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I see it … this is how I described it in the stage directions for my play The Black Man of Happiness:

Inspiration House…

…high ceilings open floor plan, gorgeous wood floors;
…huge video screens integrated into design are time-shifting portals;
…powerful abstract African American art on the walls;
…garden through large windows;
…dining room area contains a scrumptious buffet with drinks;
…piano sits in a corner, steel pan and guitar set up near piano;
…thumb piano sits on shelves;
…kora sits on floor;
…birimbau sits on stand.

∞

I feel it … this is how I described in a poem called House:

Inspiration Crib…
welcome to my house built with talk
foundation squat on our grandparents’ chaingang demands
floors creak with closeted lovers’ North Star resolve
walls   rooms   doors   roof  align with my mother’s bedtime prayers
live a barefoot holiday with me
only celebration will measure time
each second an occasion to wilt he said/she said
with riveting telepathy of 2 humans face-to-face
gossiping with kiss from mouths
steady evolving beyond the need for speech

∞

Thinking through my best memories of family gatherings over the years, AND meditating on the ugliest architecture of American history, it comes down to this for me:

Be happy your ownself, you know! Be the antidote to the historical poison of slavery (from self-hate and self-destruction to society’s willful dehumanization and disappearing of chosen scapegoats). Explore life and history from refreshing angles. Often, I choose to live through the lens of happiness of the men whose joy has never been a national priority. Choose your angle and contribute to the tipping point of a national conversation. Given our American journey, happy Black human beings, on their ‘pursuit of happiness,’ can be both last laugh of American history and a basic ingredient for enriching American society.

∞

Thinking through my best moments of human cooperation over the years, AND meditating on the ugliest architecture of American history, a happy mindset is most opposed by a system of:

Following orders: groupthink enforced by government, religion or other constricting social structure infused with myth, buttressed by myths. Stratifying expertise only within a military configuration, top down, chain of command. Granting value to any soldier, any guard, any uniform…

What is leadership? What is power? When you wear a uniform, are your mirror neurons scorched by ideology, seasoning and training into atrophy? Those aren’t magic wands being pointed at unarmed men, women and children! What gives one accent power and consigns another to banishment? What’s in a last name? Peltier? Stone? Abu Jamal? Gallagher? Who defines the criminal? Is English a magic spell? Spanish a curse? They’re both imperial languages that rode in on the horses of cavalrymen! Following orders sanctified by royalty and money. Following odious orders sanctified by cosplaying priests waving their hands and sanctifying lines drawn on an insufficient map! What if you superimposed images from France, Germany, Poland over images of East LA, San Diego, Phoenix? ID Papers. Passes. Documents. Illegal. Aliens. Migration. Immigration. A species on foot. As cargo. As contraband. As ….

And who wants us to be unhappy? Who wants us sad? Who wants us scared? Who wants us doubting our worth? Questioning our righteousness as a member of society, as a member of the species?

∞

Creativity is my indispensable energy. Imagination is my key catalyst. Inspiration keeps me supple. Rigor keeps my thinking from calcifying into one-note mindsets, attitudes, relationships, habits, and hierarchies. Hard work is foundation for keeping my eyes on the prize in the face of personal and social obstacles, mistakes, and setbacks. I consider myself the vital and visionary first-among-equals in any collaboration.

Grounded and rejuvenated, I am always stitching what’s awesome into the quilt of ‘practical’ approaches necessary to ensure healthy futures. My happiness rests on ethical self-expression, relentless search for the elemental, and making myself ecstatically available for new patterns.

Within the first minute of each new day, I pledge to grow and court improvisation. I love folk, but I embrace healthy solitude, pandemic or not. I’m down for silence (Moms would say, ‘If you can’t say something nice…!’), but I am absolutely down for going ‘on record’ with bracing candor.

With my mind on renewal, I’ll be cultivating and blending a no-nonsense, razor-sharp sense of humor, deep concentration, active listening skills, an adventurous mastery of old school (writing, each one-teach one techniques) with new school (hand-held digital devices and social media) — and straight courage to eternally call out BS.

