Wrestling with God
A Conversation with Brittany Talissa King
Several years ago, when we were just far enough into the Covid-19 pandemic for me to be spending way too much time on Netflix and Twitter, I came upon a Tablet essay that was making waves. The essay was published a few months after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers (three out of the four of whom are in prison) and the extensive marching and rioting that occurred across the country in the aftermath of that incident, all of which was still freshly on our minds, even if the content of this particular essay wasn’t exactly about any of that. It focused instead on the 2019 Congressional hearing on reparations in which Ta-Nehisis Coates and Coleman Hughes faced off on opposite sides of the discussion.
The Tablet essay was written by someone with a background of not only protesting with Black Lives Matter but also starting a chapter in her hometown, and she had been a journalism student of Coates’ in New York. And yet, in the essay, she argued for a respectful posture (though she admitted to not having always taken it herself) to be taken toward Hughes, who opposed reparations, and she placed the disagreement between Coates and Hughes within the context of historical disagreements between Black American voices that included Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.
What I did not know at the time was that the author of the article had grown up in Indiana, like me, and that our paths would cross several years later. Brittany Talissa King is a writer and journalist based in Bloomington, Indiana. Her work analyzes race relations and social issues through American history, pop culture, and social media. Having graduated from New York University with a Master's in Journalism and from Indiana University with a Bachelor's in creative writing, Brittany currently writes for the Indiana University Foundation. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Yellow Seeds Magazine, an online publication for non-partisan think-pieces. She also hosts a YouTube podcast called "American Shade," and you can find her work in The Daily Beast, SPIN Magazine, Imagine Magazine, Milpitas Beat, The Republic, and in other places.
What follows is a conversation in both video and transcript form of a conversation the two of us recently had about race, writing, my older brother, God, and even Christian rap:
Chris: Brittany, thank you so much for making some time.
Brittany: Thank you for inviting me on your platform.
Chris: I've enjoyed coming across your content and some of the conversations that we've been able to have. Wanted to just play around and formalize some of that. I initially came across your name, probably like a lot of people did, through the Tablet essay in 2020. And I was just rereading that again today. You said some things this week, that maybe some of it was misunderstood or taken too far, but I read it as a response to a congressional hearing in which both Ta Nehisi Coates and Coleman Hughes testify on opposite sides of the reparations issue. Of course you put them in conversation or comparison with, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and also, Booker T Washington and Du Bois. If you would rewrite it, would you change anything?
Brittany: Also enjoy the conversations we've had prior. So I reread my piece. I hate rereading my stuff because I'm afraid I won't believe in what I wrote then.
Chris: Me too.
Brittany: Then for this, I revisited and what the kids would say, ‘I ate.’ I was like, this is evergreen to me. This marks a moment in my life where I really said a thing that was in my mind for, I'd say, two years. Since 2017 and this is at the tail end of me doing Black Lives Matter which at this point—
Chris: You started a chapter, correct?
Brittany: I started a chapter in Columbus, Indiana, the same town that Mike Pence is from, very Republican, conservative. I think they try to present themselves more liberal now. But I was thinking of these ideas because my morals was conflicting with how the majority of the narratives were happening with social justice. It was the means of how we were trying to get it that I found unnecessary. One example, how we talk to non Black people about acquiring justice and equality and equity. Those things I'm for, and the way some people were trying to strive for it, I did not agree with.
And it conflicted with how I believe as a Christian. And my faith, I kept all that in because one, this was when BLM was starting to become acceptable and you could call it trendy. I was thinking, ‘I think something's off and I think the pendulum is going to swing a little too far and something's going to backfire.’ But then I started thinking, ‘No, this might be internalized anti-Blackness in me. I need to do the work.’ I was thinking all these other things, but then as time went on, and then especially when I went to NYU where all I was doing was thinking. I wasn't doing BLM anymore. I was just creating articles, I had time to really dissect why I had those feelings and what that meant, and then bring that into a class of, to this day, probably ten of the most intelligent people, intelligence and emotional intelligence and street smarts and all of that.
Being challenged in ways and for me to challenge myself got me to the point where I could write that piece in Tablet. A year after I graduated, I remember the day September 16th, 2020 is when it was published, but I finished that probably in June. They wanted the piece, and they wanted to wait for the right moment for it, but it was published in September and I had never been so proud of being published. Not thinking at all, it was going to get any of the attention. I was just glad I got something out that I was feeling for years. And it made sense. I feels like moves the needle a bit.
Chris: It was a contribution.
Brittany: Yes.
Chris: But that's also why people did in fact read it and respond to it. At least in part.
Brittany: Yeah, and I have to give flowers to Coleman. Funny enough, the person I was writing about in the piece, I remember sending him the piece through a DM on Twitter, not thinking he was going to see it. And this is when no one knows who I am at all. I just sent him this and said, ‘Hey, if you have time, love for you to read my piece. I mentioned you in it. I just want you to know that I don't agree with everything you say, but you have every right to say it.' And if you have feedback, I would love to hear it.’ That's all I had. And I literally think in an hour or two, he wrote back something really nice and posted on Twitter. And just said, ‘Everyone needs to read this.’ And then all of a sudden it was just everyone, like mini-viral, I was shocked. Like my notifications had never looked like that. And then all of a sudden people are asking me to come on a podcast.
People I never thought would follow me still to this day don't understand why which is weird because it's like, ‘You read this piece and now you follow me and now you like me because I said one thing.’
