D’Angelo Scenarios

Dedicated to D’Angelo and his listeners.

D’Angelo, 2000. Photo by Paul Natkin

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D’Angelo’s music echoes the house while you’re spring cleaning on the weekend. Songs travel to summer barbecues where dominos slap the table and slide over to family reunions where Spades and Gin Rummy get to steppin’ on the dance floor, jivin’ side by side with laughter.

D’Angelo’s music can be found at DJ sets where the crowd got their shades on. At game nights before your drunk ass is about to lose another round of Jenga. Where concerts feel like church. Where church feel like concerts. Where sins are committed and sins are forgiven. Where the spirits of Jimi, Aretha, Marvin, Roberta, Curtis, Nina, Donny, Ray, Sly and Prince are called to the keyboards, the guitars, the tambourines and the tongues. Sonics get added to playlists before weekly open mic nights begin at the local café. Vibrations can be heard in the barbershops and beauty salons where braids, waves, fades, weaves, afros and nails speak the ancestral code.

D’Angelo’s music is jammin’ at juke joints accompanied with cocoa butter, cologne, perfume, incense and sweat. D’Angelo’s music can be heard on the car radio while you drive under the space of hazy streetlights at 2:30AM preparing for your graveyard shift. Melodies creep inside the midnight bar located on a quiet boulevard after you got fired for talking back to your manager. You proudly stand on ten toes, but now your head hangs low.

D’Angelo’s music can be found on the record player while you cook your favorite meal on a Tuesday evening. The hot temperature looms in the background of your bedroom as you are making the sweetest love to the girl you thanked God for. You can hear the snares tappin’ at the block parties with Heinekens and quarter waters in the cooler and looseys on the back of somebody’s uncle’s ear, as he and the fellas supervise a bunch of nieces and nephews hop scotching, slapboxing, skipping rope, playing the dozens, chasing and tagging, and hide-and-go seeking, and enjoying the handclapping games like Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack all dressed in Black Black Black.

D’Angelo’s music can be heard on the boombox by the liquor store where Timberlands stomp the pavement on one side and Chuck Taylors step on a different side of the map. Where dice games ain’t too far from the checkerboards and chessboards. The bass possesses your ears as they are blanketed by your headphones while the cassette tape spins underneath your Walkman. Then later, the groovy dialogue whispers through your CD player. Then your iPod. Then your iPhone, while you ride on the subway, and look out the window and contemplate your current state of being. Funny how after all these sum odd years, these grooves can still place you back in that familiar zone.

You hear the lyrics while walking on whatever street in the middle of an autumn season where brown leaves fall asleep under raindrops and leather jackets come back outside after hibernation. You hear the notes on the speakers while you’re writing a poem dedicated to your future lover. Or drawing a bowl of apples in your sketchbook. Or painting a beautiful mural for the neighborhood. Or shooting free throws at the park with the rusty chained rims that chime whenever you hit that swish. Or looking through some old photo albums of your granny when she used to get down when she was your age. Or studying for your next college exam. Or just laying back with your eyes fading to Black— allowing your imagination to seduce you under the darkness.

D’Angelo’s music could be the theme song to somebody’s wedding day, and could also be therapy in the midst of a divorce. Some songs could be lullabies to your baby.

You hear the falsettos while you smoke your cigarette solo dolo after your lady stormed out of your apartment after another heated argument. You hear the hooks and bridges while you sip a glass of wine at your condo after you left your boyfriend’s apartment. You later hear the chords harmonize while you both decide to make up and embrace each other once again after missing each other for too many long seconds. No apologies were exchanged. Only breaths of fresh air. Will the cycle continue?

You hear the progression from the rhythm which encourages you to put yourself out there, like you have never done before. Way out there, even though you’re petrified to be vulnerable. As if you’re allergic to rawness. Your body is yelling at you to proceed, but you would rather skydive into the Bermuda Triangle than place your hyper self-protection on the bookshelf. But instead, you choose to remove the silver shackles that have been lying to you about this false promise of “perfection,” and decide to let your heart guide your soul into the unknown trenches of intuition. You give it up to the Divine. You give yourself up to the percussion. You give the best of what you got to the ultimate truth. A demanding truth that’s been banging at your door. You give to be given. You give. You Give.

And then you give thanks.

Tears have been shed to his music. Tribal memories have been sculpted by his music. Daydreams have been released from overthinking cages of the skull because of his music. Love has been yearned, re-defined and certainly shapeshifted because of his music.

Goddamn. What a powerful vessel.