Hanif Abdurraqib wishes he could bottle the feeling he got while making a mix tape as a kid.
Megan Barnard/Courtesy of the artist
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Megan Barnard/Courtesy of the artist
Hanif Abdurraqib wishes he could bottle the feeling he got while making a mix tape as a kid.
Megan Barnard/Courtesy of the artist
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I think a lot about appreciation. I teach my kids that treating gratefulness like a daily practice can help them build meaningful lives. I’ve actually got a sort of evolution of appreciation in my mind. The first step is observation, pay attention to the thing. The next step, appreciate the thing. Then find meaning in it. But the highest form of appreciation is reverence.
Reverence is bigger and deeper than appreciation. It’s divine. Reverence reminds us of our small place in the universe. Holding something or someone with reverence is an act of optimism. It’s a way to acknowledge that there are miracles in this world that make living not just tolerable — but beautiful.
Writer Hanif Abdurraqib is really good at reverence. Maybe it’s because he’s written about some of the hardest parts of living. He’s been incarcerated. He’s lived on the streets. And he’s lost people, including his mother when he was just 13.
When I talked to him last year he told me something I’ll never forget: That he tries to be a good steward to his grief because it lives inside him and isn’t going away. And maybe understanding grief helps him understand reverence.
Reverence is what differentiates him and his work, to me anyway. He can write about an Aretha Franklin song and make it a prayer. Or a sports arena and make it a church. And, as he does in his most recent book There’s Always This Year, he can write about watching the rise of LeBron James in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio and make it feel like witnessing a miracle.
His writing always makes me feel hopeful and alive, which is why I invited Abdurraqib back for a game of Wild Card.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: Where would you go to feel safe as a kid?
Hanif Abdurraqib: I’m the youngest of four. And being the youngest of four, I spent a lot of time alone. But the good news is, this was in the ’90s, and it was a really robust era of college radio, and radio in general.
And so where I went to feel safe was inside of the world afforded to me by headphones. I would put headphones on and I would record songs off of the radio onto cassette tapes. I would be making mixtapes in real time off of the radio, which required a lot of precision. It required a lot of attentiveness.
And, you know, you didn’t hit stop on the tape when you’re recording because that would be like a hard stop.
Rachel Martin: You had to hit the pause button. Oh yeah, I know. I remember.
Abdurraqib: And so, you know, it required precision and thoughtfulness and attention. And it was a way that I felt safe, extremely in control. I was saying, I can’t control what is coming next on the radio, but I can control what comes next on this tape.
And to wait by a radio all day and hear the DJ announce a song that is your song – that feels miraculous. I miss that feeling. I wish I could bottle that feeling – feeling like something is being delivered just for you, in a world where, as the youngest, I felt like so few things were just specifically for me.I got a lot of hand-me-downs. I got a lot of secondhand things. I got a lot of things that had been loved by others. And to say, I’ve been waiting on this song all day, and here it is, it’s mine.
Martin: That’s the thing that’s hard to communicate to the youngs – the ephemeral magic of that happening. And, like, being there to capture it. And it made it all the more special.
Abdurraqib: It’s like getting a gift. Even though the sound quality wasn’t that great, even though sometimes the DJ talks over the end or over the beginning, it’s still yours. And for me, when I was a kid, I so often felt like I was not in control of anything – not even in a harsh way or a violent way. I just think being the youngest, I had to wait on people to drive me places, or I had to wait on people to finish with clothes so I could wear the clothes, or I had to wait on all of these things. And to say, “I have enough money to buy a blank 90 minute cassette tape and I have a time on an afternoon that is just my time where I can sit with headphones on by the radio and wait for a DJ to tell me, “Hey, I’ve got something just for you,” that’s special.
Question 2: What have you learned to appreciate about your hometown over time?
Abdurraqib: One story I like telling, not because I like reminding people that I’ve got a MacArthur [‘genius’ award], but because it’s funny, is that the day it was announced, I had dinner plans with a friend. And these plans were set in stone for a while. And the day that that gets announced is a hectic day, like you have to do a million different things. And so I was running behind and this friend had a plan after — we were going to a concert, all this stuff. And so I was running behind and I texted her and I was like, “I’m running late but I’ll pull up,” and I pulled up, like, 15 minutes late to dinner. And she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m very proud of you. You may be a genius, but you really messed up my dinner plans.”
And I love that story because it’s so reflective of this thing in Columbus where people are proud of me and we are proud to live amongst each other, but no one’s impressed. There’s no overwhelming feeling of, “We are so impressed that we are placing you on a pedestal above us.”
