Days of Elijah 2017 CE, not 870 BCE.
Cue Judy Jacobs.
I’m corny. I know. I couldn’t resist.
More importantly, listen to Mahalia Jackson be the unadulterated utterance of Blackness for three and half minutes straight.
Besides the fact that they apparently had music videos in the Sixties, and that Mahalia Jackson was given one, and that her video for “Elijah Rock” is the antithesis of BET Uncut, and that she is inexplicably standing over an altar that resembles the one that Aslan would have been sacrificed on, and that I’m remembering that I’m using a periodic sentence, and the fact that this sentence is becoming self-conscious in its attempt to end with a witty but germane point while not offending grammatical rules such as parallel structure, I’m exciting to start writing blogs again.
Because Europeans who lived two thousand plus years ago and had not invented Listerine yet are heralded as the pioneers of rhetoric, and because I like to “stick it to the man” by legally starting a sentence with “because”, and because you are getting tired of self-referential jokes and streams of consciousness that would suggest I’m mimicking the style of Damon Young & VSB to usurp their following, I would like to introduce myself to my phantom/cyber audience in order to establish a word that should be italicized: ethos.
Me llamo Elijah Davis. Elijah Emmanuel Davis. My parents wanted me to be a whole civil rights preacher with a doctorate. My goal is to be immersed in so many honorifics that I sound like I belong to three different religions. The Most Peacefully Eminent & Honorable Rev. Dr. E.E. Davis. I abbreviate my first and middle name so that I can build Western ethos.
To the point, I’m a Millennial that eschews labels (wink wink), grew up in the charismatic church (where preachers with a high school education used words like eschew during sermons), and basically I hate constructing biographical sentences so here are bullet points :
- Growing Black man, 22, and celebrating my post-demise.
- Graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (why not in?) in the dismal science, and didn’t end up as vitriolic as Thomas Sowell.
- Pursuing a MBA in How Can Black People Make Capitalism Work for Them at the Collat School of Business.
- Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama. Lived in Kalamazoo/Portage, Michigan, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and Chicago, Illinois. More than anything, I’m a “Bama”.
- I’ve worked in Corporate America
- I play instruments but I’m not Prince. Or Tank. Or No My Name is Jeffrey. Or Cory Henry.
- My career high is 15 points. Four threes and an “AND 1”
- I’m a RN and try not excoriate those who identify as that. Not talking about nurses though. Please exercise inference.
- Lakers. Black coaches and quarterbacks.
- Join me on LinkedIn so that you can witness me trying to look as non-threatening-Black man as possible.
- I had a blog four years ago called “The Summit”. I don’t remember the Blogspot password. I also had a blog called “Intersections” before I was introduced to the term “intersectionality” (Dear Google, this is an actual word, jargon yes, but still a word. Please remove the red squiggly lines. It makes me self-conscious) .
- The average 3–10 likes I get on my Facebook posts is not exactly encouragement for me to begin blogging. But my friends are tired of me expounding through text messages and eroding their SMS storage capacity. I’m trying to be a better friend in 2017.
- I enjoy irony and levity. Chief example of which is that James Baldwin is born August 2, 1924. I was born 70 years to the day later. His friends liked when he wrote them letters as normal communication. My friends may not like my letters in the form of text messages.
- I was once Staff Writer for the undergrad school newspaper. Normally this would be something to build my ethos, but it is called the TheKaleidoscope. UAB’s mascot is a dragon called Blaze (YES, there were even dorms called Blount and Blazer). So yea. But I learned how to spell kaleidoscope consistently.
- I grew up an only child who proclaimed at the age of four to my kindergarten class that Scooby Doo was of the Devil and that Santa Claus was dead. So now you understand that the self-referential jokes are for me.
- I have a penchant for rambling if you haven’t picked that up yet.
- I have an addiction to bullet points. Just ask anyone I have ever emailed.
Why I’m Blogging in the Astrological Age of Think Pieces and What I Intend to Accomplish
In many ways, I see the geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges of our modern times as a parallel to those described in 1 Kings 17. For starters, in Central Alabama, we had nearly three months of drought in the autumn of 2016. More plainly, the story of an ancient Israel mired in a church-n-state religious upheaval mirrors the death of the religious right in 2015; the incredulous political leadership of Ahab and Jezebel look like the Age of Trump; the fracture between the Northern and Southern Tribes as well as Assyrian immigrants are reminiscent of the demographic and cultural shifts informing conversations in the the United States today; the famine caused by the drought which affected the poor and vulnerable like the widow woman is analogous to the rising wealth and income inequality that has disproportionately stresses the “middle” class. The days of Elijah were a moot point.
