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pookha · 8 months

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Dead Inside

Chapter 2: Live Again

Amity's visiting Camila in the Human Realm because she can't stand listening to Emira and Viney planning their wedding. Vee comes home upset after admitting her feelings to Masha. Amity and Vee take refuge in each others' arms.

You see my face and then you see nothin' Confused you turn and live on I turn my face You're staring back again Look at yourself and live again -Clint Edward Lowery / La Jon Jermaine Witherspoon / Morgan J. Rose / Vincent E. Hornsby / John M., Jr. Connolly

Three Years Later

Amity sits in the dark room while the television shouts something about used cars. She doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t need to. Human or witch, life goes on, commerce happens, people buy and sell and it’s all…futile. She closes her eyes and lets the noise fall over her until the show comes back on. A naked animated woman is killing people with ghostly telekinetic limbs, ripping them apart. She hasn’t been following the story, but the gore at least makes her feel something. She looks at the scar on her arm. Emira and Viney have offered to remove it, but Amity needs it to remind herself of what she almost did.

The door rattles and she knows it’s too early to be Camila coming back with the pizza. She grabs her bottle of abomination goo and readies herself to fight. Vee comes through the door in her Luz shape that she has to adopt full-time now that Luz has died. Amity stares at Vee as she removes her coat and hangs it on the peg. Vee stops suddenly and sniffs the air, then just as fast, she’s in basilisk shape with her fangs snapping.

“Come out! I know you’re here! If you’ve hurt Camila, I’ll drain your magic and leave your husk for the birds!” Vee actually sounds fierce. Amity knows she’ll fight if she needs to, but would rather not.

“It’s just me, Vee,” Amity says and Vee snaps back to her Luz shape. Amity can’t help but stare. Vee is Luz, but softer, more rounded and less…weary, maybe or hard, she doesn’t know exactly.

Vee flips on the hall light and it illuminates the living room dimly. She can see Amity now, sitting on the couch. She comes in and Amity pauses the anime on a scene that can only be fan service.

“Where’s Mom?” Vee asks, and Amity knows Vee's voice, and Luz’s voice, well enough to tell that Vee is upset about something.

“She went out for pizza since this house has been blacklisted for delivery.”

Vee laughs.

“That was me. I forgot and answered the door in basilisk shape from the waist down.”

“What’s wrong?” Amity asks, taking Vee’s hand.

“It’s…I…It’s Masha. I told them I wanted to date them, but they said they can’t stop thinking about the girl they met three summers ago that they took on the tour of Gravesfield and met for boba a few times, then disappeared. I couldn’t tell them that was me.”

She squeezes Amity’s hand

“I—I couldn’t handle it and I grabbed my shit and left. Masha called after me, but I didn’t know what to say, so I changed to a harpy and flew home. I know it was stupid, but I had to see Mom.”

She starts to cry; huge tears fall down her cheeks as she involuntarily changes to her basilisk shape.

“And—and now she’s not heeerrre…” Vee whines.

Amity wraps her arm around Vee and pulls her close. She lets Vee cry on her and Vee tells her all about the ‘let’s just be friends’ talk from Masha.

“I’m sorry,” Amity says at the right places, and, “that’s awful.”

Vee sniffles, grabs a tissue from the side table and wipes her face. She notices her hand has claws instead of fingers and switches back to her Luz shape. Suddenly it’s Luz in Amity’s arms and Amity stiffens. Vee doesn’t notice and puts her head back on Amity’s shoulder. Amity looks at the scar on her arm: the arm that’s around Luz . But it’s not Luz; it’s Vee. She closes her eyes to try to stop the tears, but they leak out anyway and drip on Vee’s hair.

Vee looks up.

“Amity, are you okay? I didn’t even ask why you were here? I’m sorry.” She pulls another tissue and hands it to Amity.

Amity wipes her eyes.

“Emira and Viney were discussing wedding plans and I suddenly just…couldn’t…anymore. I couldn’t be there with them. I told dad that I was going to bring you some magic and left. I wanted to see Camila.”

She turns to Vee, her eyes still leaking slightly.

“I used you as an excuse, but I really did bring you some Abomination goo. Edric made some flavorings he thought you’d like to try. It’s all on the table.”

“Thanks,” Vee says and kisses Amity’s cheek. Amity freezes again and this time Vee sees it.

“Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry.” Vee blushes deep red and Amity wonders if it rivals her when she blushes.

“It’s just that you look like...” Amity can’t finish the thought.

“I know, I’m sorry.” Vee realizes she’s still too close and starts to pull back, but Amity wraps her arms around Vee tightly again.

“It’s my problem, not yours.” Amity steels herself and kisses Vee’s cheek, then lets her go. Vee gets up and walks unsteadily to the kitchen table. Amity watches Vee put both hands on the table to hold herself up, then she sits at the table. She picks up a bottle of Abomination goo and then a bottle of the flavoring. Amity can’t tell which one it is, but when Vee opens it, she can smell the ghostberries. She suddenly remembers when she gave some of the white berries to Luz and then held her while she puked. There was so little food Luz could eat in the Demon Realm.

Vee puts a drop of the flavoring in the goo and drinks a bit of it, then adds two more drops of flavoring and drinks the entire vial. She stoppers both bottles and turns in her chair. Her lips are dyed white from the berry flavoring and Amity suddenly wants to taste the berries from her lips. Vee sees her staring.

“What? Do I have something on me?” Vee looks down at her ‘clothes,’ which Amity knows are just part of her shapechanged disguise.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to stare. It’s hard for me to see you like that. I…you’re my friend, Vee, but Luz was my girlfriend and I think we would have gotten married eventually, and it’s just hard.” Now the tears start to come again. Vee is suddenly there by Amity and envelops her in human arms. Amity can feel that she’s not in Luz shape now and it makes it easier to let Vee hold her. When the tears slow, she sees that Vee has taken the shape she used when they were all trapped in the Human Realm. She meets Vee’s eyes and starts to lean in. Vee’s eyes widen, but then they both hear Camila’s keys in the door and jerk back from each other, both unsure if they were about to kiss or not.

“I’m back!” Camila shouts from the hallway. They can both smell the pizza now, even over the fading scent of the ghostberries.

“Vee, are you home?” Camila asks. She must see Vee’s coat on the hook.

“I’m here,” Vee says. She shifts back to Luz shape and gets up to meet Camila by the door. Amity clicks the television from the violent anime she was watching back to Project Runway. She was watching it with Camila before she'd left.

Camila walks to the kitchen with Vee trailing behind. Camila puts the pizza down on the table and says something to Vee that Amity can’t hear. Vee hugs Camila and Camila hugs her back. Amity looks at her scar, then at Camila. Camila saw her looking at her scar and waves her into the kitchen from behind Vee’s back. She joins the hug. Odalia never hugged her like that…she never thinks of her as mom anymore…Camila is Mom now.

“I’m sorry, Vee,” Camila says as she releases the hug. Amity gets the plates and cans of soda while Vee gets napkins.

“It’s okay, mom,” Vee says. “Amity was here for me. She’s a good friend.”

Vee meets Amity’s eyes and there’s something there.

They eat pizza and watch Project Runway snuggled up on the couch together with Camila in the middle. Amity goes to bed early, climbing into the lower bunk where Luz used to sleep. She thinks she can still smell Luz on the pillow, but it’s either Vee’s scent or just her memory playing tricks on her. She reaches out to the lighted star string-lights just like Luz used to and tears come again. She falls asleep and when Vee comes in, she wakes out of a dark nightmare where Odalia is telling her ‘of course Luz cheated on you.’

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up,” Vee says. In the dim light from the hall nightlight, Amity sees Vee shift to basilisk shape. She slithers up the bunk bed in a way that shouldn’t be possible. The bed over Amity creaks.

“It’s okay, I was having a nightmare anyway.” She sighs. Vee leans her head over the rail and looks at Amity.

“Would snuggling help?” she asks after a very long pause.

“Yes,” Amity says in a tiny voice after an equally long pause. Vee slithers impossibly back down the bed and then into Amity’s bed.

“It’s pretty small, can you be your human shape, the one that’s not Luz?” Amity asks and she feels Vee shift behind to her. When she spoons Amity, she’s oh so very warm. Her arms envelop Amity. These arms don't feel like Luz's, but they hold her tightly and safely and that's all that matters.

Amity is just about to fall asleep again when Vee whispers in her ear.

“Were we going to kiss earlier?”

