: lower black pain.

Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House
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Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate. lowerblackpain.substack.com

  1. 22h ago

    Picture Day.

    [1 - 8x10] My most consistent historical visual record was compiled through time capsules delivered in paper envelopes with cellophane windows: my annual school photo. The Mondrian-like layout of large, medium and impractically small shots were all on one page, which (because I did not grow up in a fancy X-Acto knife house) we could never quite cut out perfectly. The assortment was designed to satisfy relative demand, or more specifically, the demands of relatives: one BIG one for the grandparents, a couple of decent sized portraits for parents (one for home and one for an office), several to share with interested parties (say aunts and uncles or very close family friends), and then teensy ones to pass out among classmates. There were always some left over, as the individual social popularity of each and every student could not, scientifically, match the (too) generous image supply. The most one could hope is to watch your grandparents place this year’s photo in front of last year’s in the frame that they kept on the mantlepiece, so you could get a “Wow, you’re growing up so fast!” affirmation before they close the weary metal latch on the back that bows a bit more each year against the expanding stack of glossy prints. [2 - 5x7] Picture day was always exciting, but a bit stressful. Whatever you looked like on that day would be what you would look like in the yearbook, which means you’d look that way forever, so there were lots of combs about. The photo sessions were always scheduled before lunch and recess, the two periods most likely to muss and stain us. As we stood in line patiently waiting our turn, we could watch the folks alphabetically before us being coached by staff as they moved us steadily along their assembly line. Although we weren’t Catholic, my mother enrolled me in a grade school that was - in addition, they had just opened their doors to admit young men as well as women, and initiated a program to support more financially challenged families. As a result, I was in the first class with African-American students. The nuns and other teachers worked hard to include us evenly, but after our first picture day it was discovered that the photographer had not adjusted their cameras for our skin tone and we all came out as shadows - so they scheduled a secret second day and had us all re-take our shots. After that first year, things went fine. [4 - 3x5] My forehead is the most prominent thing in my school photos. I grew up, sure, and my body changed its size over the years, but my forehead is a clearly established constant, maintaining the exact ratio through all my developmental stages. My smile is the most consistent thing in my school photos. It was my honest reaction to the command from an adult stranger to “smile”. I couldn’t re-create it now; back then, I didn’t need anything to smile about, whereas today I require pretty significant reasons. My hair is the most unpredictable thing in my school photos. It’s not great. It is on my head, but seems surprised from year to year, as if it didn’t know this was happening TODAY and would have done something completely different had it been properly warned. My clothing is the most odd thing in my school photos, because for grade school we had blue uniforms, but in high school I had no idea how to put clothes together and ended up wearing outfits that made me look like a hillbilly in a Broadway musical. [6 - wallet size] kids today have cameras in their pockets all the time to them, time is not merely captured, but fully domesticated but those photos, endless and instantaneous, prove wholly ephemeral whereas we curated tiny analog galleries, compiled through decades priceless moments of light and time reflected stored in wicker boxes behind the couch - as fragile and steadfast as paper Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    Picture Day.

  2. Aug 20

    Cheese. Cake.

