3 the perfect rebel! (or: the end(?))

hail mary digital!

3 the perfect rebel!

(or: the end(?))

by Brian Buchanan

— — —

Hi.

Before we get started with the show, I just wanted to mention two things real quick. First: this is a long show and you don’t got to be be a hero! There are natural break points so, you know, stop when you need to stop, drink some water, and pick it back up when you’re ready. Second: hail mary digital! is an independently produced podcast. Right, like, I’m not on a ~fancy podcast network~ and this show isn’t ~ad supported~ or anything like that. Now, I’m not looking for support BUT if you do enjoy the program, I’d ask that you consider leaving a donation with the Sandy Ground Historical Society. Sandy Ground — which is located right here, on the south shore of Staten Island — is the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States and was a station along the Underground Railroad. The Historical Society offer workshops to students across the New York City and they even maintain a museum here in the community. Every dollar helps them continue the work of telling their story. If you’re interested, there’s information in the show notes and on my website. 

ANYWAY here we go! 

— — —

Alex

If — there’s only so much that, you know, we should be saying from our comfy homes in the south shore of Staten Island, right?

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

Alex

And, like, we’ve talked about this a while ago where I am also saddened by, like, yeah, like, there is a whole half-island of people that I just never met and got to know because this. And that is sad, too. 

Brian

Yeah.

Alex

So, it’s absolutely time and for me I would love to just be able to talk to the kids on the north shore more.

Brian

Yeah.

Alex

And have more of, like, that — more facilitation, you know? Less of the gap. And I would love to have that and be part of that.

— — —

The southernmost town in all of New York City — and therefore the southernmost town in New York State — is my hometown: Tottenville. On Staten Island. And at the southernmost point of Tottenville is a big, red pole. A south pole. And wouldn’t you know it, but among my neighbors are those that contend that the pole is in the wrong spot, that it’s not located at the most perfectly southern point it possibly could be. Like, of course this is a thing, the height of drama in this small town. And then here’s me — discount Euripides — there but to dramatize the squabble for all the ages. Whatever; this is part of what gives us our “charm,” I guess. In any case: these people are wrong — the pole is exactly where it’s supposed to be — but, like… I also sort of get it. For one thing, there’s this:

Most Staten Islanders — or I guess, at least, most of us on the South shore — use one main road to orient ourselves: Hylan Boulevard. Running up the eastern shore, Hylan Boulevard spans the length of the whole island: top to bottom, “north to south.” Anything near the street is either below the boulevard (meaning: to the “east” towards the water) or above the boulevard (to the “west”). So if you’re driving down Hylan Boulevard and you pass Page Avenue — crossing into Tottenville — and you keep going and going, eventually you’ll hit the end, which is the quad at The Conference House Park. If you decide to break any number of local ordinances and keep driving straight over the quad and past The Conference House itself, you’ll hit a pavilion hanging over the shoreline beach. And it’s there, right beyond the pavilion, where there’s a few feet of sand depending on the tides and it’s here, at this place — that precious bit of square footage — that some choose to believe is the point of southernmost… southernness, I suppose. A most fitting place for a pole.

the pavilion.

I disagree. Mostly due to the fact that Staten Island isn’t aligned north to south. When you drive down Hylan Boulevard, you’re not skirting along some perfectly parallel longitudinal geodesic. Why not? Because — not unlike its citizens — the whole of Staten Island is slightly crooked. The thing is just cocked to the side, at some angle. In fact, the whole of New York City tilted so. Like, are you ready for this? The Statue of Liberty is actually west of Hoboken and there are— I kid you not — parts of the Upper East Side that are west of the Upper West Side. You don’t believe me? Mon fils, go look at a map. In any case, the pole is not there. It is where it is.

isn’t that a good spot???

But wait! There’s more! You didn’t think that that was the only point of contention for where a pole dedicated to one specific position ought to be, did you? If you wind through the gravel paths of The Conference House Park and stumble upon the humble pole patch, you’ll see that there’s just a smidge of a ridge right behind it. And I mean like, right there. You pass over this ridge and immediately you’re back on the beach, the same one that connects to the shoreline under the pavilion (and the other proposed pole position).

somewhere… beyond the ridge… 🎶

I’ve heard people argue that it — the pole — should be out there, instead, just beyond the ridge. My thing is: if the pole was placed anywhere over the ridge, it’d be partially submerged half the time, wouldn’t it (and thus no longer marking the southernmost point)? Perhaps — perhaps — if the pole was the ten feet or so out further from where it is such that it sat atop of the ridge — but still before the waterline — that that would be (unequivocally) the most southern of southern points. But whatever; I’m mostly content where it sits currently, where the grey pebbles of the park path cease and the sand begins, beyond which there is — officially — no more New York City, no more Staten Island, no more Tottenville.

Like I said, though, I will concede — I will admit — that even if I trust the location of the pole to be correct and I don’t want to see it moved or anything like that, the more general location of the pole doesn’t… I don’t know, feel particularly south to me. And fear not: I do, in fact, realize how dumb that sounds. Nonetheless, that’s how I can get down in the dirt with everyone else and know exactly where it is they’re coming from. Like I said, I get it, I really do. I'm a supremely meticulous and orderly person living in an ever changing, randomly generated universe. I know this about myself (and the world) so I can keep my gut instincts in check. As satisfying as it would be, I know it'd be totally unreasonable to ask for and expect that any island might come to a nice tidy pointy… point right at its southern tip. Like, if only wishing made it so, but my island is no exception. 

Here’s the thing of the thing, however — the reason the gist of the area doesn’t feel south is because… if you’re looking, well, if you’re looking to the quote-unquote “south,” out over the Raritan Bay and to New Jersey, there looks to be this sharp bend up the eastern coastline. And naturally, as if just to complicate everything — and leave me perpetually distressed — the beaches over there do seem to come to a nice, tidy pointy point!!! But, you know, just over there! Not here, where it’s actually south. The virtue of this jut existing makes it feel — to me — like the island extends out a little bit… downwards. The island is heading south, but not where it’s supposed to! How could this happen??? Who said this was OK???

see??? even google maps doesn’t know wtf is going on.

Look, I know I might sound like I’m losing my composure. I’m not. Inasmuch as I can I’ve made my peace (which, admittedly, is not that much) but still. ‘cause I know I can check the compass on my phone to confirm that south is south and I know that whomever it was that decided — for reasons passing understanding — that we needed a south pole in the first place must’ve done their homework (which was aided, I’m sure, with the precision of global positioning satellites) to make sure that everything was in its right place and I know there’d be no reason — or at least no good reason — to conduct a high-scale conspiracy to put a pole marking a place in a place other than the place it is supposed to mark!!! And so the only thing standing in opposition to all that is me. Me and my bubbling urge over this… mere simulacrum. How is it that this — of all things — I can just… let go…? Like this:

Staten Island is an island and it’s big and my tiny human body is tiny. Tricks of perspective will cause discrepancies, but, like, all you gotta do is zoom out far enough and all these geographic irregularities vanish into nothing, right? What might look like a big corner when you’re standing a little bit away on a particular ridge isn’t even that noticeable on a map unless you’re looking for it. Any why stop there? Like, if I stand at the south pole then yes, I am south of the rest of New York City, but I’m yet still someone else’s north (in this case, Perth Amboy). And the people in Jersey are someone else’s north and so on and so on. Travel enough leagues and you’ll reach Antarctica, the southern continent that the One-True-King of South Poles calls home.

My point is: that any given spot is apparently up for debate is, I don’t know… it’s fine. You know, it might be something that at first pass one might assume to be this empirically decided thing but, this isn’t a big deal. I’m OK with this. I may even go as far to say that it’s… not something to be celebrated, surely, but I find it reassuring. Why?

Well, for one thing — and I don’t want to get into the weeds of like, what is truth? or anything like that, but — we have a lot of different systems for determining where stuff is. Consider, for instance, that this whole time I’ve been referring to geographical directions — “true” north and south, as it were. We pretend that the Earth is static but we’re both hurling around a sun and spinning. And even the axis of our spin is at an angle. And even that isn’t consistently stable, it wobbles due to something called the Chandler Wobble (and thank you Seth Carlo Chandler for that one). Couple that with the fact that our solar system is moving and the entire Milky Way Galaxy is set to collide with Andreomeda and the entire fucking universe is expanding and I’m actually starting to think there’s a solid case to be made that nothing is where we think it is. We pretend that none of that stuff is going on when we talk about direction because on our scale none of it matters. 

If we were in space living like cosmonauts we’d need to use something else to orient ourselves, like using the geomagnetic poles (which are different from their famous cousins, the pure magnetic poles). Now I know what you’re probably thinking: that you’re not going to fall for another one of my tricks. This is episode three of three so by now you’ve got me all figured out, huh? “Lookout everyone, here comes one of Brian’s infamous tangents that he’ll relate back to, you know, other stuff by just the thinnest threads imaginable, right? The-last-string-of-string-cheese thin.” You're probably saying that the only reason I’ve introduced the magnetic and geomagnetic poles is because I want to talk about some unimportant nonsense I found out while I was doing my research and thought it was interesting and wanted to shoehorn it in by any means possible. Is that it? Huh? HUH??? Look, you’re half right. I was going to talk about something anyway AND I saw a way to bring it up while I was doing my research. But because I pictured that you were snarky about it just now, I’m not going to tell you what it is or when we’ll come back to it. Congratulations, you played yourself. 

OK, I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with shmantipodes and the concept of things being shmantipodal.

ANYWAY it has to do with the difference between the magnetic and geomagnetic poles. See, the magnetic poles aren’t lined with the geographic poles. In fact, the magnetic poles move because we’ve got like, a lot of these molten metal eddies flowing inside the Earth. And where you’ve got flowing metal you’ve got electric currents, and where you’ve got electric currents, you’ve induced a magnetic field. All of them add up and boom! Poles, baby — we got ‘em! But the Earth is moving and spinning and wobbling so the poles are doing their own little shuffle and even flip occasionally.

What’s interesting — ~at least to me~ — is that this means the magnetic north and south poles are not always antipodal (directly opposite from one another). In this case, it means that if you were to draw a line through the Earth connecting the north and south magnetic poles, it wouldn’t pass through the center (or, the planet’s core). This isn’t a huge problem when we want to go on a hike and bring our compass along, but again, if you’re some astronaut surfing the Heavens, it might. They got equipment and stuff and… who knows? I’m sure somebody at NASA does.

Cue, then, the geomagnetic poles. The reason we’ve been able to figure out a lot of physics over the years is because physicists realized that you can get most of the way to whatever you’re trying to do if you simplify things and don’t try to worry about every little detail. In this instance, why try to calculate how all the unfathomably complex interactions of all these eddies flowing through a moving, spinning, wobbling planet when you can just pretend that there’s one, big bar magnet in the middle of the Earth that everything averages out to anyway. In the immortal words of the Blockblister employees, “This is better, much better!”

What was my point with all this? Where was I going…? Oh, yeah. Different contexts call for different solutions and more than one thing can be true at a time. Maybe on Staten Island the most southern point of southerness should be ar the bottom of Hylan Boulevard because that’s what’s right and true for Staten Island. Lord knows I’m not in a position (pun absolutely intended) to determine the validity of something like that, even if I would reject it in the strongest possible terms. But that’s it: that we all have unique feelings about something so granular as where the pole should be is OK, because we’re all bringing something different to the discussion; a diversity of ideas, a plurality of experiences. Furthermore, when it comes to broader, more fundamental questions, we all seem to agree. Case in point: there isn’t anybody in town that I’ve talked to about this — from my staunchest allies to my fiercest detractors to the overwhelming majority who for sure do not give a damn — that doesn’t agree that Tottenville as a whole isn’t the southernmost town in New York City. On that at least we can all agree. Right… right???

On Pink, hit it. You’re listening to Hail Mary Digital. The big finale. At least I don’t got to talk about a time I got physically clobbered! I got that going for me… Episode 3: The Perfect Rebel. Or: the end…(?)

Where to even start? Look, Staten Island is the least populous of the city’s five boroughs, but we’ve still got almost one and a half times the population of Iceland (and they’re a whole-ass country). So really, I shouldn’t be surprised that there is at least one person here that is (potentially) a member of the Flat Earth Society. And this isn’t just some arbitrary conjecture that I’ve cooked up by the way, this isn’t me figuring a thing just based on the law of large numbers. I have proof! See, for years now — years! — someone has been pasting their Flat Earth stickers on the south pole. 

september 1st, 2019.

This is something that I’m extremely conflicted about. I mean, one the one hand, I’m a high school physics teacher and that there are “flat earthers” out there that genuinely buy into this collective delusion makes me crazy. I admit, I don’t know too much about what they actually subscribe to outside of what I’ve picked up through cultural osmosis, things like: they think the earth is a disk and the sun is a spotlight and that Antarctica is less a place and more a wall of ice and that gravity — precious gravity — is, I don’t know, a hoax. 

