Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #360
Guest Post by My Godson's Father + "Intro" by Kanye West - 01/20/22
Five days from the end of the promised year of daily posts.
And today we have a very special guest post from my Godson’s Father!
If you’ve been following along with the Shuffle, my relationship with him, and their family, has come up a number of times throughout the year like here and also his personal work as a hospitalist doctor here in LA like here.
I’m calling him My Godson’s Father not just to protect his SEO search for patients and future jobs, but also because it’s fun to give context to the narrative :)
Though he may be a doctor now I’ve always thought of him as one of the best creative writers I know.
He was also a Religion major in college before Spirituality came back in style.
So his shuffled-to-song feels especially apropos ;)
OK, take it away, My Godson’s Father!
“Oh Lord I Want You to Help Me” by Umoja Community Choir
To me a playlist is like a box of matches and shuffling a playlist juices the odds that any given match has a better shot of lighting when it strikes. If I don’t choose the song, my brain doesn’t get to whirring away and pre-loading the song with expectations and associations. I like that letting songs ambush me gives them a fighting chance to spark a visceral, emotional response.
There’s a similar loss of control and potential for surprise for me in scrolling through twitter every once in a while: I start with no idea what’s happening in a specific conversation or the internet-at-large of the moment, then grasp onto various threads and pull together enough contexts and perspectives until a joke or idea sticks. Which is how I came across the song that popped up first on my shuffle this morning when I headed out for a run.
Which is to say I only vaguely understood the context here, but I’ll try to explain it briefly: The milk crate challenge of August 2021 burned its way through social media platforms starting with a video of black men attempting to climb then descend a pyramid of milk crates, without aid of rope or pulley (Honnold could never).
Virality ensued, the form spreading, as is often the case, from predominantly black online spaces and conversations almost instantaneously out into the appropriating world at large until dozens? hundreds? thousands? of people, of all races, genders and ages were posting videos of themselves risking limb if not life for some likes. City health deparments and even the FDA waded in to warn people that this was officially dumb. Tik tok banned and removed all milk crate videos as if they had inadvertently platformed the VHS tape from The Ring.
The peak of my own amusement with the milk crate affair was encapsulated in a clip posted of Dakota Fanning wobbling gamely into the viral frenzy just as it imploded:
My immediate thoughts were “she looks like a high fracture-risk”, and that the song in the clip and as a whole really goes:
It’s a perfect score to undercut the spectacle of a celebrity attention-grabbing on a street populated by celebrity impersonators on normally, ostensibly as an extension of the Kimmel show set (assuming they produced the “moment”? I don’t care enough to look it up). It works as a literal soundtrack for Dakota on her journey to the heavens. It works as the soundtrack of an internet onlooker both winding up with laughter while being implicated in the masochistic foolishness brought on by “internet culture”. And it seemingly works as a specifically African-American gospel counterpoint, asking God for help while watching a group of insiders’ cultural foolishness snowballing out into outsiders’ foolishness without any invitation at all (though this point is only conjecture by me).
For me at the time, the whole thing also encapsulated parallel threads in the pandemic at large in August 2021. There was the obvious parallel between a virus putting bodies in hospitals and a viral meme doing the same. The racial dynamics aligned to a point as well. White people, disproportionately less affected by the virus and with disproportionately high vaccine rates and even more disproportionately high vaccine access, were nevertheless griping at disproportionately high rates about any seeming sacrifice for the common good. They were disproportionately leading the charge to take off masks contra mandates, and dismissing vaccines contra evidence. They had a world of choices at their disposal and they were choosing the dumbest red pills they could find. Horse paste, milk crates, the dumber the better.
“Oh lord I want you to help me,” I said, and he sent me this song.
So I put it on my running mix. The funk is undeniable, the soloists nasal rasp lifts a lot of heavy emotion out of the song. It’s an excellent cover of a traditional song that seems to have no well-documented origins on cursory internet search. There’s a cover by Taraji P Henson in a movie a few years ago, too, but I probably heard it for the first time in the mid-2000s. I was a teacher then working in a Catholic school in central Harlem. My office was a two-sided cubicle jammed in the hallway between the 7th grade classroom and the door to the church itself. So my office soundtrack was a lot of early teen squabbling or, on luckier days, choir practice.