Amity stiffens again, then relaxes almost immediately. She turns in Vee’s arms and is looking at her in the dim light from under the door. She doesn’t respond in words, but closes her eyes and leans in instead, letting Vee decide if she wants this or not. She feels Vee pull back for a second and Amity opens her eyes just in time to see Vee lean in and then her lips are on Amity’s. It’s a brief kiss, but warm and soft. Vee pulls back. Amity pulls back. Their eyes meet for the millionth time that day. One of them seems about to speak, then the other, then their lips meet again. This time the kiss lasts longer. Amity pulls away first this time.

“Are you sure?” she asks Vee and she feels Vee shrug.

“No, but it feels good.” Vee leans in and kisses Amity again. Their lips part this time and they both feel passion build that they thought they’d share with someone else, but in this time, at this moment, it feels right, right now. Vee’s hands move from behind Amity’s back and move lower down her body and when Amity doesn’t object Vee runs them over her. Amity gasps in Vee’s mouth and the kiss breaks.

“Too much?” Vee whispers. Amity pauses, then instead of answering she slides her hand under Vee’s pajama ‘shirt’. Vee changes it so it feels just like sliding under a silk shirt but over skin.

“I…I don’t want to have sex,” Vee whispers.

“No, neither of us is ready for that,” Amity agrees. She feels Vee relax.

The moon’s light moves over them slowly as the night passes. They fall asleep in each other’s arms and when Amity wakes up, she’s still snuggling Vee’s human shape. She thinks she hears something and turns to see a shadow in the hallway retreating from under the door. She shakes Vee gently and Vee blinks, yawns, and then her eyes widen when she sees Amity still in her arms.

“I thought it was a dream: the best kind of dream,” Vee says and they kiss briefly and chastely.

“I think Camila saw us sleeping together,” Amity whispers to her and Vee goes rigid.

“We’ll just have to tell her the truth then,” Vee says.

“What is the truth?” Amity asks.

“That we’re figuring it out?” Vee suggests. After a while, Amity nods. They both get up and go to Camila’s room where a light shines from under the closed door.

“Come in, both of you,” she says from behind the door, obviously having heard them come down the hallway.

#the owl house fanfiction #Amity Blight/Vee Noceda #Major character death #suicide #self-harm #doomed relationship

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scaryscarecrows · 2 years

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Go Wash That Blood Off Your Hands

AN: McDonald’s timeline. Jason is a theater kid surrounded by enablers. Nobody has the brain cell right now, but this is still a better way to deal with trauma than ‘invading a city’, so does it really matter?

Title from Clint Lowery’s ‘God Bless the Renegades’.

* * *

It starts, as most strange things do, in a New Jersey Waffle House.

So as it turns out, Waffle House or not, civvie clothes or not, people are going to notice seven muscular dudes who appear to have been fighting with something. And honestly, that’s not getting into Trent’s…er…Trent-ness.

It could be worse. The nature of the Waffle House is that nobody will straight-up ask, which is probably for the best. That doesn’t mean that much, though, not in the long run; a group of (probable) college kids are giggling in the corner.

They think Mark’s a cutie, Riley explains in between bites of scrambled eggs. But I think they’re too chicken to come over here and say so.

“God, I hope so.” Mark shudders. “Why me. Why not him?” He gestures at Jason, who huffs. “He’s their age.”

Maybe they want a sugar daddy.

“Take me back to Gotham.”

Riley laughs. Antoine takes a sip of his coffee and glares at it like it’s personally murdered his entire family.

“What the fuck is this.”

“American swill,” Trent says sagely. “Maybe cigarette ashes would fix it.”

Antoine looks like he’s considering it, but is distracted from doing so by Jimmy’s going, “So, boss…”

“What.”

“You have a Wikipedia article that’s made, like, five Buzzfeed ‘creepiest Wiki rabbit holes’ lists.”

Jason, who’s in the middle of drowning his pancakes in strawberry syrup, looks up and deadpans, “What.”

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy stabs a piece of sausage and dunks it in the cup of fake maple. “See? ‘The Disappearance of Jason Todd’, right here, black-and-white, featured literally every time there’s a listicle about creepy shit.”

“What’re the theories? Anybody get lucky and get it right?”

“Ah…no. But apparently ‘kidnapped by the Jersey Devil’ was a thing.” Jimmy blanches, freckles managing to go starker. “Shit, the Jersey Devil’s not a thing, is it?”

