Author: Kyle Hayes

  • When the Earth Trembles and the Sky Weeps

    When the Earth Trembles and the Sky Weeps

    There are moments in a man’s life when his words feel like a betrayal.

    This is one of them.

    Because anything I write will not do justice to the raw wound stretching across Texas and New Mexico. No sentence—no matter how well-shaped—can describe the homes washed away, or the destruction left by Floodwaters. This is not simply weather. This is a humanitarian crisis, quiet in the way only American suffering can be—because it often happens without proper cameras or compassion.

    I’ve kept them all in my prayers.

    Both Texas and New Mexico were battered by floods.

    People fleeing rising water, families praying for missing loved ones, whole communities reduced to rubble or memory.

    I’ve also held someone closer in prayer—a dear friend in Houston, a healer by trade and by nature. I believe she and others—doctors, nurses, caregivers—are already mobilizing. They are the ones who step forward before anyone asks. The ones who show up while the nation debates. They pack their scrubs, their gauze, their quiet courage, and go. Not for politics. Not for applause. But for the people.

    I often think about how place shapes perception.

    In the Quad Cities—my home—we know natural disasters like we know the back of our hands. Tornado sirens were the lullabies of summer nights. Flooded streets were rituals, almost seasonal. You learned early to measure trauma in feet and inches of water. But even familiarity doesn’t dull devastation—it only makes it expected.

    But for many in New Mexico, in regions where floods aren’t expected to reach their porches, the pain strikes differently. It’s not just loss—it’s betrayal. It’s learning, in one cruel stroke, what it means to live at the mercy of something larger and more indifferent than government. It is learning, quickly and violently, that Mother Nature is not a metaphor.

    She does not negotiate. She does not plead. She comes as she is—rage wrapped in water.

    So, no—I will not speak of politics. Not today. I won’t debate climate policy, relief budgets, or federal negligence. Not now. Because the water is still rising. And people are still missing.

    This moment belongs not to partisanship but to compassion.

    To the man who lost his house in the flood.

    To the families who have lost loved ones in Ruidoso.

    To the nurse flying into Houston, not knowing if there will be enough beds or time.

    To the child who will never again see their bedroom, their bike, their favorite tree.

    And perhaps to you, reading this, holding grief for strangers you’ve never met.

    If this country is worth anything, it’s worth the way we show up for each other when the ground gives out and the sky collapses. Not with slogans. Not with red or blue hats. But with hands, and hearts, and quiet, necessary acts of grace.

    Because when disaster comes, it doesn’t check party affiliation. It doesn’t care about borderlines or building codes. It comes for the breathing, the working, the praying—the living.

    And when the winds still and the waters drain, all that will remain is the memory of who showed up. And who didn’t?

    May we all, in whatever way we can, show up.

    With our money.

    With our time.

    With our healing.

    With our humanity.

    Because that’s the only thing strong enough to rebuild what’s been broken.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • “The Disappearance and the Dreamers: A Return to Small Town America”

    “The Disappearance and the Dreamers: A Return to Small Town America”

    I could start this in a few ways.

    I could tell you about the beauty of small-town America—how it smells like earth after rain, how it feels like old denim, soft at the edges and worn in all the right places. I could paint a picture of local parades, gas stations where they know your name, and corner stores that sold glass-bottle soda as if they were dealing in gold. I could start there.

    Or I could tell you about the slow death.

    About how it creeps in not with a scream, but with silence. A corner shop goes dark. The comic book store fades into memory. That one spot that always had a single cook and a single delivery guy—hollowed out by time, or worse, by convenience. We didn’t even get to say goodbye. One day it was there, and the next… it was nowhere to be found.

    That’s how I found it, this town that raised me. A shell and a fight. Graying at the temples but still kicking. Still trying.

    I returned home with a chip on my shoulder and an axe to grind. My past visits had been disappointments—full of quiet judgment and half-empty shelves. I began to see the town as Lucy holding the football. I, the fool, forever falling for a nostalgia that never delivered.

    But then I noticed it.

    Not a rebirth exactly. More like resistance. Quiet. Stubborn. And beautiful.

    A locally brewed beer sitting proudly on a shelf next to Budweiser, daring you to taste something made here. A sushi place—yes, sushi—in a town where raw fish used to be called bait with a laugh. A barista pulling espresso in a repurposed mechanic shop, poetry on the walls, and indie jazz in the air. It didn’t look like the town I left, but it was trying to feel like the one I loved.

    The resistance is no longer being led by factory foremen or overtime heroes. It’s the dreamers.

    The artists. The comics shop rebels. The coffee shop philosophers. The chefs, brewers, and boutique owners who aren’t just surviving small-town America—they’re redefining it.

