Noire Notes XVII
Book Of Lines II
Author’s Note: This piece is a combination of previously unreleased short stories / essays. The format is inspired by Nas’ “Book Of Rhymes”.
Achilles Last Stand (Shelved – Noire Notes)
Author’s Note: This piece was inspired by Katie Heindl’s “Exits” series. You can read more of Katie’s work by subscribing to BASKETBALL FEELINGS.
“Two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies…but the life that’s left me will be long.” – Achilles, The Iliad
That’s the sound of defeat, the sound of your best laid plans crumbling right in front of you.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
That’s the sound of glory denied, a dream deferred. The inevitable conclusion of choosing a fleeting chance at immortality over a guaranteed promise of stability.
More than three thousand years ago, the great warrior Achilles was faced with a choice: live a long, peaceful life at home or have a shortened, illustrious, warring life abroad. When he selected the latter, he inspired a legion of leaguers that would follow in his lacerated footsteps: Jayson Tatum, Kevin Durant, Tyrese Haliburton, and Kobe Bean Bryant to name a few. All would grasp for glory and go down with a gutting grimace on their face. All would become victim to the same fatal flaw of acute heel tendinitis.
What does it say about our society when we all agree with a decision but admonish the consequences of it at the same time? Anybody who has ever been fortunate enough to play competitive sports at a high level has often been faced with the dilemma of playing while injured or resting up in order to heal.
Most of us raised in a pre-21st Century era of masculinity would have instantly chosen the former, ignoring the potentially deleterious effects of the latter, all in the hopes of gaining the love of a sport that rarely loves you back.
Like the deities of Greek mythology, the basketball gods are often cruel and indifferent. Like the pre-Hellenistic soldiers that existed before them, athletes are merely pawns on a chessboard, waiting to be cut down by the Moirai or fate by another name.
There is a certain callousness in the way we treat our athletes. We boo them at the slightest offence, we trade them at a moment’s notice, we ask them to put their bodies on the line just to question their dedication when they don’t return at a time of our choosing. But there is a certain reverence we afford to them as well. One only has to scroll past a couple of ‘Mamba Mentality’ Tik Tok videos to see the praise that pushing past the confines of pain will get you. But only if you win.
Think of Willis Reed and his Herculean effort during the 1970 NBA Finals. Think of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s miraculous comeback after suffering from a hyperextended knee. Think of Michael Jordan’s legendary ‘flu’ game. This was the trajectory that Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers were on up until the first half of Game 7. Bucks killers. Cavaliers killers. Knicks killers. A squad ready to steal the thunder from Oklahoma City and hurl lightning at the base of the Larry O’Brien trophy. Only to roll back down basketball’s Mount Olympus with not much to show for their efforts except a couple of haunting sounds that will echo in history: Tap. Tap. Tap.
The truth is that I was once in Tyrese’s low-top shoes. I made a calculated risk because the regret of what was seemed infinitely better than the regret of what if. But the thing they don’t tell you is that you never come back the same athlete. Once the veil of invulnerability has been pierced, you always worry about what part of your body will go next? You always think back to that moment of sacrifice and wonder if it was worth all the months spent in rehab, doubting yourself, getting reacquainted with the intricacies of human biology while insecurities continue to flood your psyche. A situation that can only be likened to Achilles in the Underworld, relaying to Odysseus the lamentations of a legend and lessons learned from a previous life.
“No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I’d rather…some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” – Achilles, The Odyssey
Further Reading
[1] Chuck Schilken, Kobe Bryant’s Words Inspire Tyrese Haliburton After ‘Shock’ Achilles Injury In NBA Finals, Los Angeles Times
[2] Danté Stewart, Forever Friday Night: The Haunted True Story Of My Broken Football Dreams, ESPN
[3] Zito Madu, Kobe Bryant And Learning To Live Without Fear Of Death, SB Nation
Further Watching
[1] Clayton Crowley, Hope, Glory And The Indiana Pacers
Alfredo II (Shelved – Life Told Through Rap)
It’s night-time and he is restless. The jet-lag still keeping him awake in a city that never sleeps. The dark sky made radiant by a relay of red lights.