What kills me is that flat-earther-ism isn’t, like, hard to debunk. At all. You could, for instance, view one of NASA’s many photos showing our home to be, you know, the gigantic fucking sphere that it is. You could, maybe, look at a ship — say a cruise liner — sailing for the horizon and notice that the bottom disappears first; they’re not sailing off an edge, of course, they just become harder to see as they go around the sphere — the angle of their position compared to your viewing location dips until, eventually, you just can’t see them anymore. We should have a name for that exact moment. Maybe we do but if we don’t perhaps we could call it something like, say, uhhhhhh… The Parallax Collapse???

the callback you never saw coming.

The most intuitive way for Mr. Buchanan-the-Physics-Teacher to reconcile the fact that I reside on a spherical planet is like this: wherever I am in the world, I’ve got the entire Earth pulling down on me (at least, if we’re keeping things Newtonian). I could be at the north pole or the south pole or Tottenville and it doesn’t matter, the same amount of Earth’ll be under my feet in each location. And because of that, gravity is pulling down on me with the same amount of force and in the same direction: straight down. Just like how physicists use the geomagnetic poles as an aggregate of Earth’s magnetic fields to simplify what’s going on with all of that, we can do the same thing with Earth’s mass. This is to say: I’m being pulled by gravity to the Earth’s center of mass which, due to the nature of a sphere, would be a point at the middle the Earth’s core. And again, this holds true no matter wherever you are on the planet — everyone is being pulled “straight down” everywhere. 

But we wouldn’t observe that same phenomena on a disk. The center of mass would be the center of the disk. As you moved further and further away, you’d no longer have the same distribution of mass beneath you. Put another way: you wouldn’t feel a pull down so much as a pull towards the center of the disk.

Of course, flat earth people have an answer for all this — a bogus answer, to be sure — but, an answer all the same. ‘cause it’s really not about being right or wrong, is it? Like, for some of them, I think it’s all a joke. For most of them, though, I’m sure it’s just that classic case of their collective delusion supplying shelter and community. I mean, who doesn’t like being in the know? Who wouldn’t want to have some hidden, gnostic knowledge?

That’s all bad, obviously. And the source of my confliction. Because the act of putting a flat earth sticker on some pole seems to me to be the perfect act of rebellion. And whomever is doing it is, therefore, the perfect rebel. And I get that it is, at best, unwise to try and separate the act with the message — possibly an impossible task — and it is, at worst, outright dangerous to conflate nonsense with nobility. But hear me out:

Take, for instance, the persistence. As I mentioned, this has been going on reliably for years: a sticker goes up, eventually it gets removed, and sure enough, another appears to replace it. Consider, too, how easy an act of rebellion this is: it takes almost no effort to put a sticker on something. You can’t say the same thing about trying to remove it, though. And this feels like one of those cases where the medium is the message in that, like, of course when I see it, what else do I want to do but yank it off in one swift tug. But it never works out that way. You’ve got to scratch and peel and scratch and peel some more and you never really get all of it. And even if you do, there’s always that glue-y residue that, well… sticks around. And then after all that — boom! — another one goes up, lickety-split, Johnny-on-the-spot.

And what are you supposed to do if you catch this low grade act of vandalism in the act? Call the park rangers? “Hi, uh, yeah, somebody is putting a sticker on the south pole.” Like, what the fuck are they supposed to do about it? And be real: are you going to tell someone to stop putting up a sticker? All it takes to exact this defiance is a single solitary quanta of energy above doing nothing-at-all. That’s what makes it infuriating… and that in turn, is what makes it brilliant. Nobody is getting hurt, right, like this isn’t so much a rage against the machine but a howl at the moon and so it doesn’t even matter if this is the work of a True Believer or some trolling contrarian; a public disruption or performance art. In an instant, the south pole — this entire monument to direction — is nullified. The work of a perfect rebel. 

I was just talking to someone about this. OK, not just talking to someone because this is September when I’m writing this and I haven’t seen anyone since before quarantine started and let’s be honest: despite never being more rich than when in their company, I don’t see my friends enough anyhow. But not too too long ago I was talking to someone about this. I can’t remember whom it was exactly, but I’ve narrowed it down. I mean, I’ve only got so many friends that’ll indulge my bullshit, but I think it could’ve been either Nikki, Dani, or Alex. So I called them and asked in that order…

Nikki

Can you hear me?

Brian

Yes!

Nikki

Yay!

Brian

Woohoo! This is going to sound so strange.

Nikki

I expect nothing less from you.

Brian

Thanks. So you know The Conference House Park.

Nikki

Yeah.

Brian

Right. Do you know about the south pole at The Conference House Park?

Nikki

I don’t think so, not off the top of my head.

Brian

The — the red pole at the, the technically thee southernmost point of the island?

Nikki

I — I’ve probably been there, but I don’t recall it specifically. 

Brian

So you wouldn’t also remember that somebody is leaving Flat Earth stickers on it all the time?

july 15th, 2020.

Nikki

No. 

Brian

OK.

Nikki

That’s good! 

Brian

What are the qualities of a good rebel do you think?

Nikki

I think, first and foremost, if you’re going to be a rebel is, like, you, you need to be able to stand by what you’re saying and do so with conviction. Like, I don’t have the balls to, to argue with people. So I think, first and foremost, if you’re going to rebel against something, you have to have the ability to back it up confidently. 

Brian

You need to, like, “know your enemy.”

Nikki

Right, yeah. And in rebellion you can know your enemy and you can have all the right answers and you can explain it all really easily. But when faced with confrontation, if you’re not prepared for that confrontation, then you’re shit out of luck. Like, I think, more so than anything, to be rebellious you need to be able to be confrontational.  

Brian

What is the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?

Nikki

I’m not a very rebellious person. I tend to be a very rule… Rule Guy™. But when I was in high school at some point, I was cutting class and I was, I got really high. And then I was, I was, like, nearby the school and there’s, like, these benches that are, like, underneath this awning that you could go and sit on but nobody ever goes and sits on them. So I was, like, “I’m going to go sit on these benches that nobody sits on for no reason!”  Like, there’s no sign that says you can’t sit there, there’s no reason that nobody sits there but nobody sits there. So I sat there. And then I got detention. So…

Brian

Why?

Nikki

Because I was cutting class!

Brian

Oh!

Nikki

And decided that staying on school property was a good idea. I didn’t go to the detention, but…

Brian

Well, that — I like that when given the chance, you just doubled down on your rebellion: you were going to go somewhere you weren’t supposed to go and when they told you you were supposed to go somewhere, you said, “No. I’m not going to go there.” 

Nikki

Yeah!

Brian

Very poetic. 

Nikki

Yup.

So it wasn’t Nikki. OK. No problem… perhaps Dani…

Dani

Hello!

Brian

Hello, my friend, how are you?

Dani

Good. What’s going on?

Brian

You know The Conference House Park.

Dani

Yes.

Brian

You know about the south pole.

Dani

Yes, we’ve been there together.

Brian

Yeah, we’ve — yeah, we’ve hung out many times there. Do you know who it is that keeps putting up a Flat Earth sticker on it?

july 31st, 2020.

Dani

No.

Brian

Aw, man. All right. That’s strike two. I only have one person left! Let me ask a more broad question: what do think makes a good rebel?

Dani

Someone who does what they want, but does’t do it in order to harm other people. So they — even if they know that there’s judgement being passed, or even if there is… it’s not what’s expected or not what is supposed to be done, they kind of just do their own thing anyway just because it is in their interest. But they don’t do it — and they try to actively not hurt other people in the process of it. So it’s not doing something to screw everyone, but it’s doing something ‘cause it’s, like — does’t really hurt anyone and gives you a little thrill in the moment. 

Brian

So they’re — so… conviction. They have to have conviction. 

Dani

There has to be conviction. And some sort of sense of justice and good I think has to be in a rebel. If what you’re doing — it’s like a prank. Like, when you look at a good prank — I remember seeing something on TV when I was probably, like, fourteen and it was, like, the 40 Greatest Pranks on VH1 going over when a bunch of shirtless men went into Abercrombie & Fitch ‘cause they always had the shirtless models. But it was a bunch of random dudes so there was, like, bellies, hairy chests, old guys, tall guys that didn’t fit the Abercrombie model and it was just a prank that they all went into the store in Times Square, I think, and were shirtless for the day. And, like, didn’t harm anyone, a lot of people got a kick out of it, and they kind of just did it to do it. Like, I don’t know. So I think a good prank and being a rebel kind of go hand in hand. 

Brian

What is the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?

Dani

Oh, God. So, there was a local band when I was fourteen that put stickers all over Staten Island and I used to peel them off and steal them! 

Brian

Can — can you tell me what band it was? I’ll bleep you out.

Dani

Oh, it was, it was [REDACTED]. 

Brian

That’s perfect! 

Dani

They, they stickered my whole neighborhood because someone lived in my neighborhood and they were — every time I would walk to go to, like, the deli, power walks around the neighborhood, they were, like, on, like, posts, on, like, a guardrail?

Brian

Right.

Dani

They were on — and I peeled a lot of them off and I probably still have a lot of them. They were up in my high school. 

Brian

That’s amazing. 

Dani

Yeah, yeah. 

Brian

Thank you for the symmetry of: I have an example of somebody putting up stickers and you have an act of rebellion peeling them down.

All right. Well, at this point, I was definitely feeling a bit nervous. If it wasn’t Nikki I talked to or Dani it had to’ve been Alex, right?

Alex

Hello, now?

Brian

Hi!

Alex

Hi…? 

Brian

I know — I know I kept you in the dark. So this is why I’m talking to you: I… there’s this thing that I’ve talked to somebody about and I forgot exactly who it was that I talked to, but I’ve been able to narrow it down to three people. And I’ve already talked to the two other people and I have not talked to them about it! So if it’s not you, I’m screwed. Let me know if any of this rings a bell. 

Alex

Sure.

Brian

You know The Conference House Park, right?

Alex

Yeah, yeah. 

Brian

You know the south pole at The Conference House Park.

Alex

Of course! 

Brian

And you know that there is somebody that leaves Flat Earth stickers — ?

december 29th, 2020.

Alex

Yeah!

Brian

It was you I talked to?

Alex 

Yeah.

Brian

Oh! Thank you! I was, like, “I don’t know who else this could’ve been!”

Alex

Yeah, it was me. 

Brian

OK.

Alex

I’m sorry, it’s just, like — it’s just so funny ‘cause I was, like, “Oh my God, what is this going to be about?” Like, there’s, like, so many… this is, like, how you start it off. OK.

Brian

Can — can you talk to me in a, in a broader sense about that? ‘Cause here’s the thing for me: I feel like, whoever that is, whoever it is that does this, like — and I don’t know them and I obviously don’t believe and advocate for what they believe — but, whoever this person is, like, this feels like the perfect act of rebellion to me.

Alex

Yeah.

Brian

‘cause, like, think about it: the south pole is a monument to direction and all this person has to do to define it is put up a sticker — it’s perfect! It’s just, like, the greatest, most insignificant, “Screw you!” done in, in the most — 

Alex

For sure, for sure and I can especially, especially, I guess from a detached observing point, kind of, and, like, the fact that you don’t know who it, is doing it, I can see why you would think all of these things… 

Brian

What do you think makes a good rebel? 

Alex

Oh my God. “~Question authority!~” No. Yeah, I guess what a timely question, right? In a way, it’s like going against whatever the expectation is. You know, it’s — there, there are different forms of rebellion and they’re not all appropriate. They’re — I mean, they’re not supposed to be appropriate, but they’re not… I don’t know what I’m trying to say. This is so hard. This is so hard. You know what? I’m going to leave it at that, I’m going to leave it at that: that it’s going against expectation.

Brian

How do you think we’re able to tell the difference between what we see as worthy rebellion and unworthy rebellion, you know? ‘cause, like, we — you know, we watch Star Wars; nobody roots for the Death Star. 

Alex

I think, like, you have to be honest with yourself about what you’re fighting for and if you are fighting for something ego based… might be an issue. Especially when it is directly in conflict with people who are fighting for their lives. I think you have to really be honest with yourself and look at, and look at why it is that you’re fighting for what you’re fighting for. And I think that a lot of people can’t be honest with themselves. And maybe that’s where they should start. 

Brian

Are you comfortable sharing the, the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done? 

Alex

Off the top of the dome, I really have never done anything all that rebellious. I really haven’t. And that might be a good thing, ‘cause that might be, like, self-preservation and me just trying to keep myself from getting into trouble. 

Brian

Mmhmm, yeah. 

Alex

So this might actually be something that, like, I’ll think about and then later on maybe I’ll — I can come up with something and tell you, but maybe I’m protecting myself.

