BACK ISSUE
Remember What We Thought Love Was? (feat. Darnell Moore)
No Mary J., We're Searching For Real Love Today
This week, Josh and Tracy are talking about love (*cue studio audience* oooooh). First, they unpack their conceptions of the term, from their overzealous prom expectations to some absolutely trash relationship models they found in media. Then, they sit down with Darnell L. Moore, writer, activist, and Director of Inclusion Strategy for Marketing and Content at Netflix, to discuss radically living and unlearning in love.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
[0:00]
Josh Gwynn: What do you think love is?
Kid 1: I think love is being kind.
Kid 2: Love is like somebody's more important.
Kid 3: Love, it's like the word like, except it's love, and you like them two times more, so then you call it love.
Josh Gwynn: So love is like times two?
Kid 3: Yeah.
Josh Gwynn: How do you know when someone loves you?
Kid 1: You just know from your heart.
Josh Gwynn: What does your heart say to you?
Kid 1: It just says, "This person is kind." They could give you a present. They can give you a hug. They could help you.
Kid 3: For me, it feels like they're letting me into their heart, and letting me know that they love me and that we're friends, or we're very close.
Josh Gwynn: What does love feel like?
Kid 2: I think it feels like that you know that you're not just alone, crumbled up in a piece of paper. People love you.
Kid 1: It feels like a warm, big fire.
1:17
[Theme Begins]
Speaker 1: Beyonce? You look like Vivian Dross.
Speaker 2: Oh, but make it fashion.
Speaker 3: But you ain't heard that from me.
Speaker 4: Fierce. Can't stop.
Speaker 5: You see, when you do clown overs, the clown comes back to bite.
Speaker 6: I didn't get no sleep because of y'all.
Speaker 7: It's Brittany, bitch.
Speaker 8: Y'all not going to get no sleep because of me.
Speaker 9: We were rooting for you, Tiffany.
Speaker 10: Who said that?
[Music Begins]
Josh Gwynn: Welcome to Back Issue, a weekly podcast that revisits formative moments in pop culture that we still think about.
Tracy Clayton: This week, we are talking about love, which Kirk Franklin taught us is a word that comes and goes. But few people really know what it means.
[Music fades, changes]
[CLIP]
Laury Hill : Love, I tell you, love is that confidence. We don’t know love like we should.
Janess Antoia: Why do you think you need a boyfriend, Madison?
Madison Jade: Because I love boys!
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Everybody say “love.” LOVE.
Janet Jackson: That’s the way love goes.
Josh Gwynn: Each week, we'll go back to the past and revisit unforgettable moments we all think we remember.
Tracy Clayton: And learn what they can teach us about where we are right now. I'm Tracy Clayton.
Josh Gwynn: And I'm Josh Gwynn.
[Music fades, changes]
Speaker 11: In a world where movies and television brainwash Josh and Tracy into thinking prom would be the best night of their lives.
Josh Gwynn: Oh my God, Tracy. Prom is going to be so much fun.
Tracy Clayton: I know. We'll probably get to go with people that we're actually attracted to.
Josh Gwynn: And someone C-list is probably going to perform, like Sisqo.
Tracy Clayton: Ooh, or maybe Blu Cantrell. I love her.
Speaker 11: Unfortunately, they had been lied to... several times. This prom would not be the cinematic dream they expected.
Josh Gwynn: Ugh! This music is wack.
Tracy Clayton: All these people are too. Especially her. She really get on my nerves.
Josh Gwynn: I hate it here.
Speaker 11: It wouldn't even be worthy of a direct-to-DVD release. Like all those Bring It On sequels no one ever watched, except for the one with Solange. That one is canon.
Tracy Clayton: Why did all of the movies we grew up watching lie to us like that?
Josh Gwynn: I feel so betrayed by culture.
Tracy Clayton: And hoodwinked.
Josh Gwynn: And bamboozled.
Speaker 11: Their betrayal and bamboozlement would impact their ideas of love for years to come. More on that coming soon to earbuds near you. Like real soon, like right now. Rated R for relatable.
[Music ends]
[Music Begins]
Josh Gwynn: So Tracy.
Tracy Clayton: So Joshua Louise.
Josh Gwynn: Today, we're talking about love.
Tracy Clayton: Eeuw, why? I mean, I love, talk about love.
Josh Gwynn: I mean, it's apropos of absolutely nothing, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Tracy Clayton: I'm so sorry to hear that.
Josh Gwynn: I walk this road alone.
Tracy Clayton: You sure do, because I'm staying right here.
Josh Gwynn: But I have an idea of who we should talk to.
Tracy Clayton: Ooh, who?
Josh Gwynn: Writer, activist, living legend, Darnell Moore.
Tracy Clayton: Oooo.
Josh Gwynn: He's the director of inclusion strategy for content and marketing at Netflix, he wrote a beautiful autobiography called No Ashes In The Fire in 2018, and I think he has a lot of thoughts about what it means to be in love, how to find it and what it looks like.
Tracy Clayton: He absolutely does. And he also doesn't have any of my bitterness, so this is great.
