Garry Nitz

Leila Jackson

No: 405. It’s no question. I know you, 405, your trace, your teeth. You look like 404, but I feel you, quietly taking his place in my bones. So how’s about we start off with a toast, to you and me, then? You’re no secret, 405; you could be my greatest joy, how you warm and stretch me like new clay. It was 404 who faced me forward, and it’s you, now, who straightens my spine.

I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve been waiting for you, 405. Most folks only wait about a year to get their next great birthday, but I think I’ve been waiting all these years for you, old friend. Hey, do you mind ifI call you that? ‘Old Friend?’ It hits the ear alright, doesn’t it? Feels good. Feels like I’ve known you some time now, 405. Like I knew all the others before you, the way I can clock you, recognize you. And now you’re here just like I knew you would be, and just in the nick of time, I might add: another person might’ve gotten tired waiting around for you, 405. Shoot, at points I even considered it myself. I got worried I was getting too tired; I should hit the hay; maybe you weren’t going to show; maybe one year wouldn’t lead to another to bring us together (time doesn’t always take me where I want it to, I once learned that it’s more of a “what goes around comes around” type of thing). God knows He gave me good reasons to believe that, He threw me enough tribulations, but I kept steadfast for you in the end. Through thick and thicker; through country and city; coda after coda; and here you are and my arms are wide open for another shot—

You know, I think you’ve got what it takes to be the best of them yet, 405. I won’t get ahead of myself, but we could take my game right to the top, you and me, this go around. Take all the steps I’ve been waiting to take for on my own. Get out on our own. Go out on the town! The others told me they could do that for me. Your “predecessors” (or so they called themselves) made me those toasts from their pulpits. They came with their gift-receipt-I.O.Us, their license-track learners’ permits, but that was all salt. When I turned 154, I was told I’m old enough to start book learning, right? I get set up for the three Rs—that’s reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic, by the way—and I really go for it. Folks even seemed pretty impressed with what I could do, 405, and I started having these big ideas for myself, but before long the gift-wrapped schoolhouse walls came down and I was still in the kiddie leagues. Ha! 154 never got me into the right schools with the good teachers even after I spent all that learning on writing thank-you letters; I even had one for “His Excellency, General Washington,” imagine that, 405!

Oh, then 244 came, and he was a big one. I could hear him before I saw him, rumbling up the road, casting a shadow before the sun. He pulled me in close t0 his heart, promised we were gonna have a big party to make up for the lost time. The theme? Coming-of-age extravaganza (they always loved my extravaganza flair so long as I wasn’t the honoree). I was jumping at the thought anytime I was alone. Just picture it: replete with a meal ticket and a government ID in my name. And at the end, I was gonna be a full licensed grown-up adult, or so 244 told me. No more chores, no more looking-after. Well, I get all done up for 244; I teach myself special dances for the big day; perfect a menu and everything with what I had around. Finally the day-of comes, I get ready and I walk myself out to what I thought was my party just to find no one there to celebrate, 405. Apparently, everyone was all caught up in some big Family Feud that “had nothing to do with me” that started while I was planning and someone forgot to send all the invitations. 244 had to delay the party until 246 came around, and by the time that fool showed up no one wanted to party anymore (they were tired and scheming over their feud, and so was I, friend). To this day, I’m still not even sure when my real “big birthday” was. I mean, what kind of person plans a fight on another person’s birthday?

Then I begged 277 to be kind- or at least to be quiet- and to leave me intact. I didn’t ask for much, 405; I just wanted to stand upright. From the pulpit, at least he promised me that. Assured me I was standing just as well after I’d gotten a good kick in the teeth. I was standing just as well from the last boxcar. When I wanted him to let go, he tightened his grip; when I wanted him to quiet down, he cackled, loud, like all the years before him, a flock, a murder.

