My family and I moved to Charlotte more than fifteen years ago. The city has changed a lot since then. New houses and condos and shopping plazas have sprung up all over town. There is great wealth here and opportunity for young professionals and trees, so many trees.
It wasn't too long ago when that depiction of Charlotte, the one that included opportunity and wealth and growth, was how I would describe this city to those who didn't know it. It wasn't too long ago when I began to realize just how wrong my perception was. I realized that I didn't know my own city. Charlotte is a busted city. Split. Segregated in profound and long-standing ways. The lines that divide us are deep and difficult to transverse. The mistrust and fear, the exclusion and division are real.
There have been a lot of conversations, forums, investigations, studies, and reports about the problems in Charlotte. Many of those exchanges end with photo ops and hearty handshakes, but we all drive back to our own neighborhoods, and not much really changes.
The good news is that there is movement. There are many who are working hard to shift the balance of power here. There are thought leaders and community leaders who are working to change the narrative.
And there are also people who, although they want to see wholesale change in the systems and institutions that govern our city, aren't waiting for those wholesale changes to happen before they invest themselves in the lives and communities of the people who haven't benefited from the growth and opportunity that some of us take for granted.
Greg and Helms Jarrell are two of those people. They live in an area of Charlotte called Enderly Park, which is just a few blocks from "uptown," the part of Center City with all the bank headquarters, upscale hotels, and Charlotte's theater scene. For too many of the people who live in Enderly Park, the wealth that is concentrated in Charlotte's handful of skyscrapers is completely inaccessible.
Greg has written a book about their life in Enderly Park. It is called A Riff of Love.
Greg is a professional saxophone player - gifted in jazz and gospel, among other styles of music. In his book, Greg uses the language of music, of jazz, of improvisation, of church hymns, and of the blues to tell the story of his family's life in Enderly Park.
It would be easy to assume that their story is one of "white family moves into black neighborhood and saves the poor people in need." But that is not what this is. That's not who they are. That's not how they see themselves, and that is certainly not how they see their neighbors.
There is genuine love in their community - and in this book. There is laughter. There is loss. There is mourning. There are relationships that build up over time and relationships that end with death. There are parties and funerals. There are trips and so many meals around so many tables. There are problems, and there are searches for solutions.
Greg is a not only a gifted musician, but he is also a gifted writer. He gathers lyrics from old church hymns, stories of John Coltrane and Count Basie, theology, Bible verses written by the Apostle Paul, and an analogy about broken windows and unstable building foundations - and weaves it all together into a hope-building, heart-breaking, courage-inducing book.
He knows who he is. He knows what he believes. He realizes that he can't learn enough history or visit enough museums or be able to quote "enough pages in Dr. King's books to make me any less white." In one chapter, Greg relates the tragic death of one of the young men he and his family had gotten to know and had come to love. The way that Greg connected the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights movement, a John Coltrane song called, "Alabama," and Enderly Park's public expression of grief after Khalil's death is poignant, but not morbid. His eye for detail, his ear for harmony, his willingness to linger on both the sharp notes and the flat notes all give this book the heft and forcefulness that his stories and his neighbors deserve.
Greg riffs on his love for his community on every page of this memoir.
It's lyrical and it's blue. It's sorrowful and it's hopeful.
Here is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book:
"The ground on which we stood the night of that vigil is holy ground. The blood of a beloved and the tears of many loved ones sanctified it. That holy ground holds stories that have as their primary characters creative people who have built a place of thriving in the midst of struggle and heartbreak. They have welcomed me into their story. The meaning and the best use of that ground began to come into question in the days that followed. In the midst of that struggle, and every other one, there stands an old willow oak tree, rooted in earth, reaching towards heaven."
Get it. Read it.
And check out what Greg and Helms are doing here.
