05/16/2023
SOUNDvPROOF: A MANIFESTO
PART 1_______________________________________
NOIR C'EST NOIR
This blue headphone cord is neither black nor white. It isn't fitting to my objective. Many things, all of the colors in the rainbow in fact I now see as incompatible, even at times distasteful and unbecoming of me. Unrepresentative, I feel color no longer reflects me and so I will phase out all hints and shades besides black with periodic hints of white and build a new legacy wardrobe- that is to say, forge new armor, by the summer of 2023. I feel I have recently truly and genuinely sensed the purport behind the designer and director-at-large Tosh Hall’s claim that designers wear black because "it's simple and everything else should be the color – your ideas should be the color.” Similarly, although not as a designer but only as a man with an authentic, if not also damaged mind who likes to write and be critical of himself, striving to have a child's mind at the best of times, and to never grow tired of exploring ideas. I no longer feel the need to make my voice heard in a crowd or to speak out to defend myself against judgment. I have done so in the past but, as the Bible warns, I have also committed my precious energy, and time, and passed my passions onto swine who never would have given credence to the weight and depth of my arguments and pursuits, even if they could have (Matthew 7:6). To do so might mean they would have to acknowledge they are part of the problem.
I now declare color as anathema to my sense of self and say it no longer reflects the earnest representation I wish to give my race and my nation. I have denounced color as an unrealistic expectation and hope, like believing a worthy contribution to the Good is sufficiently made by paying taxes and casting a vote, by rinsing out your jars and putting the blue bin out on the curb once a week. Some of us may have been called for greater things but none of us will ever really know until we temper ourselves and begin through dialogue separating what is true from what is false.
But what about color? Why should we broadcast lush and vivid splendor when bombs are being dropped, water supplies destroyed, power grid after power grid set on fire, and despite high-minded statements of goodwill and solidarity, the prevailing just-so story is that life is still nasty and short. Here we are at each other's throats, every few months, it seems these days, someone is being made an example off (last summer it was my childhood friend) he was stabbed in the side and had his arm broken, a display in punishment for refusing to use his shirt to mop up his spilled blood. And lo, by only 2 degrees of separation, I knew a young woman who was decapitated while sleeping in a tent in a crime of jealous rage. It's nothing incredible or farfetched, it's indicative of our natures if left unnourished and unchecked while teamed with envious and fragile souls. Weapon assaults and even horrendous murders are not rumors. It's all happening in my city.
Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun and games.