So that’s that, I guess. Case closed. Mystery solved. Just for good measure, I also talked to Casper — of course — on the role of rebels within a community.

Casper

Well, one of the things to look for, if a community is healthy, is: how is space made for conflict? Because if you walk into a community, and everyone agrees with each other, you should have alarm bells going off, right?

Brian

Right.

Casper

Because, first of all, it’s not true. We’re human beings and we’re going to have different opinions and, you know, the quality disagreement, you know, how we engage with one another to disagree is such a sign of the health of a community. Because, if there isn’t any, it’s a cult. 

Brian

Yeah.

Casper

It really is a cult. And so, you know, one of the principles of science is to have a hypothesis, to test it out, and —  and to test it over and over again, right?

Brian

Right.

Casper

Until we can find a consensus. And so, to some extend, I’m not too worried about people who — from a climate context — say, “Listen, I’m not sure about your predictions about this data,” or, “I’m not, like, this — this data doesn’t seem to connect with the, the general theory of global climate change and catastrophe.” What I care about is when that fringe opinion is funded — 

Brian

Right.

Casper

— and positioned into the media and distorted to such an extent that you have a political movement that builds around this — perhaps genuine — question from a scientific perspective which then launches a whole industry of fake science because they know they can get funded doing it.

Brian

Yeah.

Casper

That’s — that’s when it’s a problem. So if you think about a community, like, it should have space for disagreement. Now, I — I don’t know what’s motivating this sticker guy; my sense is it might not be purely about the articulation of not believing in — 

Brian

Right, yeah.

Casper

— that the world is a globe. It might be a sense of wanting to interrupt public space in some way.

Brian

Yeah.

Casper

Or to be noticed. Or to — right, there’s all — there’s all sorts of reasons why, why people disagree. But I think ultimately in a community you need some space for pushback. One of the ways that you can see this when you bring people together is if you get, you know, ten, fifteen people in a circle and, one by one, people share something broadly along the same lines, usually by person eight or nine, there’s such a discomfort with the same — the sameness — 

Brian

Yeah.

Casper

— that people — that any — like, and sometimes it’s me and if I’m not there it’s going to be someone else, right?

Brian

Right.

Casper

Someone will just be, like, “Yeah, but what about…?” and, and, “I don’t agree because…” And so, I think that, that the invitation to each of us is, like: am I always just playing the rebel because it, that somehow feeds my identity? Or am I always just agreeing?

Brian

Right, right.

Casper

Right, like, there’s actually some health to have — it’s, it’s healthy for a community to have some level of, of discussion and disagreement but, it’s, yeah, again, it’s about how we do it that I’m really passionate about. 

Brian

I have one more question for you. I’ve been asking everybody and feel free to answer or not.

Casper

Yeah.

Brian

But are you will to share: what is the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?

Casper

Oh, absolutely! I went to a very, kind of academically orientated secondary school. I was a boarding student there. And I fit in, you know, I came out and but, still, kind of, you know, did my — I — I was not disrupted, let me put it this way.

Brian

Right, right. 

Casper

But I had this deep, bitter anger about the experience of being there. I felt that the school was hypocritical, it was very rich in some ways. I remember being outraged about the amount of money that the head teacher spent to redecorate their, their office.

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

Casper

I was really — I was, I was outraged, and I’d been reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo, this great, kind of political awakening book in, in my teenage years. And so I created a sort of burn book equivalent, if you’ve ever seen the movie Mean Girls, in which Regina George puts all sorts of, you know, secrets and rumors — 

Brian

Right!

Capser

— about people and then, like, distributes it across the school… that’s what I did — 

Brian

Oh my God.

Casper

— on my final day, senior year. And I remember asking my mother that morning, you know, “Should I do this?” And she just said, “You do whatever you need to do.” And I remember that experience as being so — it was extremely rebellious. I was banned form campus.

Brian

Oh my gosh.

Casper

I was not allowed to come to the prom, you know? I was — all sorts of things, kind of, immediately happened. And I remember the teacher’s confusion at me because I’d been this, kind of, goody two shoes figure. And it felt good because I wanted people to see that I was angry.

Brian

Right.

Casper

And get a better view of me. And the thing that I learnt was that the only people who, kind of, were curious about what I’d done and why and were supportive — even though they disagreed with what I’d done — were the friends that I, I’d had when I was thirteen who I’d, kind of, you know, had fallen by the wayside to some extent.

Brian

Right.

Casper

But that they cared about me enough to, to be curious. And so I, I learned something about — you know, when you are rebellious, you will lose friends.

Brian

Yeah.

Casper

And you will lose influence. But that the friends who, who stood by me, I — I — I’ll be appreciative for forever. And — and I also learned that that was not the most effective way to communicate my, my displeasure, you know?

Brian

Right.

Casper

So I, I learnt a lot from it!

Brian

No, I — I… thank you for sharing that.

And really, I just want to say, Casper has been a real trooper, putting up with me and my terrible interview skills. They say don’t meet your heroes but, Casper is the exception. Also — again, buy his book! The Power of Ritual! I really loved it. 

I feel like it’s only fair to share what I think my most rebellious act ever was, considering my friends were all willing to share. Anyway, it goes like this:

… actually, I suppose I should preface it by saying it was a prank, sort of in line with what Dani was saying. In this quest to define what it means to be a rebel — and a good rebel at that — I agree with her: I think being a harmless prankster is a qualifying quantity. And I wasn’t one of those, “It’s just a prank, bro!” dudes; but you know, the kind that is rooted in whimsy and fizz. I also want to say that I don’t pull many pranks. In fact, I think this might’ve been the one and only I’ve ever pulled (which made it all the more unexpected and, therefore, effective). Now that that’s all out of the way, what the hell was it?

OK, so you know in episode one how I was gushing over how much I love writing and sending notes? Well, I got to do that in a big way thanks to my first ever real job ever working in a warehouse for an online guitar store. As a music person, that was maybe the sickest job ever — you know, outside of being an actual musician — but, I got to handle these thousand dollar guitars and pack them up and mail them out to legit rock stars. I had this job for a few months, but at some point management decided to move warehouse operations from Jersey down to one of the Carolinas — I forget which one. 

So we had to pack up all our stock onto two eighteen-wheelers and clean our zone in the warehouse (which we shared with some hilarious carpet distributors, these mastermind prank-Gods in their own right). But ANYWAY that meant anything not in our inventory was going to get chucked and one of those items was a stack of company postcards. I asked my bosses if I could just have them, and they for sure did not give a damn, so the postcards went home with me that day.

What I decided to do with them was write little letters to all my friends, especially the ones that I didn’t get to see so often anymore because they moved far away or we drifted apart or whatever. I’d give them a good word to use that day (like… lucubration! Noun: to burn the midnight oil. Also: a piece of writing, typically pedantic or over elaborate). I’d give them whatever song was my current jam and I’d sign off saying, “Later Stranger!” To let everyone know that they should be expecting something in the mail, I’d make a little post on social media, nothing too crazy, just a heads up that everyone got tagged in.

something like this.

On November 8th, 2015 I sent out whatever the next batch of thirty or so postcards was and made my innocuous post online… and waited. See, with this batch I kept everything mostly that same: I still gave everyone a word to try out and whatever song I was jamming at the time and signed off with my sign off. But what was different about these notes is that, well, they weren’t notes at all. When everyone started receiving their postcards, the message within contained but a letter and a number. 

Days went by but I knew, soon enough, someone would crack and ask what the fuck was going on. I forget who the first person to start everything off was, possibly my buddy Jonathan (who got the nickname J-Bones when we played football in high school (because remember I played football?)).

or I guess it was Erin. oops. sorry Erin! 😬

So J-Bones starts asking everyone on my post what was happening… just as I intended. Everyone was gripped with anticipation. “Did your postcard come in yet, yes or no? Could you post your letter? Oh, I apologize, can you also post the number so we know where it goes in Brian’s message???” After two or three days there were just enough letters and number combinations to start trying out different phrases, but not enough to actually get it. 

🤔🤨🧐

Maybe, I don’t know, five days in my friend Shauna — who succeeded me as Band Leader of Band at Sea — put her corresponding number and letter into the phrase and inadvertently solved it because she didn’t recognize what it was, bless her. Thankfully J-Bones was there to let everyone know what it was that I’d spent twenty bucks worth of stamps on and a couple hours putting together.

And so what was it that I sent to all my pals? 

no Zim, I am NOT better than this.

Yeah. I apologize. I feel like you’ve also just been pranked by me a little bit just now, by extension. ANYWAY that was the kind of stuff we were doing for fun back in 2015. Remember that? My friends flipped the fuck out ‘cause I got them so bad. And rightfully so; you don’t come back from that, not in one piece. I feel real sorry for them, and now you, too. In any case, yeah, that’s the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done. Not too shabby, I don’t think. Not for a son of Tottenville, anyway.

The holy lines of demarcation separating Tottenville from the rest of the civilized world are well defined. The yellow lines that split and divide Page Avenue mark the border between Tottenville and our two border towns: Richmond Valley and Charleston (which I get is confusing since we’re nowhere near the cities of Richmond or Charleston).

Regardless, Page Avenue intersects with Richmond Valley Road, forming the triple point where Tottenville, Richmond Valley, and Charleston all converge. This road (Richmond Valley) continues on — crossing east to west — along the Tottenville/Charleston border until it reaches Arthur Kill Road where it neatly rounds off the corners of Tottenville. To recap — and look, I know this might sound like the height of tedium, but I wouldn’t waste your time on this if it wasn’t about to be important — but, to recap: Tottenville’s northern border is made up of two streets, Page Avenue and Richmond Valley Road. There are only three roads out of town: there’s Hylan Boulevard (which I mentioned earlier), Arthur Kill (which I just mentioned), and Amboy Road (which I’m only mentioning for the first time right now). 

tottenville.

The rest of Tottenville is surrounded by water. I wouldn’t say we live on a peninsula — because we could never compete with the slender-y-ness of a Florida or Scandinavia in this regard — but, we’re enough of a stub that, well, we’re surrounded by water on three sides. We kind of jut out of the already crooked Staten Island, like the island’s one big toe or something. I don’t know. From any bird’s eye, the Atlantic is to the east, and the Raritan Bay is to the west and south, graciously putting some distance between us and New Jersey. That said, you might literally be able to throw a stone over the Arthur Kill and hit Jersey (at least, you know, if you’re Aaron Rodgers). 

If it isn’t clear by now: Tottenville is cut off not only to the city we call home, but from our island at large; we are an island within an island, sequestered in isolation (if that makes sense). And it wasn’t always like this. At the foot of Main Street (because yes, we have an actual Main Street) a ferry used to shuttle people and cars across the Arthur Kill. It was a point along the straightest-line-route for anyone traveling from Brooklyn to the Jersey shore. Perhaps there were dreams that Tottenville would become something of a local economic powerhouse, the kind of idyllic suburbia you see on a postcard, but that traffic arrangement was obviously untenable for the modern world. 

In the summer of 1928, The Outerbridge was opened. And, I apologize, I got to stop here for a moment. Something I’ve always been bothered by (of course) because I’m an unmitigated pedant is that it’s not actually The Outerbridge, but rather The Outerbridge Crossing. Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge was the first chairman of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. That’s kind of wild, isn’t it? A dude named Outerbridge ends up leading a port authority and the most far-out bridge in the state gets named after him??? There’s a term for that: nominative determinism, and this was a right fit case if there ever was one. I mean, seriously, you think it’s an accident there was a kicker in the NFL named Ryan Longwell? Or that the fastest man ever is a dude named Usain Bolt? C’mon. Anyway, it’s The Outerbridge Crossing and not the Outerbridge and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. And why? ‘cause it’s important to remember that Outerbridge was a person. A man with hopes and dreams and a life and an absolutely killer mustache.

his jacket game was also pretty 🔥 too, huh?

I don’t make the rules and I’m usually more timid than a turtle but I once made a thing out of this over a mislabeled document I had to sign when I signed up for EZPASS; the nice lady at the counter looked at me funny, as if I’d said something utterly ridiculous… … … … …

After The Outerbridge Crossing went up, Tottenville settled down and settled in. Arthur Kill Road runs right beneath it, on just that side of the Charleston borderline. Meaning this: Tottenville is a place that’s easy to pass over, quite literally. Similar to how the Staten Island Expressway cuts off the North Shore from the rest of Staten Island, Tottenville exists as this mere pocket of a town that can be avoided without much effort. You don’t just pass through it; to get to it, you have to go to it. And given its geography, it’s very… alone in a way the North Shore isn’t. Like at least the North Shore has St. George and Stapleton and Tompkinsville and Port Richmond and West Brighton all jam packed together. Down here, there’s just Tottenville. We don’t have that same kind of affinity with Richmond Valley or Charleston or Pleasant Plains beyond them; we are so acutely cut off. Separate. 