For a hopeful second, it looks like the answer will be ‘of course not’. But then Jason just shuts his mouth and shrugs, looking very much like he’d rather have not been asked.

“I don’t actually know,” he admits. “I don’t think so, but…”

“Chriiiiiiiist,” Antoine groans. “No. There is no Jersey Devil. I refuse to believe there is one.”

Frank shakes his head.

“It’s probably fucking Batman–don’t look now, Mark, someone might have just got up the guts.”

* * *

That could have been the end of it. Would have been, even, if it weren’t for a roadside costume shop that’s probably a money laundering place, really, because who buys costumes in the middle of fucking nowhere?

But it’s daytime, AC/DC is blaring on the radio, and they have access to Bruce Wayne’s credit card because, in Jason’s words, “He owes me back allowance, trauma tax, and honestly, I didn’t rat him out to Joker so he really should have been paying me for the Robin gig.”

So they pull in.

It’s a dark, dingy place with roach motels in the corners and outfits that look (and smell) like they’ve been here for decades. There’s a great selection of masks, though, which means Jimmy can put on a decaying zombie head and go, “Hey, Trent, I’m your mom.”

“Shut up, punk.”

“Language!”

“Hey, hey, check it out.” Frank puts on what claims to be a ‘were-Bat’ mask. “I’m Batman.”

“You laugh, but you didn’t see,” Antoine grumbles. “That thing scared the shit outta me.”

“Can I help you boys find anything?” the clerk-an old man who probably has a shotgun under the counter-calls. He sounds mildly annoyed. They should probably buy something before they leave.

“We’re good.”

If it weren’t for Riley, they probably would have settled for buying, like, gum. Or maybe a pentagram necklace, to ward off Batman or something. But Riley dives into a rack of…furry bodysuits, basically, and comes up with a black one that, against all odds, looks like it’ll fit Trent.

Things snowball from there.

Among the impressive masks is what appears to be a possessed goat; white eyes, fangs, a lolling tongue, and more fur around the neck. The horns are stained red, and mucus is caked around the nose. Wings turn up, too, big, leathery ones, and a bottle of fake blood. This is bad enough, but then Jason fishes a handful of very realistic intestines out of a bin. They’ve got a strap on them-likely designed to be part of a zombie costume or something-but in the dark, especially…

“This is probably one of the tackiest things we’ve ever done,” Mark says. Riley shrugs and throws a devil tail on the pile.

“It’s not like he’s actually dead,” Frank points out. “People do worse, anyway.”

“True.”

“‘Sides,” Jason says, grins with far too many teeth. “This could have been avoided with a little detective work.”

“That’s right,” Jimmy says. “Here, get another bottle of blood; we gotta get some on the suit, too.”

* * *

They waffle about whether to do a photo or a video. Riley finally convinces them to do a video, Blair Witch-style, so of course they trek into the woods.

For a furry bodysuit and extras, Trent is. Mm. Well, realistically, Trent is pretty frightening all by himself, but the costume is a new level of horror. It doesn’t help that the sun is low in the sky, and it’s starting to drizzle. Jason’s no better; with the intestines strapped on and blood splashed on pretty much all of him, he…doesn’t look too good.

“Okay,” Jimmy says, fiddling with his phone, “I’ll film, because I’ve got the best phone. Frank, you narrate; you’ve got a good narrator voice. Riley, you do…you know that noise, that you made last Halloween that sent three people running for cover?” Riley gives him a thumbs up. “That. Do that. Antoine, you and I are just gonna chit-chat. Keep it casual. Mark, you’re our skeptic. Trent, I want a couple of glimpses of you, but, like, over there. You know, did that just happen?”

“You want me to be Bigfoot, basically.” Trent’s voice is muffled in the goat mask. “Sure.”

“Yep. Just once or twice, as we walk. Maybe pace us so I can just pop the camera over. Boss, you’re just gonna lay on the ground. Maybe, uh, scream a bit before we get to you, and then…I don’t know, I don’t know…Riley, should he be dead or no?”

Nah, Riley says. We can keep it going if he’s not.

“That’s true. Okay, don’t be dead, but let’s face it, you’re gonna be on your way, your fucking guts are hanging out.”

“We’re horrible people,” Antoine finally says. “You have to admit, this is terrible.”