[Music Ends]
Josh Gwynn: I feel like my whole journey of adulthood was trying to go back and systematically check off a list of things that I had learned, but needed to unlearn, one by one.
Tracy Clayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I feel like this is something that I say all the time, but it's always relevant, so I can't help it. This is something that me and my therapist talk about a lot. It's supposed to be this way. It's supposed to look this way." And my therapist will be like, "Why?" And I'm just like, "I don't know, because it is." You know? I don't know.
Josh Gwynn: Because I saw it like that one time.
Tracy Clayton: Because I saw it like that every time, and they're always terrible ,toxic relationships and situations that we never get to the toxicity of because they're so romantic, because they're so just dreamy and the butterflies, and fuck all that shit.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
[Music Begins]
Josh Gwynn: For example, I never really saw myself reflected in the media that I was watching, especially in the love stories that I was watching. But for some reason, I thought that even though none of the rest of it applied, for some reason, the prom story would, and I would have the most littest prom ever. Maury told me that, that is a lie. It wasn't that. I literally went with my best friend, which was fun.
Tracy Clayton: It sounds fun.
Josh Gwynn: It was fun. But my expectation for prom night was more like very special episode of Degrassi. You know? You look over to your date and you're like, " This is the best night of my life." And then The Killers start playing and you guys drive off down a hill with all these lights showing behind you. And it was not like that. It was more like me and my friend cracking jokes all night, which was fun, but had I not had these expectations of what it was supposed to be like that were given to me from the media that I was consuming, I would have been able to appreciate it for what it was as opposed to what it wasn't.
Tracy Clayton: Right, right. I was in the opposite situation, where I had absolutely no expectations, because I was dreading the whole thing. Because at this time, I had unchecked, rampant, social anxiety. So this is a social event where I get all dressed up, which I didn't do in school every day, and I was like, "I don't want to hear nobody making a fuss about, oh my God, I'm dressed up, and this and that." But you know what? I did what I was, quote unquote, supposed to do, I got asked to go to prom by this boy who was tall and was handsome then, now I see the error of my ways. He was just tall and brown and played basketball. So he's like the type, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." Did everything right, quote unquote, and then it was just wack. I'm at a dance with everybody that I went to school with and was afraid to talk to, and now we just dressed up doing the same shit, and spent money to do it.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
[Music Ends]
Tracy Clayton: So basically, prom was a lioness liar, and the truth was not in it. But the fucked up thing is that TV started lying to me way before prom. It started lying to me when it was like, these are the boys that you should have crushes on. And I was like, okay, then I guess I'm in love with Mario Lopez and Ginuwine and Bumper Robinson and Al B. Sure, because they are all fair complected, and they have quote unquote, good hair, and that's all I seen it on TV, right? So I actually did think that I was in love, love with Mario Lopez. I was like, is this what it feels like?
Josh Gwynn: When doves cry? Light skin doves, with Wave Nouveau.
Tracy Clayton: Drag me, I deserve it.
Josh Gwynn: This is super interesting. Even though I watched a bunch of television and a bunch of movies, I didn't have any TV crushes like that.
Tracy Clayton: You had to have at least one somewhere, right?
Josh Gwynn: I mean, maybe, but I never really felt the space to really have a crush. You know the feelings of having a crush?
Tracy Clayton: Yeah, I hate it.
Josh Gwynn: I never had that, and it was because I grew up queer, and so it felt different.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. This reminds me of conversations I've had with my other queer friends who were like, "I didn't know how to have a crush on somebody." Because for us straights, your starter kit is on TV, it's in movies. And they were just like, "I had nothing to model."
Josh Gwynn: That's very true. I remember everyone else in my class having these moments where they wrote down this boy's name a thousand times, or they used to have these binders that had a clear film on top of them so that you could slide pictures into them, and they would put pictures of their crushes on the front. And I would put pictures of people that I admired. I had pictures of Beyoncé or Whitney Houston, but it wasn't the same sort of butterfly in your stomach type of thing. It was just more so like, these are the people that I wish I could talk to instead of the people around me.
Tracy Clayton: Right. So it was more of a platonic crush and not a romantical crush. I see.
Josh Gwynn: Exactly. And I really didn't have models for romantic versions of queer love growing up in media. I can remember the first time that I ever saw Queer As Folk on Showtime.
It was these seven or eight friends, all of them white, there's like a lesbian couple, and it was probably the first time that I saw queer love and queer sexuality graphically displayed in front of me.
[CLIP]
Queer As Folk: So what do you like to do? I don’t know. Watch TV play Tomb Raider. I mean, in bed.
Josh Gwynn: And I remember watching it and listening for the garage door to see if my parents were coming home, so that I could change the channel because I already had a little bit of shame in terms of consuming it. I felt the same way when I watched The L Word for the first time, and I was just like, "Oh my God." But nothing really prepared me for that first time that I ever saw the show Noah's Ark on Logo. I just remember being in my college dorm room and seeing these four Black queer men on my screen.
Tracy Clayton: Key word is black.