∞

enter my house made for talk
describe our place here-and-now
bury us in the moment of our witness
pin the corsage of my promises in your hair
curl inside motion with me & end your voyage
sift our fears until all we smell is ginger behind closed eyes
sink in the quicksand softening my palms
rise with skin radiant from the grit
lining our elation from nothing to everything

∞

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ WINNER, 2015 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD: “… But the sight of two skinny brothers, in spontaneous duet with one another, armed with friendship and genuine peace between them, makes us the perfect prism for this call for Black men to play their chord of joyfulness as an equal and opposite response and counter-spell to the American Blues Song about Black pain …. Happy Black men … swapping stories and making memories and resuscitating histories. I’m anticipating The Black Man of Happiness …. Refreshing folks who seek inspiration to maintain their own personal equilibrium. He will help oxygenate their collaborations with individuals and organizations seeking to stop violence between and among Black men, to heal from the reverberations of violence directed at them, and to defuse corrosive stressfulness in the lives of too many Black men …?” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

Once, Fred Scott and I lived as neighbors in houses that sat side by side on Fifth Street in Southeast, D.C. Ma and Daddy moved us to their first house in 1971 after years of living in an apartment in Parklands.

Like my father, Fred’s Pops (of course we called him Mister Scott) worked hard, laughed hard, and lived with that unsung dedication which always makes me think of advice that Daddy always gave me: do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do!

So in May 2020, Fred Scott, now a grown man, started a post on Facebook like this:

“I thought I would share this story this morning with my FB family and friends which caused me to break down and cry this morning.”

Read the rest and you’ll see he meant tears of joy, and you’ll see why I’m so deeply moved.

“My mom gave me my fathers wallet years ago and I never thought about going through it because there was nothing in it [–] so I thought[;] he had this picture of me tucked away. if you really know me[,] you know how private I am. I’m going to show this to my daughter who never had the chance to meet her beloved and wonderful grandfather who was the best father and caring man that you will ever meet. I know his spirit is always with me and all his kids. I will see you again and I miss you so much R.I.P. DADDY I LOVE YOU.“

Like a shocking reveal to an inspiring story, ‘… this picture of me tucked away …’ was a school photo of Fred as an elementary school student!

Everyday, Mr. Scott carried his little boy’s photo. Everyday, Mr. Scott reminded himself why he worked so hard. Erryday until he died!

∞

After international viewings of video showing Mr. Floyd suffocated, U.S. Representative from Boston Ayanna Pressley wrote on Twitter on May 26, 2020:

“Just for a moment, I am going to drown out the images of profiled, surveilled, policed, lynched, choked, brutalized & murdered black boys & men w/images of their joy. It won’t erase the ache, agony & fear, but joy is an act of resistance too. Add your #blackboyjoy #blackmanjoy.”

On May 27, @wodouble22 wrote Representative Pressley: “YOU literally have the power to introduce legislation to protect Black people and hold police accountable but you’re talking about posting some damn pictures. No wonder they can kill us with impunity….SMDH.”

Igniting a thread…debating value of the images…in a classic case of either/or thinking:

Two examples:

@DuaneAMoody wrote: “You can’t symbolically do away with the ugliness of this country by countering that ugliness with pictures and not POLICY!! Lord, you new folks are proving useless as well. I just don’t know what to do after we vote in supposed progressives who STILL draw on symbolism.”

@_AVBAD wrote: “Drown it out by drafting a bill or proposing some legislation that protects us! This is our political class, black people. Notice how useless they are, posting feel good content, during our slow genocide. #MinneapolisPoliceMurderdHim #MinneapolisPD”

∞

The thread of photos on May 27 was LOOOOONG!

The photos featured all generations, all complexions. There were photos from all over the U.S., and from Africa. Photos featured dudes wearing suits and swim trunks. Obvious activists and cats in more quiet settings. Grandparents posted. Fathers, Mothers, Aunties, Uncles posted. Brothers, Sisters, and Cousins posted. Photos showed men and boys playing ball, playing trumpets; with their daughters, with their sons, with their Homeboys, with their frat brothers.

The call for these images was appropriate. Y’all know I’ve been SHOUTING this call for years, most recently in my Faces of the Black Man of Happiness social media campaign See You … Emanating a Sense of Joy on Instagram @seeyou247.