“Cheaper than therapy,” Jason points out. “And probably safer; at least three Gotham villains used to be mental health workers.”

“That’s true.”

“Okay, okay…here. Here’s a good spot. Get comfy and try to look like you just got attacked.”

* * *

Two days later, a video goes viral. It’s crappy and shaky, taken on a cell phone. The internet is divided on whether it’s staged or not, but it’s creepy regardless.

The video takes place in the woods. The narrator claims they’re out looking for the Jersey Devil. This isn’t the weird part; the weird part is when something shrieks and the camera swings over just in time to catch something big and black and furry walking deeper into the woods.*

“Damn,” the narrator breathes, and then someone else pipes up with a short, “It’s a bear, you know it’s a bear–”

“It had wings, man!”

“No, it didn’t, don’t be–”

“No-no–stay back, get away from me!”

Silence, then the camera gets jerky, like the holder’s running. There’s a bloodcurdling scream followed by a snarl, a thud, and then…munching noises.

And then the camera catches it; something big and black and furry, crouched over a twitching body on the ground. Intestines are spilling out and coming up into a goat’s mouth (but that’s no goat, goats don’t look like that they don’t look like that–) and as the camera freezes in obvious horror, the man raises his arms to try and shove the thing away.

“God–” He’s not successful. “Stop–”

The video cuts here. It doesn’t take very long for somebody to point out that the man looks an awful lot like Bruce Wayne’s missing kid, and hey, wasn’t he supposed to be kidnapped by the Jersey Devil, that was a theory, right?

Dick thinks the video is, in his words, ‘very Jason’. Barbara has a chuckle, so does Alfred. Tim weakly points out that at least Jason’s not trying to murder anybody. Bruce, however, now understands the random charge on a card he’d, honestly, forgotten about.

He could have done without, he thinks, Jason’s far-too-convincing screams, or the image of him covered in (fake, he knows it’s fake, but still) blood as something eats him alive. But Dick’s right, it is very him. Bruce still remembers him stubbing his toe and collapsing to the ground, writhing in agony and intoning, “I’m dying, Bruce, lay two tokens on my eyes for the ferryman…tell…tell Dick I stole his Fruit Roll-Ups…”

At least he’s safe. Seemingly happy, for the moment. Not causing trouble, not really. Bruce will take that, for now.

THE END

*One of the creepiest gaming moments I’ve EVER experienced is your first glimpse of Jack Baker in RE7. He doesn’t hurt you. He just walks on by, but he comes out of nowhere and I very much wanted to bail back to my car.

#jason todd #the squad #arkhamverse #scaryverse #boys will be boys: wholesome edition #the jersey devil #bad ideas start in waffle houses

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metalsongoftheday · 2 years

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Monday, August 1: Sevendust, “Confessions of Hatred”

Alpha performed about as well as any other Sevendust album, and was generally as consistent, but there was something workmanlike about the band’s middle period (specifically, the records they made during founding guitarist Clint Lowery’s four-year break from the group) that prevented those albums from leaving much of an impression. There wasn’t anything wrong with tracks like “Confessions of Hatred”, which had the same balance of hooks and aggression that defined Sevendust’s best material: the song moved with focus, and the whole band, especially Morgan Rose and Lajon Witherspoon, sounded fully committed and locked in to each other. Sonny Mayo did a perfectly fine job in Lowery’s absence, and the group’s chemistry never failed to come through in everything they did. But somehow “Confessions of Hatred” didn’t land quite the same- maybe it was that Sevendust remained in a particular middle-tier status after six albums, and there was nothing about this that suggested they could ascend higher. Nonetheless, the tune offered its share of pleasures and made a case for the band’s many strengths, even if it didn’t provide much else.

