SAULT got me in my sad bag at 4:44am
A chat about Black Love while I was watching Black Mirror.
Late Sunday / Early af Monday morning, I was getting ahead with some work that’s due for the week. While I was working, I was watching the new season of Black Mirror. It’s a pretty good season I’d say. Give it a watch.
I was getting tired once I started to watch the episode with Paul Giamatti & Patsy Ferran called “Eulogy.” (Spoilers Ahead)
Black Mirror has this incredible voice for romantic storytelling that really inspires the hell outta me. This episode follows Phillip (Giamatti), who’s contacted by Kelly Royce (Ferran) about the death of his ex-girlfriend, Carol. She invites him to the funeral and to help with the memorial but Phillip’s heartbreak was so deep, he’d suppressed every memory of her—even her face.
He uses memory-enhancing tech to literally walk through photos from their relationship, hoping to remember. Nothing lands… until he finds a photo of a brochure from a fancy restaurant he took Carol to. He tried to propose there. Carol walked out on him that night.
It was deep. You gotta watch it, fr.
The moral of it, was forgiveness, remembrance and the understanding that we’re all human and we make mistakes and we should be more compassionate with the people we have in our lives while we have them. Which led me to want to sit under my little rain cloud.
I sobbed at the end of it. A good little sob. I closed my laptop, laid in bed and started playing my go-to sad bag playlist I call “Sonder.” That playlist always transports me to that world. It’s not sad, just a perfect rainy day playlist where all of your low energy emotions matter. I call it Sonder because it’s songs that give me that experience and feeling. Love and loneliness are strong feelings that can trigger my feelings of sonder.
Sonder is the feeling one has when one realizes that every other individual you see has a life as full and real as one's own, in which one is the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.
I hit shuffle and the song “Color Blind” by SAULT started playing. Written & performed by Michael Kiwanuka. The simplicity of these lyrics and how much love and heart that was in this song, made me have my own Eulogy moment. It led me into writing this post you’re reading now and a little excerpt about love, my experience with love and what love means to me.
Dark & Lovely
There’s a reason why we fantasize the feeling of love. I’d argue that it has to do with the feeling of it leaving, more than being in it.
The last time I was in a relationship where I was certain it was love, I was infatuated.
We can’t call that love, right?
The want and need of someone to be with you every step of the way?
The memories and experiences that you cement into yourself?
The feeling of hoping and praying they never let you go?
That can’t be love, right?
Because, to me, there’s such a sad piece of me that speaks when I have this realization. I knew the life I had when I met her and I remember the day she told me that she was a mess and that she was bad for me.
So, I willingly walked into a storm and entered into a forever lingering of a sweet smell of what it used to be. The vivid tint of the rose coloured glasses that I had on for the years we were together. The world could have been burning and there’s no way I’d smell the smoke.
Is that what love is?
A moment that is here and now a memory?
Is love that dark?
To make a moment in life to be the sweetest thing you’ve ever known?
Where the colors are beautiful?
Where Red Lobster biscuits tasted better?
Where you could hear and feel every note from Alex Isley as if she was with you right now?
When we laughed harder than we’ve ever laughed?
With inside jokes I’ll never hear again?
Or Is love that lovely?
To know that you were in it. To appreciate the time given, and as a gift, in exchange of never returning, you get to cherish it forever?
There’s something dark and lovely about love.
My last relationship didn’t feel like Love Jones or The Wood but it was black love nonetheless.
Is there a conversation to be had about what love really looks like for us? Especially when we’re existing under systems built to erase us?
What does black love look like without our movies? Without our R&B? It’s tough to picture. I only have my understanding of love.
Without going into detail about my love life and everything—(I’ll save that for another post someday)—I saw myself in Phillip in the episode. He realized that he made mistakes that he was blind to at the time, and I was the same.
I wanted to work hard because I knew I had to. This was 2016. Trump just got in office for his first term. Money was always tight. I wanted the feeling to be able to say “Bae, we did it. I got the place we wanted. I made the world for us.” But that was never the reality. She & I both knew that. She moved on. I moved on. Memories were made but I’m certain it was love.
As Michael Kiwanuka strums on, I ponder on the feeling of love. I miss it. I’m thankful I had it and I wonder if it will ever happen again, or is that just life? I’m not sad about this feeling, just evermore curious with every moment I think about love.
I don’t know. I do know I gotta get up to go to work in a few hours.
What’s your take on black love? What does it feel like to you? Is there a song playing? What triggers/jogs your memory? What colors do you think of?
Tell me your love stories. They can live here.
This is just a good ramble and mind dump. I hope you enjoyed it.
Be Eazy!
- jay²
[P.S. Here’s my sonder playlist, play it on your rainiest or cloudiest days.]
wow this is so beautiful. love is tricky, especially romantic love (for me atleast)
this was a beautiful read!! p.s. I downloaded your sonder playlist lol thank ya!
Stories that demonstrate a character learning that they aren't the center of the world, and show that character learning to cope with the fact that other people lead incredibly rich and interesting lives, are perennial, and evolve with technology. A couple early examples of sonder stories are Miss Lonely Hearts, by Nathaniel West, and the Enormous Radio by John Cheever.
What gets to me when I experience sonder is the fact that I'm never equipped to handle anyone else's problems. In Miss Lonely Hearts and the Enormous Radio, both the protagonists are driven to madness by their own voyeurism and inability to help.
A solution, or something that make things a little better, is our role after our epiphanies. As artists, makers, thinkers, writers, and musicians, we can record and share our experiences and the experiences of others. Sonder can be tough, but it can also be really healing, because all of a sudden your problems aren't unique. And thank God we aren't totally unique, for the music and literature that inspires us wouldn't be able to speak to us anymore.
So maybe if we took the time to share more of our experiences, other people for whom this is their very first time walking around on planet earth, can look and see and be like, "That guy is dealing with this, too. I'm not alone."