That so many folks were inspired to post photos reflects vitality that too typically goes unheralded. Vitality that at its best actually keeps us inspired to organize, fight in legislative arenas, take to the street. Pressley obviously tapped an emotional vein to have inspired posts by such an invigorating cross-section of folks.

It’s a measure of how wounded we are that even a call to pause ‘just for a moment’ from being society’s bulls eye seems too long for some folks, as if genuine joy doesn’t deserve to be celebrated, as if Black men should be only mourned, only fought for, only used as a cause, only be the poster child of a slogan.

In this case, attacking a legislator such as Pressley, though well within the job description for a public official, seems sigh-inducing. From the beginning of her career in Congress, she’s consistently raised her voice for a humane vision in bills she’s (co)sponsored, including one that would end the principle of qualified immunity, in which police officers and other public officials are shielded from lawsuits in the course of doing their jobs.

Already Pressley has endured (and more than held her own) a national game of the dozens with Trump Devoid of Funk, who derisively and dismissively said that Representatives Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar made up “the Squad” whose members, all U.S. citizens, were asked in a tweet: “…why don’t they go back…’ to their ‘countries.’”

When racist-dehumanizing mythology is the foundation of social attack, then you better bet that the use of ‘some damn pictures’ (not to mention film and other media) MUST be a part of the quilt of conceptions and strategies and actions of resistance and renewal and restoration. 

“The endeavor to affirm the dignity of human life cannot be waged without pictures, without representational justice….” wrote Sarah Lewis in ‘Vision & Justice: Guest Editor’s Note’ for the special issue of Aperture magazine. “American citizenship has long been a project of vision and justice.”

Critically, In the face of lethal relentlessness, these photos belong to a long righteous tradition of creative disturbance on behalf of our humanity.

The photos do NOT represent powerless ‘symbolic’ celebrations in the face of overpowering enemies. They are NOT trying to convince our enemies of our humanity.

Just scan the eloquence of the captions — even at the pace of a Twitter feed. The posted photos prove that we, the people are the sacred audience for these breathtaking images!

In most viewers, smiling at these photos, laughing at these photos, smiling and laughing WITH these joyful human beings, absolutely ignites a gratifying implosion. Absolutely ignites that cascade of brain chemistry and visceral response, which restore or revive our inspiration and motivation to ACT with ethical determination and discernment as citizens. That expansive cascade represents “an inner, life-changing shift,” in Lewis’s words.

(And we damn sure know the visceral rush of that negative chemical cascade triggered by the viral videos of the murders of Mr. Floyd and too many others!)

How effing ahistorical is it to rant that these photos are not part of ‘The Struggle.’ As if we don’t have the right to grieve and mourn along with our right to rage and resist.

These photos are a reflection of what already exists.

Happiness as Geology. As Nature. As Human Hunger.

Happiness as Refreshing Protection. As Motivating Counterspell.

Happiness marked by individuality and distinction.

These photos are now part of the public record, and reflect what Lewis calls the “gravity of this connection between vision and justice.”

These photos illustrate our relentless, and parallel, Oral History of Happiness.

Like Fred Scott’s picture, these photos tell no lie!

∞

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ WINNER, 2015 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD: “…  I understand and embrace the wonderful African American humanity with which we forged joy out of insanity. But it’s time to forge joy from joy, ignite happiness from happiness, to spiral inward to get to an indivisible irradiation, whose fragrance is exhaled as part of each breath we take. Want to be happy. Will be happy. Become ornery about happiness. What happiness can I cultivate when I don’t have to look over my shoulder? What endorphins will I release – in my body and into the body politic – by singing of myself, singing to myself…being myself…again…? What ecstasy? For ourselves and for others we love …?” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

Here’s another embossed Metro Moment:

I saw a brother striding to exit the train. Just before he stepped through open doors, he stuffed a roll of U.S. currency into the hand of a Latina holding her baby. Could have been a dollar, could have been a thousand. Body language suggested they were strangers and that I’d just witnessed an act of generosity, which was the inference drawn by this Black man of happiness.

