Zone One

Buy here or check out at your local library. (Don’t go to the Jeff Bezos website).

—

The first time I saw a man die was in 2025. 

I assume that I will remember it forever, but none of us can really make a claim like that, and really there’s something frightening about the rapidity at which we take things in and how that dynamic can just push big, memorable stuff right out. I’m glad that I don’t think about night every single day, but I probably should, and I don’t love that the reason I don’t is probably just because of inundation with algorithmic content. 

All that said, I do remember it quite clearly. He was about 10 feet in front of me, and the most beautiful voice was singing to me while he died. I’d driven five hours earlier that day to hear that voice sing. No one was supposed to die. 

All I did was sit there. Reasonably, there wasn’t anything else for me to do. The situation played out so that I could either be an unhelpful (arguably counterproductive) actor or I could be an entirely passive witness. Choosing the latter made the experience entirely observational. To note someone’s death. To note the people around you. The voice singing. To note the person who knew and loved that dying man. To consider yourself and the situation you’re in and to shift from Please help this man to I am very likely seeing a man dying and for the situation to play out long enough for you to even note I’ll probably remember this forever.

It wasn’t until many months later, in a very roundabout way, that I received actual confirmation that the man had died. But I knew that night. 

--

You don’t really need to audit a literature class to realize that Zone One is a metaphor. You’ll more or less get that. Most zombie depictions in media are. But Whitehead makes bits and pieces clear in certain passages in ways that will straight up knock you out. 

To reach a certain point in a post-apocalyptic world, to have survived and lost at the same time. To still be running but mostly be asked and willing to be functioning. Whitehead can make it look intensely, terrifyingly familiar. He can make it look almost structured. 

The characters walk around with PASD (Post Apocalyptic Stress Disorder). They’ve been hyper-exposed to death. That might seem obvious. It does make you think, though: What does it mean to have a mental disorder, if at a certain point, everyone else has it, too?

-

Cécile McLorin Salvant belongs in a superlative conversation. She’s as gifted and creative of a singer as exists in contemporary music, and her choices - discerning but often still joyful - are so exact and so precious that I think you could argue there is not a better musician alive, at least in the sense that you can make such a ridiculous claim about anyone. (She is a multiple Grammy winner and MacArthur Genius Award winner)

New York-based jazz musicians do not always tour in Dallas, so I had never seen her play. I don’t think it was anything personal. (A smart Dallas promoter once told my wife that the grand piano that Salvant would bring is no easy feat for a small or mid-sized venue to abide. Certainly not prohibitive but booking her wouldn’t be something you’d do spontaneously without some thought to how much it sells, etc.). When she announced a show in San Antonio, a drive down to one of our favorite cities and a night in a cheap hotel seemed like a no-brainer. 

A Salvant show feels spontaneous (this, you might say, is more or less how jazz works). She has what my wife and I love most in a musician: a reverence for standards. And she has what makes her great: an ability to deliver them with complete originality, like you’re learning about them for the first time. She and her piano player, Sullivan Fortner, weren’t literally taking requests, but the way they were joyfully picking songs and improvising on the spot felt communal. 

We were on the left side of the stage. About 10-12 rows back. The man was about five rows in front of us, almost directly in front of my seat, maybe one to the right. I thought I had noticed him struggling a bit three or four songs in, but it seemed more likely he was adjusting in his seat - I believe he had arrived a minute or two late and might have been winded. 

When he started leaning far back in his seat about five minutes later, I just watched for what felt like an eternity but was probably about 30 seconds. In retrospect, sure, this man was dying, and I might have known that. But the most beautiful voice was singing, and in that exact moment, it is a choice to pull your wife away from that to ask her, “Is that man having a heart attack?” when she has not noticed and would have absolutely no idea the answer to that question.

Obviously, other people, much closer, were having these thoughts. Fast forward, a couple more eternities that realistically added up to about 90 seconds and the man was in the aisle, on the ground. A woman of about 45, who was a doctor, dressed to see Cécile McLorin Salvant sing, was next to him in what seemed like a millisecond (realistically about 35 seconds). Isn’t it crazy how people are able to step up in those situations? She needed a second person to help her do CPR. That person fancied themselves a know-it-all about CPR, but the doctor corrected them fairly aggressively in light of the situation’s urgency. 

--

I remember thinking it was almost my responsibility to not say anything during the long period of uncertainty. I would hold my wife’s hand and make occasional eye contact. The EMTs were on their way. That felt like it was taking too long. He wasn’t moving. Then they got there. And it didn’t seem like anything they were doing was making him more alive. 

I remember the man’s partner (I assumed it was his wife). The man looked to be in his sixties, as did she. Looking back, I think she was in shock and the rest of the audience was in a kind of shock. Her shock filled me with a kind of deep sadness. She was not crying. She didn’t seem terrifyingly worried. She looked to be waiting for instructions, worried but potentially in denial that the situation was as bad as it was. She was clearly ready to follow him to the hospital.

Shock might not be the right word for the audience. Discomfort. If anything, they seemed uncomfortable with the silence, and I think that’s what I was rebelling against, but you can’t drown out muffled chatter with your own silence. 

More than once, I heard some version of, “You couldn’t ask for a better way to go” with the implication being that dying while hearing Salvant sing in-person is a preferable way to die. You can say a lot of things when you are uncomfortable, but I think you should try not to say something that is deeply offensive. 

--

Salvant is a theatrical singer. Elements of cabaret are almost at play in spurts. Even if that were not the case, a musician would not be expected to notice what is going on in one section of the audience. She noticed the incident well after I did. So, as crass as it may seem to put it in these terms, she was singing while he was dying. 

I do believe what Salvant and Fortner went through that night was traumatic. Delivering that type of music under any circumstances is heavily emotional. I was close enough, and I watched them. Maybe their faces are what I’ll never forget. Salvant noticed first and then stopped Fortner. As the scene played out, they sat next to each other on the piano bench. Salvant looked deeply distressed the entire time. Fortner had a slight smile, the sort you have to draw attention away from yourself or let someone know you’re OK; the look you’d give a friend if they made eye-contact with you while someone else was crying as they delivered a eulogy. 

On an existential level, I don’t know what to do with the idea of that man leaving the world while hearing someone perform whom I had made a five-hour pilgrimage to see in-person. I’m not really sure if there’s anything there. When I say things like “music is magical,” I don’t really mean anything like that. 

We all walk around with some kind of trauma, most likely. How visceral the experience was might not be relevant to how deep its claws are hooked into you. The music, or whatever it may be, I think is for coping with it. Making it or consuming it. Sometimes that trauma and that coping device are going to look each other in the face. But you really could never take Salvant’s music away from me. 

I wish nothing but peace to that man’s partner. I called it shock a few paragraphs up, but it’s probably the bravest I’ve ever seen a person appear. 

My Top 5 Albums of 2025:

I listened to more than 200 albums that came out in 2025. How many more than 200? I don’t know. But definitely more than 200. Since January, I’ve been keeping track of any that might make my final top-5 list. And of course, it was very hard to narrow down. But I did it. A lot of good albums came out this year. But these were the best, in no particular order:

-Alfredo 2 - Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist

-Evangeline vs. the Machine - Eric Church

-Dali Ain’t Dead - Zelooperz

-Daughters - Jennifer Walton

-Live Laugh Love - Earl Sweatshirt

Listen to all five of em! (I have two great honorable mentions, but you know what? That would be cheating).

‘Til next time buckaroos…