    We used to have framed photos on the walls of our apartment: * there we were, on a rollercoaster. * there we were, wearing cowboy hats at night, illuminated by an endless garden of neon lights. * there we were, smiling beneath a windmill. After a time (measured in decades) these treasured memories began to overtake their allotted space. They dominated their canvas rather than artistically augmenting it - each picture was 1000 words, but together they formed a massive novel. We even tried that HGTV thing with a dedicated “wall of frames”, but it made us a little claustrophobic. So, when we moved into a new apartment where we had a bit more space, we ended up putting very little on the walls. This proved a wise strategy during COVID, where the unintended mockery of being surrounded by images of ourselves out in the world having fun with the sky and the fresh air and the wide open spaces would have driven us stark raving mad. Thus many of our physical photos, even the fancy framed ones, are still in storage. Ironically, for the past seven years we have only seen them on the AppleTV screen saver, in the background of photos of us in our old apartment. A few weeks ago I delved into the wicker IKEA box containing the majority of our printed photos. The box is not organized, and holds photos from both my wife and I: grade school, high school, college, even family photos of our parents, their parents, and a few of our great grandparents. Our aim was to digitize the lot, but given that we’ve (so far) seen six different formats of magnetic and optical storage, each making the former obsolete, this wicker box remains the most stable archival option. It’s fun to find a picture of us drinking out of a glowing fishbowl at a Star Trek themed restaurant, then a print of Zoe’s formally dressed, sepia-toned and serious-as-all-get-out great grandparents. Though admittedly there doesn’t seem to be a clear theme to the collection, I discovered that in both of our families (and perhaps in every American household) there are two photographs that everyone seems to take. The first is the specific look prompted by the word “CHEESE!”. It is not exactly smiling, it’s kind of a…grimace, I guess. As a little kid we all would say it and then kind of laugh, because the sound of any group of people saying “cheese” is a little bit funny, and usually that flash of amusement was the moment caught on camera. Everyone (past the era of the sepia portrait) has a CHEESE photo. The second photo that everyone takes was a bit of a surprise. In our collection, I found pictures of my grandfather, my mom, myself, my wife, and my daughter doing the exact same thing: blowing out candles on a birthday cake. There we all are, from four different eras: leaning forward, somehow smiling while our cheeks are fully puffed. I happen to know that the photos with my grandfather, my mom, and myself share the same pound cake recipe, with handmade icing, created by my Grandmother. It was “The Birthday Cake”; so solid a tradition that when I was in college my mother would bake one, freeze it solid, and send it to me at school. My roommates laughed until they tasted it, then fought over the last slice, and sought me out the next year for another one. It’s a good cake, one of the “top five things made of wheat that I miss now that I’m decidedly celiac”, along with Twizzlers™ and Guinness™. I also know that the traditional “Happy Birthday” song was sung in all the photos. (We don’t add anything on the end, like “Are you one? Are you two?” because the answer is right there in front of you, blazing away…it isn’t really a “pop quiz” worthy challenge.) And no milk was drunk with the cake, because we’re all allergic. People have been blowing out birthday candles for centuries (thanks Artemis), though I cannot imagine the ancient Greeks creating quick charcoal sketches of the moment. But I do find the ritual soothing. Our household is heading into “birthday season”: in somewhat of a row we have my wife’s birthday, then my daughter and mom (a few days apart), and then my own. Three of us are hitting “signifiant milestones”, this year, so we’re a bit more sentimental than usual, insuring that even more birthday photos will be taken. So I am going to put the family birthday cake snapshots in a frame, side-by-side, and hang them on a wall somewhere. Home photography seems a pretty stable hobby, and this tradition seems pretty culturally ingrained - so no matter how the world changes, there’s a pretty good chance that my great-great-great-great granddaughter could build herself a delightfully whimsical photo wall. Y’know, if walls are still a thing. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 13

    Prints.