By the time 335 raised her gentle hand, I’ll tell you, it was hard to keep the faith. Her brothers and sisters had rolled and run their way through me like punches, and she was a fragile-looking thing. Figured she’d pass with a whisper and we’d be right back where we started, if she didn’t pass out flat on her face. But when 335 stood to give her toast, I’d never known so much fire. She was gonna do it, she said. Put the schoolhouse walls back up with her bare hands and give me my room, my very own chair. And she certainly tried her hardest, that spitfire 335. Shouted her lungs out all the way to the front door and the screen door, and inside the house too. 277 had been a real doozy, and you should’ve seen the way she grabbed him by the hair and flipped him right over.

I want to say the parties got better from there, 405, but in truth, I don’t know. My 300s pushed and pulled and scrabbled for purchase like limbs in a schoolyard fight, and of course I was the one doing all the bruising. When I turned 400, they almost let me slide on the respect-elders-defense. They even finally agreed to fess up to their failures at that get together. But that’s where they tricked me again, you see, 405? Because 401 came—401, that crazy-eyed, two-faced gator—and knocked it all to the side, shifted me out of orbit, sounded the alarms. And, of course, everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they thought I couldn’t hear over the toast (more of a dozens than a toast, really). They shoved all their pretenses to the side. 400 gave back side eyes as party favors.

But let me hold my tongue, because now you’re here you can bring all those things I’ve been looking for, can’t you? You can get me licensed, 405.  Take me to school or take me to work, we can take our pick! Bona fide student or professional without a discourse in sight. Make me joyful sun up to son down. Make me the face of deliriously happy. The spokesperson for go-to-bed-without-a-doubt-in-your-mind-for-the-next-day happy. A no-grudge type of guy and a boss too. Make me Oh captain my captain or whatever at the helm of the whip. I call the shots from now on. Not him, her, them, or that guy working for that-other-guy-who-must-have-tenure-cause-he’s-been-planning-my-years-and my-birthdays-for-so-long, none of that. You can make me the rightful, emancipated adult this time and all times. Come to think of it, you can give me the chance to have the party I never got to celebrate too, how do you like that?

I always did like how the other kids always had their big parties, setting off fireworks every year to celebrate their birthday. If I’m honest, they only invited me out of pity- I think they felt bad and didn’t wanna be accused of “not trying,” maybe their mom made them- and I always thought the thing was a big Uncle Sam sham anyway, but I gotta hand it to ‘em: they know how to plan a party. They pull out all the stops, 405: the colors (just a few of the primary ones), the lights, the smell of that meat on the grill, those struck bells and all the ringing they spit. And though I could never be out that late, it’s the nighttime that really dazzles, 405 (If I can’t watch it on the TV, I read about it in the books they write for their years). Those kids know just how to turn heads. The shots and all the things blown up; it’s memorial 

it’s prophetic. And more important, it’s big. It’s enough to really make you sit up and take notice. That birthday never passes undetected, not once.

Is it too much to ask of you, 405, if I say I want our party like that but with our thing going. Let’s get people out line dancing on the White House lawn, 405! Stomping the grass down, spread-eagle up the columns of the Capitol, we’ll clean up later! Or maybe we’ll pay one of the pity invitees to clean it up later. “Have it gone by the morning, please!” Wouldn’t that be a poetic take on justice? The children will come out when it gets really dark and light up the sky me-style. They’ll use sparklers to conjure spirits. On the RSVP we’ll tell everyone not to bring a gift. After what your predecessors got me, I don’t really trust the practice anyway. Just make sure there’s enough good cheer… and maybe BBQ… to go around, and then you can stand up and make a toast, 405. That part’s for you to decide, though, I won’t put ideas in your head.

