Heinzel

Scorekeeper, deduct one life

February 15, 2025

We are in the beginning of my first blog written by voice, spoken into the air of the universe and then precariously captured by my headphones, converted into a digital signal, transferred to my computer and transcribed into something that resembles my stream of consciousness.

So, welcome.

We just crossed MacArthur into Washington Park. It’s interesting, walking, talking, trying to pay attention to my surroundings and also articulate my thoughts clearly. But I can edit this later. That’s my safety net.

My whole world has been completely upended after watching the Super Bowl on Sunday. Hannah and I watched it with the little kids, one of their first All American Super Bowl™️©️ experiences with snacks and everything.

We were vaguely rooting for the Chiefs before quickly realizing we seemed to care more than they did. The game was whatever, and then it was halftime.

I was excited about the show. I didn’t know much about Kendrick Lamar or his music coming into this, but I knew enough to know that we were in for a treat. This wasn’t just going to be entertainment. This was a Moment, and he had an opportunity, in front of the world. Was he going to call out Trump directly? Was he going to mention Drake by name?

From start to finish, I was just in awe of the entire thing. I could feel a lot of it going over my head, the deeper meaning, but it was still accessible enough. I think there was something there for everyone to grab onto, even at a surface level.

It’s been interesting to see the depths that people are willing to understand and engage with this performance. All week, my TikTok has been filled up with halftime live reactions, deep dives, and theories. By and large, people Got this thing. It connected, it resonated, and we’re talking about it.

It’s not surprising—sad, but not surprising—that so many people, mostly conservative white people from what I’ve seen, not only refused to engage with this performance but were even offended, as if they were entitied to something else! If the only lyric you recognized was “they not like us” and you were offended by the performance… well, maybe you’re a they. And maybe you should sit with that.

It felt like a stroke of genius that Lamar kept the show so clean. He didn’t swear one time, and the costumes were “safe.” He didn’t have to keep it clean, though I’m sure he was under enormous pressure. But he left absolutely no meat on the bone for anyone left offended by this performance other than to sit with and hopefully reflect upon their own discomfort.

I don’t know how you can watch this performance and not feel something. I don’t know how you don’t see beauty in it, or at least have some curiosity. I think I used to be more tolerant of that kind of willful ignorance, but lately I’ve been exploring what it means to be intolerant of intolerance. Because silence isn’t just passive – it carries responsibility. So I’m not really interested in catering to those who didn’t get the message. I’m not interested in slowing the work of progress to appease those who have chosen to close their hearts and minds.

Was this performance for you? Yes, it was. Whether or not you got what you could have out of it—that’s another story.

In the moment, I didn’t pick up on much of the deeper symbolism. I got the Drake stuff, and when Serena came on... oh my God dude, that was insane. That could be a whole blog by iteself! The shit she got after dancing at the Olympics, the shit she got from Drake. And to see her social afterwards, saying it’s the best 10 seconds of her life! That was next-level.

But that was all secondary to the Narrative. We’ve been moving around the field this whole time, around a big Playstation controller. Sam Jackson has been narrating us through the Great American Game, and his part works on at least a few levels. It’s the criticsm of the White American public who are offended by the performance (“too ghetto”). It’s the voice of pressure from executives that must have been on Lamar to keep his performance within a box. And it represents the rules Black America has to live within every day to survive in this country.

Lamar plays the game for awhile, toning it down, appeasing Uncle Sam/Tom. But soon after, Lamar is hanging with a group of his peers around a steetlight, for which he’s penalized. Just for assembling, for organizing, for existing.

“Scorekeeper, deduct one life.”

He soon sees that the game is rigged for him to lose. So he decides to break free. The game warns him by showing, “Warning Wrong Way” on the video game display in the stands. Will the game correct him, eliminate him, or will he ultimately find a way to break free?

I saw a deep dive on TikTok about the costuming for this performance and the level of depth they went to ensure color consistency, working with manufacturers to get down to the types of fibers that went into the various clothing items to make sure the dyes would adhere to specific Pantone color standards.

Everything was intentional. The level of detail in this performance was staggering. Every costume, every movement, every camera cut—it was all planned.

Did you try and make sense out of the different groups of dancers wearing red, white, and blue? To me it felt chaotic at first, then orderly. Did the red represent Republicans, the blue Democrats, and the white the elites, those in power? You can watch it with that in mind, and there’s something there.

Or maybe the red dancers were blood, danger, chaos. The blue were justice, the law, while the white were angels, purity. Watch it with that in mind and see how that hits.

Kendrick Lamar was laser-focused with this performance and a genius with the power of its symbolism and subtext. He was able to take something as large and messy and complicated as a Super Bowl halftime show and execute a singular vision. He was in total control of how much of the narrative was laid out there for us explicitly and how much was left for interpretation.