    Thanks, Technology. We appreciate the assists when we start our car with a button instead of a key, or warm something up in the microwave (unless it’s frozen and then we have to do that thing with the spoon where we wait for the glacier in the center to thaw just enough that we can use a tablespoon to break it apart like a polar ice shelf of marinara and then hope the blazing hot moat on the outside helps to melt the now free floating boulders of sauce), or use a remote control for our tv (after we use the app on our smartphone to find it). Making difficult tasks easier is technology’s bailiwick. But technology rarely makes great things better. Delicious food does not become more delicious, hilarious jokes are not funnier, clothing is no more impressive (except for Velcro™, which is an unqualified miracle). Technology nearly always delivers less expensive and more efficient options, but the old adage remains - although every product and service wants to be GOOD, FAST, and CHEAP, they can only offer two of those at a time. I thought that a photograph was the perfect repository for a memory - a physical object that captured a moment and held it gently for future reflection. But when I looked at many of the photos in our storage box I didn’t immediately remember any detail of the scenes within. Look, there’s a park. Oooh, a hotel. Wow, I’m young…that’s neat… look at all that hair. Stack and stacks of pieces of glossy paper with random images on them - precious only to me because for some reason that scene was important enough to spend a frame of actual film to capture, and then take that film somewhere for processing and wait a number of days to retrieve the prints. That’s effort. The best of these pictures hold not only time, but emotion. It’s not a picture of something I DID, but a way that I felt. Look, there’s that park where I won the three-legged-race on Field Day in third grade and that red-headed girl smiled at me and said congratulations. Oooh, that’s the famous hotel that rock and roll people stayed at that has the guitar shop where I finally found my mandolin. Wow, I really DID have a lot of hair. And now, the emotions I felt back then resonate with the emotions the photo currently evokes. Look, I admit that I could use more exercise. Oooh, I’ve gotta dig my mandolin out of the closet and play more. Wow, I should buy more hats. In the world of music, as the fidelity got higher, the physical music got farther away. Records could be played with a needle and a paper cone, but they were heavy and fragile. Then came cassette tapes: lighter and much more clear, but dependent on electronic magnets (and we couldn’t just listen to any song we wanted without fast forwarding). Then CDs - even lighter and clearer, but we couldn’t hear our music without computers and a laser. And now we can hear any song ever recorded instantly with NO WEIGHT AT ALL and PERFECT SOUND, but there’s nothing at all to touch and our access depends on corporate satellites in space. Our photographs have followed suit - housed in a digital repository so admittedly out of our grasp that it’s actually called “the cloud”; instantly sharable but ethereal, dependent on machines we sort of understand and subscription agreements and data farms and a billion dollars of miracles that are out of our control. Or you could print your pictures and put them in a wicker IKEA box. But then you have to buy paper and ink which is expensive and they take up so much space… I hear ya. Sorting through these I feel a bit like I should follow Marie Kondo’s advice and throw away any picture that does not “spark joy”. But they all kind of do spark joy: even the one’s I don’t fully remember hold some kind of feeling, just for me. Anyway, these were never images to really show off to anyone: at the time they were taken, each photo was destined to be seen only by whoever I showed it to, and to be honest, I’ve never known that many people. And it’s not like these are pristine high resolution snapshots of amazing salads I’ve eaten that I’d share online anyway. Who else would ever be interested in that adobe village of cardboard and plaster that I made as a book report? Who cares that I played Algernon in “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 10th grade, complete with a mustache and (very sketchy) British accent? Just me. Life was a little slower, but things were pretty good. Look! Oooh! Wow! Book Report. Algernon & Merriman & Jack Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    Prints.

  4. Aug 6

    Kodachrome.

    I was looking for a photograph yesterday, from a while ago - of my wife and a friend out in front of a convenience store at night riding one of those giant toy animals that moves when you put in a quarter. It was winter and my wife was wearing bright purple leggings and our friend was wearing bright green leggings. They were laughing. I looked through our pictures and I couldn’t find it. I searched by location, then for “bright green leggings”, and nothing came up. I began to look through all of them, year by year. Still nothing. “What’cha doin?” my wife asked. “I’m trying to find that picture where…” I described the moment. She remembered it. “Oh, yeah. That’s a picture.” Pause. “Yeah.” I replied. Pause. “It’s a PICTURE.” she said. There was a pause here as well, augmented by my puzzled squint. Confused, I indicated the computer before me with a cautious wave of my hand. “It’s… not in here.” I told her, with a timid Vanna White flourish. “No, it’s with the pictures.” she said, turning to leave the room, then calling back from the hallway, “…the ACTUAL pictures. It was before all that.” We see our digital photos all the time. Our Apple TV™ uses our digital photo library as a dynamic screen saver, the AI displaying warm memories, important milestones, and what we each consider an unnecessarily mean-spirited gallery of our least attractive shots, more ghastly in the clarity of 4K. Over the last 20 years we have amassed over one hundred thousand digital images, so we attempted to weed the undesirables out, but the thing has a mind of its own. Our ACTUAL pictures are in a wicker IKEA cube behind the couch, gathered in envelopes, a metal box, file folders, and a lot of rubber banded bunches. They are in no way databased. If I were to ask the box to find pictures of me wearing a scarf, the box would, in its own silent and entirely imperceptible way, openly mock me. To sort through the pictures in the box, you have to touch them with your hands and point them toward your face. My daughter watched me do this, without comment. She is familiar with the box of pictures, as well as the legacy photo albums beneath the sofa; the shadows of four generations, which together represent a comprehensive slideshow of her DNA composition. She has scanned a few images for class projects (“these are my great grandparents…”) but it’s been a minute since we’ve taken her through any of the old-timey stories. She kept a careful distance. Physical photographs are wonderful. They don’t move. You can look at them in true detail because they meet you halfway. But for all they represent in clarity, they often lack context, becoming memories we don’t remember. Digital images give us hints as to their stories - offering day, time, and location, as well as thumbnails of all the photos taken immediately before and after to further jog the memory. Paper photos have none of that. My grandmother used ballpoint pens to add “metadata” directly to her photos - sometimes right on the front. When she didn’t actually remember who was in the picture or when it was taken, she made it up. It didn’t matter, she said: no one else was going to remember any better than she could: and in the future, her BIC-pen-scribbled shoddy research would transform to historical fact. Our IKEA Collection is curated, pieces of paper that have survived 12 apartments and four to five decades, a box filled with pictures of far-distant relatives, former associates, and familiar strangers. These images are interesting, but their stories hold emotion, incident, tales cautionary and fantastic, milestones, victories, and experience. And sometimes, just a feeling. And to capture all of that, you need yourself a BIC™ pen. This column is my pen, as it is, at its core, all about history. But everyone knows that books are better with pictures, so I pulled a few pictures out to write down their stories, pass on their context and significance as best I can. (Hopefully I’ll be more accurate than my Grandmother was.) And I did find the photo I was so desperately looking for. Upon seeing it again, I could not recall exactly where or when it was taken, or what was happening before or after the moment captured - but still, it made me smile. I realized that the details of the situation are not why I treasure it. Actually, it’s the colors I remember. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    Kodachrome.

