Saturday, December 5, 2020 - Tenth Avenue & Fifty-third Street - Reflections on TQ’s “Westside”

Walking through the rain and drinking a decaf latte, TQ’s Westside came back to me. Maybe I’ve listened to the song two or three times since 2000; it was released in September of 1998. This morning when I listened to the song again for the first time in over a decade and a half, I nearly wept. The song’s lyrics are layered with emotion -––– reflections and memories of friends and family members who’ve been incarcerated, or have passed on.

This morning, it wasn’t just the song’s lyrics that hit me, but also the distance travelled from 1998 –––– when I remember listening to this song often, as a teenager growing up in Indianapolis, and gaining my first glimpses of what adulthood might look like, and feel like ––––– to one rain-soaked Saturday in Manhattan ––––– knowing more than I ever have before about the pain of loss; the value of patience; and the power of speaking the truth on a track, despite the pain: “One day everything's gonna be fine / But until that day my only reply / Is ‘Westside till I die.’"

Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was the espresso, sprinting through my mind and softening my heart. Maybe it was the grey clouds hanging over this city, after almost a year of this pandemic that made this morning’s walk, as well as the rediscovery of TQ’s song so important. Something happened this year. And even if the lyrics in “Westside” don’t quite capture the facts of what this city has withstood and gone through, the emotional essence of the song without a doubt, does.