And that’s when you know you’re in the terriroty of great art, in the midst of something so large, so powerful and intentional, yet so open to interpretation.

Artists reveal themselves in what they choose to reveal to the viewer.

How do you know if your art is impactful? You can have a weird relationship with your art as an artist. Sometimes things come out a little differently than they did in your head, and it can be bewildering watching people react to something you created that you don’t even know how to feel about.

But we all got to see a master of his craft at his best. And you know it was impactful because so many people are talking about it. It’s been my whole feed this week, all kinds of people sharing live reacts and hot takes.

When you watch him, you can see his laser focus. You see it in his face, his moves, his steps. He’s reheased, and he’s ready.

This is not a man being led by his ego, getting lost in the moment. He knows this is a Moment, and he fucking nails the performance. Every second of it. I can’t even imagine having that kind of pressure, that kind of stage, the weight of the world bearing down on that performance.

And to have that kind of trust in those jeans that you wouldn’t trip on that little flap in the back that catches on the bottom of your shoe sometimes.

On all the levels this performance worked, if I had to boil it down to a single theme, the theme I took away is Revolution.

In case it would get lost on some viewers, this is one of the few things that Lamar is absolutely clear about and speaks directly to the audience in the beginning with, “The revolution is about to be televised; You picked the right time but the wrong guy.”

This is a reference to a song by Gil Scott-Heron from 1971 and, no I am not dictating this part. I am sitting comfortably at my laptop with access to the interwebs for this paragraph. I didn’t know about this song before this week. But basically it talks about the revolution not being televised, glamorized, not something that you can consume comfortably from afar. It won’t be something endorsed by sponsors and broadcast to you. It requires your involvement.

And this is a rare moment where, on the largest stage in our culture, being broadcast on every possible streaming platform, sponsored by the biggest names in advertising, just this once, you do get to see the revolution. And they’re all paying for it. And the struggle and oppression and history of Black America is laid bare before all of us... if we only choose to engage. “Scorekeeper, deduct one life.”

But what does a Revolution look like? Am I allowed to be included? Or am I like my Mom, who once went a whole week on a cruise ship, loudly saying, “ni hao ma” to everyone who she deemed to be vaguely Chinese, feeling like she was spreading some form of world peace?

I think we can draw some inspiration from the performance. It wasn’t Lamar alone at the end. It took a battle, there were some losses, but in the end, everyone was unified. All the colors came together, and it took all of them to work as one to get to the circle button (“cancel” in Playstation world) and exit the game. He ended his set with “tv off,” and “Game Over” displayed in the stands.

When I picture a Revolution, I picture a bunch of white dudes in wigs and colurful costumes fighting with swords and muskets. Maybe there’s some tea nearby being pushed off a pier. Who knows.

But in the context of what it would mean today, I don’t know. This wasn’t a message of violence. This wasn’t a message of division. I know that we all play a part. Being White, and watching this all Black performance, a good place to start was to listen.

And so all week, Kendrick Lamar has been dominating (and confusing) my Apple Music algorithm, especially after flooding it with Moana songs with the kids last week. It’s been a trip hearing Martin and Luna bust into “Not Like Us” around the house.

And while maybe they don’t get the deeper meaning, and maybe we are a bit like my mom on that cruise ship at times, these kids are going to grow up aware of their privilege; aware of the injustices in our systems. I want them to know what “40 acres and a mule” means. I want them to know that they play a part.

I’ve long since ended my walk. I’m now in the living room by Hannah, who is sleeping as Star Trek (TNG) keeps company with the dogs and I. I’m just typing straight into my computer now, like an old-school blog.

The process of recording this blog by dictating it, transcribing it and then editing it was... really fun. It was a bit clunky at first, but there were some fun surprises. For one, it kept me moving, literally and with my “writing.” I wasn’t able to sabatage the entire writing session by getting stuck in an editing loop in the first paragraph. It was fun and easy to start, which is valuable because my best material usually doesn't make it past the “I should write that down” stage.

Another nice side effect was that I found it much easier to be authentic, or at least know when I started to bullshit, when speaking aloud in the park potentially in earshot of other people and squirrels. You can get so far inside your own head writing sometimes, and walking through the real world letting your mind spill out into it... is invigorating! Also, everyone has headphones on, and nobody cares anyway.

Ok, it’s midnight. Thanks for listening to my long rambling thoughts about the halftime show. It was nice to get that all down before this moment gets away from me. Pretty soon my TikTok will be back to dark fantasy and model railroad content. But tonight I’m looking forward to putting on “All the Stars” and letting the algoritm do the rest. Goodnight!