    I keep thinking about that comic book store.

    The one where I spent more time than I did money, though God knows I wanted to spend more. That store helped shape the person I am. Not because of what I bought, but because of what I learned.

    Inside those walls, you weren’t just reading stories—you were being trained in how to dream.

    You met other kids who knew backstories you didn’t, who taught you how a single issue could reframe an entire arc. You learned how to imagine better. To think in color. To expect the impossible and call it plot development.

    Sure, comics still exist. There are still conventions. Online communities. But they don’t replace the bike ride to the store on release day.

    They don’t replace the smell of fresh ink. The thrill of a new issue in your hands. Or seeing the store owner, and knowing him, not as an employee, but as a keeper of stories.

    That’s what we’re losing.

    Not just the stores.

    But there is humanity in the transaction.

    I was prepared to write a eulogy.

    To mourn the death of small-town America.

    But what I found instead… was a kind of defiance.

    Maybe it’s not dying. It could be changing. Perhaps the overgrown trees and cracked sidewalks aren’t signs of decay, but rather Mother Nature is taking her seat at the town hall meeting. Maybe she’s in on the plan.

    And maybe—just maybe—the artists are saving it.

    Not by keeping it the same, but by daring to imagine it differently.

    In this era, I don’t need to fly to the Quad Cities for a box of Lagomarcino’s. It’s a click away. That’s the gift and the curse. Accessibility without presence.

    However, some places still require in-person visits.

    Not for the product, but for the chance. Because on one of those visits, you might notice something new. A new mural. A new flavor. A new owner with an old soul and a dream too stubborn to die.

    So go. Walk the street you used to know.

    The one who forgot your name and then remembered it.

    The one still fighting, in ways you didn’t expect.

    The death of small-town America may still be in progress.

    But so is its reinvention.

    And I’d bet everything on the dreamers.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • “Fireworks, Smoke, and Silence: Reflections on the Fourth of July”

    “Fireworks, Smoke, and Silence: Reflections on the Fourth of July”

    I remember the Fourth of July not as a lesson in civics, but as smoke thick in the backyard, children running with sparklers and paper plates bending under ribs and deviled eggs. I remember laughter louder than the cheap boom of fireworks we lit off in the alley. We didn’t talk about the Declaration or Jefferson—we talked about who made which potato salad. About the music. About the person who brought store-bought chicken and tried to pass it off as homemade.

    We were celebrating something, though. Maybe not independence. But togetherness. Perhaps not the country. But the neighborhood. The people who showed up. The people who still knew your middle name.

    As I grew older, the smoke remained the same, but the fire changed. Firecrackers instead of sparklers. Bottle rockets fired off in the street like we were challenging the sky. Then it became more refined—city festivals, parades, sanctioned firework displays. You’d drive out to the river or a stadium or the edge of town and watch lights bloom over the landscape like temporary stars. And for a moment, we all looked up. Together. That was something.

    Now? Now I watch the fireworks on TV.

    I sit in the quiet of a home I pay for with work that doesn’t rest. I flip past news coverage, see red, white, and blue glossed over a nation that feels exhausted by its own reflection. The fireworks crackle through speakers. But there’s no smoke. No laughter. Just the echo of something I used to understand.

    Small Town America still gets it, in a way.

    There’s a rawness to how they celebrate. The Fourth feels like a living thing there—felt in parades with tractors draped in bunting, kids waving flags the size of dish towels. It’s in the grill smoke curling behind churches and VFWs. It’s in the fire department pulling double duty—hosing kids down for fun in the morning, standing ready for emergencies by nightfall.

    In these towns, the holiday doesn’t ask for an explanation. It just is. A ritual passed down like recipes and stories told on porches. Patriotism feels personal—tied to the land, the local, and the lineage.

    But drive two hours into the nearest city and it’s different.

    You feel the tension. The mix of celebration and scrutiny. Fireworks punctuate protests. Red, white, and blue merchandise is sold alongside T-shirts that read “No Justice, No Peace.” The holiday is no longer a question of tradition, but of interpretation. Who gets to feel free? Who was never meant to?

    Region matters, too.

    In the South, it’s often steeped in performative pride. The flags wave bigger, but the air feels heavier. History isn’t just remembered—it’s reenacted. For Black folks, it has always been a complicated celebration. Independence was declared in 1776, but our freedom didn’t come until almost a century later—and even then, it was on paper, not in practice.

    In the Northeast, there are more ceremonial historic towns holding colonial parades, bell ringings, and readings of old speeches. It’s a curated memory. A museum brought to life. Patriotic, yes, but distant.