I do keep my eyes peeled for public beauty. While on Metro, I’m people-watching big time. And no doubt, riding the trains and buses of LA, I witness America’s pain [homeless riders, drunk individuals, bold individuals shouting, selling, bullying …].

Yet I stay bent on peeping ‘Joy Vignettes!’ And often I’m a witness to America’s kindness.

I love witnessing adolescents, hoodie-wearing, pants sagging, shouting, ‘Thanks bus driver,’ when they clamber out the back door.

I’ve witnessed old heads holding brown bags of wine, or a half-pint of liquor, cheerily giving accurate directions to a family of European tourists.

I once smiled witnessing a 20-something young cat look up from his drawing pad to patiently explain to a dude smelling like four or five yesterdays:

‘No, bruh, you on the wrong train; you need to get off and go back to 7^th & Metro.’

And all riders, whether we notice or not, are surrounded by “innovative, award-winning visual and performing arts” integrated into Metro stations.

According to Metro’s website, “Metro Art … connects people, sites and neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County… improving the visual quality of transit environments and creating a sense of place….” 

Unable to ride the Metro during the Covid 19 pandemic, I’ve missed entering the subtle fields of beauty that public art provides to stations.

∞

I see public art as, like, boutonnieres and corsages, which I wear like I’m heading off to the prom as I move through Metro stations.

At Union Station, I actually walk with a dancer’s attitude, when I gaze up at Richard Wyatt’s eighty-foot long mural that contains images of Native Americans and settlers of the LA basin as well as contemporary Angelenos in a row of dignified faces. It’s part of City of Dreams/River of History that also includes an undulating aquarium by May Sun that holds 7,500 gallons of water and is populated with indigenous coastal fish.

Or I bop rhythmically to “Take the A Train” playing as part of artist Bill Bell’s installation featuring twelve vertical light sticks producing varying patterns of light and color beside the escalator to the red and purple lines.

“Take the A Train” was written by Billy Strayhorn, genius composer, arranger, and cultural icon. Duke Ellington said that Strayhorn was my “right arm, my left arm, all the eyes on the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head and his in mine,” according to an exhibition I swooned over at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City.

And in some wonderful way of the world, Mr. Strayhorn’s great niece, Robin Strayhorn, has been an artistic muse and colleague of mine since the early 2000’s, when we began working together in classrooms and on public art projects. Robin’s color-infused art, including her public art, keeps my senses alert to awe in my life.

∞

Robin’s public art can be found all over Southern California. The Ontario International Airport features her Terrazzo Floor and Tile Mural. There’s her Central Avenue Jazz Park Mural and her Morningside Community Mural. You can find her work adorning the Hyde Park Branch Public Library and the Ascot Branch Public Library. Robin’s striking tile work is also featured at the Ted Watkins Park Flagpole and Pool House, Enterprise Park Pool House, and Gigante Supermarket.

And at Metro’s Imperial/Wilmington Station, she co-created with Michael Massenburg the marvelously elemental Pathways to Freedom, a tiled bench that evokes the bench bus seat Rosa Parks refused to relinquish in 1955.

∞

Originally, I wanted to jump in a car with Robin and interview her when we stopped at each of her public art projects. During the pandemic, I had to settle for a telephone Q/A, which I’ve excerpted in closing below.

Q: Why do you make public art?

Strayhorn: I like the idea of working with the community to create something that’s uplifting for people and to enliven people’s daily experience…. [Her public art practice was inspired by a 2004 trip to Spain, where she was blown away by the “artistic adventure of public art” by architect Antoni Gaudi.]

How did you get started making public art?

Strayhorn: I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I became interested, however, I do remember I was exhibiting my work in Atlanta at the National Black Arts Festival. Varnette Honeywood inspired me to go. Showed me what to do, how to package my artwork, how to ship it. … I was there and remember running into Michael Massenburg,  and I mentioned that I had a strong desire to work in the public art realm. I wanted a wider audience. Michael said he’d just completed his first public art project. Within a year, I received a phone call from a friend who had purchased some of my artwork telling me she had given my phone number to Lydia Kennard, at the time the Executive Director of Los Angeles World Airports. I was an emerging artist at the time. We were all invited to create proposals for the Ontario International Airport. That is how I got started. And I was able to create couple of designs for the Ontario Airport.