The school choir was a big deal. Kids got out of class to practice. They auditioned for solos at Friday services, special assemblies, holidays and graduations. Emotions around these auditions were high, and the pride in getting to show out in front of an audience was intense.
The group performed a traditional repertoire of songs like “Oh lord…”, but they sprinkled in contemporary hits. Two mainstays were R Kelly’s seemingly unimpeachable pop-spiritual classics, “I Believe I Can Fly” and “The World’s Greatest.”
“I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly
“The World’s Greatest” by R. Kelly
It wasn’t lost on me or really anyone–except maybe the elderly church leaders–that there were grievous, active charges against the man even then. But the association somehow wasn’t yet heavy enough to drag his songs all the way down in the eyes of an otherwise buttoned-up school/church community. Whatever frayed thread of plausible deniability was out there, everyone was holding on.
Kids seemed aware of the scandals but mostly talked about I Believe I Can Fly’s association with Space Jam if anything. I kind of felt like the cheesy commercialism and ubiquity of the songs worked in some ways, adding another duality to their earnest performance. I remember R Kelly at the time would talk about how he was “the King of Saturday night and Sunday morning”, probably as a way to excuse himself to himself, but also as a way to say that the duality pushed the soul of his music even higher–an old trope in soul music to be sure. And the way past sold-out commercialism of “I Believe” generated a similar emotional friction for me hearing somebody sing it right in front of me as if it was their own.
One kid in particular crushed it to my memory. He was 13 but probably had 50 lbs on me already and was generally very, very quiet. He’d kind of whisper confidences to me once in a while when the hallway of my office was empty, but he mostly acted as an observer on the playground and in his 8th grade classroom. Only a few times do I remember seeing him really upset or show much emotion at all. When he was singing in rehearsal, though, it blew through the walls, and when time for a performance came, he brought the church down. Dammit if he didn’t really believe he could fly. From the pews in the back, it seemed like it might just be enough to redeem R. Kelly and his music in that moment–even if it really, really shouldn’t have at the time and it definitely, absolutely doesn’t feel that way now. We made it to the top of those milk crates–he took us there–but we didn’t make it down.
Aw, man, thank you so much!
My mind is aflutter with associations sparked by your post.
But first of all, I don’t really say this enough, but thank you for your service.
Too often when we’re Razor scooting or kicking soccer balls with your son, or eating home-cooked meals and listening to music with and made by your partner, or the dozens of other fun things we do together, I forget that you’re not just my good friend from childhood but also a great doctor working in a hospital in the second biggest city in the country during a pandemic.
We do talk about it at times but you always remain buoyant, modeling positivity for your son and family and community.
I had never heard your shuffled-to-song before but I loved it and I have to admit now to the readers that a lot of the music on my Liked Songs playlist comes from your Spotify playlists.
So thank you for that, too.
I believe my song today seems to be a special synchronicity too.
And once again this is exactly the song shuffled-to.
No lie ;)
“Intro” by Kanye West
It’s the intro and first song on Kanye West’s first album College Dropout, which is 20 seconds long or so and features vocals done by DeRay Davis, who is impersonating comedian Bernie Mac as a school administrator, saying simply:
Kanye, can I talk to you for a minute?
Me and the other faculty members was wondering could you do a lil' som
Something beautiful
Something that the kids is goin love when they hear it
Thats goin' make them start jumping up and down and sharing candy an' stuff
Think you could probably do something for the kids for graduation to sing?
LOL.
The resonances between the intro about doing ‘something beautiful that the kids is going love’ at a school and the story you shared of working at a Catholic school in Harlem when we lived together in an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn are clear and strong and almost don’t need further explication.
That said, Kanye now is a bit like R. Kelly then.
His spiritually-tinged songs are now the ones that Gospel Choirs are incorporating into their traditional ones.
