There is something intoxicating about a person that moves through space and time unencumbered by whatever yoke we mere mortals wear around our neck. Truly, I find myself drunk with awe at how these select few manage to exist in a place that regularly turns human beings into dust; gliding over the fresh ice of the ‘every day’ upon blades sharp enough to sever an arm. It’s often said that these people have a gravity about them, a gravity that us smaller, less dense heavenly bodies can’t seem to escape. I don’t like this analogy because it doesn’t give us meteorites any say in the matter when we fly too close to the sun.
I prefer to think that around these heavenly bodies gravity disappears. Around these beings we all feel weightless and for just a moment we get a small taste of what it’s like to move through life without friction. We cling to this feeling and the people who bring it to those around them.
“I like your hat!” the racially ambiguous woman at the Blaze Pizza register, with several piercings on her face, shouts. Steven Jaye Davis (Jaye Mac) is gracious in his response “Oh, thank you.” This is the fourth time I’ve personally heard someone compliment this particular hat. What stands out to me isn’t the number of times he’s received this compliment but that every time someone says this he starts his response with “Oh.” This ‘Oh’ is the truest evidence that Jaye floats, completely dry, above the waters the rest of us swim in. The ‘Oh’ is Jaye caught off guard. It’s not a feigned humbleness; he’s truly surprised that the dopeness of this hat would be of any note to anyone because in Jaye’s world the decision to be dope isn’t a decision at all. He wakes up, he’s dope then he gets dressed and he’s even more dope. He didn’t wear the hat because he thought people would say something about it or even that his outfit was more complete with it, he wore it because he liked it. It was only after he put on the hat that the rest of us decided it was dope.