I was nervous. It was a fast-track situation. Varnette again helped me. She said you need to look at something you’ve already done and expand on that. I had these mask-like images that I used to take into classes for kids to color. I ended up using those. I expanded upon them. Varnette encouraged me to look at what’s already there. ‘They already like your colors and your work,’ Varnette said, ‘so go with something you already have and that they’ve already shown interest in.’ She gave me so much other advice.

Recently, I saw a movie on Netflix that was filmed in Ontario airport, with Meryl Streep and Jeffery Wright. I saw my work, the terrazzo floor. I was, like, ‘Oh cool!’ I paused it and I took a screen shot. It was motivating to see it. A reminder to me of what’s possible.

What do you want your public art to accomplish?

Strayhorn: I want it to be inviting and to be aesthetically pleasing. I want it to aesthetically enhance the environment, to add to, and not take away, from the environment. I want it to be relevant to the community that it serves. In some cases, I want it to get people to think about something, or to inspire them. When I created the floor design at Ontario Airport, I wanted the art to be playful and welcoming, to give them, like, a blast of energy. One day I had to go there and get some better photographs of the floor. [I was told that a] lot of children are drawn to the mural. They like to jump on certain parts of the mural. Once it’s out there, it’s for everybody. It’s like giving birth to something, but it’s not for yourself. It’s for the whole community.

∞

Yes yes yes … People get ready there’s a train a coming.

∞

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ WINNER, 2015 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD: “… HAPPINESS BURNS WITHIN: …One man’s life-affirming grito, shouted in the uncensored voice of a ‘long-distance runner’ for what’s refreshing and marvelous and courageous about being a man of witness and participation and conscience .…” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop

With my youngest daughter Adenike, who celebrates a major birthday in July, I laugh, I grieve, I listen, I counsel, I encourage, I support, I debate, I argue, I learn.

I’m humbled and amazed at how close we’ve become in her adulthood.

In a 2018 TEDx Pasadena Talk we discussed our courageous collaboration of renewal after she revealed that her former stepfather sexually assaulted her.

Ironically, as I meditate on her upcoming birthday, that’s not the phenomenal part of our journey and our relationship that I want to celebrate here.

What’s amazing, to put it simply, is how we are living family as it really is. No formulas, just exceptional experiences grounded on a mutual goal of maintaining honesty, reliability, and trust.

Halfway through 2020, she’s even got me joyfully grimacing on Instagram and Facebook and co-creating internet programming.  

On January 25, 2020, we launched season one of a new podcast, Conversating with Pops’nAde, featuring 10 episodes of thoughtful, concise conversations between us.

We’re also producing ROAD TRIPPING, an unscripted web series, which will feature us taking road trips in search of ‘Celebration Conversations’ with men and women describing triumphs over trauma and pinpointing joy on their journeys.

All this conversating – and y’all know my Moms is turning over in her grave! – embodies our mantra: “We’re all worth healing and no silence is good that keeps you from talking to people who can help you.“

∞

Stooping in front of Ade to say goodbye in 1984 was my biggest mistake. Stooping in front of Ade at Baltimore Washington International airport before taking her brother with me to the Bay Area is the biggest mistake of my life. Agreeing to a court order that separated a four-year-old baby sister from her seven-year-old big brother, a big brother from his baby sister, was the biggest mistake of my life. I squatted inches from her sadness. Masking my own. I didn’t allow myself to fall into the shadows in her eyes. I failed to prioritize her pain. I whispered platitudes and told her we’d be together soon. Violated my father’s oath, my poet’s oath, against clichés and lies and pedestrian language. I can still see the betrayal on her beautiful blank face, stooping in front of Ade to say I’m leaving on a jet plane. How CLUELESS to think this scorched moment would resolve itself without inflaming our futures. My lack of discernment was really only a 25-year-old father’s fevered wish that divorce should allow me to accelerate past the pain. It would be three years before we saw each other again. Tell me a bedtime story about loss and resuscitation.

∞

It is phenomenal that my kid still wants to love me, still wants to work with me.

