Driven to Drink

This is a deep listen.

If you have headphones, use them.

This is 60 minutes of the Atlantic Ocean, recorded before the sunrise on Thursday, October 22nd, 2020...in a house on the beach in Corolla, North Carolina.

Self-Care is esential.

Here I offer you some suggestions for simple ways to meditate, or simply exist, listening to these soul-filling sounds.

Love yinz.

-G

Here be a rabbit hole.

In said rabbit hole?

Georgia Anne Muldrow.

You should enter this rabbit hole with me.

It's quite simple.

Love yinz!

-G

I've been feeling a lot of things lately.  This is not a thing that is unique or outstanding in September, 2020.

Those feelings, however, are awash in the neurochemicals of anxiety and chronic low-level depression.  Again, not a thing that is unique or outstanding right now.

Music, for me, always helps.  Always.

Some music exists for every existential moment through which I travel on this tiny blue dot in an infinite multiverse.

Here are a few of the many songs that, for me, provide balance, grounding, and regulation across any moment.

Love yinz.

-G

Continuing with virtuosic drummers, today we take a shallow dive into the aesthetic world of Makaya McCraven.  I say shallow because there are Carrollesque rabbit holes down which one can dive and become quite lost with Makaya and the musicians with whom he plays.

It is nearly September, 2020, and I will very soon be 46.  Nothing about existence has become easier and I expect a similar trajectory upcoming.  So I, and we, find ways to self-care as we do the work and fight the fights and try to make existence better for all.  And part of my self-care?  Is vibing with music.  So come vibe.

-G

Look.

I really absolutely adore Ian Chang.  I don't know him.  I just adore him.  And this band in which he plays, Son Lux, I just absolutely adore them.

I feel like that's all there is to say, here.  Please hang with me and get to know Ian Chang, Ryan Lott, and Rafiq Bhatia.  Like, I promise you THAT at the very least.  Get to know the music of these people.

Love yinz.

-G

Wikipedia does a nice job defining, "Misogynoir," so I will borrow it here.

"Misogynoir is misogyny directed towards black women where race and gender both play roles in bias. The term was coined by queer black feminist Moya Bailey, who created the term to address misogyny directed toward black women in American visual and popular culture. Trudy of Gradient Lair, a womanist blog about black women and art, media, social media, socio-politics and culture, has also been credited in developing the lexical definition of the term.

The concept is grounded in the theory of intersectionality, which analyzes how various social identities such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation interrelate in systems of oppression."

Today, we talk about misogynoir from the perspective of a cis white het man's desire to learn and share.  Additionally, there is music.  Always music.

The soundtrack includes Big Freedia, Missy Elliott, Queen Latifa, Leikeli47, Maimouna Youssef, and Jamila Woods.

I love all of the Black women who have loved and supported me throughout my life, starting with my step-Mom, Angie, and continuing through the myriad colleagues, friends, and educators with whom I currently work and interact.

Love yinz.

G

I attended a BLM solidarity rally organized by young people in the district from which I graduated high school.  Beautiful, brave, impressive young people.  A friend provided advising and support when asked and needed, and I committed to record the environment around me...primarily because I needed to give myself something to do to take my perserverating brain off the topic of cycling anxiety, worry, and existential crisis.

But this isn't about me.  At all.

I attended a rally in the community where I spent formative years, just minutes from a house, rented, in which I lived until 1992.

Shaler is a suburban, really exurban area, north of Pittsburgh, PA.  There is a distinct socio-economic divide between several zip codes.  That I remember.  But being a cis het white boy in the district, I didn't experience any of the other aspects of bias, including racism, both systemic/generalized and explicit/targeted.  Obviously, it was, and is, all there.

The rally was organized by the Shaler Area Anti-Racist Advocates and a "back the blue" counter protest was swiftly proposed by MAGAts in the community.  I write, "MAGAts" because the signage of the countering group included Trump/Pence flags and placards and thin blue line black-and-white U.S. flags along with several tiny dowel rod U.S. flags.

Content and Trigger warnings for hate speech against trans and queer people (...because of course the extermination of queer people is an expected response to a solidarity rally indicating camaraderie with Black neighbors...) as well as plenty of racist tropes and not-even-dog-whistles from the MAGAts.

I love yinz so much, those who are in the struggle and impacted by the centuries of relentless trauma, gaslighting, oppression, marginalization, experimentation, incarceration, and murder.

-G

I know, the episode title is tedious.

But the music herein is most assuredly not.

Ladysmith Black Mombazo.  Rhiannon Giddens.  Carolina Chocolate Drops. And a Soweto choir performing, "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," a composed in 1897 by Xhosa clergyman Enoch Sontonga.

Please join me as we contemplate the history and current praxis of settler colonialism infusing relevant music.

-G

It's deeply impacting to consider, on July 4th, 2020, how relevant is Frederick Douglass' speech delivered to The Rochester Ladies' Abolition Society Independence Day event on July 5th, 1852.

Here we will explore that relevance by listening to THAT speech interspersed with protest and movement songs from the 1940s through July, 2020.

We who believe in freedom will not rest.

-G

As a speech/language and social-emotional clinician, a person who serves an exceptionally diverse community of families and children at an inclusive preschool, a Father ever working to improve, and a human being, I would be remiss to not communicate on, for, and to children.

This podcast?  On children.

And re: "for" and "to" children?  You can find a load of YouTube videos beginning with, "Mr. Greg Reads..."

To me young people come first, and they are not pieces of clay to be molded and shaped in a vision steeped in compliance, assimilation, and behavior modification.

I love children.  Unconditionally.  It's really that plain and simple.

Unconditional positive regard.

Please hang, I'm very happy with this episode.  Spend time with me, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Marvin Gaye, and Brother Ali.  Because there ALWAYS has to be music.

-G