  5. Jul 30

    SRS 26 | Summer: (un)Wind

    The nice folks at the American Association of Retired People sent me a brochure about five years ago, which I tossed in the recycling, unopened, chuckling to myself at the blatant inaccuracy of their mailing list. Three years ago I got a large envelope from them in the mail, promising the gift of a roomy insulated travel tote upon the return of their membership postcard. I clucked my tongue as I tossed it in the recycling, bemoaning the waste of paper, ink, and jet fuel necessary to deliver their message to the wrong address. But this year, when the AARP invitation inevitably arrives, I will answer. I will answer “yes”. Yes, please send me the travel tote, and I’ll take the quarterly news mailer and subscribe to the helpful bi-weekly email tips regarding vitamins and annuities and affordable travel adventures. Fine. You got me. You stayed in the same place and I came right to you. You ARE sort of sneaky - just looming there in the future with your discounts and life hacks, as sure of your inevitable relevance as a trusty umbrella, waiting for Spring. I would call it diabolical if it wasn’t just TIME. (Oh, and if you offer an umbrella, I’ll also have one of those.) The Social Security office wrote me this week - reminding me that in two years I could begin to collect payments - but if I waited five years, I would get more money, and if I waited ten years I’d receive even larger payments - albeit with statistically less opportunity to spend it, due to the whole TIME thing again. I have always thought of “retirement” in the same space as “winning the lottery”, a goal where the implied lifestyle was mostly fantasy. Handball, fishing, wine tasting, light carpentry, walking barefoot on a beach with my slacks rolled up. I know a few folks who planned very, very well and are now enjoying the world around them after superior careers in challenging fields - though the world they’ve ended up in isn’t the one they were aiming for. They unknowingly packed warm clothes and optimism for an age of global warming and internet bullying. I never thought retirement would be “stopping” as much as “making a 90 degree turn”. There were rumors of pensions and pretty gold watches. But change moved faster than any career could - buildings I remember seeing constructed were entirely razed, businesses that had thrived for almost a century were casually dissolved, entire industries understood as primary and essential proved wholly unnecessary. So most of us wound up taking those 90 degree turns sooner than we expected, and the future, once a mathematical result of sage calculation, became once again uncertain. But in two years, dependent on the state of democracy, I could receive a payment from the United States government each month, along with a bit of healthcare to stave off the injuries I may incur while playing handball, fishing, or walking barefoot on a beach and mistakenly stepping on a jellyfish. Again, I’m not expecting retirement to mean that I don’t have to work - but that I’ve earned the time to add something other than work to my schedule. I never learned to “take my time”, mostly because (not to be twee) I didn’t really see much time that “belonged to me”. Besides unescapable life function, my every moment was an urgent payment forward, relentlessly thriving or surviving this or that or everything. I’ve given out a great deal of advice over the years, most of it to groups of eager college students or potential entry-level employees. My central theme was to always keep learning. Now, I am going to take my own advice. I have a list of things that I’m going to keep learning. In alphabetical order, they are: * ASL * (the) banjo * bioscience * sleight-of-hand Given that I’m still working everyday, I understand that I will need to make room for these pursuits, so I’m giving up * worrying about things * going out of the house after dark * drinking alcohol (outside of the house (after dark)) * doomscrolling * thinking about doing things rather than immediately doing them and then just being done with it Oh, and I’m going to sing more. I enjoy it, even if two of our cats do not. I mean, Tom Jones, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand, and Paul McCartney are all 84 years old this year. Five of them have released new albums in the last three years, and Tom Jones is out on tour RIGHT NOW. Inspiring. But the grand dame of it all is Shirley Bassey, best known in the US for singing the James Bond theme “Goldfinger”. She is the first Black artist to sing a Bond theme, the first Welsh singer to have a number one hit, and the first female artist to have a song on the UK top 40 charts in seven consecutive decades. She has released over 40 albums, 20 tv specials, and is 89 years old. Dude. I have a ways to go. Maybe I don’t need that tote bag yet. Oh AARP, don’t be mad at me: I really do appreciate that you are there to greet us as our enlightened sherpa to Creakybone Mountain™. But you just sit tight. I’ll be on my way. In a while. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    SRS 26 | Summer: (un)Wind