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muzicpromotionclub · 7 months

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Interleaved Has Come Up with Their Latest Song 'Condescend'

#Interleaved #rock music #Youtube Music Video

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cyborgdragongirl · 1 year

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#sprenslisteningto #Spotify

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metalshockfinland · 1 year

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SEVENDUST Unleash New Single + Music Video 'Everything'

(Photo Credit: Chuck Brueckmann) With excitement brewing after the release of their teaser track, “Fence”, GRAMMY® Award-nominated SEVENDUST are back with “Everything”, the debut single from Truth Killer. The song is the second piece of music from their 14th studio album, slated for worldwide release on July 28 via Napalm Records. The band – Lajon Witherspoon, Clint Lowery, John Connolly, Vince…

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#Sevendust

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nashmusicguide · 2 years

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Mack Perry: Agony In The Garden by Edmund Barker

Agony in the Garden is a genre-blending musical project that incorporates metal, blues, and other styles. The one-man band of Mack Perry since 2013, they have collaborated with a number of musicians since, including Mack and Clint Lowery of Sevendust. I spoke with Mack about his most recent record Will of Fire and what makes him tick. Edmund Barker: So what’s new with your music? You have most…

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#agony in the garden #Edmund barker #mack perry #Music #music row #nashville #nashville music #nashville music guide

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the-quasar-literata · 2 years

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December 16, 2021 By Wesley Lowery

A few years ago, Clint Smith told me about a new project that would take him to a series of historical sites—from Monticello to Angola prison to the Door of No Return in Senegal—to reexamine how these sites commemorate, and too often obfuscate, their role in the horror that was American slavery. Smith's aim, he told me, was to search for meaning in the way we tell the story of ourselves. Now, four years later, that project, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, is the breakout non-fiction book of 2021, a No. 1 New York Times best-seller (and top 10 book of the year) and one of President Obama’s annual picks, too. “In 2017, I was watching several Confederate statues come down in my hometown, New Orleans,” Smith said recently about the impetus of his undertaking. “Statues of P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, these leaders of the Confederacy. I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority Black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people. What are the implications of that?”

The project couldn't have been more prescient. As half of the country earnestly searches for a new understanding of our racial history, the other half violently denies it. Half of our neighbors are demagoguing critical race theory, while the other half are busy reading it. Smith has bravely stepped into that fray, asking a large swath of the country to soberly consider how their communities, and even their own families, contributed to our nation's original sin. “You have millions of people who are recalibrating their understandings of what America was and what America has been and what America is today,” Smith told me. “And as a result, you have this incredible amount of pushback from people for whom asking questions of American history is an existential threat to them because then they have to ask questions of themselves.” He spoke with GQ about the history wars, a golden age of Black intellectuals, and what he learned while writing How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith: I think part of it is certainly that we are in this moment where we are having the “history wars,” which are sort of embedded within the cultural wars. And there are these conversations around Critical Race Theory and how that is shaping the educational landscape, even when we know that Critical Race Theory is being used as a boogie man to instill fear and a sense of a threat to one’s position within the larger American project. It taps into the worst existential fears of many people across this country. And so there is this battle happening, as has happened throughout American history, about how we tell the story of this country, who are we including in the story, and what are we leaving out of the story, and what are the implications that that has through the landscape of our society today?

I think part of what's happened is over the past several years with the Black Lives Matter movement, there have been more people—not everyone, but certainly more—whose understanding of the history of this country has been complicated, has been nuanced, has been expanded, and people are being more honest about what that history is.

I think the implication of that is that you have millions of people who are in the ongoing process of recalibrating their previous understandings of what America has been and what America is today. As a result, I think you have this incredible amount of pushback from people for whom asking questions of American history is an existential threat, because then they have to ask questions of themselves. And they have to reassess their own sense of who they are and how they fit into that. When you have been told a specific story your entire life about how you and your family and your community fit into the American story, and then people come in and tell a different story of America, or a story that includes a lot of facets that were previously left out, then it threatens your sense of self, it threatens your identity.

David Thorson, who’s one of the docents at Monticello, told me that when you tell a different story about Jefferson, then you’re telling a different story about America. And when people have to ask questions about, or reassess their understanding of Jefferson, they have to reassess their understanding of themselves.

Of course. Because people are invested in a very intimate and emotional way with the stories about the country that they live in and the standing that they have within that country. And so, as you note, we're in this moment where so many people are now reexamining that, and that reexamination is necessarily going to be a messy and complicated process that involves some lashing out and backlash.

Absolutely. And I think that there are people who navigate these questions differently, right? You have a group of people for whom there's a sense of, they didn't know what they didn’t know. There has been a systemic and structural failure in our education system that is in part tied to the success of historical and ideological projects, projects like the Lost Cause that have made it so that many people do not understand the history of slavery in any way that is commensurate with the actual impact that it has had on this country.

