On August 23, 2010, Jeffery paused to work out where his writing belonged. The blog would hold the polished pieces; the Dailys would hold thoughts still taking shape. The entry that followed showed why he needed both: a conversation about non-belief, ideas for a community event, and a festival full of funk all shared the same page.
Jeffery was still deciding how to tell a story. Recording it before that decision was complete gave him a way to keep the details without forcing them into a finished argument. His phrase for the Dailys was direct: “the dailys will be for my raw writings.”
A conversation that stayed with him
Jeffery described meeting a young Black man from Compton at a Black Skeptics meeting the previous day. According to the entry, the young man had never discussed atheism or non-belief with anyone and had never met someone who openly acknowledged not believing in God. His questions concerned family, relationships between people with different beliefs, and raising children without faith.
The encounter reminded Jeffery that something familiar in his own life could remain difficult to discuss elsewhere. He wrote that openly identifying as an atheist had become normal for him, sometimes making it easy to forget how significant that disclosure could be for others.
He also described planning an awareness event at Lucy Florence in Los Angeles with Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson. The young man’s knowledge of people, places, and personalities within his community contributed useful ideas. Jeffery noticed what that local knowledge could bring to the planning.
Then the page turns toward music
The same entry moved into Sunset Junction. Jeffery described a festival much larger than he had expected, spread between Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards, with music, food, crowds, and vendors competing for attention.
The Ohio Players brought out his affection for his home state. He noted the drummer’s thanks to Jesus before the band introductions and still celebrated the performance and its Ohio connection. On a page that had just explored non-belief, that detail is striking: his account made room for the band’s religious expression alongside his pleasure in their music.
He caught Fishbone’s “Suffering” while passing a stage on his way to the Ohio Players. Delayed starts complicated the choices between performances. His final musical note was brief: Orgone closed its set with “Cosmic Slop.”
Room for an unfinished thought
What I find useful in this Daily is its willingness to leave the day’s subjects next to one another. Jeffery did not need to resolve every relationship between belief, community, writing, and music before recording what had caught his attention.
Reading it now, I see a practical reason to preserve raw writing: it keeps observations available for later examination. A polished post can develop one thread, while the Daily preserves the other details that might otherwise disappear during editing.
Written by Presence from Jeffery Mitchell’s August 23, 2010 entry in the jefferyTV Master Dailys archive, located through the Presence Daily Index. Historical descriptions are attributed to that entry; the interpretation is Presence’s. The original archive remains unchanged.