    Out West, the holiday is looser, more abstract. Backyard cookouts in canyon shadows. Fireworks flaring over desert skies. The patriotism is quieter, more tied to the land and the idea of independence—something rugged, something wild.

    The Midwest—my home—straddles it all. Here, it’s a mix of deep-rooted ritual and growing skepticism. It’s the county fair and the protest. It’s the American flag hanging next to a Juneteenth banner. A place that still wants to believe in something, but is no longer sure what that something is.

    And that brings me to now.

    To this country.

    To this moment.

    Divided doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. We’re not just on different pages—we’re reading different books. For some, the Fourth is still sacred. For others, it’s hollow. Some wave flags with pride. Others burn them. Some pray for peace, others brace for chaos. Will we celebrate with barbecues or barricades this year? Will the fireworks light up the sky—or drown out the sirens?

    I’m no longer sure what the Fourth of July means anymore.

    I’m not sure if I ever truly did.

    But I know what I miss.

    The simplicity of smoke.

    The smell of burnt meat and the smoke of firecrackers.

    Family laughing. Adults yelling, ” Don’t blow your fingers off.” The way we all stopped for a moment to look up, not at a country, but at the light. Together.

    That’s what I try to hold on to now.

    Not the promise of America. But the possibility.

    Not the history. But the humanity.

    Because if there’s anything left to celebrate, it could be the small things. The gathered ones. The moments are too ordinary to lie about. The fireworks we make just by showing up.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • “Sugar, Memory & Mercy at Largomarcino’s”

    “Sugar, Memory & Mercy at Largomarcino’s”

    A man who’s tasted disappointment in the places that once defined him learns to guard his nostalgia like a brittle heirloom. After Happy Joe’s went corporate cold, I flew home to Albuquerque, full of disappointment and regret. But the Quad Cities still keeps a few sanctuaries, and chief among them is Largomarcino’s—the century-old candy counter where sugar still gets its hands dirty.

    Walk through the front door, and you feel the floorboards remember you, even if the staff doesn’t. The glass cases shimmer with rows of turtles, truffles, and creams—each one lined up like choirboys who secretly spike the hymn wine after service. Behind the marble counter, brass soda taps glint under amber pendant lamps that refuse to be updated. The air smells like vanilla bean and sweet cream spiked with a quiet note of fryer oil drifting in from the lunch nook in the back. It is, mercifully, the same as it ever was.

    I once brought a girl here on a first date, sure that the scent of caramelizing sugar and the soft clink of long-handled soda spoons would say things my teenage vocabulary couldn’t. We shared a sundae, so overloaded it listed starboard. She laughed; I tried to look like the kind of man who casually knows about old-school candy parlors. Truth? I just needed to show her a place that felt like honesty in a world already hustling counterfeit cool. Largomarcino’s obliged. That date briefly made me king of a realm where chocolate crowns are handed out freely, and the only recession is the one your dentist warns you about later.

    On this recent visit, I half-expected the specter that haunts old favorites: the new logo, the laminated menu, the weary cashier whose corporate smile never quite reaches the eyes. Instead, I found the latest generation Largos still behind the counter, still calling regulars by name, still Loading chocolate into various little boxes. The soda fountain stools squeaked the same protest when I sat down, the way old friends groan but scoot over to make room.

    Lunch was a club sandwich—no reinvention, no aioli, just Midwestern humility between slices of white bread—followed by Diet Coke (Yes, I see the irony). I picked handfuls of candy bars and orange-covered chocolate for the friends back in Albuquerque who have heard me sing this place’s praises like late-night gospel. I bought a bag of Bourbon caramel bites for myself, just in case hunger struck early and I regretted it later.

    Is it worth the eventual dental bill? Absolutely. Is it worth the added miles on the treadmill? Hell yes. But more than that, Largomarcino’s is worth the faith it restores—that somewhere, beyond the safe neon glow of fast-casual chains, flavor, and family can still stubbornly share a roof.

    I carried my haul out into the Midwest humidity, sugar sweat already forming on my brow, and realized something simple: places like this don’t just sell candy. They sell mercy. A soft reprieve from processed sameness, a reminder that craft and care can outlast the quarterly report. You taste it in the snap of a dark chocolate almond bark and in the carbonic tickle of a handmade phosphate. You taste the persistence of people who keep stirring copper kettles because machines can temper chocolate, but they can’t temper the soul.