Chris: And that can quickly go the other direction, too, where it's you write something that like doesn't quite align with that little sliver of what you said that people liked, and they’re like, ‘Oh, now I don't like you, unfollow.’
Brittany: Funny though, I honestly don't remember any negative. I can't remember a negative comment, which means it must, if it was negative, it wasn't that harsh because all we do is remember the negative and not a thousand great things. I remember a lot of people either being like, ‘Yo, I've been thinking this or you're challenging me in a good way.’ And then most of everyone else was like, ‘You've articulated something I wanted to say.’ And if any article was going to be how people were introduced to me, I'm glad it was this one . That's all I can say about that. Unlike some other pieces from ten years ago. I am proud of this one.
Chris: That is great. You know, first of all, I relate a lot to the anxiety of putting, even though I'm like pumping out content right now, I haven't always done this. I've published a few pieces here and there. And usually had long gaps in between, but I think there is something just how terrifying it is to lock something into record. And yeah, five years from now, twenty years from now, you're like, ‘Oh gosh, I can't believe I wrote that.’ And people can potentially use that against you.
We'll probably talk about this anyway, but obviously the biggest event in my life is my brother committed a murder suicide that made national news. And before that happened, I had a blog at the time that no one was reading. And there were just some stuff, there was some content on there. If you want to talk about God, there was some content on there that I felt over or whatever. This wasn't what I wanted to have out there. And so I just deleted a few posts like on a whim not that far in advance of that happening. And then sure enough, there was a New York Times reporter that wanted to talk to me, and I declined. And so she read every word of my blog and pulled like one sentence from it. It just has consequence.
And a lot of times when we just rip out some words, especially when we're mad and reacting to something. That can go very badly. And of course, like the whole Internet is full of this. And yet if you're a serious person and you're not reckoning with that a little bit, I question your confidence. I do trust myself a little bit more than I used to. And hopefully that will be even more true five years from now, ten years from now, to the extent that even if, let's say I write something in 2024 and three years from now, I'm like, yeah, I disagree with what I said. At least I can be like, but I understand why I said it. Or, I think it was a good piece of writing or whatever.
Versus the kind of thing where it's ‘Man, I'm like really embarrassed that I wrote that.’ Those are different things. Now, obviously for you, an important part of the the puzzle is that, even though you sent the piece to Hughes and Hughes apparently, and I'm hearing this part for the first time, pumped it out into the world and he has a pretty big following, and so that changed your life in some sense. But you were also a student of Coates, who was on the opposite end of the debate in Congress and an important name for a variety of reasons. Used to be an essayist for The Atlantic. Actually recently has a book out. This timing is pretty good.
From what I understand at least you view Coates pretty positively, did you ever hear any feedback from him about it?
Brittany: Yes, and he blocked me. I'm kidding. No. Actually so I was in Coates class in 2019, the semester before I graduated. In class we had access to an email which was probably temporary because he was like a visiting professor, and I did send it to him. But again, it was a year later, so I didn't think nothing if he didn't respond and plus I know he wasn't teaching during that time so I tried to reach out, didn't hear a response. Would love to hear his ideas because contrary to what people might think, Coates taught me that you need to read and listen to people you do not like or agree with, or have critiques on you. If they have a critique on you, do a article critique, you should read it actually just to see if there's anything in there. So that's one, actually, there's a lot of valuable things I learned from him, but that's one key thing he taught me.
Chris: Spit a few more. What else did you learn from him? What shapes your perception of him, looking back?
Brittany: With a caveat. I challenged him in class once. How dare I? Everyone gasped, and again, this was a small class. He selected all of us. Like you have to write an essay to join this class because everyone wants to be in it. So he just selected maybe ten people. One of the last days, we're going to have a James Baldwin day where we just read Baldwin.
There's this piece that I love called “Letters from my Nephew.” And in this piece, James is telling his nephew who cannot read yet, his nephew's very young, but he's like, ‘When you get old enough, you'll read this piece and here's some advice.’ He gives him advice about what it will be like probably in his time when he's Black. But also he gives him advice that the hard thing is that you are going to have to love those who hate you. And like practically telling him that's literally the only thing that will destroy that racism. Love the hate out of them. Coates is, ‘This is where James loses me. I can't deal with the love thing.’
And I'm the one person like, ‘I got a question.’ I purposely sit right next to him too. And I think this day I come in like very early to sit away ‘cause I knew I was going to challenge him on this. And I was like, ‘I don't agree.’ Cause he said like love was the passive way to go. He framed it in a way that love was the easy way. And I'm paraphrasing, this was years ago, so he's not for violence, people. Jeez. I already know what people are going to say: ‘Oh, I told you he hates us.’ No, but during that time in the 50s, 60s, he was saying that shouldn't have been put on the burden of Black people to love. Like he thought that was unfair. And that was not weak, but passive.
I disagreed with him and I said, ‘No, that's gangsta, to be honest.’ I read that piece and totally thought different. I was like, I totally understand what he's saying and actually loving them will piss them off even more because they can't, there's no justification to their hate anymore.
Chris: You lose the hit that's like driving whatever's happening in your brain, but I'll also say we have this perception of love, which I think is really demented culturally of like niceness and I think that you're using this word passive but yeah, we just think like love equals I'm not going to be mean to you. It's a negation rather than it is a, like an active thing that you're doing.
Brittany: Yeah. And culture. But actual love is not.
Chris: Yeah. So what is love instead?