Josh Gwynn: Black and queer and keyword, lead. I'd never seen that before. In the show Noah's Arc, like the Bible. But in this case, it's Noah's Arc with a “c”. So like his story arc, you meet Noah, who's the lead character. He has his chosen family, three great friends, and he meets his love interest in episode one. Think the Gina to his Martin. The Lawrence to his Issa. But him and his friends, they don't know if he's gay or not. This love interest. And so he tries to get a little bit of advice from his friends and they tell him to go on a scavenger hunt through his house in order to find gay clues.
[CLIP]
Noah’s Arc: Let's say I did want to snoop know, what exactly would I be looking for? Signs of obvious gayness. Start with photos. Are they any frame pictures? If so, do they feature mostly shirtless male friends? No. Ooh, The Wiz! That's pretty gay. Forget that. Where's the porn, books? The Greatest:My Own Story by Muhammad Ali? Straight. Walk on the Wild Side by Dennis Rodman? Gay. How Stella Got Her Groove Back? Terry McMillan? That's a tough one. Either he's gay or he’s straight and using it to snag poontang. Well, this isn't helping at all.
Josh Gwynn: It was like the Golden Girls-- because they read each other all the time-- but Sex In The City, because you got to see them in their intimate lives, and their lives with each other. But black and queer. And all of this is really bringing up for me, it’s really making relevant for me, this idea of queer time. It was coined by queer scholar Jack Halberstam in 2005 in the book In a Queer Time and Place. And it’s basically the idea that for queer people, time works a little bit differently, because for straight people there’s a straight line to adulthood. But for queer people, because of the different obstacles that they face and the different types of prejudices that they face, and the different spaces that they find themselves in, the line to adulthood is a little less straight. And so people end up having a lot of really formative life moments, like the first time that they date or the first time that they are in a relationship, much later than their straight counterparts. And I absolutely a hundred percent identify with this sort of feeling. But it felt at odds with what was happening on the screen in front of me and what TV taught me my milestones should’ve been, had I not been queer. Everybody sort of feels like, “oh my god,” am I the first person to go through this? But I think that it’s especially true for queer kids.
Tracy Clayton: I can kind of relate because I was a late bloomer, but not because of societal stuff. I just had raging and rampant social anxiety, an undiagnosed generalized anxiety disorder.
Josh Gwynn: Fair.
Tracy Clayton: But, even though I wasn't prepared to go out, and date, and take all of these steps my friends were taking, I at least had a roadmap before me. I wasn't hitting any of my milestones, but I knew that they were there. And so then, when I was being mean to myself later, I knew how to focus it.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: Just like, "Bitch, why you ain't got no man? You ain't going on dates. What's wrong with you?" You know what I mean?
Josh Gwynn: Yeah, and I had the same roadmap, but I was in a different town. So, the streets didn't match up, but I still was able to read how toxic this roadmap was, at least later when I looked back,
Tracy Clayton: Yeah.
Josh Gwynn: And that gives me an idea. I think we need to break down some of these relationship models that we originally were in love with, that we thought we were learning from, and then we had to learn that we needed to unlearn from, with the game called Couldn't Be Me.
Tracy Clayton: Okay. All right. The title got me. I'm in. I'm sold.
[Music Begins]
Josh Gwynn: Okay. I'm going to give you iconic couples from romantic storytelling history, TV, film, literature. And you can tell me whether this is a good model of a relationship, and if not, you have to say why it absolutely couldn't be you.
Tracy Clayton: I'm going to predict that my answer to all of them is no, but see if I'm right.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. First couple, Martin and Gina.
[CLIP]
Martin: Damn it, Gina!
Tracy Clayton: (singing). Okay. I have strong feelings about this particular couple, because number one, Martin is one of my favorite shows of all time. And number two, when I was younger, that is the kind of relationship that I wanted, because it was funny. Like as an outsider, I'm looking at this couple, and I'm just like, oh man, I'd laugh all the time. It would be so fun. Martin's goofy, Gina's goofy, I'm goofy. This is what I want. This is what I need.
Tracy Clayton: Then I get older, and I'm looking at Martin's immature ass, like I'd have been done left you. Are you kidding me?
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Tracy Clayton: It's funny because he's a fool. It's funny because he's a buffoon, right? He's a chauvinist. He's petty. He's really insecure.
Josh Gwynn: He never lets people stay in his house.
Tracy Clayton: Never. Which, I mean, sometimes I wish I was mean enough to kick people out of my house. So I aspire to that.
Tracy Clayton: But, he's a terrible person and he always gets his comeuppance. Right? Like he does something stupid and then he's punished for it somehow. But then, he's rewarded by Gina, who is a high powered executive, gorgeous, light-skinned, which is what was in then, I'm just going to say it, I'm just going to call it out. And she rewards him putting her through hell with staying with him.
Tracy Clayton: No, no, no. Let me tell you what you're not going to do too many times. You're not going to embarrass me in front of my friends. You're not going to call my best friend a dog.
Josh Gwynn: In front of me.
Tracy Clayton: In front of me. And in front of her. Are you kidding me?
