excerpt from “a study of scene & sensation at a sumptuous sound lounge”

The entire piece is posted on Substack, which I’ll link in a comment so that it doesn’t hyperlink all crazy. I fear it may be too long to post here.

It’s a study of a very suave sound lounge I went to that was playing ’60s/’70s funk & soul, as prose practice really. However, I also have notes on D’Angelo, the blues, ancestral reanimation, and connecting with yourself, your ancestors, and others around you in the state of drunkenness. I’m pretty proud of it!

Excerpt below:

“In an event of convergence, these thoughts married themselves with the sound lounge’s theme for that night, which was ’60s/’70s soul and funk.

“Al Green, Roberta Flack, Minnie Riperton, Curtis Mayfield, and other pioneers of the Black secular sound seemed to rise above the room; concentrating in the ether near the ceiling; disseminating their vocals and instrumentals downwards like a grandmother with weathered hands stripping mustard greens from their stems; running our shared consciousness under celestial waters.

“The bass surpassed all. I became convinced that it would be felt through my body long after the earth took possession over my physical existence.

“Baby suns birthed from the disco’s duplicitous nature spun counter clockwise, flooding every shadowed crevice with rotund, concentrated spotlights.

“Perhaps the novelty of their existence—in comparison to the primordial sun—added an eagerness to their microcosmic axis rotation. The light they reflected was the hue of saffron tea topped off with dutiful splashes of milk.

“It ran into baseboards, vinyl records’ plasticky luster, worn walnut barstools, expansive leopard printed carpeting, and gilded features glinting in my peripheral.”

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!