Brittany: Love can be to some people hostile. It can be rude. It can be harsh. If someone's loving me, I want you to tell me the truth. If I'm off base or off course, tell me the truth. And if it pisses me off, fine. But I know that you love me enough to tell me. That's love to me. And obviously like the niceties, but love will risk stuff. But American love won't risk anything. It's—
Chris: Get out of the way.
Brittany: Real love. And that is what James meant. And I knew that's what he meant.
Chris: Your podcast, American Shade. First of all, I'm interested in where did the phrase come from, what did that mean to you? Why was that the name of your podcast? But also the frame that I've noticed that is your anchor or your your orientation is this I don't know any other way to say it other than Christian faith. I think that's fair. So first of all, why American shade, but also, was that orientation of Christian faith there through this whole process of BLM, graduate school, writing the Tablet piece or was it something that you reclaimed at some point?
Brittany: Why American Shade. American Shade started as a little show at NYU Radio Network. There was like, I don't know, podcasts that would air on the radio. I had to pitch what I wanted to do. And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to talk about like American social issues. But everything's probably going to be anchored on race in some way and ethnicity but nuance though,’ because this again, this is 2018. So this is when I'm like, okay, I'm listening to people I never would have. I'm listening to Shelby Steele. I'm listening to Thomas Sowell while still listening to Toni Morrison and Angela Davis.
So don't get it twisted. People are like, ‘Whoa, she left the left.’ No, shut up. I can't stand when people say I left the left or I left the right. Like, where did you go? So you ran to the next extreme. Like I don't get it. I guess actually I was on the left. I didn't even call it that, but whatever. You did not ask that question. Let me get back to—
Chris: You're allowed to tangent on whatever.
Brittany: That's all I do. Oh yeah. American Shade. Why I named it that. I called it American shade because I was going to only talk about American issues and I think shade, I was thinking of it as a place for everyone. Like a shade tree, but then gradually I gave it a different answer when people asked like it was either the shade that everyone's invited in here's the shade or shade as in we're all different there's all different shades not just color but who we are as we were made up of different backgrounds and experiences.
So that's what that was and then when the Tablet piece went viral, I believe that's when I started YouTube. I think I literally started that month or that week and garnered a lot, like probably a thousand, I don't know how many followers. So that is why American Shade. You asked something else about God.
Chris: The role of faith.
Brittany: I curated the way I was going to do BLM on how inspirational I found the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Riders. I have an old soul, but I'm immature. And I don't look to celebrities as heroes. Like I look to literally the freedom riders as heroes. I look to John Lewis. I look to Diane Nash. I look at even Malcolm X. People that are heroes because they did something that changed my life. And if they didn't do it, my life would not be this way. It would look totally different for the worse.
So I'm not over here ‘Yo, I love Cardi B. for what? Like, why? The only celebrity I would ever get shook if I saw them is dead, and that's Michael Jackson. Anyway, you didn't ask that question. I don't even know why I brought the heroes. You're going to have to cut this.
Chris: I don't see any reason to go hacking yet.
Brittany: I remember now the curation of my BLM was because of the civil rights movement and the civil rights movement was Christian values and faith. And it wasn't like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna be a Christian because of that.’ I was already a Christian and I already believed in God and I didn't even really mean to start BLM. I just did a protest because I was sick of seeing at that time, I thought it was like every day black people being killed. But we literally saw Philando Castile and Alton Sterling being shot to death within 24 hours of each other. I was pretty sick of that. So some of my friends and I, we went and we marched, in front of the City Hall in Columbus.
And then I was like, I don't want to just be pulling out poster boards with people's names every time someone's shot, like what can we do tangibly and like practically here? So we called it BLM. I said, ‘Okay, we can't act like we're Ferguson and Chicago. We're not these places. We're not Baton Rouge. Like, we're Columbus, Indiana. We have to tailor this organization to, us, which is we got to have our own objectives and we can have some of theirs, but we have to make sure it's going to work for us. And the way I moved, I studied the way the Civil Rights Movement moved, the way MLK used the press. He used that as a tool to show people like what they're really about.
So all you're seeing is nonviolent black Americans just marching and trying to get rights. So there's no other narrative you can paint. So I utilized social media to document everything we were doing because at that time people were calling us a terrorist group, people literally thought we wanted to take over the city and I had to then be like, ‘Okay, these people are going to come to the meetings and the events, so I gotta take pictures. I gotta have what's on the itinerary. I gotta let people know.’ And then slowly but surely people start coming. And then people that wanted to come to confront us and challenge us was coming and they end up joining.
Chris: Are we talking about 20 people? Are we talking about 5,000 people? How big was the response?
Brittany: Oh, it was like 25,000. No, I would say our group had probably a hundred. But every meeting, was there a hundred people? No, but we had people sign up and it was probably over a hundred. So yeah, God was there in NYU. God's there American Shade on YouTube. It's not to say though, I didn't have times where I, like anyone in the Bible even, that you wrestle with God. Even Jesus did, he was like, ‘God, take this cup.’ If I don't have to—
Chris: I'm not feeling it.
Brittany: And God's, ‘You gotta do it.’ So yes.
Chris: Before we turned the record button on, I had asked you why you weren't producing as much content. And you started to say things about, God hunting you down or something. What's the relationship between this journey with and against and for God and the amount of content that you're pumping out into the internet?