And I don’t mean to make it sound all bad. Quite the contrary: growing up somewhere that had parks and beaches just an hour from quote-unquote “the city” was awesome. I wish I could figure out where I first heard this — I could’ve sworn it was in some New York Times article — but, someone described Tottenville as being, at once, both an exile and a refuge. And that’s it, that’s really the perfect way to describe it. I mean, when thinking about living in New York City, even my first mental projection is of crammed tenant apartment buildings in Manhattan or Brooklyn lofts; I grew up in a home, though, with front and back yards and an in-ground pool (luxuries I hope I’ve never taken for granted). Tottenville is also an old, lived in town with a lot of history; there was this census article in the Advance once — the Staten Island Advance is our local paper — that said that Tottenville had the highest percentage of native-born Staten Islanders living within its zip code as compared to the rest of the island (because most other zip codes fill up with Brooklyn transplants).

What I’m trying to get at with all this is this: you know, Americans have this thing of talking about their ancestry and I do the same thing, right? I’m half-Irish and half-Norwegian. But really what I am is someone from Tottenville. I’m still those other things, I’m still an American, a New Yorker, Staten Islander. Shaolinite. But I’m from Tottenville. 

The Conference House is Tottenville’s claim to fame. If you’ve never heard of it before, I would not be surprised. Mainly because it was a big fucking failure.

la casa de conferencias.

Two hundred and forty-four years ago, British Naval Commander Lord Richard Howe, Admiral of the Fleet, met with a curious band of revolutionaries: Edward Rutledge, John Adams, and THE Benjamin Franklin. Staten Island as a whole has been on the wrong side of history time and Time and TIME again so, of course, during the Revolutionary War, we were a mostly pack of Loyalists. You know, now that I think about it, it’s almost as if Staten Island is still living through its boneheaded years of its version of that story. You know, assuming the arc of America is going to be long… … …

ANYWAY Howe had just won some battles to gain some footing on Long Island and he pushed Washington all the way back to Manhattan. And the revolution might’ve been well underway, but a conference was called with the hope that a stay could be put on the fighting, perhaps altogether. They talked for three hours, ate some ham, they left fruitless. 

So yeah, they couldn’t get it done; the peace talks failed. This always irked me when I was growing up. I mean — yes — had the revolution not continued, who knows how world history might’ve been different? Certainly, I would not be here. And today the park itself is a nice little zone to have a picnic in; Lord knows how it might’ve otherwise been corrupted if something important actually got decided here other than, you know, nothing. 

My beef was with the fact that this is what I was saddled with. Why couldn’t I grow up somewhere that had something cool happen? Why couldn’t I live someplace where there could’ve been some famous, harrowing battle? I pined for a legendary act of derring-do, when, from the depths of a vertiginous stupor, some hero summoned the might of ten to overcome a most loathsome, lethal challenger. T’was not to be. The fighting commenced (elsewhere) and it’s quite possible that over 100,000 people lost their lives in the Revolution, 40,000 from combat alone. Forever thus, Tottenville was the meager host to a lousy board meeting between some old, white men.

what do you think goes on in there between january and march???

But whatever. Life went on. A bridge was built. A south pole erected. Eventually, I was born. And Tottenville has remained a fairly pedestrian suburbia ever since, complete with a regular-ness, a dullness. Boarded up by sea and by land. And it’s made us all a little crazy. I mean, there’s the Flat Earth Sticker Bandit, there’s me. I think our need to place a narrow pole in the ground at a precise longitude and latitude and escalate the issue to a trial of (literal) Copernican proportion is but one piece of evidence of our common madness. 

And I know I sound like I’m joking. I am sort of, but really, I’m not. To squabble over the problems we fight over… it’s the task of fools. Before, I called Flat Eartherism a collective delusion and I didn’t make that up; that’s what BuzzFeed News is calling QAnon stuff from now on as opposed to it being a conspiracy theory. ‘cause here’s the thing, sometimes conspiracies are true and it’s important to be careful with the language we use. I want to make that distinction because I’ve come to believe what feels like a conspiratorial truth: that there is something deeply, deeply wrong with my town. With Tottenville. And it is because we come from a place marked by its alleged failure; it is because of our isolation, which has only helped foster our island’s segregation. 

For when you live in isolation, as we do… you can’t mark a location with a pole — because there is only an edge. On all sides and in every direction. And it is flat. The South Pole in Tottenville can not mark the south and it can’t mark our end because when you live encircled and on the brink, as we do, it’s all The End.

the bottom of hylan boulevard… is what I’m getting at clear? no? I should’ve been more explicit.

And what that means is that our sickness has made what it is we’re capable of trenchant. We need a prayer. Perhaps a Hail Mary.

George Floyd died on May 25th, 2020. Murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. The incident was caught on video and widely circulated online. The incident became national news overnight and the country broke. Or broke more, rather. A startling component of the video was the brazenness of the officer involved, Derek Chauvin. How he acted with the conviction of sure impunity as his peers stood by and did nothing and as Floyd used his final breaths to plead for his deceased mother. 

In the days that followed, Black Lives Matter protests sprang up across the country, including here in New York City. Viral clips went around on Twitter showing heated exchanges between police and those protesting. Occasionally, chaos ensued and lost in the moment, some took to looting shops and storefronts.

Normally, I’d have serious qualms about reducing the events of those two weeks down to two paragraphs. Right, ‘cause like, A LOT happened. But it was that last bit, that last bit by itself that the people on the south shore of Staten Island reduced the events to and then unraveled themselves. All they saw was the looting, which, to them, meant rioting. There had been protests on the north shore of Staten Island (though no reported cases of looting as far as I can tell) but it didn’t matter: it might as well have happened because that’s what’s just expected… because, that’s where they live, isn’t it? That anarchy could break out on the lawless streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan wasn’t a surprise; those are the boroughs where the others live. And the north shore was close to those boroughs and filled with their people. But never on the south shore. No, never, not here…

Social media was chattering this whole time; that’s nothing new. Boneheads are going to reveal themselves and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor until the final star goes in our universe goes supernova. But it wasn’t until a march was planned to take place in Tottenville that a group formed on Facebook that wanted to make sure the South Shore was quote-unquote “protected.” These weren’t people hiding in the slime-covered corners of the internet where anonymity and irony reign supreme; these were people putting their name to a commitment to be ready to be called to arms — literally — should anyone from this march put so much as one foot onto their property. I don’t want to be mistaken but I also just want to call it as I saw it: a lynch mob was being formed on the south shore. 

A few screenshots from this Facebook group made their way around on Twitter and Instagram. I don’t know any of the posters personally, but I definitely recognized some last names. And I know we live on a big island, but it’s also not. These were the people I’ve been living beside my entire life and they were so filled with rage and fear because God forbid some people voice their concern over the extrajudicial murder of Black lives in America… 

Brian

I’m sure you saw on Facebook people were, like, ready to arm the south shore.

Dani

Yeah.

Brian

And it’s just like… what???

Dani

Yeah, nothing about that is positive or impactful in any way. It’s kind of just you impacting the rest of the world world by showing that you’re a garbage person. Like, no one was coming to fuck up your day. No one — except maybe causing a little traffic by walking down Hylan Boulevard. Like, no one was doing anything that was directly impacting your life and your continued way of life. And… yeah, I’m glad I don’t live on the south shore anymore. 

Nikki

I — I love Staten Island. So many people hate it, so many people rag on it. I think it’s a beautiful place, I think there’s so much culture and it’s just a matter of whether or not you want to find it, you know? I grew up on the south shore, I lived in the middle of the island for my middle years, and now I live in the north shore. Like, when I was growing up on the south shore, I remember when the first, like, Black neighbors moved in and it was something that my family talked about. And being in the music scene for fifteen years, we’ve always gone to the north shore for arts and creation and things like that. And it exists so much here on the north shore, but when we were going, it was, “Be careful, we’re going to the north shore, blah blah blah, this is the dangerous area.” 

Alex

And it’s, like, how… fearful do you have to be of your own shadow to, like, threaten a child that wants to walk in your streets in the name of peace? Like, talk about living in fear. You’re afraid of your own shadow, man. 

Brian

Yeah.

Alex

Oh, it’s horrifying. 

Brian

Yeah.

Dani

I think that the south shore developed a lot more slowly with a lot of respects because physically it developed more slowly because there was just less people there. There were less ideas being spread and there was less diversity in the crowd of people whereas, were I am now… I mean, my building is a hundred years old and there’s twenty-thousand apartments in it. Like, all different mixes of people all in and out, all the time, because so many were, kind of, crowded here around the same time. And there was a lot of differences in socio-economic status, but in pretty much the same general area. 

Nikki

But, to me, the only thing that can be done to address the segregation is to allow yourself to remove those barriers. The issue comes from people being implicitly — and I really do believe that most people are implicitly biased and implicitly racist on Staten Island, and I don’t think that they think there’s anything wrong — but these implicit biases on the south shore don’t allow for Black people, or people of color, to be comfortable existing there. And that is a struggle in itself, so why would a Black person or a person of color move to an area where they know its going to be uncomfortable? So they’re not going to do it because they don’t want to, it’s uncomfortable for them. Reasonable. White people won’t move here because of the same, but different, reason. They’re going to feel uncomfortable, they’re going to feel scared, they’re going to have these issues. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of people doing a lot of work. I mean, shit, I’m probably not even going to stay in New York, or Staten Island, to raise a family if I raise a family at all so I have no legacy in the north shore and that would be the way it happens: is that people, kind of, transplanting themselves on their own accord and then growing from there. 

Dani

And as someone who has, like, made the jump, and even, you know, being immersed in that, I still have no idea how to bridge the gap. Like, I don’t understand, and I don’t really know how to teach someone that people that are different from them are still people. 

Alex

I think it’s easier to, you know, beat your chest and protect quote-unquote, “what is yours,” and all of that than start to really look and question.

Brian

It’s — it’s easier to project than to reflect.

Alex

Yeah, yeah. It’s painful. When you start questioning, like I said, it just doesn’t stop. And then it’s, like, wow, most of the things that I’ve been taught, most of the things I’ve been raised on, I never thought to question before. Like, wow, there might be a lot more to this; some of it might be untrue. It’s: questions beget questions and it’s kind of like a never-ending unravelling. It might be rooted in bias; it might be rooted in hate. Sometimes people keep themselves from all that because it’s easier not to because… ‘cause otherwise there’s a lot of pain going down that path.

I wish I could say that I wasn’t shocked, that’s it’s always been so clearly obvious, some dark open secret, but I honestly didn’t think it could happen here, truly. “I know that stuff exists in the world, but not here, right?” I always clung to the belief that you live the better world you wish to see because that’s all you can control. And so you let the occasional insensitive comment slip by without challenge because to believe that there is anything but the overwhelming cordial root extended to you (by someone) wouldn’t override their worst tendencies when it matters most is to despair. I mean, yeah, we were Staten Island, we were the south shore, but c’mon, we’re still in New York, right? But it’s clear now the bubble around Tottenville has been a fantastical snow globe, shielding us from having to reckon with misunderstanding directly resulting from that bubble’s very existence. And when finally tested, we popped. The worst among us shouted the loudest. That there can be people here that are at once both so like me and still antipodal to everything — everything! — I stand for made me sick. Never again will I be so naïve. 

this photo I took… the metaphor is too strong, right? the metaphor is too strong.

The march was set for Sunday, June 7th at 2 PM, and it was set to take place at The Conference House, eighty-nine thousand and twenty three days after the failed peace talks. Starting there, they would head to the 123 Police Precinct (which, yes, I know sounds like it belongs not so much in Tottenville, but maybe Sesame Street) and then back again. And what a convenient metaphor it would be, wouldn’t it? A protest in support of Black lives taking place at the site of a failed peace talk, not far from the most southern tip of the reddest districts in New York. What good could be done? How could it have ended with anything other than comedy or tragedy? 

But here’s the thing I left out about the origin story of The Conference at The Conference House; this is what everyone forgets. After Lord Richard Howe, Admiral of the Fleet, secured Brooklyn, he and his brother — a General Sir William Howe — decided to take their foot off the gas for the sake of diplomacy. Like I said, nobody wanted the fighting to continue, not needlessly, so maybe reconciliation and restoration was on the table. They just wanted to talk, informally if need be, with the rebel leaders to see what it would take to bring the Revolution to an end. The Continental Congress was against the meeting for a slew of reasons — mostly, they didn’t want to inadvertently negotiate their own re-subjugation — but still they sent Franklin, Adams, and Rutledge, a trio of harbingers. 