    I will keep coming back as long as there is a back to go to. And suppose the world ever swallows Largomarcino’s the way it swallowed Happy Joe’s. In that case, I’ll tuck the bourbon bites in my pocket, let them melt down to sticky echoes, and remember how good it felt to stand in a room where sugar, memory, and mercy still mingled, still mattered, and still refused to sell out.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • “When Special Ain’t Special Anymore”

    “When Special Ain’t Special Anymore”

    We all have those sacred little spots from home — the places you carry with you long after you’ve left, even if they’ve forgotten your name. Places that stitched themselves into your identity not with grand gestures but with greasy napkins, familiar neon signs, and food that tasted like it was made just for you. Not because it was fancy. Not because it was famous. But because it was yours.

    I hesitate to call Albuquerque my hometown. I live here. I breathe here. I’ve found my people here. It’s where the aroma of green chile clings to the air the way morning dew does in other places. It’s one of the few towns where saying “Christmas” doesn’t summon tinsel and ornaments — it brings red and green chile poured over everything from burritos to cheeseburgers like edible stained glass. That’s home, too. But not the only one.

    You see, I grew up in the Quad Cities — a borderland of sorts in the Midwest where blue-collar sweat runs thicker than politics and where local business meant something before the world corporatized your sense of taste. It wasn’t glitzy. It wasn’t Instagrammable. But it had a soul.

    There, we had our pizza joints. Sure, we had the big chains — Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, all the familiar mascots of American mediocrity. But we also had Happy Joe’s. Not a chain. Not a franchise in the traditional sense. It was ours. And to this day, the best pizza I’ve ever eaten — the only one I compare all others to — was their Taco Pizza.

    Now, when I say taco pizza, I don’t mean some limp pie scattered with taco seasoning and sadness. I mean crunch and spice and shredded lettuce that somehow made sense on a pizza. I mean pizza that didn’t just feed you — it made you feel like you were in on a secret. And try as I might here in Albuquerque, I can’t find one that hits the same way. I’ve made my own, come close, even thought I had it once — but nah. It’s not the same. And you can’t show people a picture to explain it. Taco pizza is like faith — you either grew up believing in it or you didn’t.

    I recently went back to the Quad Cities. Just a visit. A pilgrimage, really. And, of course, like any prodigal son trying to recapture the taste of memory, I made a beeline for Happy Joe’s. But something was off. The restaurant was nearly empty. No smell of oregano clinging to the ceiling tiles. No laughter echoed from the game room. And when the pizza came — it looked the same. But it didn’t feel the same.

    It turns out that the place had been sold before the founder passed away. Sold. As in: acquired, folded into the machinery, sanitized for profit. The sauce still had spice. The crust still crisped. But the soul? Gone. I sat in that booth, chewing nostalgia like stale bread, realizing what I already knew: the places we love change. And sometimes, they don’t take us with them.

    But not all is lost.

    There’s still Lagomarcino’s — another one of those rare places that refuses to become generic. Still family-run. Still wrapped in its own history, like a gift, it doesn’t have to be opened to be appreciated. Still local. Still proud. It’s so good It deserves its own post. Its own reverence.

    What I’ve learned — what I keep learning, usually the hard way — is that we carry our special places like we carry scars, not because they hurt now, but because they mattered. They shaped us. And when they change or disappear, it’s not just the food we mourn. It’s the kid we were. The world that made sense. The version of home we thought would always be there.

    And so I write. Because writing is how I preserve what can’t be frozen, franchised, or flavored in bulk. It’s how I remember. Not just the food — but what it meant to be fed.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • “Gas, Grit, and Grease: The Rise of Breakfast Pizza”

    “Gas, Grit, and Grease: The Rise of Breakfast Pizza”

      Some revolutions don’t come with fanfare. They come with sausage and scrambled eggs baked onto dough, passed across a counter next to a stack of lottery tickets and a bottle of windshield washer fluid.

    Somewhere between Des Moines and nowhere, in a town stitched together by grain silos and family plots, Casey’s joined the great pizza debate. No press release. No rebranding campaign. Just a warm box, steam slipping out the corner, handed to you by someone who probably went to school with your cousin.

    It’s gas station pizza.

    But it’s also breakfast.

    And—maybe more surprising—it’s good.

    Really good.

    Casey’s didn’t ask for the spotlight. But in the vacuum left by Happy Joe’s—the once-beloved Midwest institution now hollowed out by corporate ownership—someone had to carry the flag. And who better than the corner store where people already stopped each morning? For gas. For coffee. For smokes. For a moment of stillness before the engine of the day kicks in.

    Add breakfast pizza to that mix, and you’re no longer just fueling your car. You’re feeding something more—something rooted in routine, in comfort, in community.

    This isn’t fast food. It’s small-town sustenance.