Brittany: I used the word hunted. No, haunted. I was going to say, no, he's haunted. Yeah. He haunted. Yes. Pumping out a lot of content, 2020, 2021, 2022. You're like, ‘You have a following!’ and now I'm like, ‘Cringe!’ but they're still there. And then you have people on Twitter and then you have people reading your stuff and let's say long story short, I think I did a video on this in 2022, but frankly just became very full of myself. I got prideful. I really thought I was the ish and I realized it's like that analogy people use for a lobster or crab in a pot. If you put a crab in the pot and it's hot, it's going to jump out. But if it's like over time sizzling, it doesn't feel that it's being cooked. And then by the end of it, it's dead. So that was happening. It was over time.
It didn't jump, ‘Oh, I have four followers. No, it was over time.’ I started to get a big ego. No one called me out on it. It's something I felt inside. ‘People like really think I'm such good ideas. And I am being published here and videos are doing well.’ But as I'm accomplishing, I'm getting more depressed. I feel like I'm more in despair. I'm like, ‘just one more video.’ And then I get a lot of likes. Or ‘one more article.’ Depressed. And I'm just like, ‘What's going on?’ If you want to know, I have a video on it. I talk about the hiatus.
This isn't God audibly talking to me, but when you have the Holy Spirit, it can speak to you as your advocate, it can speak to you when you listen to it, you can definitely decipher between your voice and it. And I felt when I'm on the ground crying, like not understanding why I'm miserable. And I'll just be honest, why I don't want to be here anymore. I'm like, I don't really want to be here. Like I'm sick of this. I'm confused. What's going on? And I felt God telling me, ‘You care more about what other people think, what these men think, women, these thinkers, philosophers, and your Bible is collecting dust. You're searching this philosopher's essay, this person's book, your own mind, and you're negating me on your life.’ And he said, ‘You have now replaced me with intellectual idolatry.’ I would have never came up with that on my own.
He also said, ‘There's no space inside of you and your heart for me. Cause it's full of you. It's all of you.’ I'm like, ‘He just read me for filth.’ I’m Still wrestling with Him. And in tandem, so many great things, but so many things that people don't even know. There's so many things happening. And one day things got really bad, I'll just say that, and I called my mom and I was like, I think I'm in trouble. And my mom knows, cause I'm so private. Like I will handle everything until I can't.
And I told her this and she's asking me what's going on. Tell me everything. And I'm telling her all this stuff. And then she zones in and says, ‘You are so angry with God.’ She's, ‘You need to tell him cause he already knows. So newsflash.’ She's, ‘You need to confess it. Be honest, scream, just get it out. ‘
And I went home and boy, I like rolled up my sleeves. I'm like, I'm ready for this. And I closed my door and I started yelling at God. So background, I don't know if you know this or, and I know people know it, but I dealt with an alcohol addiction for five years. So I was an alcoholic. And now I've been sober for 10. So I stopped drinking when I was 25, but it was pretty bad. And a lot of obviously bad stuff happened to me during that time. And one time I almost died in a car wreck because I drove under the influence and I drove on a highway and passed out and my car flipped and I almost died, I should have died.
And when I'm yelling at God and I'm like, ‘How dare you, You brought me through here, You brought me through all for what, like what do you want? What am I supposed to be doing? Like I'm getting so angry and then also saying all this other stuff that's happened to me like, ‘And you weren't there for them!’ And all sudden I got wrecked like just down on my knees and God brought me back to that moment where I almost died when I was 21 or 22 in that car wreck on the highway in Cincinnati where my car was flipping.
In my mind I'm like, ‘I'm going to die.’ That's all I knew, I'm going to die and I am so far away from God, people thought, I don't think people thought I was Satanist, but people would be completely shocked if they knew I was Christian. So I wasn't going to hurt nothing I was so far away from my faith. But when I was about to die, I knew who to call on. I called on God. I was saying Jesus name over and over. Like I never in my life, like my life literally depended on it. And He brought me back to that moment.
And He was like, ‘I've never left you. You strayed away from me. And in this moment, when you were almost dead, what happened was meant and was built up for you to die,’ which I look back and I'm like, ‘Yes, that whole weekend was a perfect setup for the enemy to kill me.’
And he was just telling me, ‘I was there for you. I was holding you. And not only did you not die, you didn't kill anyone, it didn’t ruin your life.’ Like ‘You were drunk, you were under the influence.’ The police somehow didn't have a whatever he was looking for.
He's, ‘Oh, I don't have a thing. Oh, I don't have this.’ He didn't have the stuff. So I'm over here and also praying to God like, ‘God help me. I know this is the most selfish prayer, but I can't get a DUI.’ The police officer was like, ‘You clearly have had something to drink, but I'ma let you off. Where's your family?’
And God showed me, ‘You could have been dead at 22.’ And at that time, I was 33 when God, when I had this reconciliation, for 11 years, ‘You've been living where 11 years you could be dead. Like the last thing could have been that Brittany King under influence died on the high, like that would have been your last note. Your last article on this earth.’
That changed my whole perception. I do this video and I share this months later. I do the video about God, what he did reconciled, realizing my life isn't mine, realizing who cares about followers and fans and who cares about me having this, whatever, this career. There's nothing wrong with that, but that was my Idol that became my idol. So I stepped away from it because I wanted to focus. I stepped away from a lot of things and I just was like, ‘God, redirect me in a path where I'm going to be fruitful. I can still write. And then I landed this job at IU, and it's been everything I would hope.’
But for a year-and-a-half, I know God is telling me and he's been telling me through other people that don't know nothing about me and specifically at my church here and there. He wants me to go back in this stratosphere, public thought and sharing ideas. But ‘Now that you have a base, now your base isn't you. I need you to go back in there and I need you to now apply thoughts with the biblical message. Still communicate on music, culture, whatever. But don't tie it down on and I'm the last word, tie it down on God's the last word.’ Like, there's a bigger thing because I always was thinking, ‘What's the point of my channel?’
