A Silver Thread
Happy New Year! Is it too late to say that? I used to be a proponent for saying happy new year whenever you saw someone for the first time in a calendar year, even if it was in March or August. But I’ve found myself internally cringing every time someone said it to me within the last week. I guess I’m a New Year’s grinch.
But there is actually some newness afoot in my world. Though I started The Kyla Letter in 2020, the last 4+ years were a fallow period for my writing. Imagine my writing self was Sleeping Beauty, and since the pandemic, I variously tried to let her rest and vigorously shake her awake, to no avail, until last summer.
Like many people, I experienced a lot of loss in 2024, including the loss of 3 family members. But what I found is that being face-to-face with death and dying made me, after 4 years of utter silence, urgently need to record what I was seeing. I hate the inevitably of every death; yet there is a silver thread running through these experiences: all the ways we seek to heal and comfort ourselves thereafter. All the searching for joy. All the connections and conversations and bonds that come out of it. There’s a wound, and then there’s what grows over it. For me, that has been a renewed creativity.
I’m so excited to (finally) write and create and share more this year. So please support a tiny Black lady-owned business! If you’re a free subscriber, please consider upgrading to paid. If you’re a follower, please consider subscribing, and recommending The Kyla Letter to your followers. More of what I’ve been up to below.
BBC Pop Culture Debate Club: I was once again on a podcast discussing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” 10-year-old me is delighted that is part of adult me’s career. I wish I could tell a speaker’s bureau that I can be booked to talk about Mariah Carey (maybe I can?) Me and Jenny Eliscu were the debaters, with Ronald Young, Jr. (of the amazing podcast Weight for It) serving as final judge. If you can bear to hear people talk about Christmas music 3 weeks after the fact, give it a go.
I Didn’t Vote for Him merch: Inauguration Day is almost here! Show your support for having some gd sense with an I Didn’t Vote for Him pinback button, dad hat, beanie (or other custom item, upon request).
I haven’t found a good umbrella term to describe all of the things I like to do which have no apparent relationship to each other—like writing, crafting, working in the NYC jazz scene, and making buttons and hats—but one place where some of this is housed is my outpost Shell Designs. Right now, in addition to the IDVFH merch, I have ready-made crochet items as well as patterns for all my DIY girlies. Follow me on Instagram and visit my store here!
I interviewed two cultural big dogs recently: For Kinfolk Magazine, Alexander Smalls, the opera singer turned restaurateur, who created celebrated spots The Cecil and Minton’s in Harlem, and is the author of the new cookbook The Contemporary African Kitchen. For the NYC Winter Jazzfest program guide (for which I serve as editor), I spoke with Terri Lyne Carrington, legendary jazz drummer, producer, mentor, and founder of the Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee College of Music. You can read Kinfolk online (or in the Whole Foods checkout line). And read my interview with TLC in the NYCWJF program guide here.
Last but not least: listen to this song I’ve been obsessed with, “Better Dayz” by Zacchae’us Paul.
See you soon!
Kyla