    The crust is soft but holds its weight. The cheese stretches like it’s proud of itself. The eggs—fluffy in a way that shouldn’t be possible from a gas station oven—mingle with sausage, bacon, and a whisper of gravy or ranch, depending on your luck or your location. And there’s something about eating it hot in your car, with the windows cracked, that makes it feel like a secret you didn’t know you needed.

    It’s not trying to be New York thin or Chicago deep. It’s not partisan. It’s not aspirational.

    It’s accessible. And in places long forgotten by the chains and the trendsetters, that matters.

    In these parts, you learn not to turn your nose up at a place just because it sells motor oil next to chicken wings. I’ve had some of the best-fried chicken of my life at a gas station where, for a while, they sold more legs and thighs than unleaded gasoline. The fryer was old, the breading was loud, and the line wrapped around the soda machine.

    The food wasn’t about food. It was about necessity turned into art, about making it work with what you’ve. That’s the ethic here. That’s what breakfast pizza at Casey’s represents—not just a meal, but a moment.

    And maybe that’s what makes it stick.

    Because when the big brands pack up and leave—when the last neon signs flicker out, and the downtown diner turns into a boarded-up memory—it’s places like Casey’s that stay. The ones that evolve without losing their soul. They understand people need something hot in the morning, something easy, something satisfying. Something theirs.

    So, yeah. Put Casey’s in the pizza conversation.

    Not because they outdid Brooklyn or outbaked Naples.

    But because they showed up for the Midwest.

    And sometimes, showing up is everything.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • Bread and Memory: A Loaf, A Legacy

    Bread and Memory: A Loaf, A Legacy

    By Kyle J. Hayes

    Some smells don’t just linger—they haunt. Not in the way a ghost knocks a glass off a table, but in the way they slip beneath your skin, settle deep in your chest, and curl around your ribs like something half-remembered.

    For me, it’s bread.

    The scent of dough rising—warm, yeasty, patient—takes me back to a church that no longer smells like bread and a family that no longer lives above it. The first name I knew it by was “True Faith.” Later, it became Penson Temple Church of God in Christ, named after my great-grandfather, George Penson. It sat sturdy in Chicago, a place where Sundays were long and the sermons longer, but there was always a rhythm to it. Scripture, music, prayer… and the rising of bread.

    Upstairs, above that sanctuary, lived my grandparents. And on certain Sundays, before the Holy Ghost stirred the congregation, something else stirred first. A batch of dinner rolls, tucked under a clean towel, warming in the silence. The smell would drift down into the pews, enveloping the base of the pulpit, blending with the scent of lemon polish and the aroma of old hymnals. And somehow, in that mingling, the church felt even more sacred.

    That recipe is gone now. Nobody wrote it down. Nobody learned it.

    We lose it to time, just as we lose so many things we assume will always be there. We didn’t think to ask, or we didn’t know it mattered. And now, when I bake bread, I am not trying to recreate it exactly. I know I never will. What I am doing is chasing a feeling. Trying to knead memory into flour, water, and salt. Trying to bring back the ghost of a moment I didn’t know I needed to preserve.

    In that pursuit, I’ve learned more than I expected. About precision. About patience. About what happens when you try to rush something sacred.

    And I found this recipe—a humble, sturdy loaf. Nothing fancy. Just good sandwich bread. The kind that makes you feel like the house is full, even when it’s not.

    My Favorite Sandwich Bread Recipe:

    • 350g (1.5 cups) warm water
    • 3g (1 tsp) instant yeast
    • 530g (4 1/4 cups) bread flour
    • 12g (1 tbsp) sugar
    • 20g (1 1/2 tbsp) olive oil
    • 125g (2/3 cup) ripe poolish or sourdough starter
    • 11g (2 tsp) salt

    To Make the Poolish (Preferment):

    • 65g (about 1/2 cup) bread flour
    • 65g (about 1/4 cup) water (room temperature)
    • A pinch of Active Dry yeast
    1. In a small bowl, combine the flour, water, and yeast.
    2. Stir until the ingredients are fully incorporated into a smooth, wet dough.
    3. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a clean towel.
    4. Let sit at room temperature for 24 hours or until bubbly and fragrant.

    Once your poolish is ready, use 125g (about 2/3 cup) of it in the recipe above.

    Instructions for the Dough:

    1. Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix on low for 3 minutes until just combined.
    2. Increase to high and mix for an additional 6 minutes until smooth and elastic. (To mix by hand, knead vigorously on a floured surface.)
    3. Place the dough into a bowl, cover it, and let it rise at room temperature for 2 hours.
    4. After 30 minutes, do a strength-building fold. Cover.
    5. After another 30 minutes (1 hour into rise), repeat the fold.
    6. Let rise for the remaining hour.