And his ego of course has seemingly committed some errors, not quite egregious as R. Kelly’s, but enough to have made him not quite unassailable as he seemed to be when we both first listened to him in 2005 when this first album of his came out.
And whom I would write my first published piece in The New Yorker about and who we would both go see in LA together during The Life of Pablo tour as he was having his own manic episode / spiritual awakening then marital troubles before I had my own which you helped me with both as a friend and as a medical doctor and as someone who understood religion and spirituality.
I guess this is where I might push back on your post for a moment.
To say, like I did on Christopher Von Roy’s podcast, from studying Lewis Hyde and David Markson and many others, that, I believe:
That all art comes from spirit and the divine.
Yes, the person or the ego is involved.
But it’s a non-dual both/and.
All egos make mistakes, large or small.
Some so seemingly large like R. Kelly’s that as you seem to imply they are irredeemable:
“It seemed like it might just be enough to redeem R. Kelly and his music in that moment–even if it really, really shouldn’t have at the time and it definitely, absolutely doesn’t feel that way now.”
But I believe like some Catholics and many other spiritual people that ultimately we are all redeemed, even the worst of us, and not even for good works like art.
Then again I’m only a Godparent, not a Biological Parent, so maybe I don’t fully understand the ‘absoluteness’ of certain crimes like the ones R. Kelly committed and of course the similar ones that some of the Catholic Church members committed.
I will also add that, though I don’t make promises or vows anymore, ever since the divorce and those marital promises and vows were seemingly nullified/canceled…
I will say that if I did make a promise or a vow, one of the first ones would be to promise or vow to continue to honor the responsibilities you’ve given to me as the Godparent of your son to help and guide and nurture him.
Because I do believe within the paradox that the world is both an imperfect and perfect place, and we are all ultimately redeemed for any decisions or behavior here, we still non-dually have the responsibility to make the ‘right’ decisions and behavior.
Your partner and you and I have a text thread and she mentioned that your son had heard about the Shuffle and requested “a shuffle post written for kids to help them understand what music means to people and why it is so powerful.”
I don’t think mentions of R. Kelly and the Catholic Church and hints of their pedophilia is it.
LOL.
At least not for a number of years.
But let’s get back to the entreaty of:
could you do a lil' …Something beautiful…Something that the kids is goin love when they hear it…Thats goin' make them start jumping up and down and sharing candy an' stuff
It’s ‘unsaid’ in your post probably because you are a better creative writer who shows and doesn’t tell.
And yet I do believe in the 21st-century simplification of the writing of the Internet and memes and the both/and of showing but also telling.
So I’ll say that you explained many of the reasons music ‘means so much to people and why it’s so powerful.’
That 13-year-old boy.
So shy and withholding of himself.
Yet able to express his true limitless Self through music.
And the Gospel song you added to your playlist while you run.
It helps you cathartically get through almost two years now of working in a hospital for a community too often doing perhaps the non-dual ‘wrong’ things during a pandemic.
So you don’t bring that stress home to your family and friends and stay present in the midst of the work itself.
And, with humblebragging modesty, I’ll say, perhaps the power of the Shuffle Synchronicity, ‘my’ work this past year, how the shuffled-to-song is reminding you that the ‘Lord’ is always there to ‘help you’, my friend, or however you want to define that Higher Power or what you need on your path.
I re-listened to R. Kelly’s “The World’s Greatest” a number of times on repeat.
And I thought of you and me and your son and your partner and your mom and my mom and now in the edit of my dad and your dad and how they were friends at the end of his life and then other friends and people who read this Substack and R. Kelly and Kanye and a woman in a park who told me yesterday to talk to someone I haven’t talked to in a while which prompted me to call my mom and work on resolving our issue about boundaries and finances, and I’m clearly getting sentimental again, as I’m wont to do, especially after a therapy session, this morning, in which I talked about how yesterday as I wrote a text to the Comedy GoGo Dance Teacher letting her know that even though I enjoyed our two dates and was thankful to be introduced to Ecstatic Dance through her, I thought we should just be friends, and she wrote back that that was how she felt, too, and that she has been dating other people during the last two weeks and might have found one she particularly likes, which is great, and just at that moment, my now-ex-wife texted me, the first time she’s initiated a text I believe since we stopped talking in August after the divorce went through and I had the Esalen discovery of my ‘true Enneagram 7 type’ and the glory of my sister’s wedding and the healing with mom afterward in that quasi-manic/more-awakeneded state but how I impulsively invited my now-ex-wife to that wedding last minute and she got upset and that it made her stop talking to me, and I realize I’ve reverted back to the long sentence style of writing, but let me just add that yesterday when she texted me, she asked:
And there’s something to add that my Numerology is an 11 and how part of me wonders if she is going through a pivotal moment with the person she’s dating now though I haven’t heard that they are still dating or anything about it really but still can’t help but wonder that they might become engaged.