And after the party, when they see us walking down the street, 405, I want them to say there goes Culture incarnate. “That’s Dr. Culture with a culture so old and so resilient and so its own even Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar make ‘yr culture so old’ jokes about that one, did you 

to that party?” They’ll finally say it like they say it for everyone else when we walk by: with no other way to cheep around it. “What seven wonders? Never heard of ‘em.” We’ll make them say that I had the best food too, 405. Serious miracle food you wouldn’t believe. That I can make anything and turn it into a party with a 5-course menu that just so happens to heal the soul, that’s how good I am in the kitchen. They even saw it and tried it themselves. The dancing I have is the best too, they’ll whisper. It’s infectious, it’s a bug it can’t be kept down just like all the rave gossip. Both spread like the plague from my party, they’ll say. Then I’ll just walk coolly. Don’t let me bother with the reviewers after this: let’s have our shindig be so good that all I hear is applause that I don’t give a damn about anymore because I’m so stupid happy and carefree. I’m too free to care. I “don’t need the stamp of approval,” that’s what they’ll say and it’ll be true.

O.K. look: let me stop before I start rambling and get carried away. You have no way of knowing this, but sometimes I just get so swept up in these things when I’m left to myself. I get to thinking about my standing, my times, and how I just want a party and my mind splits (sometimes you just gotta split, though, don’t I know it, especially when a birthday comes). It’s just that I can’t help but get a good feeling about you, 405. How can I not? There’s so much possibility for us together, so much that I haven’t gotten to do yet. So many ideas brought up and never seen through. So many shots and roads neither taken nor traveled.

Isn’t that a beautiful thing? And I think everyone forgot about us too, 405, so when we show up it’s bound to make waves somewhere, huh? So here’s to that! To possibility for us, 405! I’ll tell you, that’s the kind of thing that keeps a person on their toes; promises made, promises kept; party, no party; not even a bad year can cloud that North Star.

Notes

The Author Reflects on Turning 405

It is uncovered that, if performed correctly, certain songs of the South could even sever the jugular. (How’s that for soul?). While previously such power had been thought impossible, now– thanks to Ryan Coogler’s latest film 

– the blues are actually shown as the harmonica slide mojo bag eternally trailed by that bloodsucking stinger you had thought was mere legend. As if there weren’t enough things to worry about, 

coaxes from its cave the thing you’ve only heard whispers of, sensual and preying on a talented cast of proselytes, an otherworldly temptation. Of course, isn’t it always better to know the source of the things you’re hearing, licking their chops, humming in the forest, just a taste?

Mississippi, 1932. The film opens with a beautifully disturbing flashforward to the return of a badly-injured Sammie Moore (portrayed by actor and singer Miles Caton) to the Mississippi Delta church where his father is the preacher. Sammie’s father embraces his scarred son, before asking him to repent for his sins. However, no time to hear his decision, the film moves backward in time to one day prior in which identical twins, World War I veterans Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” (both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan), return to the Delta from Chicago with plans to open a juke. Along the way, the brothers recruit several allies across the town of Clarksdale, including their prodigious musician cousin, Sammie, as well as Smoke’s estranged wife, a grocer, a sharecropper, and a seasoned blues musician, all of whom agree to help get the first party off the ground after hearing how successful the juke could be (and portrayed by Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li, Omar Benson Miller, and Delroy Lindo, respectively); later, this group is also joined by Stack’s ex-lover, the spurned octoroon Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) who attends the party despite protests from the community. This ensemble drama, while completely captivating on its own, soon runs parallel to another spellbinding storyline in which Remmick (Jack O’Connell) flees Choctaw pursuers– who warn of his evil nature– to the home of two Klan members. Under the cover of night, then, when the Choctaw are forced to abandon their hunt, Remmick attacks his keepers, and they join him in travelling to the juke’s front door. Naturally, supernaturally, this sets the action of the film into motion, bloodied but not beleaguered.

is a blues throwdown with the powers-that-be so soulful it leaves the room spinning, in and out of focus. The aperture of the shots widening and narrowing, the juke stage flattening to vaudeville and back to horror, sleek and sexy. Soul pours from the movie’s every setpiece– though this comes as no surprise given the creative reverence clearly poured into the film’s choreography, its performances and plotting. Actually, in an April 4th press conference delivered ahead of the 

 release, the film’s cast and Coogler repeatedly emphasized the role of music, musicality, and harmony in the production. Specifically, the actors praised Coogler’s “horizontal” leadership and complex script, and Coogler praised his cast for giving their all while having sympathy for his directorial process (particularly Jordan, having directed 