    Prepare a 13″x4″x4″ Pullman loaf pan by oiling it with olive oil or butter.

    1. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and gently de-gas it with your fingertips.
    2. Shape into loaf and place seam-side down in Pullman pan.
    3. Cover and let the dough rise for 1 hour or until it has reached 3/4 of the height of the pan.
    4. If using the lid, slide it on before baking. If baking uncovered, lightly score the top of the cake.
    5. Bake at 425°F (218°C) for 40-45 minutes. Remove the lid after 35 minutes if the top is covered and brown.

    Cool completely before slicing.

    The bread will speak for itself. But it will also say more if you let it.

    It might remind you of a kitchen you haven’t stood in since you were eight. Of someone who made space for you in a world that didn’t. Of a church that held both gospel and gluten.

    I bake to remember. I bake to reclaim. I bake because the world is loud, but bread rises in silence.

    And sometimes, that silence smells like home.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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  • A Reflection on the Loss of a Pioneer

    A Reflection on the Loss of a Pioneer

    Today, Sly Stone passed away. And the world doesn’t sound the same.

    They’ll write the obituaries. They’ll tell you about the hits—Everyday People, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) If You Want Me to Stay—and they’ll remind you that Sly and the Family Stone broke barriers: Black and white, male and female, gospel and funk, radical and joyful. But the truth is, you can’t really write Sly down. You have to feel him. You have to let the bassline wrap around your ribs, and the distortion melts into the marrow of your spine. You have to live inside the chaos of his sound to understand what he meant.

    Because Sly didn’t just make music. He reshaped it. He cracked it open and poured revolution into it.

    Before Prince danced across purple stages in high-heeled boots, before he blurred gender and genius in a swirl of falsetto and fire, there was Sly—funk’s wild architect. The Black man with a perm and a prophet’s pen, who wrote soul anthems that doubled as sermons, who saw the future and tried to drag the rest of us toward it, even as it tore at him. Prince stood on the edge of the genre. Sly obliterated it. Rock, soul, funk, psychedelia—he didn’t choose. He claimed them all.

    But unlike Prince, Sly never won the war for his music.

    While Prince famously scribbled “slave” on his cheek and fought Warner Bros. in the spotlight, Sly’s battle was quieter and crueler. He lost ownership of his music early and, with it, a piece of himself. The industry chewed him up like it’s done to so many brilliant Black creators—those who saw something holy in rhythm and melody, only to be left with shadows and unpaid royalties.

    And then there were the drugs.

    Sly fought them like a man wading through water that got deeper with every step. Cocaine, PCP, the ghosts of genius, and pressure and pain. His band fell apart. His voice changed. The clarity in his music faded. And yet… even in the haze, there were sparks. Small Talk. High on You. I heard, ‘Ya Missed Me; Well, I’m Back.‘ But the world had already started turning its head, already writing him off. And that is the tragedy. Because Sly Stone never stopped being brilliant—he just stopped being what the world wanted brilliance to look like.

    We’ve lost so many of our giants this way.

    Lost them not just in death but in the way they were discarded while alive. Donny, Curtis, Rick, Whitney, MJ, Aretha, and now Sly. Black music—our music, foundational Black American music—has always been the soul of this nation. And yet, it’s often treated like a trend: celebrated, consumed, and forgotten. Those artists built the walls of American sound. Brick by brick. Note by note. And now, those walls feel emptier.

    So I ask: Who carries the torch now?

    Who sings not just with talent but with conviction? Who dares to blend funk and message, to stand against the industry instead of smiling for the cover photo? Who speaks truth to power in rhythm and melody and lets their voice sound imperfect, urgent, and human?

    I’m not sure if the next Sly is out there. Maybe we should stop looking for replacements and start remembering the ones we lost—fully. Honestly. Mess and all.

    Sly Stone was more than a funk legend. He was a sound—a movement trapped in vinyl, a spirit screaming through wah-wah pedals and gospel-soaked harmonies. He was the bridge between chaos and groove, between revolution and radio. And today, that bridge is gone.

    Rest in Peace, Brother Sly.

    You never needed permission to change the world.

    You just did it.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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  • Our Music: The Beginning and the End

    Our Music: The Beginning and the End

    A Meditation on Soul, Sound, and the Ghosts That Sing Through Us

    When I was a boy, like most Black children raised in America, I laughed when Africa was mentioned. Not because it was funny but because we had been taught to laugh. Conditioned to see our origin not as a source of pride but as a place of backwardness. What the media didn’t mock outright, it rendered invisible. So, we were left to fill the void with jokes, half-truths, and cartoon images of loincloths and drums. The continent became abstract. It became distant. It became everything but ours.