But mostly I’ll say I’m aware that posting the texts is perhaps an egoic error, maybe small, maybe the same size as some of Kanye’s, but perhaps larger, if not as large as R. Kelly’s.
Yet, there’s more to the story.
Because I shuffled right after that interaction.
And got:
“Searching For My Love” by Bobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces
Which came up before in the Shuffle in post 81, which was the first post where I actually used a dating app, while hanging out with a friend and drinking (I think the last time), and we talked to people on my dating app together.
And I did not just talk to someone on a dating app.
But I set up a date with someone.
And then went on a date with that someone.
My first one post-separation.
And I wrote in that post about how the lyrics to the song when I first heard it at this friend’s house come upon her shuffle, I thought it was about searching for a new love, and was a sign of dating apps being good.
But that it’s actually much more complex:
Searchin', searchin' for my baby, yes I am
Searchin', searchin' for my baby, yes I amSearchin', searchin' for my baby
I'm searchin', searchin' for my love
I'm searchin' for the one I adore
If I find her you know I will
I'll never, never let her go no, no, no, no
No, no, no, no
I'll never, never let her go, now, babyI love you, I need you
I need you by my side
For my love, for my true love
I'll never, never never hide, now, baby, no, no, no, no
No, no, no, no
I'll never, never never hide, no noI wonder I wonder why
You had to leave me this way
I'm sorry, darling that I made you cry
Forgive me, love, for the things I've done to you
Come along, come along
Come along, give me one more trySearchin', baby
I'm searchin', searchin' for my love
I'm searchin' for the one I adore
And if I find her
I'll never, never let her go, no no
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
I'll never, never let her go
How Bobby Moore’s song is about how he is both ‘searching for’ love but also missing someone who 'had to leave me this way.’
And how he’s asking to be ‘forgiven’ and for ‘one more try’.
And that he vows if he does ‘find’ seemingly both her and/or new love(?) (which I guess could be both in the same thing) he will ‘never, never let her go, no no’.
Which made me remember that while I was driving the Comedy GoGo Dance Teacher home from Ecstatic Dance in relatively ecstatic quiet compared to our more argumentative egoic drive there, this song came on:
“Never Let Go” by Tom Waits
Which was the song I happened to send to my now-ex-wife in August during that manic/awakened post-Esalen/sister wedding/mom-healing-time which made her stop talking to me because it upset her.
With its lyrics:
Well, ring the bell backwards, and bury the axe
Fall down on your knees in the dirt
I'm tied to the mast between water and wind
Believe me, you'll never get hurt
Now the ring's in the pawnshop
The rain's in the hole, down at the Five Points I stand
I'll lose everything, but I won't let go of your hand
Now Peter denied and Judas betrayed
I'll pay with the roll of the drum
The wind will tell the turn from the wheel
And the watchman is making his rounds
Well, you leave me hanging by the skin of my teeth
I've only got one leg to stand
You can send me to hell
But I'll never let go of your hand
Swing from a rope on a cross-legged tree
Signed with the one-eyed jack's blood
From Temple and Union to Weyley and Grand
Walking back home in the mud
I must make my best of the only way home
Marley deals only in stones
I'm lost on the midway, I'm reckless in your eyes
Just give me a couple more throws
I'll dare you to dine with the cross-legged knights
Dare me to jump and I will
I'll fall from your grace
But I'll never let go of your hand
I'll never let go of your hand
Which I felt was Tom Waits saying seemingly to risk your life to realize a vision of the life you envisioned with the woman you love.
