Sunday Pick: How to love your hometown (w/ Hanif Abdurraqib & Sarah Kay) | How to Be a Better Human

0:28Happy Sunday, TED Talks Daily listeners. Hanif Abder-Aqib. He invites Chris and poet Sarah Kay to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio to show off what makes it so special. From sneaker shops and record stores to public parks, Hanif talks about how he builds community and how home, as the saying goes, really is where the heart is. This episode is part of a special series, the How to Be a Better Human bonus videos, adapted for podcasts just for our TED Talks Daily listeners. To watch the entire special series, head to TED.com. And if you want to hear more insights like this, listen to How to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04That's coming up.

1:17What is home? Lately, I've been thinking about that question a lot. Because home isn't just a place with familiar spots and corners. It's where you feel a sense of belonging. And as the world has gotten bigger and messier and lonelier, I have been feeling like it is more urgent than ever to have people and places that I can depend on, to really call a place home. When I brought this up to my friend, the poet and educator Sarah Kay, she said, We have to go to Columbus, Ohio, and hang out with my friend Hanif Abdurraqib. No one is a better person to show us what it means to be from a place, to love that place, and to love the people in it.

1:53So today, we are hanging out with Hanif Abdurraqib and learning about why he loves his hometown so much.

2:04Hanif Abdurraqib wears many hats, but I know him first as a poet and a writer. A cultural critic who writes about music in a way that makes you just want to listen to albums all day long. An essayist whose books about grief and joy and basketball make you ugly cry in public. Every time I think I'm going to dodge it and then he gets me again, I am tearing up. Hanif spends a lot of time on the road, but he always returns to the place where he is from, the east side of Columbus, Ohio. And that is not just a place that Hanif loves. It is clearly a place that loves Hanif right back. So I sat down with Hanif in one of his favorite spots in town, a vinyl record shop called Spoonful Records, to find out why.

2:50I've been thinking a lot about the idea of like when the world is really overwhelming and there's so much going on, how one of the ways that we can ground ourselves is like to be in a specific place, to be in a community and with people we care about, taking care of them and having them take care of us. You know, we're filming this and recording this in June. It's like a massive heat wave that has stripped the city. And last night, my neighborhood lost power, like my street lost power. And it's a funny thing happens when you lose power, at least for me, where I had like 10 solid minutes of being like, maybe this is just affecting me.

3:21But I like gradually like peeked out my window and saw one of my neighbors gathering in a gazebo in the middle of our street. So it was wonderful in a sense to go out to this gathering point and have everyone kind of like, we all don't have power. What are the most immediate needs? If I were to say I am just like a small speck in this grand universe, I would very easily and quickly fall into this individualism. Instead of me saying, well, I step outside of my house and I see either a person or I see the results of a person's living reflected directly to me. Why do you love Columbus so much? I tend to think that my most joyful experiences living in Columbus are mirrored by the fact that people just talk to me in a way that is also familiar and comfortable.

4:13We're in Spoonful Records in Columbus, Ohio. It's my favorite record shop. And Columbus is a great record town. In every city I would stop on tour, I would go dig and I would go record shopping. But it's kind of isolating. I know my own tastes. left to my own devices, I would just be delving through the crates in search of whatever would satiate and satisfy my own taste. It requires someone, be it a friend who bring them to the shop with you, or a person behind the counter like Brett or Amy or Elijah here at Spoonful, who can say, I remember we had this talk about Sly Stone. I got these Sly Stone B-sides.

4:47You want to hear? That's so cool. Yeah, Amy drew this. Amy drew this. Yeah, yeah. Just the people who know you with a depth of curiosity and care. Thanks as always, y 'all. Yeah, tell him, he said, what's up? and definitely email me the stuff you're working on. Hit me up. I think if I offer myself up freely and eagerly to others, it informs our collective, our shared interests in each other so that when we come across something that we think might delight the other person, we hold onto it for a while until they re-enter our lives again. And that is beautiful to me. And I think that has really mapped itself out through my life in Columbus.

