Apparently my 700th post is about toys, sadness, the pandemic, and privilege, and hip hop? And sadness.

In rounding out a day that started with dark, went to light, I’ll end it with dark, and why this STUPID ASS toy post actually means something to me.  I definitely posted this dumb ass desperate off brand toy distraction post at the end of May when I was drinking [REDACTED] a day in the darkest bottom of the well I could imagine. No work, no future, etc. Darkness. I was in a pretty bad way and any distraction was glory. I kept thinking of your toy world and how intricate and weird it is. It’s a brilliant distraction because seriously some of the shit your world descends into is fascinating. Not just knock-offs, but Gen 1 vs Gen 2, or variants, and all that. So at that time, I’m sorta struggling. I’ll be real. Who’s ever thought I wasn’t? But I mean for real. So, in a bad place, I recorded this mix between 6p and 7.30p PST on May 25th of Memorial Day, Probably my favorite mix on record, and 100% transcendent as the best day of the pandemic at that point. Leading in from blues to “This is America” was so wonderfully deliberate. Just another privileged white DJ playing black music with the N word. https://www.mixcloud.com/DJFishbits/2020-early-summer-coronavirus-hip-hop-and-rap-git-down-friends-and-folks-bump-it/

The hours of that mix we’re the literal identical timestamp of when George Floyd was beginning to be murdered, to being pronounced dead. I realized that within about a week, and for whatever reason it really, REALLY messed with me.  I had really fierce opinions, and then I would keep wondering if a son or little brother had the right to have adult opinions… something that will be lost on people who’ve never worked with family. By mid-June, I was in a powerfully dark place. It sorted itself out, I did the work, we’re here now. I still have opinions, and not only are they respected, but I’m heard differently now. So life is about the power to grow, and the grace of being recognized by other people who respect you and can also grow. I think the pandemic will have the brutal legacy, to be sure, but there will be a footnote of people who had growth and change. Maybe that can permeate the future. Maybe that can inform the people who have stepped through the portal we’ve passed through? I remember going back to that silly toy post on Imgur in June, and begging this junk ass ridiculousness of a meaningless capitalist distraction of a throway post, and trying to make it “work the funny” like it had, and it never worked. But I stared at that post for a long time, hoping I wouldn’t be dealing with what it wasn’t dealing with. I’m curious as to people’s mental states leaving the lockdown pandemic mentality. I’m curious how healing happens in a society that is trying to heal from a pandemic, that can’t realize they’re trying to heal, but it’s not from the pandemic at all.