When: Monday nite 5/25 730pm ET

Where: https://youtube.com/live/V3RCkmcVSA8?feature=share

10% to: Organization Of Black Aerospace Professionals, OBAP - https://obap.org/ace/boston Programs for future aviators of color, Boston branch

http://paypal.me/vancevancevance or https://venmo.com/vancevancevance or VanceFunder P.O. Box 17, Arlington, MA 02476

*PRIVATE COACHING AVAILABLE - Songwriting, performance, and voice.

***CUSTOM SONGS - Expensive, sure, you want one about you, your family, something.

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THE COLOR OF COLOR

I don’t spend time with many Black people. I barely know any Black women. I’d like to say that this isn't by choice, but clearly I have chosen to do things in my life not populated by Black folks.

I play acoustic folk music. I build and fly model airplanes.

Goodness gracious these may be two of the whitest things on the planet to do (that and saying “goodness gracious”). But I do love these things I do. I am often the Black one at events that are historically and predominately white. I walk the planet a Black man, adjust and tell jokes (sometimes unsuccessfully) about me and my Black experience. I often comically point out my singularity. I code switch with the best of them. I dream about the melting pot/kumbaya salad while simultaneously reviewing my journey to here.

I have friends from college that “got me” and stay in a modicum of touch by coming to shows.

I thought I had more Black friends in the 80’s when I was a ”jazz” musician. I believe my music education illegitimacy distanced me from the Black folks from Berklee and the local scene even as I hired folks from that crucible to play gigs.

I know I’m as guilty as the rest in not nurturing relationships, and still, my circles of close friends are pink. And sometimes I just feel alone. Not everything is about color and representation all the time.
OK, wait a minute, yes, yes it is if you’re wearing my shoes and you own a mirror.

Yesterday I was trying to teach myself how to stow-and-go the seats to this minivan when my neighbor, Sing Tao - phonetically spelled here, forgive me - and her absolutely nuts pug Drake came up. She asked how I was and what I was up to with lowering the seats into the floor.

“I want to make sure I can do it when I load in my big boxes of model airplanes to go fly them.”

She laughed. “Oh sure, your big model planes. So what gig are you going to that you’ll take such large equipment that you lower the seats?”

Ten minutes and a few YouTube videos later she was agape.

“You draw them, engineer them, power them with twisted rubber bands to store energy for motive power and fly them [astute observation questions not at all surprising from this Chinese project engineer who’s a terrible dog trainer and who tolerates my piss poorly pronounced Chinese daily greetings to her]?"

“Today I was so blue. But at this moment, I am so filled with joy and promise. There’s so much about you I do not know. Thank you for this lift for me today!”

Pooh kah chee, my somewhat-brown female friend.