[CLIP]
Martin: Girl, I am a bullet in the chamber. Lock and loaded. Do you want to pull my trigger, Pam? You want to pull the trigger? Go on and pull the trigger, Pam!
Pam: I will Martin, cause’ from what Gina tells me, you’ve been shooting blanks.
Josh Gwynn: Is there a particular moment you think exemplifies their relationship the best?
Tracy Clayton: That proposal that he gave her would have been the last time he ever saw my black ass ever.
Josh Gwynn: Wait, what happened?
Tracy Clayton: Okay. So what happened was, Martin and Gina are together. And like typical woman, quote unquote, Gina's ready to get married. She's dropping all these hints about getting an engagement ring.
Tracy Clayton: At some point, Martin bends down to tie his shoe. She turns around and starts hyperventilating because she thinks he's going to propose.
[Martin]
Gina: Baby, I know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing! Martin, oh baby!
Martin: Nuh-uh, Gina. Chill, baby chill. I’m running the show.
Tracy Clayton: So she's like that type, just thirsting for marriage. Because if you don't have marriage, are you really a woman?
Josh Gwynn: Are you valid?
Tracy Clayton: Do you matter? So, they're talking about it. Martin gets annoyed and he’s just like, “Quit pressuring me Gina, damn!” And so then, Gina’s like fine! I got a job in LA. I’m going to take it and then move across the country.
Tracy Clayton: Martin is like, she ain't going nowhere, she ain't going nowhere. On the day that she's supposed to leave, he shows up at her empty ass apartment, gets on his knee, and says…
[CLIP]
Martin: Fine, okay. All right, baby, Gina. Okay, fine. Please. All right, your little plan worked.
Gina: What are you talking about, Martin?
Martin: Gina, please. Here, sit. Okay, baby, you plotted, and you schemed, and clank, clank, you finally got me, Gina. Okay, fine. Gina, I will marry you. Damn. I mean, are you happy now?
Tracy Clayton: That was the first proposal. That would have been the last word you ever said to me.
Josh Gwynn: What type of jagged edge-ass proposal.
Tracy Clayton: There's no possible way that we're getting back together.
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: Because I no longer trust your love for me or your devotion to me. You're only here because you're ass don't want to be alone, and you don't want me to be mad at you, because you're still trying to get some.
Josh Gwynn: And you just told me.
Tracy Clayton: Exactly. And you know what? What is always true, what one person won't do for you.
Josh Gwynn: Another person will.
Tracy Clayton: I'm out. First thing, smoking child, done. So in conclusion, couldn't be me.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. Okay.
Tracy Clayton: Could not.
Josh Gwynn: Ready for the next couple?
Tracy Clayton: I think so.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. So we got sports. We got Sanaa Lathan. You got Omar Epps playing Love & Basketball.
Tracy Clayton: Play for my heart, right?
Josh Gwynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative) mm-hmm (affirmative).
Josh Gwynn: Do you remember the scene where Quincy gets mad at Monica because she won't leave her dorm room, because she's under curfew for her team?
[CLIP]
Monica: That night you wanted to talk about your dad, I had curfew. What was I supposed to do?
Quincy: Stay.
Monica: If I stayed, I wouldn't be starting.
Quincy: Well, at least you got your priorities straight.
Monica: I'd never asked you to choose.
Quincy: You'd never have to.
Monica: I'm a ballplayer. If anybody knows what that means, it should be you.
Quincy: If basketball is all you care about, why are you boning me?
Tracy Clayton: It couldn't be me, because, there is this message, this narrative, that love is supposed to be unconditional. It conquers all. It's to be weighed above all else. And if you have to suffer and struggle to stay in this relationship, that's how you know it's true love. That's how you know it's real and it's going to last. Look and listen, unconditional love is great if you're a puppy.
Josh Gwynn: Or a child.
Tracy Clayton: Sure, we'll throw babies in there too. Although, draw on my wall one more time and we'll see what happens.
Tracy Clayton: But, that idea is what keeps people miserable for so long, and in miserable relationships, and feeling like if they demand more from a partner, or if they leave one partner who's not providing for them in some other way, that it makes them like bad, or weak, or they weren't really in it like that to win it to begin with. No, there are absolutely conditions on my love. You know why? Because my love is worth it. This should be a 70s soul song.
Josh Gwynn: Okay!
Tracy Clayton: Love is not enough. I'm sorry. Those people don't always deserve access to you, into your heart. And you're allowed to say that. You're allowed to kick people out of your space. And you know what, you can love them all day long until the cows come home. But that doesn't mean you have to be with them. It doesn't mean that you have to be miserable every day of your life because some TV show tells you it's how it should be, because suffering is the thing that gets us closer together. Look, I suffer enough on my own. I don't need you for that.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah. The fact that Sanaa Lathan is expected to take a back seat to his success, and that's what a successful marriage and a successful relationship is supposed to look like in this storyline, lost me.
Tracy Clayton: A good, healthy relationship would never require...
Josh Gwynn: Anyone to dim their light.