This is the thing of the thing, though: all they had in their power was to ask Lord Howe questions. They wanted to suss him out to see what kind of authority he actually had. You see what I’m saying? This wasn’t a peace talk, this was a fact finding mission! A meeting to possibly maybe have another more official meeting somewhere down the line. Right, like, they couldn’t make any formal declarations because the Continental Congress didn’t authorize them with any official authority. They just were there to see if their revolution would be recognized as a legit enterprise.

And on the other side, Lord Howe might’ve had full control over the British army’s land and sea operations, but that was it! All the tools in his diplomatic arsenal had been neutralized. Right, like, this is what he could do: declare peace and grant pardons. You think the British royal court was going to let the Admiral of the Fleet openly discuss legitimate grievances? Give me a break. Lord Howe was stripped of any real power and he knew it. 

And here’s the real kicker: they all knew this about each other, more or less, right? Franklin, Adams, and Rutledge couldn’t talk on the record and even if they could, Lord Howe had no bargaining power and nothing to negotiate. The Americans would not recognize peace without independence. Pessimism and despair abounded in all directions because it was crystalline clear than nothing was going to come from this meeting. AND YET… and yet, they all still went. They still went! Howe was even considering blowing the whole thing off until he talked to his brother about it — that General Sir William Howe. And you know what? People like him deserve a fucking medal and we’ll call it just that, after him, the General Sir William Howe Award.

I can only imagine what that conversation was like when he convinced his brother to go. That the cause of peace — to strive for harmony among your fellow person — was to take aim of Heaven. To dream of a life in tranquility and meaningful brotherhood… That they came together in that spirit despite their certain defeat, this is not failure. Not at all. Not by a long shot. And you know what? I’m not big on hope. But is there a more remarkable display of hope in the face of certain failure? I take pride in calling this place my home, if only for that. Annoyingly, proud, and reluctantly… but I am. That happened. And that happened here.

And so, I think in many ways The Conference House was, in fact, the perfect spot for this march to occur. Peace often fails, but it takes guts just to try; it takes courage. Courage to walk into the land of those that would rather see you dead and stand up and say, “You will, today, here, in this place and at this time hear me. And you will listen. And you will learn. And we will emerge, together, better for it.” Because with peace on the table you never know what can happen. It is so much easier — infinitely easier — to give in, to fight, to be abrasive and to bully and to be hostile and to commit terror. I would never say that the protests that took place throughout the city were unimportant, but was there one more important than the one that took place in Tottenville? This is where it needed to happen most and these are the people that needed to hear it, that didn’t want it. That threatened it. And I can promise you, you didn’t hear about it on the news. None of our clips went viral on Twitter or Instagram. But that day two-thousand Staten Islanders showed up. From the north shore to Tottenville, we showed up, just outside the park quad, at the point Hylan Boulevard ends. The southernmost point.

sunset at the conference house park.

In a lot of ways, this project has been a ruse. All of this has been set up because, really, what I’ve wanted to do since that day is set up a platform for someone that spoke at that rally. Someone whose words have etched into my soul and reshaped me. Every time this project got tough, I found inspiration in the fact that, no, I need to keep going, I need — I need! — everyone to hear what I heard from Donovan Robinson.

Donovan Robinson.

And so, this is it, really. This is a conversation we had a few weeks after the rally. I hope you enjoy.

Brian

Hello.

Donovan

Hey, what’s going on my man?

Brian

Good, how’re you doing?

Donovan

I am A-OK, man. Glad to be here. Can you see me good?

Brian

Yeah, yeah, that’s perfect.

Donovan

My name is Donovan Robinson, I am a New Orleans born person, I guess. I moved to Staten Island in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. Even though, you know, my heart‘s in New Orleans, my body is a hundred percent New York City, and I am New York — I could — I might —  I’m actually more New York now than I am New Orleans, so New York is my home, and I just love it here, man. Staten Island is a… it’s so different. You know, when you think, “New York City,” you think of Manhattan, you think of Brooklyn. Well, Staten Island is kind of like a culmination of both. You kinda have that upper… I don’t wanna say, “upper echelon,” but, it has a kind — like that, like that strong vibe, of, like, a Manhattan, but with that suburb feel, like, that Brooklyn can be at times, so it’s kinda like a beast in its own. As far as Staten Island itself, Staten Island is… for the most part segregated. It’s segregated by highways, the highways that, there is a north shore and the south shore. And what happens, you know, growing up on Staten Island, both of these sides have their own thing. You know, both of these sides have their own schools, both of these sides have their own grocery stores, movie theaters, pool — swimming pools. 

Brian

Right.

Donovan

So, a lot of times, unless you have something important on the opposite side, you probably wouldn’t even need to go onto the other side, you know. So, with that being said, it causes a disparage between the people and there’s not as much integration as you would think there would be in a place like New York City in a time like 2020. So, when you have two — it’s not even, it’s not a layman’s term, this is, like, literal: when you have two separate communities on the Island, you’re stuck on the island, right? And you have two communities that don’t have to interact, or they’re made specifically for people not to interact, what happens is, you know, I grew up on the north shore, whatever the case may be, another person may grow up on the south shore, but because you haven’t had the need to go over to the north shore, you aren’t as familiar with the different minorities and different ethnic groups that are around. So, because of that you don’t really have a connection or a feel of the true community of Staten Island, because you’ve kind of been pushed to one side and I’ve been pushed to another side, which, down the line causes friction, because, you know, even though they make it seem like it’s just one big island, we all live at odds. And it’s not because of the people, it’s just the way that Staten Island was built and structured. It’s… you know, I — I work on the south shore and, you know, in — in the store that I work at, you know, you can feel — you can feel it. You know, you get the eyes, you get the stares, you get the comments, you know what I’m sayin’? I’ve been, you know, coming through the parking lot, I’d hear, you know, doors clicking, as if I’m coming to go inside of your door. You can feel it, you know? And that’s why it’s so scary because, you know, as more, you know, crazy things happen, people start to show their true colors. It’s tough man, especially in your youth, you know, it’s — society is hard enough, you know — you know, there’s so many things going on, you’re — you’re trying to make it in, in the rat race, you know? And, and pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and it doesn’t help to feel like your country doesn’t care for you, you know? And, you know, it’s one thing to have the government, right? ‘cause the government’s the government, there’s always been the people versus the government mentality, you know, that’s been on since Great Britain and beyond, right?

Brian
Yeah.

Donovan

But, once these instances come up, you know, then what you have when you try to push forward for that justice, you get that backlash from the community. Now that’s where it really hurts, you know? Because the police are going to police, the government’s the government; it’s not the first time in history they’ve played that role, but when you also have your community patronizing you, demeaning you… Literally, I’ve had — I got — I got to a point for a long time where I stopped speaking because I would get into arguments everywhere I go, just trying to simply explain how a man can be choked out to death for selling something like loose cigarettes, right? And what would happen unfortunately with Staten Island is — I have been fortunate enough to be on both sides at times, so I have friends on both sides. And unfortunately — you know, I had a lot of great friends who understood, but I lost a lot of friends as well, simply of — of having these kinds of conversations, where, I don’t want to lose any more friends. I don’t wanna even have this conversation, and you say something incredibly stupid, or bigoted, or one-sided, and I lose a friend. So growing up on Staten Island, if you did have the opportunity to have friends — I had — like I said, I had— I had a lot of great people who completely understood, and I had a lot of friends that I had to stop associating with because they showed me their true colors. It can be really, really tough you know? In my youth I was thirteen to seventeen during that “stop-and-frisk” era. And I must have been stopped and frisked at least forty times. Now, when I tell somebody something like that they, they, they think I’m — of course, you think it’s bullshit! You think it’s crazy, and I don’t fault them for that, right, because how do you tell someone a unicorn is real if they’ve never seen a unicorn, you know what I’m sayin? 

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

If, in any other situation, a cop has done the right thing, why the hell would they want to grab you, some random kid, forty times over the span of three to four years? But this was my life, you know? When they came out there was guns drawn, you know? It’s not — it’s not like, you know, [SVU], where they pop up and you know, they have a conversation.

Brian

Right.

Donovan

Nah. Not at all. I could literally be getting off the 46 bus stop, backpack on my back, you know, and when that cop turns that corner from Alaska, I could see his eyes through his tinted windows. Because I know he saw me. And I know he’s going to get to me before I can get to my building, right? So, once that car sees you, they jump the curb. They jump the curb, two cops get out. First of all, they’re unmarked cars. There was no marked cars at the time, you know. They had the badges, if they had the badges, but there’s always the vest and the hat, and that’s how we knew, the vest and the hat. They hop out, tell you, “get on the ground.” So you on the ground. So you have trained veterans, you know, the — the veterans are coming for us. You know, we’re fifteen, sixteen. I’m — I don’t — not your regular, average beat NYPD cops, they’re talking about trained, seasoned veterans that were targeting us because that’s what they were told to do, you know? It’s a numbers game. If you go after enough, if you go after a hundred you get ten, if you go after five hundred, you could get fifteen, whatever the case may be, but —

Brian

Right.

Donovan

 — we paid the price for that. I never carried any guns, I never got into drugs, I’ve never been arrested, you know what I’m sayin? But somehow I was always, always, always targeted, you know? To the point where it was so normal for us that, when we would come home from school… so, we’d always have like, a group of girls, ‘cause we were — we were… we were like— we’re young, you know!

Brian

Yeah, yeah!

Donovan

We would be able to prosper off of it, right? And I say — I don’t wanna say, “prosper,” in a good way but, I knew that that car right there is going to stop us. So we got these girls with us, so the cops would jump out on us, the girls are there, you know we’re getting all tacked up and checked out and thrown on the wall, and we would just laugh it off because now we look cool in front of the women. They’d let us go, of course, because we didn’t have anything.

Brian

Right.

Donovan

But, we were so used to it that it wasn’t a thing for us. Like, it didn’t really — I didn’t — if I knew how much of a big deal it was I would have maybe said something sooner. I didn’t know my rights at the time, you know. I didn’t know my rights, I didn’t know they couldn’t stop me for no apparent reason. So it was, Staten Island was tough to grow up on. So, I got, I got another story. So at the time I was work — I was — I think I was sixteen. So, I was outside on my way to work. I had to catch the bus, I had my duffel bag with me full of my stuff. I go into the store — I go into the store, at the time I know I’m eighteen, young, I shouldn’t be, but I was smoking Black & Milds because I was trying not to smoke weed or whatever.

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

Donovan

So, I go into the store, I get the Black & Mild, I have this bag on me. Now I’m standing in front of the store just chatting with a couple of friends right before I go to work. The bus is probably, like, five minutes away, I still had a little bit of time. So, we’re all standing there. This is, like, two o’clock in the afternoon, ‘cause I’m trying to make that four o’clock shift. So, we’re all standing there and a detective car, all black Ford, careens by us, right? Flies past us, slams on the breaks. Throws the car in reverse. Two cops hop out, they grab my boy, throw him on the wall. They pat him down, yada, whatever the case may be. He has been in trouble before, so that’s how they know his face. So, that’s an easy way during that stop and frisk era — it wasn’t, like, just random people either. If they, if you have been in trouble before, you’re now, like, a lead. So, they throw him on the wall, you know, “Ah, whatcha doing here,” checking his pockets, “You got any warrants?” He’s like “Nah, I don’t got no warrants,” this, that and the third. They’re like, “Nah, you got warrants.” They’re heckling him, “You got warrants.” So, they go, you know, go through the whole shaboozje; he doesn’t have a warrant. OK. So, they get back in the car, they’re about to go away, and right before he closes the door, the officer on the passenger side, he gets back out the car. When he gets back out the car, he comes directly to me. So, he’s talking to me, he’s like, “Yo, where’s your ID?” I’m like, “My ID? Well, for what, I didn’t do nothing.” He’s like, “Yo, give me your ID, I need your ID.” So I’m like, “Aight,” get it out my pocket, give him the ID. He’s like, “Yo, what’s in the bag?” I’m like, “Clothes, you want to see?” and I open the bag. Clothes, whatever the case may be. So, he goes to the car. I, of course, have no warrants, the 46 flies by me, I just missed my bus, now I’m late for work. So he comes back to me and as he comes back I’m still smoking the Black & Mild, whatever the case may be. He’s talking to me and I kind of spit to the side. You know, whenever you smoke a cigarette, you smoke a Black & Mild, yadda yadda. He goes, “AHA! I got you!” I’m like, “You got me?” He’s like, “Yeah, you didn’t know it’s illegal to spit in public in New York?” I’m like, “What???” I’m like, “You — you’re kidding me right?” He’s like, “Nah.” Takes my ID, right, goes back to the car. I watch him pull out his personal cell phone, take pictures of my ID, and then put it back in his pocket. Now, at the same time, luckily my mom is coming home. She works health aid and one of her aids had dropped her off.

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Brian

Mmhmm.