I want people to reconcile with race. Really I just want people to re-see humanity, and reconnect and realize it doesn't freaking matter what we look like. Like it's so cliche and that's the point, but I'm like, ‘If people are not racist anymore and they're still lost what's the point?’ There has to be something deeper. God has shown me the puzzle piece of what I'm missing and he wants me to go in there. I'm so sure he's annoyed with me ‘cause I like make a video—
Chris: So it's a good thing we're forcing you tonight. Is that what you're saying?
Brittany: Yes.
Chris: First of all, thank you for sharing all that. I didn't know pretty much any of it. I've seen bits and pieces, a few nights ago I was watching the the Jordan Peterson and Michael Dyson explication.
Brittany: That is something I would redo. Maybe not the article. I would redo that.
Chris: Say more about how would you redo it.
Brittany: I really thought I was being objective and I think in a sense I was—
Chris: You were pretty annoyed with Dyson was my takeaway.
Brittany: And I didn't think of what would happen after. I saw this video pop up on my home page and I just watched it. You could see it was crappy. I don't even know what was going on—
Chris: But I like that you do things like that because it makes for a, I don't know, a more creative podcast. You're like, no, I'm just going to watch this thing and sometimes I'm going to pause it and then I'm going to riff a little bit. So I like that you make that move? Even if you're, if you want to redo certain content, whatever, by all means go do it. I like the method.
Brittany: I try to be organic and not think too hard. No, I am thinking hard, but would it be different if I would have watched it first and then thought about it? I literally was like just—
Chris: Watching it for the first time?
Brittany: I was watching the first time with everyone.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Brittany: And so I was really Just saying what I thought in that moment. And I'm like, it would have been different if I watched it and then had to edit it.
Chris: Slept.
Brittany: Yeah. Slept on it, but when I saw the reactions people had against Eric, I was so disgusted. And I'm like, what did I do? I just create a space for like people that aren't nuanced, who just, hate him and hate, honestly, you hate black people. It seems and I think at a point I turned the comments off and I said there's not space to attack anyone and I do not condone these comments against Eric and so I think I would have watched the video first and then really try to be fair and even try to point out where Eric was right. But I just, again, 2020, it was that time where everyone was just making videos. I'm like, I have one day to do this. So let me just post this. And then that's the one that goes viral. I'm like, really y'all?
Chris: As you were telling your story, I was thinking, I spent a good bit of my thirties… My family was, I don't know, let's say lower middle class or they were rich poor, in between those two categories somewhere. And I also went to boarding school frankly a wealthy boarding school. So that's always been a confusing part of my life experience. But I really took my first full time job with benefits that I felt like I could stick in for a while when I was 31. And so at that time I also, I was like, ‘I'm going to clean up my finances. So I take this Dave Ramsey class over the summer and I get the plan going and it starts churning and I start side hustling as a sports referee and umpire and that part actually I was shocked at how much I enjoyed that, and I was an athlete growing up so it makes sense, but I paid off my student loans or at least I almost did because I paid them off for the final time in COVID. And then there was the forgiveness executive order. And then supposedly they owed me money back, which I filled out the paperwork for. I got the money back and then it got struck down on the courts. And so now actually I owe them again.
But during that time, I also bought a house, which I loved. And then three years later, when I was about a year and a half into the pandemic and probably wasn't in the best decision-making space, the market's going nuts, so I sell this house that I love for much more than I bought it and I’m just telling myself like, ‘This is it, you're gonna leap, you know, forward and I think one of the implicit deals that I was under with myself and with God—I speak a lot less confident about God than maybe I used to or whatever—I was like lining my life up to have all my shit together by 40. I turned 40 in June and all of that, but at about 38, like it all spectacularly unraveled. So first of all, I've thrown tens of thousands of dollars away is the starting point of it in the aftermath of the house. Things would happen like I got hit by an under-the-influence of some sort truck driver who ran a red light. And he slammed me pretty good. But he hit like the front corner of my car. And so I just spun and then he hit two more vehicles. And so it was the kind of thing, it was like, there's this very chaotic scene. And as my car stops, I just like, pause. ‘Do things work? What hurts? Nothing, literally, stand up.’ My car's totaled. And he didn't have insurance, so I lost $5,000 on the matter.
That's just like one example of the many things that were happening. There was a dating situation that presented itself. And I swear, it just dropped from the sky. I did not seek it out at all. And there were very personal reasons why, like I was invested: she knew my brother actually, but I did not know her previous to the interaction. So initially I was very skeptical. I was like, what is her motives or whatever, but we like had a lot in common and we start connecting, and so that's part of my I'll-get-my-shit together-by-40 plan. Get a woman, get some money in the bank account, and all these things are just getting struck down, eventually the almost-dating situation fell through, and I was crushed about that. And now I live in a place that's fine. It meets my needs, but I don't love it in the same way that I loved the house that I lived in.
And like the last like couple of years, it has been a lot of I don't even know who I'm yelling at and cussing at, but there's been lots of yelling and cussing, which, there's like emotional release in that. But I think at the very least there has been a humbling in it. You have this idea of what life is supposed to be and you're trying to align every part of your life. You're basically trying to control life. And it's all wrapped in identity, what you think you're supposed to be. So that's definitely been a part of the last few years of my life is just having an expectation, having the expectation dashed, and then being like, ‘Fuck you then!’
