Day 21: "Anita Baker Introduced Us and Patrice Rushen Did the Rest"

Ed Pavlić (Oxford American, Winter 2023)

In this twenty-two-day series, we are counting down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“As I watch Ric dance his little dance and chop out that double-beat with his left hand, stepping out with his right foot when the high hat closes, and while the backup chorus and Patrice Rushen trade repetitions of Baby when I found you, I know I’ve arrived somewhere I’ve never been. For all we know it’s a place that’s never been; maybe whenever something like this happens it happens for the only time. And again. Every time. And maybe one day this song will be about a wedding, a wedding inside some unrealized revolutionary rocking back and forth, but here and now it’s about a meeting, a friendship, an intimacy even closer than skin on skin.” 

—Ed Pavlić, “Anita Baker Introduced Us and Patrice Rushen Did the Rest,” Oxford American, Winter 2023.