We started where we recently stopped, thinking about William H. Johnson, and wondered if it was right to tag him w/ the word blue. We went in two directions.
The first is toward Johnson's name double, Lonnie, who offers, we think, some of the same historiographical problem. When we put on his sweetvoice renditions of sadsongs, and lissened to him philosophize 'bout bedbugs, we could not help but touch the same tender contradictions we were thinking on as we looked at Brovah Willam's pictures of Norway, which he painted up just before getting locked up in the 'nsane 'ssylum w/ his own version of the bug.
From the privileged gaze of hindsight, both appear as independent operators who took on something of the primitive as part of their hustle; not primitives who scrabbled along. It was their burnt cork. And both got these sad stories attached to them that are sadder because they are true, and not made up to enhance their primitive brand.
The second is toward a Snoop Dogg post we did when we couldn't figga out how to get the Blue Light started. We invite you back to the beginning, if only because in its lack of a conclusion it's a good place to start.
We're not drawing conclusions today. It would, as the saying goes, leave us painted in a corner. We're living with the contradictions, instead.
Represent, represent y'all.
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