What strikes me more is the motif of voice that reconciles these two disparate epochs. Elijah the Tishbite is famous for his voice, his polemic amidst competing voices. His time was defined by questions of national, cultural, and spiritual identity, much like ours. His voice was defined by boldness, wit, and pragmatism. The Elijah of Kings, an outsider, tried to articulate a nostalgic path forward while wrestling with new, irreversible realities of the new era his nation faced. Thinking he was alone in his pursuits, he was joined by others hiding, the seven thousand, waiting on his voice. He was also flawed, and in great irony, ultimately yielded to a still, small voice.
I’m no prophet. There’s no chariot coming for us other than the one that the Ancestors sang about. I’m just a guy. But as I watched a whimsical demagogue rally millions of voices who felt they had been politically underserved (also actually a word Google), it made me reevaluate the importance of voice. “Elias”, as he is referred to in the New Testament, could be seen as a type of a rhetorical ancestor to Cicero, as he employed his voice as an appeal to a form of moralistic nationalism in order to persuade his nation away the path of pleasure but eventual ruin. Put simply, we, however imperfect, who fight for social, economic, environmental, spiritual, and medical justice are the collective Elijah. Our chapter has opened.
2016 was the beginning of the end of for the Boomers. The eldest of that group were now at least 70 years old. And we witnessed the reality of life-expectancy. Who now runs the world? It’s not Gen X (personal bias).
Though these are times are that humanity has seen before, we now no longer look through the historical lens of Boomer regret, or waddle in our own adolescent limitations: We have come of age, we have now taken on the mantle of responsibility for the future of our world.
We must go to the mount, and pray for the fire this time.
Expectations
Like every one else, I’m trying to be great (I don’t paid to write think pieces). Here are more bullet points:
- I work and I’m a nascent, full-time grad student that is also a part-time musician. Does this sound like the schedule of someone who needs another deadline?
- I’m using Medium because it’s easy and they tell me that I own my own content. The business model is not perfect but this medium (ha!) allows me efficiency. Plus the font and layout makes me feel hipstery. I like that because then I can afford four dollar lattes. You have to speak it into existence.
- I dislike self-aggrandizement (really? you low-key compared yourself to a biblical prophet) but I’m not against being featured on major platforms. Where I could get paid.
- Because I’m a grad student, the tone of my pieces, whether light, succinct, or academic, will basically depend on if I have a date lined up for the weekend.
- Most of my works will be mainly about Black people
- I’m capable of organized essay structures and will employ them effortlessly when Graham Wellington (white supremacy) comes for me.
- It’s not that I don’t want to argue with you in the comments section. It’s just that I perform a cost-benefit analysis of whether it is economically profitable to do so.
- I wish I could say my pieces will be no longer than “10 minute read” but…we’ve been fighting oppression for hundreds of years. And I really want to stop sending my friends messages that default to “SMS 1/10”. It’s gotten bad.
- The end goal is to not “flex”. It is to mobilize.
Upcoming Works that I’ll Hopefully Get to this Quarter but probably won’t Finish Until 2018
More bullets (points)!
Obligatory Black History Month Topics that may not be covered by ForHarriet, HuffPost, Essence, FADER, The Root, VerySmartBrothas, Jacobin, or Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “The Repatriation of the Black Middle Class” (a meditation on why the hell we moved out of the hood with no plan to invest)
- Revisiting James Balwin’s “Stranger in the Village” and its Modern Applications to Socioeconomic Stratifications in the Black Community
- “Daybreak in Alabama”: A meditation on the future of Alabama’s political ecosystem
- “The Case for Racism”: An economic history and proof for normal people who do not have time to read “The Case for Reparations”
- “Where’s Lucious Fox?” : an examination of Black masculinity
- “Grant Gustin & Candace Patton v. Serena Williams”
Smarmy Political political pieces that try really hard to not mention race but still do so in a way that people who read the Wall Street Journal would appreciate.
- “The Condom Broke”: A First Person Examination of American Foreign Relations Since I’ve Consciously Been Alive.
This is as far as I’ve gotten. I’m sure after January 20 I’ll have more to talk about.
Again, ladies and gentlemen. Judy Jacobs. I actually got her autograph in Grand Rapids. I wasn’t a normal ten year old.