). This respect for the creative metronome is what makes the film so compelling, it is able to tease out ideas– on morality and evil, race, American history, religion and more– by full heartedly returning to its 12-bar roots. Indeed, it is this truly musical center of the film which creates that hypnotically impressionistic bloodsucker story, making it the juicy and choice morsel that it is. The vibe of the vampire, it is impossible to separate 

from its beating heart, pumping hot blood through endless veins into its action sequences as Michael B. Jordan’s character leads his ragtime band against what may only seem to be the Devil (but who knows?). Though it's a common theme, the blues scale, the film hits every note it can for color: it does not resolve its progression easily, or in one way, and every character is complicated by their off-beat deviations from what seems like righteousness, and even the orders of Heaven and Hell seem insufficient to denote the diversity of powers their music portends.

Critically, what Coogler resists in vibing with the vampire is a contemporary trend which Namwali Serpell, 

, dubs the style of “The New Literalism.” A dangerous temptation itself, Serpell’s essay diagnoses this as the metastasizing spore oozing and festering on the backs of today’s films, caused by bludgeoning the point past the point of death. Art which demands mediation while hollering the theme all the way home, says Serpell “It is, in fact, condescending. Forget the degradation of art into content. Content has been demoted to concept. And concept has become a banner ad.” She even goes so far as attribute this to the Freudian death drive, that alienating urge to repeat history toward mastery of it which, in its repetition, superimposes the past onto the present rather than redressing it. To Coogler’s credit, it would have been easy for the film to slip into the literalist register, conjuring the simplest spirits imaginable with respect to the postbellum South, and joining the flat ranks of recent satirists (see the 2024 Oscar Nominee lineup). To death drive the undead into lazy metaphor. Nevertheless, Coogler instead choses key chord substitutions, preventing his audiences from sliding comfortably into either satire or allegory. Indeed, we cannot read this a quickly Black and white story, for how would that pay respect to the racial diversity of this moment in time? What of the Asian and indigenous communities whose cultures also fell into the crossfires of atavistic tragedy? Equally, we cannot easily reject the vampirism of the blues as exclusively the provenance of white people nor can we call the way of the jukehouse the way of pure good. Can we even easily locate the film’s namesake? Shit, that’s the blues baby. 

 fights stake-in-hand for the music, to resist the beckoning dance with the death drive.

In this resistance, too, this complicated filmic chord structure similarly quickfoots beyond another repetitive trend of “Antebellum Fauxstalgia” in twenty-first century Black art identified by Julian Lucas, 

. Lucas spotted this tendency as the inclination toward “closed arena[s] where the country can exorcise its racial demons without touching too closely on the here and now” or art which hyper-fixates on slavery. After all, we can all agree on the unpopularity of slavery– what a mistake that was– even if we cannot all stand to hear its continued reverberations in our time. So, having flocked afeared to films such as, say, Tarantino’s 

– which appears as an apt counterpoint to 

, at least for its similar studio backing and visual quality– 

 unsettles us with another variation by situating in the 

 past and looking forward. Bang! Beware light spoilers, but in one central scene in the film’s second act, for instance, a musical performance by Sammie allows the blues tradition to call not just back to Africa but also into the future, to shake that ass, bitch. It strikes a refreshing suspension against the canon, to actually indict the persistence of the condition from past to present rather than merely analogizing present to past, again, from the top.