And I think when those people are confronted with new information, when those people go to Monticello, or on a walking tour of the Underground Railroad in New York, they are often confronting information that they have not previously encountered. But there is also an openness with which to receive that information and then to take that information on and have this history inform how they make sense of themselves and the landscape of inequality across this country.

There are also a lot of people with whom you can share all the empirical evidence, all the primary source documents, all the historical fact and it won't matter. Because the reason they believe what they believe is not because they don't have information, it is because that information threatens the position that they have taken on for themselves within their family and within society. It is a truly existential threat to how someone understands who they are in the world.

That is the thing that’s difficult for a lot of people to accept, and so they push back against it. We see a 21st-century iteration of that today. We saw it after the Civil War. People attempt to distort history, distort information, distort fact, because it allows them to continue to tell a story about themselves and their community that they're deeply invested in.

It’s also interesting to me at this time where there’s almost an embarrassment of riches in terms of brilliant Black public intellectuals, journalists, writers, people who are pushing this conversation forward, there does seem to be, among the opposition, a sort of hyper focus, that is often either very semantic or pedantic. It’s Nikole Hannah-Jones having to spend two years talking about one sentence in one essay of the 1619 Project, or the number of times people want to analyze exactly whether this diversity training does this thing, or what is Ibram X. Kendi really calling for when he talks about anti-racism? Oftentimes it doesn’t feel like we’re having a good faith conversation around these issues, despite the fact that there are so many people who are doing this work in extremely rigorous, intellectual, good faith ways.

I think that’s intentional. I think some people intentionally sidestep the good faith conversations and the robust set of scholarship that would challenge, or at least add more nuance to their contentions. Part of it is picking out straw men. Part of it is gender. It is hard to imagine that the way Nikole has been targeted would happen if she was not a Black woman with red hair who was sort of unapologetic in the way that she presents herself to the world. It is hard to imagine that Ibram Kendi would become the sort of boogie man that he has, if he were not a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks, and if there wasn’t an X in his name.

It's not to say that all those things singularly shape the reason that certain people become targets or don't become targets. But it is to say that those are inextricably linked to the way that people are turned into avatars and sort of two-dimensional caricatures of themselves. Because they also know that the way that certain people look signals to white America something that they should be concerned with or mindful of.

I have thought a lot, as well, about how much the public conversation has shifted and evolved since 2014 and Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson. That so much of what is happening today would have been out of the realm of imagination back then. How, in a strange way, it can feel like the events of 2020 and 2021 have eclipsed what was happening back then, even as they were only possible because of it.

If we were to quantify a cultural impact and social impact, between Mike Brown and George Floyd... Clearly George Floyd is only possible because of what happened with Mike Brown. But I guess what's true, as I'm thinking through it, is that when Black Lives Matter started, there was no context in which a brand or a company was going to then take that on because it was too associated with riots in the street or whatever. But I remain so fascinated by the way the post-George Floyd stuff was so omnipresent, just how widespread it was. Everybody put out a statement. I was talking to some friends this weekend who work in corporate America and they were saying that so much of the stuff their companies are doing now would not have happened without George Floyd. Like tying diversity to how companies and managers are paid…

I think some of this stuff takes so long to actually get going that once you get the wheel going, it keeps spinning. You put in the process of doing this thing, so now it exists, right? I've been working on a project involving civil rights movement history, and also thinking a lot about how we underestimate the length of time that had to elapse before MLK showed up and then they were on a bus and then people could vote and John Lewis was there. This was a 15 year, 20 year span that built on top of other 15 and 20 year spans before and after. I think there was a time where the assessment in the culture was that Black Lives Matter was a two-year thing. I think the moment that happened last year was very much a reminder of how present everything still was. And so folks who had been reticent to jump in initially were now like, oh, wait, this is still here.

I've thought a lot about that as well.

At the beginning, a lot of these folks are probably like, ah, I don’t know about these Black Lives Matter people. And what if that guy did deserve it? By the time we get to 2020, the conversation has played out so much further that the delineation between the two sides in the debate was very clear even to the average person. You know? And so it's been really interesting.

I think that’s right.

What compelled you to write this book at this time?

In 2017, I was watching several Confederate statues come down in my hometown in New Orleans—P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, these leaders of the Confederacy. I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in this majority Black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people. What are the implications of that? What does it mean that to get to school I had to go down Robert D. Lee Boulevard? To get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. My middle school was named after a leader of the Confederacy. My parents still live on a street named after somebody who owned over 115 enslaved people.