5:22The idea of offering yourself up to people freely and eagerly, that really stuck with me. You know, as kids, we're told not to talk to strangers, but to Hanif. No one in this town was a stranger, even if he had never met them before. Bye, thank you, Dan. Thank you. After Spoonful Records, Hanif took me and Sarah to see some of his other favorite Columbus spots. My favorite thing is to be in the car with Hanif, driving around Columbus, Ohio. Do you have, like, a go-to when a friend comes to Columbus of, like, what do you show them? The Buckeye Donuts is one of my favorite places in the world. The Buckeye Donuts is like glazed on it with chocolate frosting and then a peanut butter center.

6:04It is a phenomenal experience. It's like an assortment of cake donuts and jelly-filled things. Now, those of you who are familiar with Hanif will already know that he absolutely loves sneakers. Of course, a trip to his hometown wouldn't be complete without a visit to his favorite sneaker shop, Heat Archive. Just like Spoonful Records, everyone knew him here. What's up, brother? How you been? Good, brother. Good to see you. Yeah, take a donut.

6:38I'm a big sneaker guy. And when I was coming up, sneaker boutiques were not as popular. Now there's sneaker boutiques everywhere. and Heat Archive is interesting because they're local guys. You have so many incredible shoes. What's the most Columbus sneaker you have in the store? Most Columbus sneaker in the store. Like if you could sum up the city in one. Definitely these, Scarlet and Gray. These would take it every time. And for those of you who are wondering why these shoes, well, Scarlet and Gray are the colors of Ohio State University, the Buckeyes. They're so caring and thoughtful for our young folks.

7:12And they don't really talk about it all that much, But like if kids come in with a good report card, they'll give them a pair of sneakers for free. Or if a kid comes in and doesn't have enough money for the pair that he wants, they'll like take care of them. It feels like as much of a community hub as a sneaker shop can be. This is what we love to do. I have a big passion for. So bringing this here, like growing up, was like our dream. I am someone who I grew up, born and raised in New York City, and I left. I moved somewhere else. You have such a deep connection to Ohio. You were raised here.

7:45You still live here. What do you think makes some people leave their hometowns and some people stay? I think the relationship with one's place of origin is, by definition, I think, a contentious one because you don't choose it. The place is something that happens to you. What keeps me here, I guess I can't speak to why people leave, but there is one woman on a street in East Columbus who has held onto her house no matter what. She's been offered so much money, been offered so much to move out of that house because if she moves out of that house, it is the entry point to kind of raise that neighborhood and make it something else, and she refuses to leave.

8:26And her refusal, I think, is an action that my work is pointing towards. my very presence is stopping the worst designs of a city that has no idea who its population actually is and my staying here means i'm actually keeping a history that existed before me and a history that i want to exist after me because what's the point of staying in a neighborhood if the neighborhood no longer feels like it's a place where you're welcome or if you cannot be translated through the new population of that neighborhood. Next, we headed to one of Hanif's favorite parks. The sun was shining, the water fountains were flowing, there were flowers in bloom everywhere.

9:12I love the Park of Roses because it is exactly what it sounds like. And Park of Roses were like where you took, if you had no money, but you wanted to go on a date, and if it was like spring, that's where you would go on a date. Because it's like, we could just look at these pretty flowers and don't worry about the fact that we're both broke. Okay, so you're both poets, and I feel like poets and flowers, right? This is the stereotypical relationship that you're supposed to have. What are you trying to say, Chris? Roses are red. Violets are blue. I'm with two poets. Do what you do. And there's the poetry.

