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Untitled (How Does It Feel)

JOIE DE VIVRE | by Logan Nakyanzi Pollard | October 15, 2025

untitled

I always throw-up a little bit when a ____ person wants to talk to me about how they abstractly think their struggle is the same as something they hypothetically have never experienced. Please. Just. Please. Grow up.

I don’t mean this literally, the throwing-up part. What I mean to register is a level of colorful annoyance at something like this. It happened once in a job interview— it was one of those group interviews with a handful of people asking questions. And someone was asking me about Miles Davis because there was some bizarre pretext where I had to prove I was ‘educated’ “yet” ‘ethnic’ enough to this person, who was of course not African American, but he who really knew A LOT about black culture. By the way, this had zero basis for the work I was being hired to do, and everything to do with a kind of counterfeit sympathy that co-ops the actual struggles of an individual’s lived experience.

Yes, I got the job anyway. Turns out that person didn’t know I knew as much as I do about Miles Davis.

Other amusing examples: “BLM” or other inorganic “grassroots” movements claiming to be for people of color, but not led by them; “African American studies” professors who aren’t even black; religion professors who aren’t at all religious; fanatical protestors who claim to follow with principle, yet violate every teaching of MLK and non-violent opposition . . . Starting to see a trend? And often with the full-throated support of some media.

And don’t get me started on the mayor’s race in my city:

{Red flags? Here are some:

• From a messaging/stylistic point of view: Any man who wears non-essential jewelry, especially finger rings. Why? Because it smacks of vanity. Okay fine, if you’re Lenny Kravitz. I get it. We’ll tolerate it for a rock star or creative, but not a serious person.

• No track record of significant public service.

• Policy-wise: Penalize the rich, but the rich are a major source of tax revenue, cultural support, and job creators. And this guy’s the child of wealth himself.
  • Make it make sense: Is this really about your family damage, sir?

• The rose video. Do watch journalist Dave Rubin’s post and analysis of this.
  • I would add the following: A lot of people don’t realize that seduction, is actually an indication of evil. I’m not talking about a nice guy buying a lady flowers. I’m talking about the nature of evil is to trap people into doing something they wouldn’t normally do, if they had all the information, and if they were in the correct state of mind. And this video is alarming because it oozes with this. To be fair: maybe he’s clueless that this is truly off-putting. Or maybe this kind of crass manipulation works on people these days. Or maybe, as I posit, evil is afoot. I have no idea, but it raises concerns.
  • … concerns that are borne out by the fact that: this person has shown an inability to decry ethnic violence.

All of these are major, major red flags, people.

Oh, and totally undermining the spirit of this country, especially the values of this city: Make something of yourself. Don’t stoke ethnic and/or class hatred.

But I digress. }

Often, I turn away.

Maybe I can rest in art.

NOPE.

Only God gives us rest:

Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

No— Art troubles us:

It requires honesty, not vanity. And this is why the art these days is no good. It is dishonest because it’s replaced honesty with vanity.

Think of Van Gogh’s self-portrait, with his bandaged ear.

… versus someone who’s (I’m making this up as a hypothetical) shown us the latest tattoo of his or her arm. The image is some stupid symbol this person saw, and thought was cool.

Both show wounds. Both show pain, but they are operating on different levels of understanding and insight.

~

“I can’t be bought!”

This is something my colleague is blurting out, exasperated. And I smiled and laughed.

That was the nature of the dynamic we had, the three of us. We were honest with each other about things.

If I had an idea, they’d run with it. Make it better. Help me get it done.

If they had an idea, I’d do the same.

It was a system of mutual respect. The perfect sandbox.

It was totally subversive. I mean, we were filling a need at the job, they wanted the stuff we made, but what we said, well that was up to us.

Then one day, someone was either assigned to our creative group or wanted in.

And then it was over. He didn’t know the rules. He was totally annoying and fake.

He had none of the creativity or honesty we all innately valued.

And this is how the battle goes.

Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s big.

But the thing is always the same, as Paul writes in Galatians:

For the flesh lusteth after the Spirit …

Galatians 5: 17

And this is because the flesh (i.e. the world, the things of men, sin) is fraudulent.

But the Spirit is truth.

~

Hollywood, I think (I hope) everyone knows by now is really bad. A sad pastiche of a dreamer’s dream. A place where people are turned out like prostitutes and then destroyed in some form or another.

And yet, there are people in that system who maintain some kind of integrity, even if on the surface they seem to be complicit.

And maybe they are.

But this again is the battle.

The battle to wake up. To get to the light.

~

Good art is essentially prophetic: meaning it tells us what’s coming, and it reveals the nature of God.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the truth-teller, reflected the demonic in his culture, as a way I believe to start confronting it.

And his contemporary, Andy Warhol, for whom I have no affinity, was a man all about commercialism.

And they both reflected/foretold the kinds of challenges our culture faces today: The spiritual challenges related to the loss of God and the propensity to observe, steal, exploit, collect, objectify.

These are some of the archetypes of the modern artist.

And yet, the paradigm is breaking down.

Actually, I think the whole thing is starting to fall apart. And bizarrely, at the same time that we are surrounded by even more exploitation, misery and falseness— where ____ fabricates and distorts and steals … and the young people are so idiotic that they can only impersonate the creativity of the past, instead of being genuinely creative themselves.

~

And into this picture stepped D’Angelo, a musical artist who died of pancreatic cancer in recent days.

His sexy song, “How Does It Feel,” many can say (anecdotally and amusingly) is the reason they exist. Seriously. Why? Because that song (at least in part) facilitated their conception.