Brittany: Are you just saying it out loud?
Chris: Yeah.
Brittany: Well, I have two things and you can go there if you want or not. Yes. Frustrated when things will go our way, Because we want our life to be the way we see it in order to become the way we want to be in the world. And, I can't say that won't peak up again, which it has, certain things like, oh, if I just got this and this. But there's a reason why God said, if you love your life, you'll lose it. If you love your life, you want your life to be the way you love it, you'll lose it because you'll never fulfill it because God knows the purpose for us, not us. That's going on a tangent though into a sermon, and I know we're not going there.
I was going to ask a question because I read your piece that you wrote through Salon. And I will say when I was reading that, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Like thoughtful isn't the right word because it sounds so whatever, but like heartbreaking, I hate to say that too, but that's what I felt. Which prompted me to want you to write for my magazine, which, thank you for that. Love the piece. What really got my attention about it one is how you were open. Two is like when things like this happen to people, and like I met you and then I learned this afterwards. And you don't strike me as a person because of how you carry yourself and you were very kind, that something like this can happen and it not harden your heart. I think that was the most shocking thing.
I remember one of my friends. She told me about a situation when her brother was murdered in 2012. And she said, it felt like an actual crossroads where it's ‘I either go down this route where I hate everybody, especially the person that looks like the murderer who killed my brother. I am done with the world, or I go down the hardest path of trying to understand why that person did that. What got him there and doing my best to help anyone not get there to murder, to take someone.’ She's shared this a lot on podcasts and things like that. But that also struck me with you. It's like you had to have taken that route, done the hardest, non-beaten path of not hardening your heart to other people.
But then, you also say that's when you really started having a conflict with God and your faith. And I'm trying to square it, because I'm like, I feel like for someone to go down that route, there has to be some iota of faith in God to be optimistic to even try to go that way.
Chris: So I was certainly raised, I would say I was over-churched, maybe I've even said that to you before, very activities based, we were involved in not just one, but multiple churches, youth groups, yeah, I would say it was pretty performance-based, and a lot of that got deconstructed after my brother's death. So this is almost like a second crisis, and that probably fueled my own entitlement, too. It was like, ‘You already deconstructed me. Now it's like time for You to give me the prosperity, okay? We're through all that hard shit. I think you even mentioned like spiritual warfare this week, something like that. It does feel like a battle, there's the part of me that just hates everyone and everything. That part of me is real, okay.
And then there's this other part of me, and one of the things I did, I would say several years ago, that was part of the first deconstruction, my mom's side of the family is like full of visible dysfunction. My dad's side is full of numbness, and if I put this out in the world, I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble, but, I think that's a fair way to describe it. So, just by inclination, I had this grave site tour. So I had an uncle who like shot my aunt and went to jail. And then got out and they got back together. That's an example of how crazy this is. And he eventually took his own life.
So I went to his grave, and I had a cousin who committed suicide during the year that I was born, and he was like 16, and I don't have any recollection of meeting him. If I did meet him, I don't remember it, because again, it happened a few months after I was born. But he had a girlfriend break up with him and then he drove into a garage, let the fumes run.
And then, there's a known abuser of children on that side. And he's a great uncle of mine. Again, not someone that I have any recollection of. I just know through like stories, and so I actually, I didn't go to visit his, I went to visit my grandparents who I did know. My grandfather, there are some stories of he like bloodied the back of my uncles and one of them took off and so there's some shit there, but like, the grandfather I knew was timid. But withdrawn, too. So I went to go find my grandfather and my grandmother's grave site and talk about God again, there are certain events along the way where I'm like, ‘Oh.’ I think it was Thanksgiving day, and I show up to this cemetery, and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. This place is massive. Like you could walk around all day looking for a grave and not find it. And the only instructions I have are from an aunt of mine, like ‘Oh, I think it's by a tree.’ There are hundreds of trees. And by the way, the ground is wet, there's mud.
I'm like, there's no way I'm finding this. So I just start walking around. I probably look around for 20 minutes. And then there's like a gas station right here. I'm like, I'm going to go into this gas station. I'm going to use the restroom and come out, I'm going to give another half an hour and then I'm going to pat myself on the back for trying, and then I'm going to go to Thanksgiving dinner.
And sure enough, I look like 15 or 20 minutes and they're freaking there. It is my grandparents’ gravestones and the part of it that, like, I'll never forget, I wasn't prepared for this, but I probably also wasn't surprised by this, is that the uncle who was an abuser was right next to theirs. So it was the three of them in a row.
And that was, like, so disturbing. That was spiritual for me.
Brittany: What did you do?
I took a picture of it. I had prepared like a letter for for each of those individuals, but I didn't have a letter prepared for the person I wasn't expecting to be there, and I talked a little bit, my family, we don't historically talk about this kind of stuff very much, although I would say it's gotten better since my brother's death, and they know I'm doing it. I'm not like secretly doing it, but they're like, ‘What is he doing?’
When I see, let's say that there's some sort of shooting that gets a lot of attention, my trigger or my getting irked is that we go immediately to, ‘If we just changed the gun policy, or if we just funded mental health or whatever.’ We go to these pretty, I don't know, broad-based political solutions. And to me, it's like, ‘What about what's happening in these humans that's leading them to this spot where they want to show up to a space and kill people?’ That's the part that I think we're terrified of that conversation.