9:49Poetry? Oh, there's a flower named poetry. Yeah. When you are walking around a place like this that's full of natural beauty, is this like ripe possibility for poetic inspiration? Or is that not how it works for you? For me, it doesn't work that way. Like I don't look at that bush of flowers and say, I'm going to write a poem about that bush of flowers. I think that's maybe not my brand of brain function. I think what is more useful to me is to like find out the history of the flower and what it might tell me about the land it originally came from. Or there's something beyond the surface thing that my brain is consuming.

10:28And I think just because something is beautiful doesn't mean that it has to be reworked into something else beyond what it's already offering us. I tend to just kind of think that this is a cool place to sit in gratitude. Like, we're here in late July, in the middle of a heat wave, and yet these flowers have survived a little bit longer than they normally would, you know? What is it, like, gilding the lily? Literally, that is about a flower. Because it's like when something is already beautiful in the form that it's in, it doesn't need your messy human poetry traipsing about. Speaking of which, as much as we wanted to stay and smell the roses, there was a poetry reading that we had to catch at one of the great local bookstores in town, $2 Radio Headquarters.

11:17Funny enough, it wasn't actually a reading for Hanif, but one that he had put together for Sarah, whose book had just come out, which really hit something home for me. Like Hanif said, place may be something that happens to you, but community, that's something you build with care and generosity. Thank y 'all for coming out tonight. It's great to be in here and not be expected to do anything other than introduce poets that I want to hear. Yesterday, Sarah got into Columbus and we were driving around. And she was looking up at the sky and she was like, look at how round and beautiful the clouds are.

11:59Like the edges of the clouds are so puffy and round. And, you know, as someone who lives here, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, sure, sure. And the whole function of this was like Sarah lives in New York. And so, like, the clouds are often obscured by the skyline. It's the show and the sky is not as much the show. I think that oftentimes the function of the entire project of Sarah Kay's living, if I could boil it down to one thing, is look at this thing, look at this thing, look at this thing, but not in an annoying way. It is a way that says, I am checking to see if your heart's still working and your ability to pay close attention to that which you have become intimately and deeply familiar with.

12:33Because if you can pay deep and close attention to the clouds that you walk underneath, like literally every day in this city, you might be able to pay close attention to someone in your life who may be hurting or in need of something or deeply just need you to sit in front of them and be silent for a while. And so I am thankful to be a fan of Sarah's work. But more than that, I am thankful to have a life where Sarah is always challenging me to question repeatedly how well is my heart still working. Please give a hand to Sarah Kay.

13:15It's not very charitable to make someone cry before they go on stage. Hi,$2 Radio. Hi, Columbus.

13:27Gosh, you look good. As I sat and listened to some beautiful poetry with this lovely group of people, I realized that building a community doesn't have to be this big, intimidating thing. It can start small. It reminded me of something that Hanif said earlier. How do you decide who is in your circle of care and who is not? So I was unhoused for a stretch. I was like sleeping in a storage unit for a while and then just like very much on the streets, right? There's this very large church. and every morning I would walk by it. And there was a person who, you know, was like a maintenance person at the church who would notice me.

14:09And after a while, again, without a lot of language or a lot of intention, he would start unlocking the door at 6 a.m. You know, and let me and a couple other people come in and sleep in the pews for three hours. It was saying, like, I have a key. The key opens the door. Inside, on the other side of the door is a place where you'll be safe for three hours. And so I tend to think that for me, I've been lucky enough in my life where I feel like I've been in community with elders and younger folks. And I've also been in, of course, like just a broad swath of people who I'm in community with. And oftentimes it does not feel like to give of myself in a way that serves or feeds others is that difficult or challenging.

14:48It feels instead like this very simple thing of I have a key to something. I am going to unlock something and we are going to sit in a place that feels comfortable and safe for us for as long as it takes. And in some ways, the miracle is to say I will surrender my time to you. And through the surrendering of my time, I hope to love you better. And I also hope to be renewed in a way that helps me love others better. Because if I move through the world with a very clear understanding of the fact that my time is not only my own, then I think I make the most of it in the moments where it is my own.

15:25Thank you.