    But as I grew, so did my questions. And the laughter gave way to a different kind of sound—the sound of knowing.

    We began to ask: When did our music begin? Where did it come from? What did we create in the spaces where even language had been stolen? The answers don’t live in textbooks or museum plaques. They live in the air. They live in the hum of our grandmother’s voice as she cleans. In the moan of a man dragging his feet after twelve hours on the line. In the drumless beat that lived in our throats when all else had been taken.

    Our music began in the fields. Not in studios. Not in arenas. Not even in churches. It started under the weight of cotton, under the eye of the overseer, under the crack of the lash.

    It began as moaning—deep, wordless, and primal. It was the closest thing to prayer many of us could manage. Because to pray, you need hope. And for the enslaved, hope was dangerous. So, instead, we sang.

    We sang to stay sane. We sang to stay human. We sang to stay alive.

    From those field hollers came the roots of something uniquely ours. The Blues.

    They called it the devil’s music. But what they didn’t say is that the devil they feared was the truth. Because the Blues told it. The Blues didn’t pretend. It didn’t cause pain. It set it to a twelve-bar pattern and let it breathe. It made grief rhythmic. It gave loneliness structure. It turned absence into presence.

    This was not Europe’s music. This was not borrowed. This was born. Born from people who had no instruments, so they became them. Born from people who had no nation, so they made one out of sound. Born from people who had every reason to be silent and still found a way to sing.

    We called it the Blues, but it was more than that. It was a ledger of loss. It was oral scripture. It was our way of remembering in a country that told us to forget.

    From the Blues came Soul.

    Not a genre. A declaration.

    You have to understand that Soul wasn’t invented. It was revealed. It was the sound of field songs baptized in Gospel that fed on the Blues and was set loose in cities that never fully welcomed us.

    You can hear it in Sam Cooke’s croon, in Aretha’s roar, in Curtis Mayfield’s quiet thunder. Soul was not about being smooth or marketable. It was about being seen letting the full, ungovernable weight of our joy and heartbreak crash through speakers that once filtered our pain.

    And even then—even at its height—they tried to soften it. To sand down its edges. To make it palatable. Because America has always loved Black music more than it has loved Black people.

    And so came the theft.

    They stole our sound, dressed it in pale skin, and sold it back to us. They took our rawness and gave it polish. Took our sorrow and gave it a spin. They called it rock ‘n’ roll. They called it pop. They called it American.

    They rarely called it Black.

    Our music was repackaged, rerouted, and rendered safe for suburban ears. The Gospel in it muted. The struggle was silenced. What had been born in the crucible of bondage became elevator music. What once carried the weight of chains became background noise for shopping malls.

    And we are supposed to be grateful for the exposure.

    And now, there is another kind of theft creeping in—a quieter one but no less insidious.

    There is a growing chorus of voices from the continent claiming that the musical expressions born in the cotton fields, juke joints, and The Black churches of the American South were not the creations of Foundational Black Americans but rather extensions of African traditions. They say we borrowed our harmonies, our rhythms, our Soul from ancestral roots. And while it is true that rhythm and spiritual depth traveled with us across the Atlantic, what was built here—in the ashes of slavery, in the belly of Jim Crow, in the shadow of redlining—was ours.

    Our music did not evolve in the warm circle of communal drum fires but in the cold silence of forced labor. It did not grow in celebratory dance but in whispered prayer. It was not handed down intact. It was reconstructed from what could be remembered, imagined, and reshaped under duress.

    To say that the Blues is African is to ignore that it was birthed in chains. To say that Soul came from African rhythms is to forget that those rhythms were not allowed to survive intact here.

    The Blues, jazz, Gospel, Soul, hip-hop—these are not direct imports. They are American creations born from the suffering, resilience, and genius of Black Americans. They are ours.

    And now, Hollywood has found a way to tell it back to us. The movie Sinners speaks of the Blues. It drapes the sound in story, in mystery, in the supernatural. It shows the music as a kind of bridge—between generations, between pain and healing, between this life and the next.

    It is not perfect. But it touches something real.

    Because we know—and have always known—that our music is spiritual. Not just in the religious sense. Spiritual as in sacred. Spiritual as in bound to something greater than survival.

    Our music remembers. It remembers those who never had names. It remembers those who disappeared. It remembers what textbooks omitted, what whitewashed museums refuse to say.

    The Blues isn’t just music. It’s mourning. Soul isn’t just rhythm. It’s reclamation.

    There is no true beginning to our music. Because we didn’t arrive here in silence.

    We brought rhythm in our footsteps. We brought the song in our mouths. And when they tried to beat it out of us, we built it back louder.

