Our Trip to Houston: The World is a Ghetto
But regular people are pulling back towards the light
This weekend 24 - 26 July, Lovely Wife and I traveled to Houston to attend the Keith Sweat concert. Honestly, going down there this time around was kind of a chore. As a younger man, I used to love to drive, but for some reason, as an older man I no longer take as much pleasure from it. However, Lovely Wife pointed out that we could see Keith Sweat, October London, Xscape and Cupid, all in the same show.
So down to H-Town we did go. As it turned out, the concert was pretty good. October London opened the show, and man, that young cat has some vocals on him. He’s got a smooth style and swag that make me think he’ll be around for a while.
He came out smoking a cigar and sipping on something player. So of course, we in the audience found that to be pretty cool. He sung at least 6 cuts off of his new album, including the two number ones. He also did a tribute to D’Angelo, playing some of his music and discussing how it influenced him. He then sang Brown Sugar, which was really good! He put his own sauce on the classic, but kept the feel of the original.
After the obligatory DJ and sponsor content, 90’s girl-group Xscape came on. And to be honest, their performance was a bit lackluster. In fact, the high point of their show came about half-way through when T.I. came out and surprised everybody with a song. I don’t really dig T.I., so I didn’t know who he was at first, but the crowd was feeling him!
Keith Sweat, on the other hand, tore it up! He was not at all what I expected. His music is all smooth and funky and lovey-dovey, but K-dog seems like a hood brother. He prowled around the stage at times, cussing and fussing in a monologue that was actually rather entertaining. He taunted haters, bragged that all his parts still worked and thanked God, at times all in the same rant. It was very personal, and somehow enhanced the show.
At one point, be boasted that, “I still sound just like my records, too!”. And HE DID! He was jammin’! In fact, Lovely Wife and I agreed that the show would have been worth it if it had only been October London and Keith Sweat.
Bottom line, I’m glad we went, but I’m also kind of sad about what I must report next.
Like every other big city we’ve been to recently, Houston has noticeably deteriorated. Kim and I have been noticing and discussing how “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” seems to have just gone downhill since the covid operation. Food, any kind of service at any store or establishment, manners, quality of life, etc. Everything is worse.
I personally think that’s by design. Societies often fall down a notch or two after a national crisis. Powerful people and groups know this, which is why I believe they purposefully use traumatic events to steer society.
Think of how in basic military training, they use insults, collective punishment, physical exhaustion, and group chants and rituals to break down new recruits. This then allows them to remake the troops into whatever image they please. (In this case, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen or Marines.)
I think “elites” use national traumas to steer society in the same way. Of course this possibility also suggests that many traumatic events are purposefully inflicted, because they make us easy to mold.
Think of how society changed after JFK’s assassination, the September 11 attacks and covid.
Houston, like Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, New Orleans and other big cities, has fallen. While we there, the power went out after moderately-intense-but-isolated storms. It stayed off for 24 hours where we were in Spring, Texas. We had to get a hotel just to get ready for the concert. Power outages are apparently routine, since there were T.V. commercials for generators essentially admitting this fact.
While we were out, we saw what we thought was a dead body wrapped in a blanket in between the gas pumps at this random gas station. As we pulled further in, we saw another “body’ just like it and realized there were homeless people sleeping in blankets between the gas pumps to stay out of the weather.
There was even a hobo in our hotel lobby, curled up in a blanket just out of sight of the front desk.
Everything was noticeably trashy, and shabby, and even dirtier than we remembered. I thank God Lubbock is no where near that level, even though we do have a few “walkers” of our own. Fortunately the leadership and populace here have not made the decision to live down to a gutter level in the name of compassion and letting people do their own thing.
There were several bright spots on the trip though. Thank God we got to experience some more uplifting things. For one, we stayed with our dearest friends, the Johnson Family. Their presence always nourishes our hearts. Also, they took us out to their church Sunday Morning.
It’s called The Mountain Church - formerly Mount Sinai Baptist. We were really impressed with the sense of order, and the quiet, neighborly feel there, and we truly felt the presence of God.
I especially liked how the all-male Pastoral team met with the men in the church before service, and prayed with us and gave us a little space to just be men, as well as Men of God.
After church, our dear friends (just say family) took us out to brunch at a place called The Chopn Blok. Their African Fusion cuisine was just exquisite!
On the drive back to the LBK, we listened to the Veritas Wellness podcast and talked about how we have noticed another trend running right along side the fall of standards everywhere. We agreed that there also seems to be a spiritual “quickening” going on.
Regular people everywhere seem to be responding to the decline and decay by pulling back in the opposite direction, towards God and away from the world. This is a much needed corrective or counteractive movement towards Order and away from Chaos.
And I don’t mean the “order out of chaos” that our so-called leaders always talk about. We don’t want to be led by their machinations toward some cashless, dirty, urban hellscape, poorly managed by artificial intelligence. No, In this case, the move towards order seems to be occurring at a grass roots level. And that is nothing but positive!