Justice or just us?

Okay, so I've got this friend here in town, a fellow musician-type with whom I used to play a lot of gigs back in the day(in this case, the day being mid-80's- early 90's). Keyboards and vocals, somewhere in the general direction of R&B and jazz.

You know how you have these patches with people where you play a million gigs together over a certain period of time? Well that was us back then: some as a trio with his brother on bass, but mostly just us two on guitar and keyboards. 

Sometimes I procured the gig, sometimes he did. Many of the ones he got us had to do with the local black community in one form or another: his Church, the local Boys' and Girls' Club, or just family outings. It was at one of these family events that he made the remark which serves as the subject of this blog. 

 Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that my friend is black. As you can see from my picture, I am white. While we have the commonality of being male homo sapiens who are somewhat musically inclined, there are more than a few cultural differences between his world and mine. These we would tacitly acknowledge, and sometimes draw amusement from (he would often give me a wry look at one of the Church affairs when the Reverend Doctor somebody was mentioned, as if to say "I know that sounds funny!"). Humor or not, usually an unspoken thing. But this one time I had to speak up.

Black folks(or at least these black folks), it seemed to me, embraced life more than us white folks. They extracted more pleasure from it. I forgot just how I put it, but it was something like, "I know this is a generalization, but when y'all are in party mode, you're more fun than we are!"

His response to that, which I'll never forget, was: "That's because despair ain't no thing!" And that's where you get that (perceived) greater sense of fun.  From the greater sense of abandon you get when you accept your own- despair. Hopelessness. This can also be very liberating: when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose!

My friend would probably get a laugh out of the tasteless Monopoly parody that begins this blog. But as much as we may note and enjoy cultural differences, he'd be much more receptive to the humor if another black person showed it to him. It's not a tidy analogy, but I don't much appreciate short guy jokes or remarks unless they're made by somebody my height or shorter. (And of course usually they aren't.)

Not everything makes sense in this world(nor is it supposed to, I'm inclined to think), but I still try to understand.