The Two Zeros: The Best Album of 2002 - The Colored Section

"Who are you? - Donnie, People Person

This decade began in earnest for me on January 24th, 2002. On that day, I started a blog. It would eventually be called Negro Please and live for several years but it started simply enough. A work friend had started her own site on diaryland or livejournal or something with the premise that having an easy to use publishing system on the web would get her to write more and, by extension, improve her writing. I thought that was brilliant and so I did the same. I hadn't read blogs to that point. Didn't really know what one was, actually, but I was searching for an outlet and in a format that meant something to me. I was a professional web guy who had done been active online since my college days in the early to mid-nineties, writing on paper with no audience didn't make much sense to me any more so I registered with blogger, it was called Better Left Unsaid, and I wrote "on the first day..."

That single act has influenced just about every aspect of my life since. I only know The Lady because of blogging. Some of the most significant people in my life are only there because of blogging. I wouldn't have the career I have without blogging. Most of the best experiences of the past 10 years I can't imagine having come to fruition without Negro Please and everything that came after.

I also wouldn't be the kind of man I am without the forum that blogging gave me to explore who I am. To examine and give birth to my identity. I spent those early years discussing race, my own blackness and beyond in deep and surprising ways. Surprising to myself because I didn't know how conflicted I was. Even more surprising because I didn't know I wasn't the only one. Those honest and raw moments in which I was emotionally and culturally naked and yelling out from a web browser provided not just an outlet but created connections. I found a community of like minded (and sometimes not) individuals who I could parry and banter with. They became as much a part of my family as those I'd known all my life.

I felt at home. And so, when Donnie opens this inspired soul collection with "Welcome to the colored section. Welcome to the negro leagues..." well, you'll forgive me if I assumed he was talking directly to me.

And while I didn't spend any time talking about this wonderful album, please trust that that is exactly what The Colored Section is. Wonderful. Honest. Joyful in the face of pain.

Looking back on my first couple years blogging, that was me, too. Full of joy as I was able to put to virtual paper a face and form to things that I didn't even know pained me.