The big struggle of my day is now stopping myself from buying a chicken sandwich at Popeyes. Work is catastrophically boring now ... and I mean the pure existential reality of being a 56-year old man at a job. My actual job is pretty good. But it's still a job. And I've been going to … Continue reading Popeyes
I was working on a song with a line about the world being upside down and kept picturing an actual room turned on its side. It hit me that I was picturing a fun house at an amusement park I went to when I was a kid. Delta Village. In Tallulah, Louisiana. There was an … Continue reading Delta Village in Tallulah
Notes from the early days of quarantine. Along with the virus, New York has been invaded by “the real” — an elusive concept. I was telling an old school New Yorker about an encounter I had at Coney Island once. Super hot day. Blazing midday sun straight above. My children were little. I was taking … Continue reading The Real
It's one of those days at work where I'm absolutely paralyzed. Hogtied. Brainfreeze. I can't do anything. So what do I do? I go to Google Street View. I take a drive in my childhood neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi. Take a look at the old house. There it is. There's the lawn I mowed a … Continue reading Manhattan Academy
We had a big field behind my house. Somebody twenty years before then grew soy beans out there. But now it was just a big field covered in tall grass. It was a great place to fly kites. The remnants of the old rows made the ground a little uneven as we ran to get … Continue reading Cedarstone
This is a story my father told me about his youth in Kosciusko, Mississippi during the 1940s ... I’m gonna tell you about something that happened just about one block off the square to the west. There was a pool hall down there behind the building that was on the corner of the square. At … Continue reading Pool Halls and Mayor’s Courts
I’m always happy when something strikes me as “Southern.” My sister works in a retirement home in Ridgeland, Mississippi. A 95-year old resident gave her a little frosted-plastic, crystal-looking Christmas tree to sit on her mantle. Inside it, a soft glowing light gently cycles through the color spectrum. My sister said that the next time … Continue reading Southern Subjectivity
I experience a specific, subtle pleasure when I get off the subway taking my son to school in downtown Brooklyn. Our stop is Jay Street on the F. We exit onto Willoughby. When I first stood on that corner looking across the street at the big signs for CRICKET (former disposable cell phone store now … Continue reading Curious George City
I’m back in my beloved Hotel Monteleone. I fly back to Brooklyn in the morning. Instead of strolling over to Pirate’s Alley as I had intended, I never left the Carousel Bar downstairs. I clicked around a full 360 degrees three times, one tall Maker’s for each trip. In the mirror behind the bartender, I … Continue reading Down and Out in the Monteleone
Kenny Nowell 