Bradley and White

Footage from the Charles Bradley concert in Manchester a few days ago:



We were just to the left of the camera man, so close you can hear my voice.

For some reason, I want to put Bradley together with Curtis White, author of The Barbaric Heart, even thought the two (the first, a black soul musician from Brooklyn, the second, a white English professor in Illinois -- couldn't be further apart in most ways.

Yet here's Bradley:

"I tried so hard to make it in America / a land of milk and honey / a land supposed to be built with love / it takes love and understanding / to live and let live."

And White: "The mark that we leave upon the world will not be the mark of brute force clothed in the false virtues of the barbarian but the mark of the ultimate realist, making our own world, demanding the impossible, and calling it Beautiful."

White helps us to understand; Bradley shows us how to love -- and to live.