Martin: I’m talking to you when you’re in New York right now. You know, New York is where the writers go and L.A. is where the writers go. I mean, people can go anywhere now, but what was important to you about staying in Columbus?
Abdurraqib: I don’t really know how well I know myself anywhere else and at this point I don’t want to find out. There’s something about being unhoused in a place that you love, where I remember just walking the streets at night and feeling like the city belonged to me and only me because you’re at your most invisible then.
I think to be unhoused in a place is to be either invisible or a nuisance, right? Either you’re invisible or someone is hassling you or you are presented as some kind troublesome figure to a geography or a population.
Martin: But being invisible made you feel ownership over the city in a different way?
Abdurraqib: I think so. At night, you know, I remember walking the street and being aware that I had nowhere to sleep. But also being aware that that meant I had everywhere to sleep, you know. It gives you some kind of false sense of ownership, but you also see a city for what it is. You see through the kind of lies that a city might dress itself up in in order to make itself marketable.
So Columbus, for example, is now trying to market itself as like a tech city or food city – all these things that don’t actually serve the population that is living and breathing and actively there. But to be among that population and to be among a version of that population, in my case, where I was extremely at a margin, meant that I got to see the city’s most honest face behind all of its false masks.
I got to see that and say, “You know what? I actually think I still love it. I still love it. I love the city as its most honest self because I know what that most honest self is and I can cut to the heart of it.” I don’t want to have to learn that about any other place. And I don’t have the time or energy to learn how to love a place at its most honest, which I require. I require that.
Martin: I mean, that’s the purest love, right? It’s like seeing a person or a place for everything that it is and still choosing to love it.
Abdurraqib: Yeah.
Question 3: What’s your best defense against despair?
Abdurraqib: I live with depression and anxiety, and occasionally I’ll have a real moment of crisis, like a week-long, can’t-get-out-of-the-bed kind of thing. And I remember, this happened a few years back, where, you know, I just have such a great emergency support system, in Columbus especially.
And there’s a friend who has a key to my house, who, like, she knows if it goes like two or three days where she doesn’t hear from me, it’s time to check in. And she – I’ll never forget this – she did this thing where she came and just sat by my bedroom door.
And every now and then she would tap on the door just to let me know she was there. And she would at times, like while I slept, she would slide some food in the door and every few hours she would just tap on the door – she wouldn’t talk, you know? And It was just her way of communicating, “I’m here and I’m not gonna leave. We don’t have to talk. But as long as you’re behind the closed door, I will be on the other side of the closed door.”
And that defines the kind of person I would like to be. I am sometimes the person in bed, but I also want to have the capacity to be the person on the other side of a closed door. And I think that the best way that I operate against despair is feeling like I have a responsibility for that. The way that I hope to love and the way I hope to carry myself is to be the kind of friend who says, I am willing, if not eager, to be on the other side of whatever door you’re on.
The other thing I will say that pulls me out of despair is – so many of my friends now have kids. I don’t have kids, but kids really like me. I jokingly call myself like a freelance uncle, and it has changed me. It’s, like, rewired me, like being witness. And I know that this is just how DNA and genetics sometimes work, but the fact that one of my friends, who I love more than anything, has a child who looks exactly like her makes me predisposed to loving that child more than anything, even though I already would.
The fact that I can look at the child’s face and see her face mapped onto it, it makes me say, “I would do anything for you right now. You don’t even know I exist yet. You’re like eight months old. You don’t even know I’m a real person yet, but I would do anything for you. And I want to be here to do anything for you. I want to live in a way that keeps me here for as long as possible so that if you ever need anything, I can be there.”
Despair is inevitable for me. I think that despair hovers. And I don’t find ways to stop its hovering. And I’m actually fine with that because I think that keeps me in tune with the realities of the world that need addressing. And it keeps me in tune with what I need to fight back against. And it keeps me in tune with a real rage that propels me towards love, you know?
But also I want to be the kind of uncle-type figure who gets called when a date doesn’t go well, or when someone’s parents don’t understand them and they want to talk to me, or when someone’s putting on a prom outfit and they don’t like the way they look in it, or when someone needs a little money to go on a date.
I want to live long enough to be that because I feel like all of my friends who I love have carried new people into the world who are waiting for me to love them and they are hopefully waiting to love me and that means that I get to echo the love I already had for one person into a whole other generation of people and that is enough to make me say. I just think I want to stick around if I can help it, I want to stick around.