  6. Jul 23

    SRS '26 | Summer: Madness.

    Last week I purchased an empty bottle of mouthwash. It arrived from eBay very well wrapped and protected with paper and another type of paper in a ziplock bag surrounded by bubble wrap, in a box. It was very inexpensive, mostly because it’s an empty bottle of mouthwash. I am writing a series of short essays about the home my grandparents lived in; they bought the house in 1949 and lived there for over 60 years. I knew the house well because we lived in an duplex at the other end of the block and visited at least once a week, most often on Sundays after church. I only lived in my grandparents’ house for one week, the summer my mom had to leave town for a national teacher’s conference. I was seventeen. My grandmother thought it would be most appropriate for me to sleep in my mother’s old room to experience what it was like for her, sleeping in the 1950’s. All I knew about my mother’s childhood room was that, growing up, she hid Ray Bradbury and Issac Asimov books under her pillow - so during that week, I did the same (I believe it was “I Robot”), - just for authenticity. I had a summer job singing at the amusement park; I had to be at work by 10AM and didn’t get back until about 9PM, so out of respect I got up early each day to get ready and have breakfast with my grandparents every morning. Anyway, I bought an empty bottle of mouthwash last week from eBay. I should say that the bottle is “almost” empty, as it does have a little bit of liquid still in it. I am not a linguist, either professionally or as a focused hobby, but I always believed myself to be familiar with common prefixes and suffixes. For instance, I thought that “sol” referred to the sun in some way. It does as a prefix, but as a suffix, sol refers not to “solar” but “solution”, as in AEROSOL, or the product names Pine-Sol™(pine solution), or Lysol™ (the LY refers to the Greek word “lysis” meaning “to break down or dissolve”), or the curious American mouthwash named “Astring-O-Sol™”(astringent solution?) - created in the 1920’s to compete with the Listerine™ brand. Rather than Listerine’s “Fires of Sterilization” flavor, Astring-O-Sol contained zinc chloride and the oils of myrrh and wintergreen. The gimmick was that Astring-O-Sol was highly concentrated, even somewhat dangerously so: potent enough that just three drops in six ounces of water created an potion powerful enough to deliver fresh breath for a full day. That’s how it could be marketed as a clear value, since its smaller packaging allowed more product to be shipped for less money and a bottle would last longer than its competitors due to the fact it was being emptied by only three drops each day. My grandparent’s bathroom was far more of a time machine than my mother’s old bedroom. The tile was vintage, the sink was tiny and low with a sturdy little faucet, and there were products I had never heard of or seen before in the cabinet behind the mirror: soaps and creams and my grandfather’s depilatory powder (which smelled like rotten eggs) and after shave (which smelled like, well, Grandpa) and a bottle of Astring-O-Sol, which I did sample during that summer week in their house. However, being in a hurry, and as there was not a cup in the bathroom, I did not dilute it, but instead sprinkled three drops directly onto my tongue. Those familiar with the effects of wasabi can extrapolate what happened next - a moment of calm, then curiosity, then complete and total panic where I forced my head as far as it would go into the tiny sink, desperately trying to calculate an angle that might allow a few drops of water to get into my mouth. And yes, the freshness did last all day long. Anyway, they don’t sell that stuff anymore in most stores, so I bought an empty bottle, exactly like the one from that bathroom. When I think about my grandparent’s house, it’s not so much architectural details as the experience of being there, and that moment was one of my clearest (if not exactly fondest) memories. My family watched me unwrap it, which took a while, but did not immediately comment when they saw what it was. “Is that old mouthwash?” my wife finally asked. “Yeah.” I replied. “It’s for research.” I was surprised that my answer was good enough for both of them. I was all ready to impress them with the fact that one just like it is in the Smithsonian. https://www.si.edu/object/astring-o-sol-mouthwash-and-gargle%3Anmah_1218694 Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    SRS '26 | Summer: Madness.