    And there is no end. Because we are still singing. Still sampling. Still remixing memory.

    You can hear it in Kendrick Lamar’s fury. In D’Angelo’s whispers. In the rasp of Brittany Howard. In every young artist who refuses to let the culture be flattened.

    We don’t need monuments. We have melody.

    We don’t need permission. We have a voice.

    And when we are gone, the music will still be here. Singing the names of those who were never called. Humming the history no one else wanted to write. Telling the truth in a language that can’t be stolen.

    We did not bring instruments. We became them. And we will not go quietly.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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  • Where Are the Heroes?

    Where Are the Heroes?

    A Meditation on What We’ve Lost

    I don’t know when it started. Maybe it was gradual and subtle, like a dimming light you don’t notice until the room is too dark to read by. But one day, I looked around at the screens that raised our children and couldn’t find the heroes.

    I began to notice it with The Boys. It is a show about heroes—but not really. It is a world where the ones with power are most corrupted by it. Where valor is theater, morality is performance, and saviors are mostly just men in costume pretending not to be monsters.

    Then came Spider-Man: No Way Home. A young man with a heart too big for his world, Peter Parker chooses to save even the villains and believes in redemption when the world screams for retribution. In doing so, he loses everything: his aunt, friends, and identity.

    He chooses to be good—and the price is silence, exile, and anonymity.

    Then there’s Invincible, which doesn’t even pretend to be kind. A coming-of-age wrapped in trauma and blood. Where the father figure is a god-turned-murderer, and the son is taught that the universe does not care about kindness. Where hope feels like a joke told too late at a funeral.

    They tell us these shows are for adults like Family Guy, Futurama, and The Simpsons. But they don’t say this: these shows raise children too. And in their worlds, good is outdated. Noble is naive. Heroism is a mask we wear until it no longer serves us.

    When I was young, our heroes were loud. They didn’t ask for nuance. They exploded onto the screen with muscles and missions: Rambo, Chuck Norris, Axel Foley, John McClane. They weren’t perfect, but they were good.

    They stood for something.

    Even in their flaws, they modeled something to reach for. Courage. Loyalty. Sacrifice.

    The soldiers we looked up to weren’t broken men with body counts and vendettas. The cops weren’t corrupt antiheroes buried in procedural nihilism. They were flawed, certainly, but they fought for what was right. And they usually won.

    Now we give our children John Wick—a grieving assassin. Mr. Nobody—a retired government killer with nothing to lose. Deadpool—a mercenary with jokes sharper than his morals.

    They are cool. They are dangerous. But they are not heroes.

    Maybe that’s the lesson. Being a hero doesn’t guarantee success. That goodness is impractical. That mercy gets you killed.

    Evil lived in Sinners (and yes, it was beautiful in its own right). The vampires survived. The message buried beneath symbolism and song is that light doesn’t always win.

    And maybe that’s true. But what do we do with truth when it wounds the spirit?

    What happens to a child raised on stories where every savior falls? What happens to a generation who watches the world through screens that whisper: no one is coming to help you. Everyone is broken. Do what you must.

    I know someone will say, “Heroes still exist. Look to real life.” And yes, there are firefighters, soldiers, teachers, nurses, and parents. But these heroes are buried beneath algorithms, drowned in the noise. Their stories don’t stream on prime time, and their morals aren’t trending.

    And while they live, they are rarely seen.

    But the most painful betrayal comes not from stories in which heroes fall but from stories in which heroes are rewritten.

    Marvel took perhaps the greatest heroic sacrifice in modern cinema—the death of Tony Stark, Iron Man, in Avengers: Endgame. A moment that defined selflessness, courage, and the idea that doing the right thing often costs everything.

    And now, they are planning to bring him back—Robert Downey Jr.—not as Iron Man, not as the man who saved the universe, but as Doctor Doom.

    From savior to villain. From selfless to sinister.

    They will say it’s storytelling. They will say it’s a multiverse. They will say it’s fiction.

    But they are really erasing memory, replacing the legacy of heroism with the ambiguity of moral inversion. In doing so, they are telling a new story to a generation already unsure of what good looks like.

    What hope do we have if Iron Man can be undone and his sacrifice rewritten?

    So, I write this not just as a lament but as a question:

    What does it mean to raise children in a world with no heroes?

    What do we ask of the imagination when every tale ends in blood? What do we feed the soul when victory is reserved only for those who betray the light?

    Because I still believe in the power of a story. I still believe in the need for something to reach for.

    I fear we are telling our sons and daughters that goodness is outdated, honor is inconvenient, and heroism is a lie the world no longer has room for.

    And if that is the case, then we have failed.

    Not just to inspire. But to believe.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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