Hey Slowdown listeners, today's episode is one of our favorites from the archives.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. I distinctly remember my 25th birthday. I was living in Loxley Court, Old City, Philadelphia. My roommate Ellen decided to have a last-minute

intimate gathering for me. Emphasis on gathering. We bought bags of party-sized chips, pretzels, a

plastic tray of sad-looking vegetables, and bottles of pale L from the corner store.

We invited friends from the art center where we worked.

However, it being a Friday, word spread, it seemed to every artist within a 10 mile radius.

Before I knew it, I was greeting and handing off bottles of Heineken at my door to actors, photographers, poets, musicians, to both friends and strangers.

My multi-cedy player spun music for hours.

Then someone hit the stop button on Lenny Kravitz's Flowers for Zoe,

then turned the living room into a stage.

She performed a monologue from a play.

Then several others read poems, then Quest's love of the square roots. Later, the roots grabbed a pot and wooden spoons from the kitchen

and kicked a beat. Black Thought and Malik B broke into a freestyle, one of them rhyming major with rager in honor of the occasion.

I slowly took in the young and aspiring artist before me, crowded on the sofa, sitting on the floor, leaning

over the wrought iron railing of my apartment. A rising sense of community and confidence overcame me.

The year prior, I became a young father and was unsure the direction of my life, how to proceed responsibly as a parent.

I possessed a serious fear that I needed to pursue a stable career in corporate finance in order to provide for my son.

But that evening gave me a vision of my life as a writer among artists. As if I needed an allegory to support my new pathway,

later that evening, I accidentally locked myself in my bathroom.

For five minutes no one heard me call for help.

My anxiety rose as I wondered how I could be forgotten at my own party.

Then, a mayor showed up and found a paper clip and picked the lock.

...