Tracy Clayton: Exactly. And plus, he knew that there were consequences for her if she was supposed to sneak out.
Josh Gwynn: He just didn't care.
Tracy Clayton: He didn't give a shit. Compromise, okay? Communicate. What if she had said, "I hear you and I understand that this is very urgent for you right now. Here's my situation. How can we meet in the middle?"
Josh Gwynn: At the half court line. I just did a sport.
Tracy Clayton: You did do a sport. That was good.
Tracy Clayton: I can't remember if or when I've ever seen that happen in a situation, where the stakes are so high. And it's always the woman.
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: It's always she who suffers. That is bullshit. It is all by design. It's all on purpose.
Josh Gwynn: Okay, Tracy, one more.
Tracy Clayton: Okay. Let's both answer this one.
[Music Begins]
Josh Gwynn: Okay. Romeo and Juliet.
Tracy Clayton: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
Josh Gwynn: It is the East.
Tracy Clayton: And Juliet is the sun.
Josh Gwynn: Wow. I really did pay attention in English class. Like I'm surprised.
Tracy Clayton: Good job.
Tracy Clayton: So Romeo and Juliet. I'm sure you know the story. If you don't, here are a few tidbits. So you have Romeo, you have Juliet...
Josh Gwynn: So you got Leo and Claire Danes.
Tracy Clayton: Yes, basically.
Josh Gwynn: You got Des'ree singing as they look at each other through the aquarium.
Tracy Clayton: Oh my God. That song.
[Music Begins, changes]
Tracy Clayton: (singing).
Josh Gwynn: (singing).
Tracy Clayton: Okay. So they fall in love, but they're from feuding families. Juliet is 13. Shakespeare actually never says how old Romeo is.
Josh Gwynn: Ew.
Tracy Clayton: But it's assumed, or at least portrayed, that he's like around 16 or so. But he could have been fucking 21, 47, who knows?
Josh Gwynn: Yikes.
Tracy Clayton: Who knows. Right. So, they fall in love. They hatched this plan to be together. It was a terrible plan, probably because Juliet was 13. You know?
Josh Gwynn: Oh my God.
Tracy Clayton: You don't really have, the part of your brain that can look around corners, is not developed yet.
Josh Gwynn: This is awful.
Tracy Clayton: So the plan is that Juliet is going to pretend to commit suicide. Romeo rolls up. He's like, oh shit, my boo is dead. He actually commits suicide. Juliet pops up. She like, oh shit, my boo is dead. And then she commits suicide. The end.
[Music Fades]
Josh Gwynn: Yo, where were you? You need to write someSparkNotes.
Tracy Clayton: Do I? I'll keep it in mind. I will keep it in the back of my mind.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah. Second career.
Tracy Clayton: But it's all well because this is like a love story of the ages. Right? Star crossed lovers. It's been re-made so many times. It's referenced in love songs. And when you think about it, this is what we were supposed to aspire to?
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: That's a bad idea. This is actually dangerous. You know what I mean?
Josh Gwynn: From the top to the bottom. Rooter to the tooter.
Tracy Clayton: And back to the top.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: So, I mean, think it's clear that it couldn't be neither of both of us.
Josh Gwynn: Couldn't be me.
Tracy Clayton: Because I got shit I want to do tomorrow. I'm trying to go on vacation again. You know? I want to get a puppy one day. I can't do none of that shit if I sacrifice myself because without true love your life's not worth living. Listen, what if you fell in love with yourself?
Josh Gwynn: These models are fucked up. They're not right.
Tracy Clayton: They are.
Josh Gwynn: But it raises the question. If we can't look to these models, where should we look?
Tracy Clayton: That is a good question.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah, and I've been asking myself this a lot. And it sounds like a question for Darnell Moore, who's an activist, writer, and currently the Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content and Marketing at Netflix. He has a new podcast called Being Seen, and we're going to talk to him after the break.
[Music Ends]
[Music Begins]
[ 26:16 Interview with Darnell Moore]
Darnell Moore: For love to exist, there has to be equity. There has to be justice. There has to be invitation.
Josh Gwynn: That’s Darnell Moore. He is a writer, activist, and the host of the new podcast, Being Seen. He sat down with us to talk about love, life, and the pursuit of healing.
Darnell Moore: So, I grew up in a family with a daddy's and said he loved my mom, but he beat the shit out of her. That's not love. And I want young people to know, it isn't just when I feel the googly wiggly butterflies in my stomach, that's cool. That's love. But you know what love really is? When forgiveness and accountability and the push to keep going is present, that to me is love, not just this butterfly stuff, that you can feel that and still treat people like shit. And that's what America's love this to us. We can't do to others what the system does to us.
Tracy Clayton: Drag me. Drag me from my home, just up and down the street.
Josh Gwynn: In the television and the film that you watched growing up, were there times that you saw relationship models that you could identify with?
Darnell Moore: When I was growing up, there were no formidable forms of black queer love available to me. Even in literature, I read books that center white people and talking animals. You know what I mean? Black love was absent. Black, queer love was absent. So I didn't have access to it. I dreamt it into being, in my imagination and my mind.