Donovan

So, at this time I’m on the car now, like, waiting, you know what I’m saying? He’s checking me out more, I guess, whatever else he’s looking for ‘cause he — I already showed him I didn’t have any warrants. My mom comes out, she’s like, “What’s going on here?” And, you know, she’s trying to defend me, and I’m, I’m begging her, please, anything but that. You know, if even so much as your mother trying to fight for you could land you in even more trouble. So, I then received a ticket that day for spitting. Which, is like, I didn’t even know that was a thing, you know what I’m sayin?

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

And it’s — I got — and I have so many stories like that, that’s why I say, that I use that phrase, that unicorn, you know. You don’t believe, you’d never believe in a unicorn unless you physically saw a unicorn with your own eyes. And a lot of these situations, for a lot of people, these are like, impossible things. Who would give a kid a ticket for spitting, you know what I’m sayin?

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

Like, spitting? You know, with, with all the things in the world and, and, and real crimes going on. So, I had, I had to go to court, I had to adhere for that. When I went to court the judge immediately threw it out and then I went home, you know? 

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

Loitering, you know, in front of your own building, you know? There was a time we couldn't stand in front of the building even though we lived there, you know what I’m saying? I could go on and on, man. And the same token, you know, I understand it’s a job, you know? And people doing that job want to go home. But the culture and the disregard for life in the efforts of you getting home yourself has blurred the line significantly. We’re both trying to get home, but because you’re a cop you deserve to go home more than I do, and then, with that kind of culture it’s easy to justify, you know, shooting anybody when you yourself are trying to make it home too. It wasn’t always that way, you know, same thing with Stapleton and West Brighton, you know? It was, at one point it was an integrated situation, but over time, you know, there’s certain, certain systematic tools that they use to, kind of, court off that growing minority population. Construction and things were being done on the south shore because it was, it was mainly like grassland, stuff like that. When these opportunities were given it would be almost taboo to allow a minority to come into that community, because it would bring down your property value. It would bring down the property value of your house, of the community itself, so once these properties were being built, they stressed to make sure that, you know, that access wasn’t given.

Brian

I was just reading the other day, I was reading up on Sandy Ground, and how here in the south shore we had one of the longest continuously — settlements of free people and now it’s all but gone. You know, there’s some remnants that are still here, some families and descendants that are still here, but imagine what that could have been if Rossville wasn’t filled with condominiums, you know?

Donovan

And you know, you know what the — and that’s a part of the problem, right? Because I didn’t know that myself until about two weeks ago when a friend of mine told me. When I heard that there was an underground road on the south shore —

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

— not only did it blow my mind, but, the fact that you didn’t know it either shows that both, neither of us was given that information, you know what I’m saying? And that has been, you know, detrimental, and you know, this whole thing, it’s where my history was tarnished, my history was damaged in, by the way that they described us, my people, and my history. But on the other side, for you guys, a lot of your history was flat out erased. You don’t even, you don’t hear about these things, you don’t talk about these things. Because, for there to be an underground railroad settlement, it means, that means a white person was helping these people, you know? There was a lot of help, there was a lot of love, but that wasn’t the story they wanted to tell. I had mentioned in the protest about, you know, the 70s, you know, the Black Panthers were done a just, a disservice by being regarded as thugs, hoodlums, radicals, you know? So, that’s how they were able to oppress those people without any, you know, blowback, right? Because they told society they were criminals. And, at the same token, the disservice that was done to, you know, my white colleagues and counterparts was, you know, they told everybody, “The hippies…” You know, everybody in the 70’s was hippies, you know? Everybody did ~acid~ and there was ~Woodstock~ and there was ~peace and love~ — it wasn’t just peace and love. There was peace and love, but those people were out there fighting an unjust war that was costing countless amounts of American lives, as well as being hand and hand with us in the, you know, social injustices. If Martin Luther King was in the street by himself, you guys have always been there, but every chance they got they kind of erased that. That way it, they can, it can always be this segregation, this Me vs. You world that we living in. So, what happens is, you know, you grow up, I grow up. You know, I get a little older, I start doing my research, and then I find out what actually happened, you know, in my history. Now, me and you are at heads because you know, I’m — all my aggression is pointed to you for something you feel like, which you really have never done, right, because you, you’ve never done it! You know what I’m saying? But, you don’t understand what the full extent of what happened was, because you were never taught it just like we were never taught it. And if both of these things were tried to been, were have tried to been addressed — the true history of America at its core — then we wouldn’t be at odds down the lane. And I just feel like a big part of getting this right is teaching the right stories, you know? So, when you have this whitewashing of the history, you know, and then you combinate that with that feeling of being attacked, ‘cause that’s what it is at its root. People feel that they are attacked because, you know, the black people are kind of calling America’s number. So, in that, a lot of, you know, white people feel that attack because, you know, “I’m not a, I was never a slave owner, like, what does this have to do with me?” But slavery was only about two and a half grandfathers ago. That’s it. Your grandfather, his grandfather —

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

— that guy’s grandfather was a slave. So, they’ll put slavery, right, next to — they’ll put the slavery stuff next to Egypt stuff, you know? And you create this ideology that it was sooooo, so long ago, not knowing America’s one of the newest empires to be risen on the face of the planet, and that misinformation just leads down the road to bad things And unfortunately, your peers are the ones who pick it up.

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Brian

You know, something else that you brought up at the march: that any time in the — in the news when a white kid on the south shore OD’s, he was an angel, there was so much promise, it’s such a tragedy. But, if a Black kid on the north shore gets in any kind of trouble, it’s, “He was—”

Donovan

“ — a thug.” The streets can be rough. You know, especially, you know, when you’re trying to make it out of, you know, a lot of bad situations, ‘cause that’s what happens. A lot of people end up in bad situations, that’s how you end up in, you know, certain neighborhoods. So in my youth, growing up, I would have, you know, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen — I’d have a friend who may be in a car crash, or maybe gunned down, and you know, before that family is able to contact you, before that families friend or, you know, before you even go outside and see, you know, other people that may have seen it or been there, you know, you turn your phone on, ‘cause in this day and age that’s what we do, we go straight to the phone.

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

And the first thing you see on your timeline is: Staten Island Advance. Now, the Staten Island Advance has already come out with their own article in that short amount of time where they’re demonizing, you know, a fifteen year old, you know? A fifteen year old was gunned down. I think we can all agree that’s, that’s tragic and senseless, right? But you’re not given that benefit of the doubt on the north shore, you know? They’re pulling up his rap sheet, you know, when he was a kid — when he was younger he got suspended for bringing a knife to school, you know, when he was a teen he got caught with a bag of weed in his pocket. And the narrative changes, right? So, when you talk about, you know, that disparage between the south shore and the north shore, if you don’t come to the north shore often, then one of your only references would be the Staten Island Advance. But every time you pick up the Staten Island Advance, if you’re seeing that these young kids are being demonized, then of course, you know, once we do cross paths you’re kind of giving me that look, you know? Or even from a cops standpoint: if you're a cop who grown, who’s grown up on Staten Island and you haven’t been able to have that integration because your high school was one side from — literally — from elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to college, like —

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

— literally all on the south shore where you don’t need to go to the north shore, once you hit your beat and you’re now dropped in the middle of these areas, ‘cause that’s what they do; the rookies, they don’t really warm ‘em up, you know? Once they, once you come out the gate they’re dropping you off in some of these neighborhoods, and a lot of these neighborhoods do, kind of, get crazy and I — it— it’s something that needs more of a veteran’s touch, right? But you now have this cop on the beat who doesn’t know the community, and everything that he knows comes from news sources like SILIVE that demonize, literally, children, you know? And on the other side you have the south shore which has had a tragic, tragic opioid endemic that’s been taking the lives of countless kids, countless young people. But in the same token, they’re,  they’re not demonized, you know? You know, they’re — a lot of these kids are sick, you know? They made bad choices, but their bad choices don’t paint who they are, and unfortunately in the north shore we don’t get that same respect. And a lot of times, which is awful, and I hate to say, you know, we live in a, an odd world that likes conflict, right? So when you have, you know, the thug this or the gangbanger that, that’s an easy click. And that’s the way a lot of these companies, you know, they profit off of, you know, the clicks. My friends had a house party, now I’d say — we were living in — it was in the West Brighton projects which is, literally — some people’s garages are bigger than the apartments that are in there.

Brian
Yeah, yeah.

Donovan

So, we had a little party. It wasn’t really so much of a party as much as, like, a gathering. A group of people came by, it got kind of rough, don’t get me wrong, and the cops were called. The next day in the paper, it was — have you seen the movie Project X?

Brian

Yeah.

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Donovan

It was — yo! — they were like, “Project X Party: Over a thousand people in attendance, brawls everywhere.” And I’m like, “You couldn’t fit fifty people in this apartment, let, like —”

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

And I read this, in black and white, in print, it was there. “A thousand people at this crazy party,” and it’s like, just blatantly spiced up to have a better story, that way you could pick up that paper or you could, you could, you could have that click, so it — it’s, it’s a spooky world, man. It, it would be easier to say, you know, “Try to do what’s right,” but, what’s right isn’t always the same for everybody. I’m a man of principles, you know? I’m not gonna take pride in the race against someone who is handicapped or had — or, you know, I was a hundred yards ahead of him and he’s a hundred yards to the back of me. I wouldn’t want my tax dollars to be given to people who are going to abuse other people and in turn throw them in jail, because we all know mass incarceration in, in, in America is a major thing, right? So you don’t even — you don’t have — you don’t even have to like black people. As a person paying taxes, I would think you wouldn’t want all of your tax money going to people being unjustly put in — just to not be — people being put in jail, period, right?

Brian

Right.

Donovan

And that’s why I feel like you have to try really hard to be against this, right? To be against —

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

— positive, you know? It’s not like, I’m — it’s not like I’m asking for, like, betterment, I’m just asking for equal rights, you know? Just equal. You know, I say, “My life matters,” and people are like, “Mmmmmm, you know, all lives matter.” But if all lives matter, wouldn’t you responding to me with that, be contradicting that? 

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

If all lives matter, when I said, “Black lives matter,” it would have just been a, “yeah!” But you give that, “all lives matter,” because that gives you that, kind of, breathing room to not outright say, “Nah, I don’t think so.” Because, shortly after we were condemned for the Black Lives Matter movement, the Blue Lives Matter movement was raised, right? And now those two groups kind of work synonymously, and I think it’s odd that they’re not met with the same quote we were met with. You never heard someone tell somebody from Blue Lives Matter, “No, blue lives? Nah, all lives matter.” You don’t hear that. So, is it the black that only concerns people? That kind of mind game and this kind of chess moves — it takes a lot energy to play this game, to run this scenario. If you’re, if you’re simply expressing that your life matters, right, wouldn’t it be like a heart? Or like a dove —

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

Donovan

— or like a shield, you know, give the, the NYPD shield? No. They’ve chosen the Punisher skull. So what does that tell me as a black kid? I tell you my life matters, and you reply with the: “Not only does my life matter more, but I’m your judge, I’m your jury, and I am your executioner.” And they — I don’t know who’s making the swag, the gear, but they must have a shitload. Because I see moms with it, aunts with it, grandkids with it, grandmas with it, dad has it, and it’s everywhere, right?  So, in the struggle of me trying to convince that my life matters — not: my life is better, my life just, it just matters, you know? — this other militia was built out of the very people who were put in charge to protect me. And I have to live on an Island where they are sporting anti-me — there’s literally anti-me clothes! At least with the Klan, their faces were hidden. In today’s day and age, it’s just outright, they just use a little bit more meticulous things. Now, inside of that Punisher skull is the American flag, but instead of red, white, and blue, it’s white, black, and blue. So, that’s the way America feels, that — when you’re sending those kinds of subliminal messages you’re expressing that the true blue is only blue, and there’s no other colors.

Brian

How did you become a leader in all of this, and how did you find yourself speaking at these rallies with two thousand people at them?