He switches on the TV and puts it on mute, letting a new beat CD play on the living room speakers. The instrumental album has hints of Jazz, Japanese Soul and Quiet Storm R&B: lush music, elegant music, music for moments of lucidity in a lonely, liminal space.
He puts some slices of defrosted steak into the frying pan, thinking about everything he’s been through as the melted butter starts to sizzle. Each pop reminding him of a bullet missed, a woman kissed, a former-friend-turned-enemy dissed.
He imagines himself as a Ronin, a swordsman without a community or home to go back to. The words of Miyamato Musashi give him comfort while the films of Takeshi Kitano appeal to his sense of humor. The only consistent thing in his life right now being his pen.
Now that the steak is done, he brings out two cooking pots, boiling an egg and some bok choy in one and a couple packs of ramen noodles in the other. The film Battles Without Honor And Humanity is showing on-screen.
As he watches some foot-soldiers being taken advantage of by their bosses, he wonders if that is all there is to this life: betrayal. What does one do when all the people they once loved have turned their backs on them, taking a piece of their wallet, pride and soul on the way out? Who is the person at fault? Is it the betrayer or the betrayed? Especially if the betrayed is the recurring factor in all these fallouts.
The film ends just as he’s dipping his noodles in a sauce packet broth mixed with garlic, mayonnaise and egg yolk. He goes to the drinks cabinet and pours himself some red wine as words start to formulate in his head. Words to describe the feeling he’s chasing, something both within and just beyond his grasp.
The sound of flutes surround him as he visualizes himself training in the ways of the samurai, sweat dripping down his body as he walks toward the bottom of a new mountain to climb.
Further Watching
[1] Adri, Cooking For The Culture: Alfredo
Dangerous Games (Shelved – Watching Movies)
Cops and robbers. Kindred spirits on opposite sides of the law. A game that kids used to play, along with ‘House’ and ‘Double Dutch’.
There is a thin between love and hate, life and death, laughter and tears. One wrong step can turn intimacy into incarceration, friends into felons.
That’s what so thrilling about it, being so close to the climax that you can’t see the heat coming around the corner. Thirty seconds, that’s how much time you have left to get what you came for.
Finger is caressing the trigger but you’re afraid to pull it. Is it decorum holding you back or a false sense of duty, knowing that wrongdoing occurs on both sides? What’s the point of being right in a gray sea of seduction and confusion? Boundaries are blurred with the mist of when bodies meet, inhibitions laid down at infatuation’s feet.
“Love
Is a dangerous game
Filled with veins of hate
All it takes is one mistake
Can't make love a dangerous game”
Further Watching
[1] Decision To Leave (2022)
[2] Jackie Brown (1997)
[3] Out Of Sight (1998)
[4] The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Liner Notes: God Does Like Ugly (Shelved – Noire Notes)
“Picked up the pen just to write some remarks / The wrongs, ugliest songs from the heart” – JID, YouUgly
The Forever Story ends with the hero, a protagonist named Destin Route (otherwise known as JID), returning home and recounting his journey since 2007. A road filled with false starts and true promise. A path equally as perilous as it was miraculous. The birth of a new star from the Eastside of Atlanta.
Well that’s how the story is supposed to go. According to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth structure, the hero is meant to return home with a message to share with his people. A message that will inspire others to embark on their own journeys and become the hero of their own stories. God Does Like Ugly is that message, the captivating coda of The Forever Story.
What is ugly? The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as something “unpleasant to look at; not attractive; unpleasant and threatening or violent”. Zone 6, ugly. Chitlins, ugly. Rap music, ugly. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to, certain sects of society, everything about where JID comes from is ugly. In the words of Uncle Sam Jackson, it’s “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto”.
God likes ugly. JID likes it too. Matthew 5 of the Bible is filled with blessings for the ‘poor’, the ‘persecuted’ and the ‘meek’. Those who hustle to make a living. Those who struggle to survive under unfathomable conditions. Those who represent the grit and graciousness of the ‘Dirty South’. Those who have no problem slappin’ the taste out yo mouth.
Fuelled by the fire of Malcolm, JID is molded from the same red clay the Dungeon Family sprang from, giving us Soul Food for the next generation. An album simultaneously steeped in salvation and sin. An album that can only come after some deep reflection within. A love letter to a community cast aside by callous politicians and conniving businessmen, an audio acknowledgement of those unfairly branded as villains, a sonic sermon for God’s favorite children: the ugly.
