"I have always been this good, you were just laughin' too hard to listen." - Childish Gambino, Difference
I've been joking with increasing frequency about how I'm becoming an Old. I'm not really serious but the grown up moments happen more and more often. Tiffany helped me select my benefits package this week. Felicia, who I've been friends with since junior high school, asked for confirmation on the date of the wedding and then remarked about how adult it was that we were discussing that. Going out on Friday nights are to be noted. I catch myself often talking about how things used to be.
I'm okay with this. I don't mind being grown folks. I've never feared growing older. I am afraid of death, though. Well, that's not true. I fear missing out. I fear not getting the chance to do everything I want to do in this life. Mallory on Amazing Race tonight said something that resonated for me, it was one of several signposts this week but she crystallized it. She said (and I'm paraphrasing), "My dad has always taught me that you've got to go after what you want in this life. To the fullest. Live your life like it's a race."
Yes. That. So, even though I'm not the hippest dude at the show anymore, I'm still going for mine. I'm still trying to live every day deliberately. Life doesn't happen to me. I happen to it.
Even if I am wearing "dress shoes" and sports coats more often these days.
Even if I find myself discussing what looks deceptively like those corny American Dream type things (the house, the wife, the two and a half...dogs) more often.
Even if a Saturday night out ends well before midnight.
Even if one day I will die.
Today, I'm grown folks and I'm alive. And I'm confident the world knows it.
[E]ven if the point of “A Strange Arrangement” is to prove that the instant-everything generation appreciates standards, chivalry and romance, the easiest way to get Hawthorne’s fork jabbing in the air is to suggest that his music is retro. “I hate it when people say, Let’s take it back to the good old days,” he said. “Screw that. Smokey Robinson wasn’t saying that when he was making his songs. Run-DMC wasn’t trying to take it back. They were trying to do something new and different, something exciting. I don’t want kids listening to my music thinking it’s for their parents. I want them to feel it’s theirs. I wasn’t even alive when all those soul records were made.” Hawthorne argues that his drums, for instance, have a modern, beefy sound — “J Dilla drums,” he said, referring to a hip-hop hero. But unlike in hip-hop tracks, they’re not the focal point. It’s the tunefulness and the romantic lyrics that are the reasons a few of his fans have walked down the aisle to his song “Shiny and New."
Why? Because, while the title asks "Can a Nerd Have Soul?", the writer never makes plain what he seems to mean by nerd. I take it by what he focuses on that he means someone who obsesses about something that most "normal" people wouldn't. In this case, it's young, predominantly white guys who love 60s era race records. Black music. Soul. Nerd feels like the wrong word. He touches on what I think is really going on here, a generation who has grown up with hip-hop—a genre who celebrates old Soul and Funk records by sampling and remaking them—is now looking to go deeper.
I've talked over the years about enjoying music and artists that have grown up as I have but what's also true is our ears mature too. Well made, well performed music that celebrates or laments universal themes like love and family and friendship or maybe tackles the social and political issues of the day will always stand the test of time.
That's not nerdy, that's real.
Even Jay-Z knows that.
We're all getting our grown man on.
Let's go!