Tracy Clayton: So when do you feel like you first saw yourself generally represented in pop culture?
Darnell Moore: Noah's Arc.
Josh Gwynn: Wait, Noah's Arc is a big moment for me. A huge moment for me.
Darnell Moore: At that moment, I was in my first sort of official relationship. I had a relationship with a dude before that, which was a mess. I don't even claim that.
Tracy Clayton: I feel that. It was practice.
Darnell Moore: Right, so my first real relationship where love was present. Wade and Noah's relationship mimicked ours in so many ways. We were living together, in the hood, and in love.
Josh Gwynn: I remember literally sitting in my college dorm room and being like, "What is this?" It was just like, "Wow."
Darnell Moore: Same. It was a gift. It was a gift.
Tracy Clayton: I love that you said it that way, that it was a gift. I feel like a thing that I'm learning as I continue to grow up, though I am nearing 40, is that telling your own story is a gift that you give somebody else. And in 2018, you wrote a memoir called No Ashes in the Fire. I want to talk about how the genre of memoir lends itself to doing for others what Noah's Arc did for you.
Darnell Moore: Literally, when I was writing, I would close my eyes and I imagined myself standing in the back of a theater. It was empty, except for the presence of one little boy, with nappy ass, beautiful hair. And all I could see was the back of his head. And that's who I wrote to in the book. And I'm thinking, "Out of the things that I've been able to experience in my life, what stories, what themes might be relevant to this young person and to the people in his life?" And in that way, it was a gift. It was a gift to my younger self, to the younger black folk. It was a gift to the caregivers around me. It was a gift to my city, Camden, New Jersey, shout out to Camden, woo, which is often scandalized in terms of representation.
Darnell Moore: Nobody's trying to talk good about my city. So it was a love letter back. And it was a gift to my family, to my mama. In the same way that I think Noah's Arc allowed me to find myself in the stories of these characters, I hope that folk were able to find themselves in this one.
Josh Gwynn: Can I ask a question that Tracy asked me that I felt like was really hard for me to answer? Who was your first pop culture crush and when did it happen?
Darnell Moore: Prince. My aunt lived in this penthouse in Atlantic City when stars would come in to do their concerts, helicopters would drop people off at the rooftops. And I swear, I would sit up there and I would imagine... Yo, this is so funny, but I would be at her house by myself, imagining that Prince was being dropped off and that he was coming to meet me. I mean, Purple rain! Like what?
Josh Gwynn: Yeah. Yeah.
Darnell Moore: Oh, definitely Prince.
Josh Gwynn: I know that prior to Noah's Arc, a lot of the media references and touch points that I had were rooted in trauma. Boys Don't Cry wrecked me for like six months. The Matthew Shepard Story, I remember sneaking and watching that and being a wreck. One time you said that queerness is magic, and I love framing it in that direction instead. So can you talk to me a little bit about what it means to make that honors that magic and affirms queer black folks that watch it?
Darnell Moore: One of the difficult aspects of writing No Ash in the Fire was the reality that I would have to write a complex human story that had both pain and joy. I would be lying if I would write a story that absented the shit that I endured, as a black person coming up in a white supremacist world, as a black queer person coming up in a world that is antagonistic to queer and trans and non-binary people. It would be impossible. And what was important for me was to find elements of joy, of strength. I think about this all the time, and maybe this will help explain it. I was once in Gugulethu, a township in South Africa, and I remember being with these white folk... It was so funny. They're like, "Oh my God, this is like squalor." And I saw one flower sprouting out of the dirt. And I used that as a reference point. I said, "Focus your eye on that flower. Focus your eye on a flower." Now that doesn't mean that the sort of large acres of dirt that we see here, which represents squalor doesn't exist. But I want us to look for that flower. All that to say, when I say queerness is magic, it is.
Darnell Moore: I also say we shouldn't have to fight so damn hard to be superheroes. We should have the ability to just be. I think that the best stories are those that can hold intention, what it means to be human, our pains and our joys, without over-indexing on the pain, without only ever needing to hear a story by black people, when it evokes something in the other, the non-black person. And these sort of stories of black trauma are attractive, because it does something to the person who is often enacting the violence on us. We haven't even been able to be mediocre. You know what I mean? Let us create mediocre stuff, let us create great stuff. There are so many black queer stories to be told. So many characters that have yet to sort of be put on screen. So many narratives, so many settings, so many body types. We ain't even touched half of it yet.
Josh Gwynn: If you could go back and you would have these positive, healthy models of possibility, in media, that you would have been able to see as a six year old, a seven year old, an eight year old, how do you think your life would be different?
Darnell Moore: Oh my God, it would be so damn different. When I was a kid, I was watching somebody's VCR porn.
Tracy Clayton: Shout out to VCRs.
