyway, we went because someone put together an Old School All-Star concert. Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Chubb Rock, Big Daddy Kane, Whodini, Sugar Hill Gang, Rob Base and several more including Fab Five Freddy.
So yeah, it was worth being out in the middle of nowhere.
What struck me at this concert is that hip-hop will be, for me, what "oldies" are for my mom and dad. They may have been young adults when Woodstock broke rock music into a thousand tie-dyed, psychedelic little pieces, but what they remember most fondly is shit from their idyllic childhood. Idyllic, I say, not because it was perfect but because they were innocent in the world. That's what that music reminds them of. That's what they hear when Leslie Gore sings, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to." They hear "Back when I didn't have to worry about anything because I was a kid."
So when Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh finally unleashed "La Di Da Di" on us, I was all tingly inside because that was the stuff I liked when all I had to do on a Saturday was cut the grass and play wiffle ball in the front yard with my friends.
And that reminded me of what I thought about the black kids I played with growing up. I knew—based on the way I saw adults act, based on what I heard some of them say—that there was supposed to be a problem between us white folks and them black folks. I knew that there was supposed to be a difference, that we weren't supposed to get along for some reason. By and large, we got along anyway. We were kids. We did what kids do. We played. We did that without much of a problem until we got older and adopted everyone else's prejudice.
I remember clearly the day I got too old to be innocent anymore, the day I became tainted by this shit. My bike got stolen, and one of my white friends said it was probably one of the black kids who did it. We walked around the neighborhood, off Shurling Drive, down Alandale and Clinton and Walnut Creek, back to Kensington. Never found the bike but that idea that someone would steal my bike because of their color stuck.
What I only sensed as a kid started becoming, in that moment, a part of how I thought, which was cemented by a friend who got it from the adults around him. In bits and pieces for a long time after that, the idea grew, the prejudice and bigotry grew. White people did good things and black people were shady. That isn't to say I was an ardent racist at any point in my life, but I certainly had a particular set of lenses on. After a while, my friends came in colors: black and white.
My black friends changed too. It was obvious that something had gotten into them. They came around less, started calling each other "Nigga". In one of my least enlightened moments, I asked why they could call each other that and I couldn't. Didn't get an answer but I did get punched. From then on, it was the default worst thing to call a person. Once, I got into another fight and called the guy a "Nigger." Angry and hateful, that word transcended race. It was the just the meanest thing I could say.
Thankfully, eventually, it just made no sense to me to think or feel that way, and ever since then, I've been trying to unravel that ball of knots. But being in a city that willingly (and often just ridiculously) segregates itself socially, makes it hard. It’s hard to just see a person—not when you’re one-on-one or in a small group. That’s fine. That’s easy. It’s when you see a big group. Boom: there’s the black club; there’s the white club, which is tantamount to "Stay away" if you're not of that race. And that's tantamount to stupidity. It's one thing to not dig what someone else digs, but it's another to pretend you don't because you're not the right color for it.
The feeling I had at the Capitol last Thursday, the feeling in Twiggs that Saturday afternoon and in the Tic Toc that night, was a lot like when I was just a small kid. I knew there was supposed to be—based on the way folks here act—a big difference between us white folks and black folks, but I wanted to have fun anyway so I disregarded it. Just like being a kid. That's what made it so great.
There was a while at the Capitol when the room divided itself pretty clearly. No one was dancing or mingling much. I asked Riddle why and he said, “There’s too many black people in here,” meaning that’s what the white folks were thinking. And I said, “But the black folks seem uptight too.” He said, “That’s because there’s too many white folks in here.” Fortunately, as Riddle predicted, that broke down when Doski took the stage.
I get the sense that the kids coming up now are dealing with this less, and I hope that’s true. Thing is, as much as I think they’ll keep straightening this shit out, I don’t want to wait on them to do it. From what I’ve seen, the folks my age want to be done with this BS, and I think with the way things went Thursday, and again on Saturday, we’re getting damn close.
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