And as you talk about your friend and you're like these two choices, I can either hate everyone or I can work my life toward, and this is the path I've questioned a lot in the last few years, but it is, yes, there is a familial line that can potentially be changed for the better. And also there is a macro discussion that's being had that I think is tragically incomplete. And not very honest, frankly. But I don't have a plan, I don't feel like, yet, oh, this is what my life is and this is what it's going to become.
Brittany: Do you think, like you talked about your quest of, why did that person get to that? What route are you taking? Is it more of, not I'm gonna do a lot of research and be like, I'm gonna figure it out that way. Or like, how about I just talk with people and get to know people? What route are you taking to be like, we need to figure out what happens in humans to get them to a point where they want to do what your brother did or what happened to my friend's brother?
Chris: I don't have a great answer in terms of a specific method. I will say that by accident or God or whatever I think probably some of both of the options that you threw out there. My Substack is called This Human Experience, and that doesn't mean I always write about, whatever, human things. But I do think in my conversations, in my posture toward the world, when I'm at my best, one of the things I'm looking for is man, we have all these ways, and some of it is even just the way that we structure jobs and professional settings, we have all these ways of shielding people's actual humanity, and we produce these sort of robotic ways of interacting with each other, but also interacting with workspaces and the things that we're allowed to say publicly. And so I do feel like there's an against-the-grain approach. I don't feel like I'm making huge progress or something. I don't want to sell it like that at all.
Brittany: And that was going to be another point, like maybe answering questions you have internally. And of course it's like for the world, but also ‘I'm trying to get to the bottom of what I need.’
Chris: Yes. Yeah.
Brittany: I have more questions about, see, this can turn very Sunday sermon. Like my dad's a pastor. He's given me that.
Chris: Do you ever preach in any setting?
Brittany: I have never preached, but I have given when was it? 2023 For the last MLK holiday I spoke at my childhood church and that was like 30 minutes. So it wasn't a sermon, but I was speaking about revisiting the Civil Rights Movement. But I said of course we look at what the outcomes were, but we don't look at how they did it. And I was talking more about, they used the Bible really essentially to foundation the civil rights movement to get what they needed. And also people that weren't even Christian were part of this, like people that are rabbis or people that are other faiths or adapting MLK's leadership. So I was basically being like, unbeknownst to America, like when you're celebrating MLK, you're also celebrating God. That is how he was able to do it. And he talks about his faith all the time and almost all the speeches it's there.
So no, I've never preached. But people have told me, when people are telling you, like God has a word that in other ways has been brought to me. Definitely when I talk to people about God and I get into, long conversations with friends, three, four hours, I feel I would guess a preacher could feel this way when they're speaking on Sunday, like I don't even watch action films, but Tony Stark, like whatever that is, that light that's in him, like when he has that, then he can do the things when it's out of him, he can’t. I feel like that. I feel like when I'm aligned with God, I feel like, oh yeah. But when it's out, I'm like, I feel lost. But, and it's like daily, it's take up your cross daily, your daily bread. Every day it's a new thing.
Chris: It's like Peter stepping on the water, right? What I resonate with is, there are moments of feeling enlightened, feeling clear, feeling centered and feeling I can take the walls of Jericho over, and then there are most moments are not like that. Most moments are like, ‘This is bullshit! What are we doing here?’
Brittany: I'm having it now. Funny that you bring up Peter. I have a painting of Peter walking on water as he is sinking. And you can't see their faces, Peter, you see the back of Peter and it's him falling, holding his hand out and all you can tell it's Jesus ‘cause he's the one with his feet on the water. And it reminds me every day I walk by it and this reminds me like the humanness of faith. It is not something that's like you get it once and you're like, ‘Oh, everything's great.’ No it's not. I feel like Peter all the time.
Chris: It's a practice.
Brittany: It's a practice, like anything.
Chris: I'm sure we could probably go way longer than would be responsible for either of us. And I'm also sure that, if we work at it, we might be able to figure out a time so we don't have to get every single thing in in a four hour marathon, a Joe Rogan conversation, but before you go I want to hear about your experience at the Holy smoke festival.
And, some background: I saw some pictures from Brittany on Instagram at a Christian rap concert in Nashville, so I piped up because I grew up in this Christian-music only household. And of course, we were all embarrassed by that and we hated it. And so of course, as soon as we had any choice in the matter, I mostly don't listen to Christian music at this point, but I do have this experience where there are times where I'll revisit something and be like, ‘No, I actually did like that even though I was being coerced to it,’ and my older brother drove the musical ship. He drove the subversion of the rule. And so he would like introduce me to these ska bands and these Christian rap bands and these Christian rock bands. And we would also drive around the Midwest and go, to concerts and stuff like that. And so one of these bands that I pointed you to is this group called the Gospel Gangstaz. And so I want to hear your thoughts about them but also who are the Christian rap groups right now that are worth listening to and to what extent is that primarily what you listen to versus maybe you listen to everything and that's a part of it?
Brittany: Nashville was freaking dope. And I'm going next year, and my friend, it was both of our first times, but she's never, like most people thought Christian rap was whack. She doesn't listen to it. And I had her listening to some music in my car when she was like, this is Christian rap? And then she's listening. It's, ‘Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like they're quoting over here Psalms and Proverbs.’ And I said, ‘There's this, like a festival happening. I missed last year. I can't miss this year.’ She's ‘I want to go.’