  7. Jul 16

    SRS '26 | Summer: Time. Blues.

    This is my sixtieth summer. I don’t quite have the hang of it yet. I’ve done all the important research: Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were fantastic professors, taught me all about beach culture and how to “hang ten” on a surfboard and sing my summer feelings in groovy song. Admittedly, the majority of their wisdom did not effectively translate to my landlocked Kansas City existence. I eventually made the singing part work as a summer job, but the closest I ever got to surfing was skateboarding and watching Point Break. My mother was a schoolteacher, so that cycle of summer vacation seemed natural to me. In fall, winter, and spring there were books to read, reports to write, pencils to mindlessly chew; but in the summer pressures lifted, and I could relax a little (when I wasn’t mowing grass or working at that singing job). Now, nearly 40 years past any kind of educational cycle, it’s still harder for me to wake up and get out of the house in summer than the rest of the year. Surely I should be be-slippered and pajama-ed in front of a television with a huge bowl of colorful breakfast cereal on my lap, re-charging my gentle system from its three-quarters of a calendar year of diligent toil and focus. But no. I put on actual pants and talk to people, nearly every day. My family is in alignment with my seasonal malaise, which is supported most authentically by my high-school age daughter. She loved the first two weeks of summer vacation, but feels the dew has now evaporated from the lily and craves some kind of challenge. Cleaning her room was her first adventure - the frenzy of studying for finals and creating year-end projects begat a creative tornado, whose aftermath was still clearly evident. But three days, a garbage bag, and a couple of strategic bookcases from IKEA later, that task was completed. Even her phone, whose constant fountain of digital distraction had proven an absolute lifesaver against academic stress, now seems a bit much. She looks at it on-and-off during the day, but it is clearly a condiment without a burger to complement or french fries to enhance. I see her particular near-boredom as the edge of true genius - this is when she might pick up her guitar and learn three chords and explode with a bunch of catchy tunes that rail against injustice, inspiring her generation and beginning our retirement plan. That may not happen. For now she’s making art and cooking and writing and starting to read a few books. Her chief complaint is that summer days are LONG. Even her attempts to sleep halfway through them are futile: the hours keep stretching languidly forward toward lazy late evening sunsets. My wife is a casual athlete and should love the summer months, but for days on end we’ve had sweltering weather where it’s beyond impractical to run outside. And she loves running. Outside. So there is no clearer expression of human dissatisfaction than my wife’s face when forced by aggressive weather to workout inside and online, using those pastel colored little weights that I bought her non-ironically. Observe her frustration. She is the lion given tofu for supper. She is an opera fan at a monster truck rally. Her form is strong, her dedication pure, but her effort is disrespected by the Lilliputian stature of her digital instructors, the prison-cell-floor amount of space we have available in our apartment, and of course the Easter basket color of our weights. She is a mighty warrior, sitting on a folding lawn chair. To make things worse, the blazing sun, cause of this discontent, continually mocks her by shining scornfully into the room, creating arrogant reflections on her iPad screen. She is a Michelin star chef, dining at a Cheesecake Factory. Summer time is different than regular time. It’s slower, somehow - weighted down with the responsibility of making crops grow and evenly tanning and supporting the hot dog industry. There is something tangible that relaxes our pace and ever so slightly lowers our shoulders, letting us breathe a bit easier. I think that’s what bothers us now: the break in our relentless pace. I might eventually be able to run a (quarter) marathon, but if there was a nap break in the middle I don’t know if I’d have the wherewithal to finish it. Summer isn’t synonymous with “vacation” anymore: so if I’m not allowed to fully stop, I might as well just keep on going. But time is an action noun, like river or snowstorm, always in motion. Today will not be tomorrow, now isn’t then, and soon enough there will be piles of homework, cool damp mornings to run in, and the darkness of a subterranean lair to wake up to. Ah. Just gotta make it through summer. Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    SRS '26 | Summer: Time. Blues.