Further Listening
[1] Goodie Mob, Soul Food (1995)
Further Watching
[1] ReedMySole, God Does Like Ugly Is The B-Side Of The Forever Story
Out Of Time (Shelved – Watching Movies)
“Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late.” – Chow Mo-wan, 2046
The best love stories are the ones that are too late. The ones powered by a fear of time. Of time running out. Of being temporarily outside its confines but feeling the walls closing in.
When you are falling in love, you feel that time is on your side. Until it suddenly isn’t. There is always something that gets in the way: different locations, our own insecurities or just a cruel twist of fate.
Time is unpredictable. Time is unkind. Time is undefeated. The determining factor between destiny and disaster, the ghastly gatekeeper of our heart’s desire. Time: the only element capable of extinguishing love’s eternal fire.
“Say I love you girl, but I'm out of time
Say I'm there for you, but I'm out of time
Say that I'll care for you, but I'm out of time
Said I'm too late to make you mine, out of time”
Further Watching
[1] Lost In Translation (2000)
[2] Past Lives (2023)
2046 (Shelved – Watching Movies)
Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. The only thing real about this story are the films.
2046, a hotel room steeped in the color red.
In this room, sits a man and a woman, rehearsing lines previously left unsaid. Lines filled with hurt, confusion and sorrow. Lines that try to dissect a love gone hollow.
In between these moments of despair, comes moments of creativity and levity. Moments of singing, dancing but, most important of all, writing. Writing martial arts stories about assassins and warlords that existed several millennia ago.
The color red flows through this fictional universe as well. The color of passion. The color of fury. The color of deep-rooted fears and insecurities.
In this story, the man and woman who occupy Room 2046 are finally together. However, there is an invisible force that, once again, drives them apart. Familiar themes of infidelity and jealousy.
In another timeline, the man is the owner of a convenience store while she is the beautiful yet scornful patron that graces his shop every day. The potential beginning of a fateful relationship, built on sweet treats and stolen kisses.
There is that dreaded word: ‘fate’. Destiny. Or, as some Koreans call it, ‘in-yun’. How else can you explain it? Two people in two different relationships who move into the same building on the same day. The temporary sharing of their furniture foreshadowing the temporary sharing of their spouses.
The man will do his best to recapture his time spent in 2046. He will travel all the way to a Cambodian temple and bury his secrets behind a piece of earth, forever mourning the loss of a love he denied himself.
Years later, the man will find another room with his cherished number and move into the apartment right next to it. Callously sharing his body with the occupant of 2046 but never his heart.
The number 2046 will also feature in the man’s short story: a science-fiction ode to lost souls yearning for love on a train with no destination. During this time, the man will find a new writing partner and, once again, fall victim to feelings creeping up on him unexpectedly. However, like last time, he will ultimately be left alone, doomed to linger in the liminal space between what happened and what could have been.
“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.” – Liu Yichang, In The Mood For Love
Further Watching
[1] Days Of Being Wild (1990)
[2] Hero (2002)
[3] In The Mood For Love (2000)
[4] 2046 (2004)
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to like, leave a comment, share this post and / or subscribe for more content down the line.
This piece feels like somebody flipping through all the stations of Black genius at 3 a.m., from sports to rap to cinema to myth, and realizing they’re all the same song played in different keys. You can hear the hum of obsession under the polish. Achilles and JID, Tyrese and Wong Kar-wai, all fighting time and the body. What I love is that John writes like he’s both the audience and the archivist.
"Tap. Tap. Tap.
That’s the sound of defeat, the sound of your best laid plans crumbling right in front of you."
You had me at the beginning.
I don't watch basketball as much as I used to but I could feel Haliburton's pain. I popped my knee in 2008 that kept me from running for a long time.
Your introduction has me reflecting on the days when I felt defeated - thoughts of giving up because in the moment that feels easier to do. Lie down and wail because the internal pain hurts and I don't know what else to do right now. I know that it's temporary but in the moment it feels like it lasts forever.
Another AMAZING read John!🔥