Okay. So we went. The best time, two days of just music and meeting people and seeing these artists that I love. You asked about, is that all I listened to. My taste of music was broadened because my sister was years ahead of me and she went to college in Chattanooga. And so she brought home all of the underground rap before it even hit the Midwest. So I listened to “Snap Yo Fingers,” whatever. Wow. I'm really in favor. Years before it hit mainstream. Like I knew all these songs before, and I love that. I love rap. I love hip hop. I loved everything as a kid and yes, I would sneak it. And some things I didn't have to sneak. If I listened to The Temptations, Michael Jackson, whatever. And sometimes like Britney Spears or Backstreet Boys, but other stuff I had to sneak. Now I only listen to Christian music. Mostly. And if I am listening to something, it is not explicit. I used to cuss like a sailor. Every other word was the F word. So I don't
Chris: I'm sorry that I have (in this conversation).
Brittany: Hey, who am I to judge? But the Lord sees all—just kidding. ‘Cause I've been in moments where I was far aligned with God and there's certain artists that I could only listen to that got me in this type of mood. And it came to a point where I used to try to listen to Christian music, and I like almost physically shake when I was in my addiction phases. And when I was not, I couldn't hear it. Like it haunted me. Like I couldn't listen to it. Now it's the reverse. It's almost like when I hear like certain rappers or certain music I listened to a lot when I was in that stage it triggers me, it reminds me of where I used to be and also I really listen to the words and i'm like I was saying this out loud like you are what you say, the power is in your tongue.
That's what god says, like I was saying, no wonder I was depressed. No wonder I almost fought every single person. I looked at it so now that I could listen to anything I want, I only listen to Christian rap and that's why I love what's happening with rap right now. I would say, I would give grace and say the past decade, but I'd probably say five years or six or seven. It has shifted and people that probably would have been huge in mainstream had a sudden change in their life to where they had a different trajectory. They could stand with the best of them.
Chris: Is Lecrae in that? My sisters have tried to get me to go to a couple of Lecrae shows, and I haven't taken them up on it.
Brittany: Yes. Great. So I think he was probably the first person listed to at 13, 14, and he's still good. He's like the godfather to some of these people. They always acknowledge him that way. The way people would acknowledge Tupac or Biggie or Jay Z or whatever. They acknowledge him. I would say a lot of these rappers’ skillset has exceeded Lecrae.
Some of the rappers I like is nobigdyl. I like Andy Mineo. I like Marty. I like Social Club Misfits. I like, who else? So many. Indie Tribe. And that's a group of five rappers. Jon Keith, who else? Miles Minnick. There's a lot of people. And I feel like if you find one, you're going to find a lot like, cause they're all usually friends. And I've listened to that and crank it up every day.I'm blaring it in Bloomington going to work.
So when you talked about Gospel Gangstaz, I was like, ‘Oh, I've heard a couple of songs before and I never knew it was them.’ I been diving back into their albums and I realized they have a very West Coast—
Chris: Yes, absolutely.
Brittany: Pop nineties, it gives me this nostalgic feeling for things I love in that time. But I'm not going to listen to all Christian rap. Some Christian rappers suck. God doesn't, but that bar does. get a better bar, get off GarageBand and make a better beat.
Chris: Would you want to be considered a Christian writer?
Brittany: Low key. The last couple articles I had is like Christian apologetics. I don't know if you saw, if you're familiar with them. I think one, the last piece I had, the title was, “Is our Internet Fame Addiction A cry for God?” and a publication said they could publish it, but more or less they weren't comfortable with me overtly saying God. I say Jesus at the end. Oh my goodness. But the most of it is a dissection and analysis of how social media has completely ruined our mental health and ruined how we see people and ruin how we see ourselves and ruined reality. Thinking like everyone's doing so much better than me when really that person's looking at another person, no one is ever being fulfilled. So I do a piece on that and basically just say at the skinny of it you need the Lord and that's it.
Chris: That's very C. S. Lewis-ian in my sort of understanding of Lewis like this desire and this longing and the pain that we experience maybe the anxiety the angst is this desire for God that we try to fill with many other things and, inevitably gets disappointed. Have you read any Lewis?
Brittany: I've read some, but I want to get more into him because so many other people that I like, I don't know if you're familiar with John Lennox, but they've mentioned him and I want to get more into his work. So yeah, I have done a lot of like even on my YouTube it's taken a turn where that's been a little bit of Christian apologetics, too. Because I find I want to analyze what's happening with humanity. How am I going to leave out The Person who created us? Hello. So it's going to be in there. And I forgot the rest of your question.
Chris: I think you answered it. I think podcasting and this isn't exactly a podcast, but also essay, is a very meandering form and that's what works about it for me. It doesn't work for every human being, but I've learned to notice when it works for another person ‘cause I'm like, ‘Oh, that's a person I can actually have a conversation with that doesn't bore me to death.’
Brittany: Actually, I don't know if I've ever had a podcast where I'm just like, this is going nowhere. Usually people have stuff to say even if they don't know that's just what we're going to share.
Chris: And they want to express it even when there's like a defensiveness or resistance.
Brittany: I think that's the work of the interviewer. That's like something, with journalism, when I went to NYU, that's on you too. It's on us to really make someone comfortable enough to open up. Like letting someone in your house, you got to have hospitality. You got to know how to answer questions and you can have someone answers those questions that are like the taboo ones. If they trust you enough. And that really leads with how you ice break with that person and all that. So it's your fault. I'm just kidding.
Chris: You've shared a lot, so I'm going to tell myself ‘Good job!’ and go to bed.
Brittany: I feel that.
Chris: That feels as conclusive as we're going to get. Thank you so much and let's keep talking.
Brittany: Let's keep talking, thank you.