Darnell Moore: I was very aware of my sex and having sex body. I was very aware of my sensuality, very aware of attraction. We imagine kids as these bodies of innocence, when in fact, I had a lot of questions. So I believe, had I saw two black men, and they don't even have to be in love, but in intimate connection, not even sex, but touching, like Moonlight, for example... Moonlight would have freaked me out, because in a world in which I was socialized to think about black queer desire as sinful, as wrong, as against God and against community, it would have freaked me out in the best way possible, because it would have made real the stuff that I was already feeling inside of myself.
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: Validation.
Darnell Moore: So I often say, "Had I had representations like that, I probably would not have spent a good 15 years of my life trying to take myself out of here." To just keep it very real.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah. So with your new podcast being seen, you center the experience of black queer men. What do you aim to do with that particular space? And what does it mean to be seen in love?
Darnell Moore: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I wanted to create a lush ass, sonic space for us to just exist and tell our stories. I inevitably want black, queer, gay, bi, trans, men, masculine of center, non-binary people, to hear something within popular culture that they can connect to, and also to say that we are here too, and that estimation, "Black Lives Matter," we are part of that black. And I'm always adamant about ensuring that there is an archive of our lives. I always think like, "Shit, 20, 30 years from now, in the same way I can go and pick up Marlon Bridggs' work, Essex Hemphill’s work, somebody can go and get that podcast and hear from the people who have been at the center of so much cultural creation, political maneuvering.
Darnell Moore: And what that means for me... Love. I hope that love can be evident in the care with which we try to curate this. All of the art is by black artists. The cover art is by black artists. Moses Sunday's song is our cover song. I wanted to love on black art, black culture by doing that, putting something that can be close to love out in the world. So I'm just happy to be doing that work.
Tracy Clayton: So your relationship to ideas that polarized or excluded you in your youth, like masculinity and strength, how has that changed with the recent uprising going on? I don't know if you noticed the race wars... It's like a whole thing. So how has, not to bring it all back to trauma, but how has just watching all of this really scary shit impacted or changed or advanced your ideas of masculinity and love and black joy?
Darnell Moore: This pandemic, the storm within a storm within a storm. What we've all experienced is isolation, loneliness, we've been sort of caged in, separated from others, maybe blocked intimacies. And if they don't sound like patriarchy, I don't know what else does. And I was sitting with the fact that I've been grieving so much, the deaths of black people who've been killed by police or white vigilantes, lost people in my life. And for the most part, as men, what it means to not allow ourselves to feel, to experience, to name... Mourning, to name griefs, to be honest about the fact that we are broken. In a moment like this, we're expected to sort of get up and keep going. That is what manhood demands. So I think what I have learned is the very simple mantra that it’s okay to not be okay, and that freedom, or at least healing, which is a process and something that can only get through-- that if we allow ourselves to sit in the break. And that is Fred Moten’s term. And this moment has been a break.
Tracy Clayton: Grief. Something that I keep forgetting is that we are all grieving together. We’re all grieving so many things, and it reminds me when Kobe passed, on Twitter there was this picture or video or something. It was of Allen Iverson and Dwayne Wade and they were hugging and embracing and crying and holding each other at this Kobe tribute, and it went viral. And I realized that I’ve seen so few representations of black men grieving and caring for each other in pop culture.
Darnell Moore: That's right.
Josh Gwynn: I think sports is a place where you see the acceptance of that sort of intimacy in a certain way, maybe sometimes. And I know that a lot of times we see love on screen as this outward experience that you have with another person or other people as a potential strategy towards fixing those issues with masculinity.
Darnell Moore: Hell yeah.
Josh Gwynn: And looking inwards towards self-love and sort of thing.
Darnell Moore: Yeah, because inevitably patriarchy denies men and women their humanity. It actually pushes you further away from your truest self. And I think about love as the energy that removes the distance that exists between us and the other. Self love would mean it's a coming closer to the truest self. Black men, black people are already living under the conditions of lovelessness, period. Period. That's a fact. So to love the thing that you've been told to hate, that's what makes it radical. To love the nose you've been told to hate, to love the skin you've been told to hate, to love the body you've been told to hate, to love the essence you've been told to hate, to love the femininity in yourself that you've been told to hate, to love the things you've been told to deny is radical. And I think for me, the moment I was able to look in the mirror and behold all of me, the shit that I loved about myself, hated, the bad things I've done, the good things I've done and say, "I love you, still" is the moment that I began the process of living real.
Josh Gwynn: Whoo!
Tracy Clayton: Wow. I would-
Josh Gwynn: I feel like I'm at church.
Tracy Clayton: I feel like I’m about to cry at work today. Thanks a lot. I’m just like, maybe love is not fake. Now I'm going to have to reevaluate everything I thought I knew. Before we let you go, where can people find you and your work?
Darnell Moore: On my website. It's darnelllmoore.com. But I'm on all of the socials, which I sometimes use, but it's @moore_darnell. And you can go to beingseenpodcast.com and now you can have access to your art, the actual podcast episodes, and other fun things.
Josh Gwynn: Thank you.
Tracy Clayton: Thank you so much.
Darnell Moore: Y'all are the best. Thank you so much, y'all.