Symbols and names and iconography aren’t just symbols. They are reflective of the stories that people tell and those stories shape the narratives that communities carry and those narratives shape public policy and public policy shapes the material conditions of people’s lives. That’s not to say that taking down a 60 foot tall statue of Robert E. Lee is going to suddenly erase the racial wealth gap, but all of these things are part of an ecosystem of ideas and stories that help shape the story that we tell about this country's history.

The historian Walter Johnson says that New Orleans is a memorial to slaves—the slave people built the levees and slave people built the streets and slave people built so many of the buildings that stand in our famous French Quarter. I wanted to understand who was telling the story of New Orleans. And then I sort of broadened it out and started thinking about how other historical sites that are intimately tied to this history are telling the story, or failing to tell the story, of what happened there.

Who do you see as your constituency? Another way to ask that is, who are you writing a book like this for?

I believe that if you are going to spend four years working on anything, then in some ways you yourself have to be the primary audience. To write 120,000 words about something over the course of many years, it has to be something that you are obsessed with. It has to be something that, at least in my case, is attempting to fill in a gap that had been there.

So I'm writing this for a 15-year-old version of Clint who grew up surrounded by these statues, who grew up in a city that people called the murder capital of the nation, and talked about the cultural decay of the public housing projects. So much of the language about what was wrong with New Orleans was implicitly a commentary on what people thought was wrong with Black people. Growing up in that context, I wished that I had the history and the language with which to push back against so much of this pathology and free myself from a sort of psychological or emotional paralysis that I felt.

You are not someone who necessarily has identified previously as a capital J Journalist before, although this work clearly is a work of journalism. Talk to me about how you see yourself as a writer and how journalism factored into telling this story?

I think part of what I loved about this book was talking to people for the research, but also I really loved how at the end of it, I felt like a much more dynamic and well-rounded writer. I had never done man-on-the-street interviews before, and the idea of going up to people on a plantation and asking them what they think about slavery is not something that comes naturally to me. I kind of have to psych myself up every time in order to do that. I just think of myself as a writer.

There's a version of this book in which I go to all of these different places and then offer sort of personal essayistic reflections on each of them. I think that book would've been fine, but I think what made the book what it was, was the history, in conversation with the conversations, in conversation with my reflections on both of those. What I wanted to do was write a book of narrative nonfiction and a book of history that felt like a novel.

That means I am the protagonist of the story, and you are on this literal journey with me to these different places. That demands that I reveal some level of interiority, in which you are getting my own moments where I'm excited, moments when I'm surprised, moments where I'm scared, when I'm sharing that with the reader. It also includes a cast of characters who add depth and perspective and a plurality of sensibilities to the story.

Now reporting is such a profoundly important piece of all of my writing. It has added something to my toolkit that I previously did not have that I think has made me a much better writer. The impulse to physically visit places and have conversations about the ideas that I'm wrestling with is as important as reading any book. It is as important as my own personal commentary. I love to write across genre and across discipline, whether it's using poetry or reporting. I think like so many in the Black intellectual tradition, I think you just use whatever tool you can to answer the questions that you're asking.

What are you reading?

I just finished Ron Chernow's Ulysses S. Grant biography, which was incredible. When you write a book like this, you spend a lot of time reading a chapter or two of books that you wanted to spend more time on. I hadn't had the opportunity to do a real in-depth dive on Grant in the way that I would've wanted to, but I listened to this incredible podcast, 1865, and season two is focused on the presidency of Grant. I think Grant was always sort of overshadowed by the legacy of Lincoln, in the way that I had been taught. Writing the book and then listening to this podcast really piqued my interest. Grant is a really remarkable historical figure who I think is getting his due more now than he has in previous decades.

As the Union general, he beat the Confederacy, he beat the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. He arguably did more to support newly emancipated, free people than many other people in his position might have at that time. He wrote his memoirs while dying of throat cancer. He was basically a broke store owner or store clerk when he became drafted into the Union army or became part of the Union army. His entire story, the way he grappled with alcoholism—it's just so fascinating. It was just a beautiful, compelling narrative. That and David Blight's Frederick Douglass book are probably now my two favorite biographies that I've read.

#america #slavery #history

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