Dear Randall,
It’s been a few years now and I’ve been thinking about you a lot, so I thought I’d write.
Here’s what you’ve missed: the world continues to be awful and wonderful. Sometimes in turns, more often all at the same time. People continue to be the biggest pains in the ass, but also so endlessly radiant with promise. Not much has changed, but I’ll be damned if everything isn’t changing all the time.
Back in 2020, I was writing an email to you when I read that you had died. I’d wanted to finish If I Had Two Wings before hitting “send” to congratulate you. Oof. A year or so later, I made the exact same mistake. I fiddled around and got a card in the mail a day too late to reach my high school biology teacher before he passed away. Regret is a relentless telemarketer, but I’ve tried to make something of it. I’m doing my best to tell people what I have to say while I’m able to say it.
Because what this world needs more of in 2023 is hot takes from a White, gay man.
I hope that would have made you laugh.
Everyone misses your laugh. I read a bunch of remembrances before I sat down to write, so I can back this claim up with hard data. Making you laugh was my goal in every conversation we had. Rich, warm, an absolutely unselfconscious celebration. Such a gift.
We first met in person at a dinner for a visiting scholar. It was my second year in graduate school (winter 2009 based on the date stamp on the photos from that evening— you know my memory is absolute shit). I was so nervous. Those academic events always made me feel like: 1.) a poseur and 2.) a hillbilly. To that point, I will never forget the person who introduced us saying, “Ben thinks he’s going to get his Ph.D. studying comics.” What…a sucker-punch.
“You’re in English?” you asked and I fell back on a tested line, “Yes, I’m in English, but my first language is Hee-Haw.” I was so self-conscious about my dialect. You laughed and said, “Oh good, me too! What comics are you reading?”
You knew about everything! (That’s something else everyone remembers fondly about you.) That first meeting, I remember talking about comics (always comics, you were so gracious and curious about my research), cooking green beans, our dream line-ups for a VH1 Divas Live special (I think we agreed on Mariah and Beyoncé, but little else?), and a website where people reviewed fragrances that you described as featuring some of the most evocative prose you’d ever read (I wish I could remember the name of the website!). But you weren’t like anyone else in academia I’d met at that stage in my career. There was nothing pretentious about you or the absolute wealth of knowledge you so casually shared. You weren’t a magpie for theories or trivia; you exuded a fascination with the world’s eclectic offerings.
Reading one of Daniel Wallace’s remembrances of you, I learned that you wanted to see, but never saw— a whale. Do you know that video of Destiny’s Child from the 90’s or early 00’s where they’re being interviewed backstage… while eating like fast food or something? Can you imagine Beyoncé granting an interview under such conditions in 2023? Anyway, it’s one of those videos that lives rent free in my head for whatever reason. Beyoncé says that she wants to touch a whale. (Note: after reviewing the tapes, Beyoncé says she wants to BE a whale in response to the interviewer’s bonkers question and Michelle, off-screen, says Bey wants to touch one. Memory is wild.) If you never got to see a whale, I sure hope to God that Beyoncé has gotten to touch one by now. As Daniel Wallace so rightfully wrote, the immensity of your not being here makes a whale seem very small.
I was talking to our mutual friend Harry recently about this talk we saw you give about Black comic book heroes in (I looked it up) 2010! Gurl, only about 5 people in that room knew who Black Panther was back then! I remember you projecting an image of early Storm illustrated by Dave Cockrum or John Byrne and saying something like, “How many women from Kenya do you know who look like that?” That line brought the house down. Coincidentally, ever since, it has lived in my mind right beside that video of Beyoncé talking about whales.
How did you make the time to visit so many of our classes? After you were gone, in talking with my peers, we were all amazed at how generous you were with your time! If any of us taught one of your books or stories, you would kindly spend an entire class period in discussion with our students.
While I finished my dissertation, my office was a couple of doors down from yours. You have no idea how much I came to treasure those moments when you would pop your head in the door with, “Have you seen this?” A news headline. The latest technological wonder. That book about the history of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Your excitement to share the mundane marvels of the day was infectious.
And God bless you. That one semester when I decided to take reference photos to practice my drawing skills! I solicited models and somehow scrounged up enough money to pay them $10 each to snap a few pics to use as references. But because I wasn’t trying to take pictures of young people in my office with the door closed like some sort of creep with an Oleanna death wish, everyone on that hall got to hear my spiel about a blue billion times. After that first day, you poked your head in and said, “Hey Avedon, what’s the story?”
I remember that you were fascinated when I showed you how I was teaching myself to draw digitally. I had no idea just how interested you were in the tech aspect of the process until I read Black Folk Could Fly.
And here’s where I come clean. I can’t seem to finish that book. I’ve talked to someone else who said she couldn’t bear to finish If I Had Two Wings because it felt like saying goodbye. Your voice is so present in the essays in Black Folk Could Fly that I think I’m afraid to finish it because… well, that’s all she wrote. And I don’t much like the idea of being a Randall Kenan completist.
I feel like I’ve learned so much about you from Black Folk Could Fly! How had we never talked about computer science? Your admiration for Eartha Kitt? Your feelings about Hamilton? A whale seems very small, indeed.
You know what I bet would blow your mind? Artificial intelligence has really popped off in your absence! I mean, REALLY popped off. I would give my eye teeth to hear your thoughts on the subject.
While I was procrastinating in writing this message, I used a generative AI called NightCafé to create some portraits of Mariah Carey in the style of some of my favorite Black artists. Honey. I’m offended on behalf of Mimi, every artist I asked the robot to imitate, and human culture, in general.
There were some big Hollywood strikes this year. Justine Bateman emerged as a major voice for creators. I can’t find the exact quote right now, but one of Bateman’s arguments really stuck with me. Generative AI is trained using the work of humans, right? What generative AI presents as “new” “art” is ultimately regurgitated human strivings. In effect, I blithely stole every brush stroke and pixel in those busted portraits of Mariah from a Black artist. Ain’t that just like a White man?
So I asked the AI to make some images of you and Beyoncé touching a whale. Don’t steal from Black artists this time, I said. Everyone else is fine, I guess.
I hope that would have made you laugh.
Buddy, I’ve never seen a whale either, but I’m pretty sure that’s NOT what they look like.
I’ve written a comic book where you team up with other writers to fend off evil. Some days it feels more like objective reality than science fiction. I hope you would have gotten a kick out of it. It’s dedicated to you.
In the process of making Southern Gothic, I’ve worked with some real life humans (not just robots) to create art featuring you. Here’s one of my favorite illustrations from an upcoming cover by Roasif, (Rodrigo Marques), an independent Brazilian queer artist whose work will appear in chapter 18 of Southern Gothic.
You are very much missed here in this place. But you are still felt, out there reverberating through this mean, old iron world letting in a little light where it’s most needed.
— Ben Bolling, Chapel Hill, NC, December 2023
Thank you for reading, my friends. And a special thank you to everyone who read a draft of this essay. We’ll see you back here in 2024 for the conclusion of Southern Gothic, volume one.
Wow. This is one of my most favorite posts. And I can't decide which art is more insane: Mimi or The Whales!?
This is a beautiful tribute! You are living in the nexus of technology and art and the written word. And you are doing amazing work! Now I must read Randall’s works!