The elemental lessons for me? Live your WHOLE Life! Say EVERYTHING! Acknowledge when you’ve wreaked havoc and not happiness. Work on honoring the mysterious and making the miraculous. Live your ‘love with accountability,’ a magnificent concept and turn of phrase by Aishah Shahidah Simmons, editor of an anthology of the same name, to which Ade and I contributed.

My work to convert mistakes into wisdom, misunderstanding into mutual gain, loss into dedication, and paralysis into baby steps, has been threaded with candor, regret and atonement. I work to re-consecrate my father’s oath, my poet’s oath, without sentimentality. I own my past without sinking into its worst configurations. I hope Ade and I will continue to redefine family so it reflects the healthiest and most empathetic configuration we can shape.

Our arrival in 2020 has been fueled by the virtuoso art of CONVERSATING. Two folks, way past the biological facts of life, two adults, two histories inflamed by loss, continue to tell each other they remain valuable to each other. Two adults tell each other they believe in each other, when they could have chosen the painful comfort of silence. Two adults have found joy in the labor to keep their love intact, their initiative intact, their curiosity, laughter, and collaboration intact. Two adults have chosen to walk together guided by a genuine compact to live as family for the rest of their lives.

∞

She tells me that my ring tone on her current phone sounds like the rotary or push button phones of my youth! I laugh because I do embrace my Inner Cantankerous OG, who can absolutely hear those phones blaring in his memory!  

But I remember and prefer my ring tone from one of her first smart phones. She said it always jazzed her up, and jazzed up all nearby anybodies who heard her phone announce that it was Pops on the line.

My favorite ring tone?

After all our CONVERSATING, what else but … Let’s Groove!

∞

BONUS EXCERPT from my book, Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ WINNER, 2015 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD: “… I thought I had the hang of it. But later that week, somebody at day camp unhooked Ade’s plaits and substituted two smart cornrows. I got to soul searching again. Why didn’t I let somebody cornrow me out my constriction and be done with it? I was feeling out my league and locked out the circle of wisdom where these grooming secrets were passed on. Deep down, I was also plain embarrassed: Here I am, a grown man and I can’t even fix my own daughter’s hair. Then I got pissed! Here I was actually braiding her hair, but still having women redo styles without asking me for my permission, or asking whether or not I’d like their help. Turn the tables, I thought. Let me or some other man — day care director, boyfriend, husband, or candy man on the corner —  put his hands on one of their daughters, and be talking about, ‘Girl, I’m just doing a touch-up.’ Homegirl be cussing me out, dialing 911 on my ass, and  feeling around for a knife — all the while holding her daughter close, redoing the hairstyle, and wiping imaginary sleep out the child’s eyes!

My breakthrough came after an intense conversation with my friend Nikky Finney. She encouraged me to keep trying. Despite the tears, Nikky assured me, Adenike appreciated my hard work and would remember my determination all her life. Then, fingering her magnificent dreads, she fondly reminisced about the snap crackle and pop of her own mother’s hands. That night, I dreamed I had been going about it all wrong: I saw braiding as a chore, instead of as an opportunity for special intimacy with my daughter. I was too tentative. Every time she whimpered, I eased up and brushed only the surface of her hair. My dream also offered me some practical advice: Use more Dax Jack! Don’t make her Little Richard or nobody, but spread a little more sheen boy! I had a New Attitude our next session. We had gone swimming, and I got down, if I do say so myself. After I used shampoo and conditioner, her hair draped damply and unruly. But this time, with comb in hand, I took a deep breath and easily separated small portions until her scalp peeked out. Section by section, I parted her hair, fingering dressing down each row, until her crown had a fragrant glow to it. Handling Ade’s hair took my breath away. Slowly I braided and my satisfaction … deepened twist by tug by criss by cross. I transformed her Head of Hair into patterned plaits. Four well-woven strands and she hadn’t moaned at all. She looked into the mirror, rubbed her hands over the job, and nodded approvingly. I was fired up. Once again, I felt under control as a father. A part of me — quiet as its kept — was gleeful that Black women aren’t born knowing how to braid hair. Mostly, though, I felt good reconfirming that with perseverance, dedication and imagination I could learn to speak a loving, painless language to my daughter through her thick, healthy hair …” www.blackmanofhappiness.com/shop