Salt Lake City

At long last, after years of struggle, confusion, self-loathing, and guilt, I finally see that Salt Lake City had everything to do with the way I had been seeing it, and that the place really looks nothing like the way it once looked to me.

Accordingly, I take out the stitches Salt Lake City has stitched into me all these years, one stitch at a time, and re-open my eyes, while paying homage to my old thoughts and feelings, until the city becomes the kind of place where Master Kennedy and his AfroBeats, with Spencer Roddan on rhythm guitar, is invited to play a live set Friday night on the local public radio station.

The bandleader Master Kennedy was born in the Congo. He now lives in Lehi, Utah in the greater metropolitan Salt Lake City. His first name really is Kennedy—he was named after JFK—and he came to America 5 or 6 years ago. He’s started a band with the genius name, Master Kennedy, which conflates, at least in my eyes, both the evils of slavery and glories of freedom. (Disclaimer: my son is in the band, as are anywhere from 6 to 10 other people including at least 2 female back-up singers).

 In days of yore I walked down the streets in Salt Lake City actually believing that everyone I saw was Mormon, and that I was some sort of prey for conversion. Mormonism hung in the air, stinging my eyes, tickling my nose. Un-Mormon, I couldn’t wait to get out of the city though getting out always felt much more like an escape than a simple goodbye.

This time Salt Lake City looks much different to me. I’d finally settled down in the city’s many contradictions—beautiful mountains and godawful smog, AfroBeats and Mormon Elders, illiberal politics and art exhibitions as thoughtful and timely as Air at the U. of Utah Art Museum—seeing SLC as a singular all-inclusive American city, a place where the little breakfast joint named Finns feels free to put this message on its menu: Thank you for coming and thank you for leaving.

Salt Lake City has become like the t-shirt I now enjoy wearing because it finally feels comfortable on me, having been washed over and over and over. I’m happy I’m still able to read the message on the front of it—Die Living—and will be sad when the message evaporates.