And the story continues a bit more.
Because last night, I went to davecowen.com, which has frustrated me because it was bought by someone else and mysteriously has this as the only page:
For the first time, I did some digging and discovered who owns it and for how much longer.
And the date the website is owned until happens to be my now-ex-wife’s birthday in 2030.
Just then, I looked at the clock on my computer and guess what time it was, again, no joke, no lie:
I had the impulse to text her.
And I almost resisted it.
But at the last second, I did.
Aries.
Just to say:
And she hasn’t responded.
LOL.
Yet I read on Wikipedia that Bobby Moore died of kidney failure like my Dad sort of did if he didn’t finish the job with the suicide instead.
And that Moore’s son took over for him in the band and still tours.
The last line of the entry is that:
The Rhythm Aces are booked by Nashville based Crescent Moon Entertainment.
And I think of my associations of her as the moon.
And crescents versus new and full moons.
What is the order?
Do crescents become new or full?
Full.
And what does that mean?
So I wonder again about promises and vows, and if I should keep my wedding vows to my now-ex-wife.
Despite the seeming insanity and self-defeating aspects of that.
And thus also go back to keeping or making promises and vows.
Like promising and vowing to help and guide and nurture my friend’s son, which I’ve implicitly done but never actually literally done in a formal ceremony like Godparents traditionally have done.
And I’m listening to R. Kelly’s “The World’s Greatest” again:
I am a vision
And I can see clearlyI'm that little bit of hope
When my back's against the ropes
I can feel it, hmm
I'm the world's greatest
And I have probably dumbly hoisted myself again on a bunch of milk crates as I write this, and will inevitably tumble down, not just from the ‘honesty’ of this post and all the others, but with the egoic ‘errors’, whether those be large or small, of disclosing things like text messages and personal info about people who are not ‘myself’ yet are in relation with me, and of course the copyrighted lyrics, despite all of it being freely available on the Internet, post-plagiarism is the future is now, and how Bobby Moore sang, For my love, for my true love I'll never, never never hide, and so I can’t hide myself or Self and not live out my creative philosophy, no matter how avant-garde it appears, or as Lewis Hyde said about Walt Whitman, a likely 7, vis-a-vis Emerson, his forefather and likely a 1, ‘Each point…was unanswerable,’ he wrote in his memoir of their talk, ‘no judge’s charge ever more complete and convincing.’ Emerson was the greater intellectual and the greater critic. But Whitman was the greater poet, and faithful to his genius. He did not debate the master’s caution, but when Emerson asked in conclusion, ‘What have you to say to such things?’ Whitman replied, ‘Only that while I can’t answer them at all I feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory and exemplify it.’” and of course of claiming this vision of the future I speak of foolishly over and over again and again, yet also continuing to date most likely, that paradox, at best, or hypocrisy, at worst, because I can’t help but believe that all of us, no matter what we do, or have done, or what happens to us, or will, are all “The World’s Greatest” and will all non-dually both tumble down and make it to the top…
Okay, that was going to be the three hundred and sixtieth Synchronicities.
But lastly, a bit of meta-commentary arrose for those still reading/interested…
My Godson’s Father and I texted after we finished the collaboration and here’s the transcript:
I shuffled one last time to close out and got:
“Just a Little While to Stay Here” by Jack Brass Band
Which is a jazz standard that is often improvised for New Orleans-style jazz funerals, which made me think of how I used to play in jazz bands with this friend, for those still reading he said we can call him Al now, and how we’re still improvising like jazz musicians, writing all of this in one day, separately yet together, and how my dad has passed, and his is likely to at some point, too, and all the people that have died at my friend’s hospital and in the country and the world of covid and not, like all of us will, and how all of us have “just a little while to stay here”.
I hope you readers are enjoying your time in your life and thanks for spending some of it reading this Substack and its ‘too long for email’ length post today.
Okay, now that’s the three hundred and sixtieth Shuffle Synchronicities.