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Donovan

So, I spoke at two marches, and both of those marches were complete accidents. So, the first march I went to, I actually hit my boy up that I used to work with, I hit, I hit him up on the humble, said, you know, “What’s up bro, what you doing? Do you want to hang out, chill, whatever?” He’s like, “Yeah, actually I’m going to this protest Friday, yo, you should come,” this that and the third. And this was, you know, of course, the George Floyd protest. So, at that time I literally kind of shrugged him off, you know? When you’ve been through the Eric Garners, and the Tamir Rices, the Sandra Blands, and, you know, you, you’re already living through stop-and-frisk, you know, you’re living through poverty, you develop this hopelessness, you know? That’s why a lot of, you know, kids in the minority communities don’t vote, because they’re at such a hopeless state they don’t feel like their vote means anything (which is the opposite). But at the time I’m, “Just go? For what, they’re just gonna kill another one, what’s the difference?” So, the next day I end up going to work and, you know, what happens is, you know, what the black community has to deal with is, like I said, you now have George Floyd’s killing, the whole world sees the video tape: black man being lynched, but you just have to go to work tomorrow. You don’t get the day off, you don’t get no mental time, you know? And those things really affect people, you know? Because you are living in a society and a world where you, A) have your government who is out to kill you at times and, B) your community is shaming you for trying to stick up for what’s right, and we were at work, and everybody is having a great day and, you know, people are joking and laughing, but, you know, you have these things running through your head all day as you're working and you look around to your peers and, you know, people that are not minorities, and you can see how they’re just not affected, you know, because it doesn’t concern them. So, a friend of mine, you know, she was at work and she was having a real tough time, her name is Ariel, and her — she was completely crushed, you know? Yet again, it’s happened another time. Like you said, we’re on Staten Island so we know that pain specifically. That happened right down the street from my grandmother’s house. So she just cried, man, and cried, because she just was in disbelief that everybody could be so happy/in a state where this could happen to any one of us, you know what I’m saying? So, when she broke down, when she told me that she was going to the march later, I’m like, “No, I gotta go. I got — I have to go now.” You know what I’m saying? So, I went to the march, I brought one of my big speakers. There’s a big bright orange speaker, I’m outside bumping Kendrick Lamar, the, “We gon’ be alright!” Took me like an hour just to catch up with ‘em. Halfway through it, the speaker dies, so now I’m lugging this giant dead speaker in 95º weather. So, when we get there, and I didn’t realize there was going to be a speaking portion and I — and the words and everything they were saying, and I was so inspired that I looked at my mans, I was like, “Yo, I think I’m going up there.” He’s like, “What?” I’m like, “Hold my speaker.” He’s like, “Hold your speaker???” “Hold my speaker.” So, now I bum-rush the stage, now I bum-rush the stage, I seen a mentor and a — and, and a, a former teacher of mine, his name is Ranti. So, I see Ranti, I grabbed him, I’m like, “Yo, Ranti, you gotta let me speak, man.” He was like, “What???” He’s like, “D, you got a lot of people here, you know, everybody wants to speak,” I’m like “Nah, listen Ranti, you gotta let me speak.” So, he was like, “All right.” Gave me a second, twenty minutes went by, thirty minutes went by. I was the last person to speak. And then when I got up there, I literally just poured my heart out and, you know, everybody had just related, and they felt what I was saying. So, from there my man Snoop, who was a part of the Young Leaders, he was like, “Yo, we’re trying to do something on Sunday on the south shore at the Colonial House, yo, you gotta pull up.” So, I’m like, “Aight, cool, I’ll pull up.” So that's Friday. Saturday goes by and now it’s Sunday morning. Sunday morning there are Facebook group chats of, you know, of — not everybody, but a couple people from the south shore, who, you know, this, this — you know, “We’re locked and loaded. Not on my side of town. We got guns ready,” this, that, and the third, “We’ll be waiting for them.” So, I start to, you know, blast on Facebook, “Don’t show up to this event,” you know, just for safety reasons and whatnot. I didn’t want people to go there —

Brian

Right.

Donovan

 — you know, a race war or a fight breaks out and then, you know, I had a part in that. So, I tell them not to go. I think that the march might have been for like, two o’clock, so by like, one o’clock I’m sitting there, I’m like, “…nah, I gotta go.” And my shorty’s like, “What? But this and that!” I’m like, “Yeah, but, you know… I just gotta go.” I’m like, “Worst case scenario I’ll take a couple pictures of, you know, these dudes, the motorcycle dudes, white supremacists or whatever, I’ll blast ‘em on Facebook, whatever the case may be.” So, she’s like, “Aight, I’ma go with you.” So, we hop in the car. We driving, we driving, you know. You can always tell when you’re on the south shore because you have the, those old Victorian, those beautiful Victorian houses and stuff. So, now I’m — I, I see the houses, I’m getting nervous, because now I know, like, I’m getting closer, you know? The farther you get, the, the nicer the houses — not to just say they were nicer houses, but that old school, that, that, that Victorian type style house. So, we finally get to The Conference house. We turn the corner and there’s just a sea of, just, people. It’s a sea of people, probably 80% white people, and then just, Black Lives Matter signs everywhere, it was, like, amazing, right? So, we get out the car, and when we get out the car, I’ll be honest, I was still kind of leery. So, I’m kind of walking through the crowd, you know, trying to size people up, but now the crowd kind of falls into this chaos, right? ‘cause now everybody’s rowdy, they’re yelling, they’re screaming, you know, no one’s kind of stepping up, so I grab the megaphone and I kind of just calmed the crowd down, calm the crowd down. And then I just started telling some of my stories, you know, I said the things that I’ve been through. And, you know, I’m not a religious person or, or, or, a spiritual person but, just, for me, I — I was — since, since then I’ve just been in the right time with the right place, and people just respond and, and, and appreciate the things that I was saying. So, from there it was like “Aight, we’re gonna start the march,” and we’re trying to wait for the whole crowd to get in. So, we’re waiting, we’re waiting, and then the street is packed. So, then I go start speaking, and then all of a sudden, all you can hear from around the corner is, “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” The crowd hadn’t even finished coming in so they had — the police had to move cars so we could fit more people onto the street. So, once we finally got people onto the street, I started speaking again about, you know, the injustices that staten island has had, the division, that they want to keep us with that separation, the history behind how we’ve all been in this fight, but they only tell one side, and that leaves, you know, us to foot the bill with each other, you know?

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Brian

The work that needs to be done to undo that is, you know the, the burden is on the south shore to step up. What does that look like, for our community, in order to make our entire island something that’s more welcoming?

Donovan

I mean, I think that is something that is going to take a generation beyond yours or mine to really be able to address entirely, right? ‘cause for now, with our generation, we have to address — we have to identify that there is this problem, right? At the very least with our generation, we can identify the problem, the — maybe our kids or our grandkids will be able to help fix the problem. But what happens is, if you force something on a group of people who don’t even really understand why it matters, then you’re gonna only cause more friction. There has to be a deeper plan than just, “desegregate.” Because we have still not addressed the initial plan. And what happened, right? They put the Black Lives Matter painting, and there was, of course, a retaliation, like there always is, and now there’s a blue strip going through Hylan Boulevard. I haven’t seen anything as far as, you know, permits from the city. None of the right steps were taken; literally, just a blue line. They’re literally drawing lines! Like, we’re at a point where we are literally drawing lines in the street, like we’re in a cowboy movie, you know what I’m saying?

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

Simply because I painted, “Black Lives Matter,” over here, which is a simple statement, you know, everyone can agree with — that shows the true opposition of both of these situations. They said their lives matter, and we have to show that, no, our lives matter. So, they painted an entire strip of a street blue. And then we’re going to once again be in this countless, countless, countless, countless rotation of just, this back and forth, which is, is really tragic.

Brian

You know, this is the most conservative borough in the city, the south shore is the most conservative section of this city, and yet it wasn’t broadcast. I didn’t see us on, on any of the major news outlets or anything like that. My question in, in, in all that, I guess, is, you know… As you’re, as you’re saying, you know, it’s going to be something that takes many generations, potentially, to correct, but I guess what my question in all of that is, is… you know… just how — I don’t know, it —

Donovan

Say it, you don’t got to sweeten it!

Brian

No, no, it’s not that, I’m not trying to sweeten it, it’s just like: how do we keep on going when it’s just going to be us? The rest of the city is not gonna have our back, ‘cause the rest of the city has written us off, right?

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

Donovan 

One hundred percent, right?

Brian

But it’s, it’s —

Donovan

So —

Brian

— yeah.

Donovan

So, that, that particular protest taught me a lot, right? You know, me as myself, I’m brought up on Staten Island, I’ve been through all the racism and all that other bullshit. So, like I said, when I went there I was extremely skeptical, but once I got there I was embraced with the kind of love that I didn’t think was alive on the south shore. You know, we’re not talking about a handful of people, we’re talking about two thousand people, right? And, for that, for me, it was such an eye-opening situation where I can take, with a deep breath, that, this is not, this is not my entire city, you know what I’m sayin? My entire city does not think this way. My entire city was not the ones in those group chats, you know? You had that handful, that good amount of people, or whatever may case, the case be. They don’t represent my city as a whole, you know? And then that protest, those people on the south shore, they really came, and they showed out. And it really stuck to me that, I can’t get hung up on people I can’t change, you know? ‘cause there’s so many people that have their hearts and minds open and they’re willing to walk the right direction, now. So, I’m not going to waste my time arguing with people, trying to persuade people. You’re going to respect what I have to say because when I come, I’m going to come correct, you know? I don’t speak on things I don’t know about, I don’t speak on — I don’t even have conversations if I haven’t already done the research myself. So, it’s pointless to try to take that route with it. When you — and it’s funny that you mention it, you know. You’re talking about a protest of two thousand people. Two thousand people, which is a crazy — even for New York City standards, that’s an amazing protest, the only one of its kind on Staten Island. And it’s so — it’s — this one specifically was, I feel like, more — the most important in New York City because of the reputation that Staten Island has had for a long time, and this was kind of its reckoning. You know I — what I call “the New Staten Island,” because we’ve shown that there was a change. But like you said: no New York 1’s, no CNBC’s, not the New York Post, it was picked up nowhere, you know? By that time that we had that protest, I think that might have been the third protest, right?

Brian

Yeah.

Donovan

Third protest, largest protest in Staten Island history of two thousand peoples. There was not a single elected official there. Not a single one, right? And that’s why it’s so important, you know — The Young Leaders of Staten Island, shout outs to them — that is gonna be a big part of moving forward. There’s a new generation, there’s a new Staten Island that is sick of all the bullshit, they’re sick of having these conversations, they’re sick of being demonized, they’re sick of watching people being demonized. And I think a lot of people just want to see what’s done right so we can move back to regular life, whatever that may be. The way to keep this moving forward is by doing exactly that: by continuing to move forward. Continuing to have these conversations. Giving people the chance to kind of change the narrative, you know? You got these young groups that are putting on events for the community. I myself just, my — me and one of my teams, Changing The Narrative, we just put together a poetry slam, and it was amazing. The whole point of the. the poetry slam was, you know, we’ve done the marching, we’ve done the kicking, the screaming… I wanted to give people a chance to kind of decompress, right? Have a good time, but at the same time be able to express yourself, you know? It was about healing. Being able to tell your story without, you know, a thousand people around, without this anger and this — no. Leave the anger at the door, come in, and spill your heart out, and it was great. So, that’s how we want to keep this narrative going: having conversations, having gatherings, having — continuing these protests, and just keeping up the fight, man. So don’t be afraid to have this hard conversation. Don’t be afraid to call people out on their bullshit, you know? People talk about Millennials, you know, “Millennials are crybabies, Millennials are —” you know, “They’re always whining.” But, you know why that is? Because millennials thinks it’s cool to mind your own goddamn business, right? If someone has a sexual preference, why the hell does that matter to you? If someone’s skin is different, why the hell does that matter to you, you know? And what our generation has done is, we’ve called people out. And, and they say it’s, “Nagging,” they say it’s, “Complaining,” — no, you’re calling people on their shit. In this age of the millennials, people are calling people out on their shit, and look how that movement took off. Look how much differently the world is now, how many pieces are off the board. It’s still a crazy place, but calling people out on their shit is the gift that our generation was given. So, don’t let people tell you, you know you’re crybabies, or you’re all this, you know? This is the same generation who turned blind eyes, you know? When people were making those jokes that weren’t that funny, when people were saying those things that were really rude, they turned their eye. They kind of brushed it off, and that’s why we have this culture of people thinking they can just do and say whatever they want. A part of America’s greatest freedom is, you know, the freedom of speech, but you got to take the heat that comes with that. So, by all means, if you want to, if you want to talk, talk, but my mans is going to have a camera and we’re going to make sure you’re on YouTube by the morning, so…

Brian

Yeah!

Donovan

Follow that gut feeling, you know? We don’t got to wait til tomorrow, we don’t got to wait til next week. We can do something right now. And I believe me and you caught the same feeling, which pushed us into the places that we are. So, I — I’m so glad you were there, man, for real. And I’m — I, I don’t know how, but this is gonna trickle on into something even greater afterwards, so I’ll be excited when that comes too.

Photo by Marquis Pickering.

The Perfect Rebel… it’s Donovan. He’s the leader Staten Island needs right now, the leader I need. And so, I’m going to have his back, whatever he’s got in store for us next.