I’m not sure how many musical artists, let alone people, brought so many lovers together! What a beautiful thing.

Watch and you can understand why:

D’Angelo – Untitled (How Does It Feel) (Official Music Video)

So on the surface, the video is about a man— with no clothes on— singing, laying his heart bare— to a woman.

And yes, it’s a woman.

gasp. How old fashioned.

And he wants to take her away— “from here.”

And this song has this beautiful, universal message— that in love— you have to be real, you have to be honest, you have to be vulnerable.

These are table stakes for real relationship.

Meta-wise: we are also seeing an image symbolically of black man-black woman healing, that was of course violated by slavery, and the ramifications of broken families in the 400 years of that trouble, and following the violence of Jim Crow, etc.

We do not know who the woman is, we never see her, but his level of comfort makes us imagine she’s a mirror of him, the yin to his yang, if you will. This is underscored by the fact that he makes no social adjustment(s) in language or posture; it’s almost as if he’s talking to himself, which leads us to believe she’s his female equivalent. And this completion of opposites is what’s healing— because in this conversation/song/interaction, we see unity where there has been brokenness and the strife between the sexes.

And here, with his arms wide, as if in an embrace he is offering himself— an invitation in it’s highest human form— to love.

It is an honest, and pure thing. There is no human thing better, perhaps.

Outside of this, we see the objectification of the body (in one sense)— yes, we all know the story of how the producers reportedly made D’Angelo lose a bunch of weight and that the artist himself felt exploited by the way he is depicted.

(Although, I wonder as well if this kind of internal mental/body shaming was a product of some kind of abuse, this is typically seen in people who’ve been mistreated, and which is self-inflicted. That is, later— D’Angelo decided what he did was wrong. Even though in the moment he was fine. But it was the accuser (the devil) who wanted him to feel shame about himself: that made him feel he didn’t have a right to express himself, as is. Interested in this topic? More on this in my book: God Heals —how the love of God exited me from the trauma narrative— to live in His spirit of power, love and a sound mind— and how you can count on Him to heal you too. )

Two+ things can be simultaneously true. I do think this happened: that the producers etc. exploited him, as a visual product. Yes, gross. I would add further that the 360 degree view of him, is much like the view of a slaver viewing a morsel of meat on auction. It is disgusting, in a way.

But this is the profanity of the viewer.

(And I’m not talking about nakedness for nakedness sake, like a naked protest, that we saw for example this past week, out West. This is gross, and weird in a stupid and ineffectual way. No one wants to see any of these people naked. Seriously, no one wants to see it. Really. Same-so with people wearing costumes, and all the other stuff, that simply reveals the juvenile and dysfunctional nature of many people now.)

Not the subject of our article here.

The subject of this video is beautiful. And what he is saying is good. And his nakedness is not shameful, it is honesty.

He’s like the statue of David, in Florence. The beauty of the male form is something that is noble. (Why? Because it is the image of God.) Now when it is fetishized, and objectified, that is something else. That is sin. But that was not the intention of the video, I think. D’Angelo is standing in his power. As David was (the statue):

photo credit: image by Michela Calcagno at the Michelangelo’s David – Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze

And that power was his love for the person he was speaking to.

So what then do we make of this? We’ve seen similarly moving videos: think of Sinead O’Connor with her lovely, bare head and shining eyes— in:

Sinéad O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U (Official Music Video) [HD]

These are moments of sublime honesty.

They shame us— those of us who do not feel, who cannot feel, who cannot be honest.

And they thrill the part of us that has been there. That wants to love, to feel, to run, to embrace life to the fullest.

This is great beauty. This is art.

Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car and Prince’s Never Take the Palace of Your Man— also come to mind, for different reasons. The desire to go somewhere else in the former (as Chapman sings: “I got a plan to get us out of here”) and Prince’s guitar solo (watch the whole thing, but it’s about 3 mins in.) are spiritually similar to How Does It Feel to me.

Equally so, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ prompts us to well, keep believing in love, in life… if you read/listen to the lyrics of the song you’ll recognize the tension between embodying real joy and futilely grasping for meaning and fulfillment (in all the wrong places). Why? Because getting away from a situation (i.e. “taking a train to anywhere”) can also lead to endless searching and mindless escapism. But the song is also saying: you have to try. It rides a tension between living and giving up, which is a foundationally American ethos: because all Americans left some place to build a life here. And it was hard, but we/our ancestors did it.

We collectively connect with these songs because we know what they say is true about life. The artists are not puffed up— they know they are not the “highest,” or “the best” at all times, and this is why we love them— because we are all flawed and straining to find God in our own way. But what they say is nonetheless real.

Tracy Chapman – Fast Car (Official Music Video)

Prince – I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Official Music Video)

Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’ (Official Video RCF)

~

I had something that was really bothering me last night, and yesterday actually. And as I sat at my desk, having my morning coffee, I was thanking God that it was gone.

And then, the melody of How Does It Feel came to my mind:

“How does it feel?” the crescendo soared—

And God and I laughed.

I feel good, God. Thank you!

I knew God was saying that He knew what D’Angelo was doing. Of course! He knew. He knows everything. And He was playing that song for me because He knew the problem I had was gone (because He removed it.)

D’Angelo was deeply loved by Him. And his work did matter, and it made people better.

I also got the sense that God was saying: every true soul is searching for me, and even as they live, they are working towards healing now.

D’Angelo was seeking it through an amorous connection— but the true love he was seeking was God.

Now he has found it.

Don’t Stop Believin’.

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