I've seen this before but it hasn't presented an issue, now I need to do some editing and finding it difficult... on a couple of tracks in the piece I'm working on, the audio information is black and I can't seem to use the Smart cursor, even though Smart is selected, it defaults to Draw... I'm sure this is a simple setting issue, but I've been looking and cannot figure out how to change it back to normal.

Correction: it's not defaulting to Draw, but it is defaulting to "Select" instead of Smart...

Make sure the Edit Filter on the track(s) is set to Clips.

Thank you, is that something that gets automatically changed during some other process? I certainly did not change it consciously.

The Edit Filter is used to enable and show automation envelopes and transient markers. Taking any action that enables an envelope, like writing automation, or enabling Audiosnap via the Audiosnap Palette automatically changes the Edit Filter to show and highlight the relevant object and restricts the Smart tool to operating on that object type.
 
I can't really think how you would do any of those things inadvertently, but the clip foreground color used to display MIDI notes and waveform traces goes black when the Edit Filter isn't set to Clips, so I'm guessing you were doing something with automation or Audiosnap at some point and the Edit Filter changed accordingly.
 
 

Yep, now I know, the devil's in the details.