What’s special about the film, then, is that its originality unmasks and addresses a much-needed moment of creative authenticity, using the pastorals we have seen ad absurdum to tease out in a 12 bar form something completely unexpected and hard to figure. Again, while 

 could’ve followed the predictable common time and been a slapdash vampiric metaphor for the consumption of Black culture, with blues as a synecdoche, it chooses its alternative path. A path with blues in the foreground, whose ideological ends are obscured by thrawn darkness, where hope can be heard but not quite seen, making you moan out raspy music from your ribs. Thus, one does not get the impression that Coogler was sat at the page, plotting heavily but that he was tickling his creative ivories to his film’s benefit. From the plantation which has been rehashed into a sharecropping afterlife, often representationally reopening the wounds of the past to jeeringly remind us that it was bad back then, 

 refuses to simplify a complex story. It uses a rep n’ rev, repetition and revision, a seemingly simple palette to (re)complicate themes. This extends even down to its cast– the discoveries of what lies dormant in the history of Hailee Steinfeld, the Jordan twins’ evil within as a split human drawn toward opposing seductresses. And then there’s the impossible to deny O’Connell performance, which seems to presciently come right as a conveniently raceblind obsession with Ireland 

, but dislocates that caricature in Southern twang. You can’t help but catch it in 

 (or can you?). It’s lyrically present and always, an apt film for right now, thinking about the origins of the things we’re seeing played out on stages across the world. Right in the pocket, sending uncontrollable tingles down your leg and up your spine right to your neck:

Certainly, this does not mean that one cannot find a veritable jazz combo of interlocutors for the film. To the contrary, in the way of ancestors we could quickly name the whole body of Zora Neale Hurston, if not specifically 

; as a return to the South narrative, too, 

 also appears a brother in arms; then there are the Caribbean pioneers of the Zombie as a metaphor for captivity who metaphorically resurrect; not to mention D’Arcy’s “The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo.” In more recent time, too, this film also falls in line with another studio project by Black millennial talent which just two months ago far exceeded critical and commercial expectations, HooRae Media’s comedy 

.. Likewise, it’d be foolish to not also mention Rungano Nyoni’s rave-reviewed 

, a Zambian project distributed by A24 as a gem among a troubled Spring crop (see 

). It’s interesting to see against a shrinking box office that those impossibly flexible, familiar transatlantic sounds remain stalwart against the ebb and flow of industry, regime to regime. It would seem that 

cements where the unlimited cultural power lies, and it does not play around with it carelessly; intelligently, too, it does not believe everything that it’s heard either.

See: the form of the blues has a certain progression, if that means anything to you. On the one hand, it’s ancestors include the spirituals, field hollers, shouts, and chants of slavery, all in concert with a call-and-response tradition which can be traced back to Africa; on the other, it’s descendants include jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, and many more to rival Abraham, all in harmony in a praxis that continues into Harlem, Detroit, L.A., D.C., as well as around the American South. Its promise is freedom undelivered, a repossession of the self just out of reach  and, as the cast  hangs between the song of servitude or being apostate of Devil, they have a choice to make.

In the dark Southern woods, sawed-off shotgun to your head, down on your luck, end of the line, lawman on the way, which eternity would you choose? If you had thousands of years of drifting and grifting archived in your bones like Michael B. Jordan’s Stack and and Smoke, for instance, only ever suckled at the breast of a stranger, would you think a little differently? If all around you the afterlife had already started to bleed into your “real world” of unimaginable violence, and you were promised delicious gifts on either side, eternal ecstasy or eternal peace, what then? After all you’ve known as freedom being sporadic and fugitive in the one-night-only juke, would the sight of one or so Grand Dragons on the dark side be so off putting, if the reward for surrendering were eternal bliss? Are you even good enough to be on such a high horse? Behind your back, a pack animal is baring its fangs, making the neck hairs under your coif stand at attention, breathing wet and hot, waiting for invitation. 

will help you think this one through; anyway, you could use the help, for it is suspected that you cannot go from one death world to another so easily. Pick a note.

Garry Nitz

Garry Nitz

Notes

Notes

The Author Reflects on Turning 405

Notes

Why The Vampire Would Sing The Blues: A Sinners Review