There was an old weird guy that played the open stage, his name was Citron and his English was very difficult to understand though I think it was his first language. He was strange in a way I liked but also kept my distance. Sort of like the closest I might ever have come to knowing Captain Beefheart, but he had one blues song that had a chorus I understood and enjoyed pondering which was, “everything is the opposite of what it seems” and he played it on the piano to a Professor Longhair left hand style. It was a thing of beauty. On some of the news channels I frequent, I’ve noticed more and more interviews since the summer about Critical Race Theory, often by Black journalists with Black and White guests and often the guest is defending why they are against the study of CRT. It is very confusing to me. Off the top of my head I thought the gist of CRT was to teach people that racism exists, that racism is shit, that people should realize it exists and be sensitive to the tricky ways it weaves itself into decisions and manipulations. But actually these conversations often are about people who are upset that White people or White children might assume they are bad. But that isn’t even the point, and so many hours are afterward lost in straw man arguments, I just hear old Citron playing the only thing I ever heard him say with clarity.