The Digital Cook-out

Unc is sitting here. That’s the thought that settles in as the blue light from the laptop cuts through the dark like a quiet lighthouse. I’m surfing the web, as I often do, sipping cheap brandy and chasing it with a Miller High Life. The High Life isn’t mine, not really—it’s a ritual, a nod to Percy Jarvis, Sr., my father. His drink was Cutty Sark, but this bottle, this pop of the cap, feels like communion. If I had my way, it’d be a Ballantine Ale and a blunt. But tonight, this is the sacrament.

There’s a myth—persistent and shallow—that solitude equals loneliness. That a man alone in a room lit only by a screen is somehow incomplete. But this room isn’t empty. It’s dense. It’s thick with memory, with choices, with the kind of peace that only comes when you’ve made your peace with yourself. I could date. I could dance that dance again. But my interest lies elsewhere—in reflection, in legacy, in the quiet clarity that comes when the noise fades.

My son is my anchor. My living legacy. The reason the future matters. And tied to him, inseparable from him, is my Blackness. My Negritude. Not just a demographic checkbox or a pigmentary fact—it’s a conscious state of being. Born from the pens of Césaire and Senghor, Negritude was a reclamation, a declaration that Black identity is not deficit but depth. It’s a global inheritance, a diasporic rhythm that pulses from Kingston to Kinshasa, from Atlanta to Accra.

And here’s the twist: that rhythm now lives online.

The internet, for all its chaos and vanity, has become our digital cookout—a virtual front porch, a global cipher, a space where the Diaspora gathers not just to speak, but to vibe. I log on and somewhere, some brilliant, unfiltered soul has posted something so arcane, so absurd, so hilariously Black that I’m doubled over in laughter. It’s not just comedy—it’s code. A shared language born of struggle and brilliance. Humor that doesn’t need translation because it’s already in our bones.

That laughter? It’s medicine. It’s resistance. It’s survival.

I’m not romanticizing the pathology. I’ve seen the cycles—poverty, trauma, self-destruction. I’ve lived through my own seasons of depression, some of it brought on by my own foolishness. But in those moments, when the weight is heavy and the silence feels sharp, the digital cookout is there. A meme, a tweet, a reel—it’s not just content. It’s communion. It’s someone saying, “I see you. I get it. And isn’t this whole damn thing ridiculous?”

That’s the genius of Black digital culture. It turns pain into punchlines, marginalization into memes, and isolation into intimacy. It’s not escapism—it’s alchemy. It’s the transformation of absurdity into art, of trauma into testimony. And it reminds me, again and again, that I am not alone. That my experience is echoed, mirrored, and magnified across a million screens.

So yes, Unc is sitting here. Alone? Maybe. But lonely? Not a chance.

This room is full—of memory, of legacy, of laughter. My glass holds my father’s ghost. My heart holds my son’s future. And my screen? It holds the chaotic, brilliant, irrepressible soul of the Diaspora. I love being Black. I love being Negro, Afro-American, African American. All of it. The weight and the wonder. The struggle and the joy. And in this digital space, this cookout of the mind, I am reminded that to be connected to that is to never truly be alone.

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