Whatever I create going forward, I can’t not address whatever’s going on. I’ve been consciously held to that ever since that Literature of Genocide class I took. At some point in the semester, we talked about this infamous quote by the social critic and philosopher Theodor Adorno where he said, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” 

I’ve spent a lot of time — frankly, too much time — thinking over what he meant by that exactly. The quote is often taken out of context, but I’ll be honest, Adorno is a capital D Dense writer. Like, first you’ve got neutron stars, then you got your black holes, and then finally, there’s Adorno.

look I made a meme.

So even in the broader context that he wrote it, it’s not super obvious — and especially not to a dummy like me — what he was getting at. But this much, I think, is clear: 

First, Adorno wasn’t just dunking on poets or poetry as an art form. There were poets within Auschwitz, such as Dr. Ruth Klüger, and poets that survived and continued to write poetry afterwards; he wasn’t discrediting them or their work. Instead, he was addressing our culture — local, federal, global — and how it is one that is still capable of committing genocide. While we still have the means to carry that out, ANY and ALL facets of our society are connected through rotted roots and are therefore complicit to that end (or, you know, The End). The only way to change our culture is to skirt outside it, SHOCKING others out of their complacency and leisure. Sometimes literally. I mean, why do you think I choose a song that starts like this as my theme? 

Put another way: if what you create does not address the status quo, if it does not challenge the recipients of that art, then you’re a contributor to barbarism. There is no nuance or in-between. This is black and white. Life or death. I’m writing and recording this in the midsts of the pandemic — still! — but when we return to quote-unquote “normal life” (whatever the fuck that’s going to mean) the spaces we occupy can’t only offer us a distracting reprieve from culture’s daily onslaught. We cannot be hypnotized into a lull; the places we occupy must be spaces to questions, expand, develop. 

ANYWAY that’s what I think Adorno was getting at; I could be wrong. And Lord knows I haven’t always lived up to that, either, if I ever have with any of my writing or music or whatever. Or even this; something feels off about roping people into that first episode with a funny anecdote that promises some kind of audio adventure and then getting “real” and “serious” out of nowhere. But, it was the best way I saw to start so that eventually I’d get here. 

Regardless, every time I’ve stumbled and not lived up to Adorno’s ideal feels, at least in retrospect, like a failure to my Black friends, family, and the Black community. I’m trying to stay committed to do better and take the next steps toward reform and restructure, but it’s hard. I don’t say that as an excuse, just an acknowledgment.

I posed this question to Sarah, if she thought artists have a responsibility to be committed to a goal like that, if they should shoulder that burden. Here’s what she said:

Sarah

Do we have a responsibility? That’s a tough one. I think, ultimately, the answer is yes. You know, this idea of, like, when you’re given a talent or a platform, I do think you have a responsibility to at least try to be good, right?

Brian

Yeah.

Sarah

That being said, I do think it’s telling of our times and it’s just a little bit of a shame that many people are not doing just what they want to do, you know? Like, I would love to see just, like, the freedom for artists to, like, just draw what they want to draw. I actually feel it’s become a little bit impossible to just “make work” and I, I think that’s kind of a shame especially for people who are younger. But I do feel that there just, there just is some responsibility to — to — to do the best you can. And, you know, watch out for yourself as well, but I — I do think you have to be… you have to be good, right?

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah

You should try to be a good person.

Brian

Yeah, yeah.

A responsibility to be good…  (also, again, go buy Sarah’s new book, FANGS — it’s out now!!!). Later in the day, after I talked to Alex, she still couldn’t think of the most rebellious thing she’d ever done, but she sent me this text: “Anyway, I think one of the most rebellious things one can do is tell the truth. And speak from the heart.”

^^^^^

Sussing all this out doesn’t seem too hard: 

Tell the truth; speak from the heart; be good. 

That might not have the density of Adorno, but I’d wager there’s still a lot of weight to those words. Tell the truth. Speak from the heart. Be good. That I can do. 

That’s all I got. Actually, I had a different ending planned, but I think I’ve said more than enough. My football coaches always talked about leaving it all on the field; if Coach ever hears this, I hope he’s proud of my hustle. 

I’ll admit that I’m… not scared about how this’ll all be received, but… actually, fuck it: yes I am. I don’t want to mess up and do a big thing badly. I mean, I’m sure my friends will listen and my parents for sure and even if it’s bad and they hated it they’ll lie to me and tell me it was good and they liked it. But my extended family? And strangers? I don’t know. At least I can rest easy knowing ones I want to hear it the most won’t. And that’s fine. I’ve not had any grand delusions that my dumb podcast will change the world or move the needle. I don’t think it’s going to change anything, not Staten Island, not Tottenville. If anything, I’m about to get run out of town. Plus, now I have the added bonus of knowing that everybody in town is fucking strapped, so… that’s fun. But you know what they say, “No one can be a prophet in their own country.”  I suppose I could be in worse company than, you know, ~The Lord.~

two memes in two minutes, who am I becoming???

But seriously, I don’t even think I feel like doing all of this has changed me. I don’t know, I thought it might. Not much is different, though. I don’t feel any different. There’s been no epiphanies along the way, no moments of cloud breaking clarity. For example: I wondered if this would help grant me insight into whether I should continue to live on Staten Island and be-the-change in Tottenville or finally move to Jersey or Brooklyn or anywhere else. I don’t know. I’ve got nothing. In fact, if anything, I’m more confused than when I started (so really, in a lot of ways, this has all been a big mistake!!!). I feel like I’ve been living outside of life. Like, I know it’s there, I know it’s happening. But I’m not getting the full ride. Imagine reading the transcript of a slam poetry event instead of, you know, being there. That’s what it’s like, that’s what I’ve been feeling.

Maybe I’m just feeling this way because this has been what I’ve worked on all quarantine. I’m past the point of wondering if the quarantine will do damage to me. Now, it’s just a matter of how much damage it’s going to do. Like when you watch a TV show and a crew has to go shut off a valve someplace, but they know going in they’re going to get showered with radiation: I’m racing against a clock to my own personal erosion. Like, this whole pandemic I’ve felt like I haven’t been the comfort to my friends I used to be, and I wish I could be. Being there for them was a way of aiding myself. That’s when I was my best self and, so, I haven’t been my bet self for many, many months.

And let’s be real for a moment: unable to access my friends or any of my normal routines, I’ve just been sitting here, writing. Writing has been my retreat. Because if I’m not writing then… I don’t know… I’m just… time traveling to the future inside a cardboard box that’s been taped shut from the outside. But, at least packed away with me is a word processor so let’s write and write and write, right? When I’ve needed a retreat from writing, what did I have? Well, I started with walks to the south pole to check for stickers. But before long I knew every crack in the sidewalk, I knew the name of every blade of grass at the park. So yeah, I’m not starting to lose it. I’ve lost it. 

And sometimes I couldn’t get away. As a result, working on this has been, at times, downright unhealthy for me. Forget the late nights staying up way past my bedtime to jot down stupid ideas or hit the next thousand word benchmark. I fell into all my worst traps. I am so predictable with my self-sabotage it hurts. Like, the worst thing I could do for my wellbeing was put a deadline on this, which of course I did and of course I missed. I also felt like maybe — just maybe! — if this is good enough, I’d impress the one person I want to impress the most and I know I wont. I stopped writing for two weeks in August because I was so worried that I’d been portraying, not me, but a caricature of myself. I will record this and edit myself, but I don’t ever speak so clear or without long breaks or a slight stutter. I can’t come up with anything cohesive off the cuff because my best thoughts take at least three days in the hopper before they’re ready for anything. You’re not hearing me, but a character of me, and I’m so uncomfortable with that that I doubt I’ll ever indulge writing reflective pseudo-documentary interview-ish-type nonfiction memoir bullshit ever again. Like, if I’ve got to be fake, I might as well lean into it.

That said, I’m a never-say-never-type. And I mean, have I said all I needed to say?

For one thing, I would like for you to hear from someone that can tell the story of Sandy Ground, of its past AND of its future; that’s something I’d like to put together. And hell, this miniseries was supposed to be five episodes originally; I cut it down to three and it’s still hours and hours long. But I have those other scripts written and the interviews recorded so… why not? And the story of the march… that wasn’t an ending, that was the start of something and let me tell you, A LOT has happened since then that’s definitely worth covering. 

I’m not going to make a decision now, though; it’d be too much like going to the grocery store when your hungry… or rather, I guess, the opposite? Like, I don’t want to make a choice to do more work while I’m exhausted. After this goes out, I’m taking a nice, long break. I’m going to work on some other stuff.

Like, at work, I’m the club adviser for the Student Technology Association… really, we’re the podcast club. People have been asking why I’m making this and I’ve been pretending to be joking when I say that the reason I create anything is to get people to like me. But the most legitimate answer, truly, is that I want to show the kids in the club that the way you make a podcast is really like so much else in life: you just wing it and one day you decide you’ve done enough. And, I mean, working on this has been tough, but I love having worked on it, if that makes sense? And I’m sad to see it go (in a weird way). 

If I try to listen to it once it’s out… that would be a move most impolitic. I’m not going to be able to enjoy this ever again once it’s published. I’ll only hear the mistakes and the doubts and where I went too far and didn’t go far enough and the points I settled and bits I want to change and on and on and on. But, until then, as I speak these words, I, at least, still have this episode to finish.

All that being said, if there’s anything from this that’s lasting… I don’t know. I mean, I don’t concern myself with legacy too much; I’ll be too dead to enjoy it if it’s good and thankfully away if it isn’t. But The Now is important. Like, right now. The middle of things; the medium run. Like that scene from Spaceballs… 

DARK HELMET: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?

COLONEL SANDURZ: Now. You’re looking at Now, sir. Everything that happens Now is happening now.

DARK HELMET: What happened to Then?

COLONEL SANDURZ: We passed Then.

DARK HELMET: When?

COLONEL SANDURZ: Just now! We’re at Now, now.

DARK HELMET: Go back to Then!

COLONEL SANDURZ: When?

DARK HELMET: Now! 

COLONEL SANDURZ: Now?

DARK HELMET: Now!

COLONEL SANDURZ: I can’t!

DARK HELMET: Why?

COLONEL SANDURZ: We missed it.

DARK HELMET: When?

COLONEL SANDURZ: Just now!

What I mean is this: I started calling this show hail mary digital! which is a bad name that sounds religious. And it’s about football but it’s not about football. And it has a terrible acronym… But I started calling it that because that’s how I thought of that first episode, the impossibility of crossing paths with Sarah again and how that was (hopefully) a compelling narrative under the Aristotelian Laws of Story™. But, like I said, life isn’t a story; stories are stories and life is life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try and blur the lines. So much of what we do is story and so much of those stories are a comfort to us, right? They feel like home, whether it’s a book, or a TV show. Or a podcast. And everything’s impossible until, one day, it isn’t. So, I’m going to try and live that life, the life worthy of a good story. 

And in that sense, I’m sure (like I said) that some of my friends and family will listen to this, but I’m also sure there’ll be people I don’t know — people I’ll never know — that will listen to this, too. Someway, somehow, and against all the odds, this show found its way to you… I know it’s going to happen and so what I want you to know is this: if you are listening, you’ve just received my Note. A new Note. And you didn’t know it at the time, but you’re with me now. I can feel you here with me in my room as I type these words on September 16th at 9:40 PM. You’re with me as I say these words at 10:32 PM on December 5th. You’ll be with me when I listen back and cringe at the sound of my own voice when I edit this together and you’ll be there with me when I hit the button to publish.

And wherever you are, whenever you are… I’m there with you, too. So, come to think of it, the whole show is the digital Hail Mary, isn’t it? So, touchdown! We did it! Game over! And you know what? That might not be much but, if nothing else… it’s… something.

All right. 

That’s all. 

— — —

hail mary digital! 

by Brian Buchanan

Mixed by Nick Pitman and mastered by Ian Pritchard.

Special thanks to Erin Janosik, Steve Zimmer, Jason Roschbach, Alex Cadwell, Brian McCann, Angelica Bamundo, Cole Rice, Steven Bacas, and Kayla Elder. 

Shout out to Sarah Andersen and Casper ter Kuile. 

Intro and outro music by On Pink. 

Additional music provided by Sthlm Blush, Collector//Emitter, Chronofile, Shaun Gold, Lincoln Mayorga, Mike Maldarelli, Joe Ippolito, Ross Fish, and Curious Volume. Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov was performed by David Nolan, Enrique Batiz & the Philharmonia Orchestra, was provided courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. “Up She Rises” and “Classic Battle” by Sam Spence were provided courtesy of APM Music.

Promotional material provided by Marisa Sotto. Additional material provided by James Yarusinsky and Marquis Pickering. 

For more information, please check out our website at:  www.brianbuchanan57.com. That’s Brian with an I, Buchanan, like the president, and 57 like… the ketchup bottle. 

Hail Mary Digital is a co-production between Phat Jewelle & Star Command Audio Solutions.

Later stranger!

— ♭rian♭uchanan57