[41:16 End of interview with Darnell Moore]
[Music Begins, fades]
Tracy Clayton: All right. So this is the part of the show where we channel the one and only Tyra Banks and we take her advice and we do our best to learn something from this. Joshua Louise, did we learn something from this?
Josh Gwynn: I think a more appropriate title is, what did we unlearn from this?
Tracy Clayton: Oh, sharp. Okay. We had our Wheaties this morning. Yes.
Josh Gwynn: It's just become really apparent for me just how much unlearning that we've all had to do. Regardless of whether you're straight or you're queer or you're black or you're brown, TV lied to us all.
Tracy Clayton: Repeatedly. TV is a habitual line stepper.
Josh Gwynn: It's lying, and the truth ain't in it. And like Darnell said, it's not just about this idea of Disney, Hallmark, MTV love.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. And it makes me so sad that there are people who don't know that accountability and mutual respect and apologizing and amending your behavior. These are things that real, true, substantial love is characterized by, not from making bad decisions that's going to make you resent him and her and your children and your family and all this other stuff. That's not what anything substantial and, what's the word? Stable. Yes, that's the word. Stability over butterflies. Friends and family. This is where I am in my therapy journey, and that shit is so hard. It's so hard.
Josh Gwynn: You know? It's really hard to retrain yourself to be like, "Oh, the fact that I cry every day isn't a sign of passion, it's a sign that something is wrong.
Tracy Clayton: Right. That is your body and your subconscious telling you, "Bitch, that's not it. Listen to me."
Josh Gwynn: Love doesn't have to involve trauma. That's not a prerequisite to it being true.
Tracy Clayton: That is the people, the person that controls the big machine and is pulling the puppet strings.
Josh Gwynn: The man.
Tracy Clayton: The man. Mr.Charlie Bobo. That jive sucker turkey pig. But that is the system trying to keep us subjugated, you know what I mean?
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: If love is a thing that you want, then be prepared to suffer. And since you're suffering anyway, just let me oppress the rest of you too.
Tracy Clayton: But, like, the idea and the concept of falling in love, a fall denotes a regression somehow, or being caught and trapped in this thing that you have no control over. And it shouldn't be like that. It doesn't have to be like that.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: Someone else who doesn't think it should be that way is Toni Morrison. May I share a quote with you?
Josh Gwynn: Absolutely.
Tracy Clayton: So Toni Morrison wrote this line of her novel, Jazz. And one of her characters says, "I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." And that's what love is.
Josh Gwynn: And still I rise.
Tracy Clayton: I rise.
Josh Gwynn: I rise. I rise. Ashay. Snaps.
[Music Begins, changes]
Josh Gwynn: We've gone through all of these relationship models, all these ideas of what the possibility of love is and what it can mean. What is love to you?
Tracy Clayton: Love is a word that comes and goes.
Josh Gwynn: Comes and goes.
Tracy Clayton: Love to me is about freedom.
Josh Gwynn: That's what I was going to say.
Tracy Clayton: Are you really?
Josh Gwynn: Love is the freedom to be autonomous, love is the freedom to the experience on this earth that you want to have.
Tracy Clayton: And love is the privilege of being with and near somebody, not owning that person.
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: Love is supporting the person that you love whether it benefits you or not.
Josh Gwynn: Love is the sharing of good times and bad times.
Tracy Clayton: Love is whatever you want it to be, honestly.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: Whatever ends up in the both of you being supported, being heard and seen and respected and cherished, do that shit. That's what love is.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah. Love is the ability to figure it out.
Tracy Clayton: It is. All right, I'm going to go die alone now.
[Outro Music Begins]
[46:09 Credits]
Tracy Clayton: Back Issue is a production of Pineapple Street Studios.
Josh Gwynn: And love. This show was created and is hosted by Tracy Clayton
Tracy Clayton: And Josh Gwynn. Our lead producers are Josh Gwynn and Emmanuel Hapsis.
Josh Gwynn: Our managing producer is John Asante.
Tracy Clayton: Our senior editor is Leila Day.
Josh Gwynn: Our associate producers are Alexis Moore and Xandra Ellen.
Tracy Clayton: Our intern is Briana Garrett. Special thanks to Gabrielle Young.
Josh Gwynn: ALSO - Special thanks go out to the extra voices you heard at the top of this episode! Thank you to …. Andy, Addison, Kobe, and Nia. We also have extra engineering help from Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Max Linksy.
Tracy Clayton: This show features music by Donwill. You can follow him on all the socials @djdonwill. And if you give him some money he'll make you some music. You can follow me, Tracy, @brokeymcpoverty also on all the socials.
Josh Gwynn: And me, Josh, @regardingjosh. Subscribe to this podcast wherever free podcasts are sold. Tell your lover, tell your friends, tell your paramour, tell your mistress, tell your side boo.
Tracy Clayton: Okay.
Josh Gwynn: See you next week.
Tracy Clayton: Bye.
Josh Gwynn: And I'm Josh Gwynn.
Tracy Clayton: You sound like such a serious reporter. Here with news highlights at 11:00.
Josh Gwynn: There's a cat stuck in a tree on Juniper.
ENDS [00:47:31]