  8. Jul 9

    SRS’26 | Summer: Breeze.

    Hyperthymesia sounds exhausting. It’s exhausting to say, quite honestly. It is the rare ability to accurately remember nearly every day of one’s life in absolute detail - what you wore, ate, saw, said, and did. Every day. Of course there are days that I remember…well, pieces of days. Mostly glimpses: brief sequences - photographs, edits. My memories are clearer and more distinct when associated with an object - a favorite shirt or beloved comic book - but at their strongest when paired with either an odor or sound. I cannot tell you what I was doing 40 years ago today, and there’s probably a photo in our library of what I was doing 25 years ago, but still I do not remember it. But I can tell you, with confidence, exactly what I was doing 54 years ago during the summer of 1972. I was listening to music. The top hits of 1971 lacked... empathy, somehow. And 1973 was too showy - too variety-show-ready. It was 1972 where I absorbed everything that I love about music. Check out a playlist of hits from that year: they are awash with cacophony: rich strings with rhythmic horns with toy pianos with overdubbed harmonies and the occasional cheeky Hammond organ. There is so much MUSIC in this music. And the variety. Lean On Me by Bill Withers, American Pie by Don McLean, Heart Of Gold by Neil Young, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack, The Candy Man by Sammy Davis, Jr, Take It Easy by the Eagles, Song Sung Blue by Neil Diamond, Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations… For me, these songs are visceral. They are hypnotic, time machines, siren song. And I discovered them all through the combination of Kansas City’s stalwart Soul and Adult Contemporary radio stations and a bright orange Radio Shack™ FlavorRadio™. It was amazing - you could hear music in the yard when you were trimming the sides of the grass, or in your room when you were (supposed to be) cleaning it or AT NIGHT when the world was (supposed to be) asleep. And for FREE. Miracle box. Thus listening to music is what I was doing that summer. The story my Mom tells is that as a tiny baby I was much so much soothed by music that she put a radio in my crib with me (at a safe distance). As a single parent, she couldn’t always “sleep when the baby sleeps”, and no one had yet invented the “let the baby piteously cry itself to sleep” strategy, so the radio solved two problems by allowing her to get me to sleep quickly and then use the time to do the dishes and boil the bottles and get a little sleep of her own. However, it did have one down side. R&B, rock and roll, and classical music all made me MORE awake and volatile, resulting in either fretting or dancing about (in a prone little baby position). The key to relaxation was country music. “Oh, come on little baby, now listen to this…” she would say, tuning to Bach or Smokey Robinson - to no avail: I was calmed only by the twang of a steel guitar. Even if she tried to change it after I’d fallen asleep, I would immediately stir with concern. So a few years later, when she discovered a super-affordable plastic radio WITH AN EARPHONE JACK, it seemed that God had heard her those many nights she lay in bed, unintentionally learning every word of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, and had offered her a transistor-powered solace. So I listened to every radio station. I kind of knew there was a Black one and then other ones, but I listened anyway. My favorite songs of 1972 were “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “A Horse With No Name” by America (my favorite horse song until “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey (sp) in 1975)… …and number one - “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts (not to be confused with Sid and Marty Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf fame). I liked this one so much that my mom actually bought me the single. I remember listening to it over and over, watching it spin around and around on the record player, trying to work out the lyrics. Even at that young of an age, I knew that most of these songs were about love, which seemed nice, but was a bit confused when lyrics became poetic and metaphorical. (I actually appreciate that now: the 1972 lyric “makin’ love” would be replaced in today’s music with unmistakably graphic step-by-step instruction.) What confused me most about “Summer Breeze” was its referrals to jasmine, mentioned in the song seven times. I had already been confused by Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” references to “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme”, which the nuns played on the guitar sometimes during chapel at school. I didn’t understand the “Herb / Love” angle, though it did make Thanksgiving more exciting, since that’s the only time I saw all of those at once. But jasmine notwithstanding, I clearly remember standing at the edge of our console record player, staring at the revolving turntable, singing along with both the lyrics and the strangely satisfying notes of the twangy guitar solo. And I did feel fine. Songs of 1972 Get full access to :lowerblackpain at lowerblackpain.substack.com/subscribe

    SRS’26 | Summer: Breeze.
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate. lowerblackpain.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    225
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jd Michaels
  • Show Website
    : lower black pain.