Literature

i write therefore i write.

carte blanche

/kärt blänSH/ [noun] the complete freedom to act as one wishes. a column with Intermission Magazine.

no. 5: “ms d, day twenty eight thousand, two hundred and sixty three” - a one act closet drama.

no. 4: “notes on the midway” - change is unbearably slow, that is the agonizing sincerity of it.

no. 3: “dear theatre cough” - theatre is a life i live and wheeze, we are a coughing culture, are we not? maybe that’s why people keep mistaking us for dying.

no. 2: “ten impressions of house and home” - this house is made of people. which means that it is alive, which means life doesn’t have to be this way.

no. 1: “kärt blänSH (n): complete freedom to act as one wishes” - welcome.

dispatch: 18:31, june 1st 2020

to the white and nonblack people addressing racism directly for the first time in their lives, i’m curious - why now? considering that this exact racial situation has been occurring at a steady rate, without intermission and with several crescendoes, for hundreds of years - what was your personal tipping point? what was it that awakened you to the fact that you are indeed consequential in this reality and that this reality includes racism and therefore racism includes you? 

i want to talk about how a lot of you are describing your delayed response to a centuries-old urgency as due to being scared, as being scared to say the wrong thing, and i’m curious: what was at the root of that fear? what were you scared would happen if you spoke out against racism and took anti-racist actions? were you scared that black people would say you’re doing it wrong and make you feel embarrassed? were you scared that the same racists that come for us would come for you too and you might start to receive the same treatment that we do? were you scared of the truth? is there a silent agreement amongst you not to speak of these things and you were scared of breaking that? 

i want to know what is at the bottom of that feeling because when i hear of that fear it makes me wonder… if that fear is rooted in the same “fear” cops shoot black people about; the same “fear” that white women lie and fake cry about. i think that fear might be something to investigate within yourselves and it’s likely a fear that is easily tracked and accounted for in history and sits alongside this illusion, and delusion, of white innocence and white fragility. i think a lot of white people are scared black people are going to “come for them” if they don’t do “not-racism” right and that is something you need to dig into, this idea that black people are scary, the idea that progress, and conversations necessary to progress, are too scary for innocent, fresh and sensitive you. 

this is one of the most consistent forms of “microaggressive” racism that i encounter: white people have reiterated, in a variety of ways, on numerous occasions, directly to my face, that they understand themselves to be inherently more innocent than me and my people, which i find to be a truly remarkable twist of reality, considering, as some of you are awakening to, the violence inherent in whiteness. 

it is a fear that has pressured us into silence in at least two ways, one is because - contrary to popular narratives - we are human and empathetic and therefore can feel your fear and often don’t say anything because our goal isn’t your discomfort; it is our liberation, and we have been forced into a habitual pattern (for many reasons, some necessarily self-preserving) of protecting and privileging your comfort over our expression. the second way this fear silences our truth is the way it plays upon and reinforces the very easy-to-access and extremely insensitive and diminishing stereotype of The Angry Black Person. even this post, as i write it, i’m aware it can and will be taken as a form of aggression instead of what it is: me taking time out of my busy and oppressed life to help you, so that you can best participate in helping the evolution of humanity as a whole. because we actually are in this together and when i say “this” i mean this planet, this species; we are inextricably linked and our collective progress has been held back by the relentless persistence of racism and the silence that enables it. 

i would much rather be spending my time thinking about the universe as a hologram, my brain as a hologram; i am meditating in order to transcend the limitations of the mind and this form and just when i think i’m getting somewhere i realize i can’t leave the limitations of my mind because that would translate as silence and complacency and then i was quiet as we were killed, i wasn’t paying attention, and so then i have to re-engage with the baseness that is racism. the conversation of black humanity aka “wait… are black people actually… people???” is such a lowly conversation, like i actually find it hard to even get behind the phrase black lives matters only because the language of simply mattering sounds like the smallest of small requests that a people can make, especially a people who have endured so much cruelty, with so much grace, kindness, innovation and courage.

and still, still, this assertion, profound in its humbleness, is narratively demonized and systematically criminalized, as we are witnessing in the streets of america today.

i don’t want to just matter. every single form on this planet constitutes matter and, once black people said it, everything suddenly #matters from house music to stratford to insurance. blackness is beyond matter to me. blackness, to be born into a black body, is to be born into a body that is a portal for profound understanding, deep consciousness and an unprecedented capacity for love. blackness is a portal between this reality and the great void, the great unknown, that’s where we pull our unbounded creativity and inventiveness from. blackness is omnipresent, blackness is transcendental, blackness is whole, and black lives are of the utmost importance to the success and survival of the species, and the planet, that we are all in and on together. 

phobia relates to fears. examine your fears diligently.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE.  

. 

Spotlight: Weyni Mengesha

an artist feature on weyni mengesha.

for Intermission Magazine.

“People want authenticity, that’s what they want. Yeah, you can try to fit yourself into their mould, but then— they want to grow too. And that’s been my thing, my fight— to stay true to myself. Audiences respond when I stay true to myself, not when I compromise.” 

photo by dahlia katz

I FIND AGE A LAZY MEASUREMENT.

an audio essay for CBC Radio's Out In The Open. 

HOW OLD ARE YOU? THE AGE OLD QUESTION OF NO IMPORTANCE. 

FOR Intermission Magazine.

missa solemnis

when i woke up the sky was already blue with a wide stroke of peach and i held it with my eyes hoping it would be enough to hush the crowded lobby in my head. i fell back asleep, so to speak, and when i woke the sky was already grey and i imagined a summer that had traces of you.

i am writing this with my hand and my mind is in his apartment instructing my mouth to tell him things about myself because i just want to try because i just think we should because it felt like escape and made the world disappear as he played his guitar and i became thirteen again. 

HIGHWAY

i was in the back seat of the car, looking out the window, deciding that mustard fields were unnaturally yellow. i didn’t even like mustard at that point, and had only seen the hot dog kind, which was, come to think of it, also unnaturally yellow. clearly, something was wrong with mustard. 

my friend was driving and singing along to a song that was playing out on a mix cd called roadtrippinballs. her window was down and single stands of dark blonde hair floated into my personal back seat area. i immediately looked for split ends. i found none. 

i’ve never liked the term 'shotgun' for the seat in the car that also happens to be the most dangerous. i think it’s an unlucky omen to attach to a very risque position and i also believe that naming is claiming and rhyming is timing.

the joint was finally passed my way. the end was wet and i thought about how grossed out my mother would be if she knew that i was putting something this wet in my mouth. but i was teenager committed to rebelling. i inhaled deeply and held my breath. my brain started to float and a feeling of quiet success crept within my skins. 

i’ve never really done anything that bad. yet. i haven’t really done anything that bad yet, but i will, i just haven’t decided exactly what right now and i don’t want to waste it on a whole bunch of little things. i just want to do one very bad thing. or two. but maybe just one. something memorable. something that sets into motion a wave of satisfaction that will ripple through me for at least the next ten years after which i’ll have to do something bad again to rejuvenate the feeling but at least i’d be familiar with it and got to spend some time feeling satisfied. 

i exhaled and immediately felt like sleeping. the sky was large and blue. there was a pool of water at the end of the road that was definitely a set up. probably pigs, i thought in a voice that sounded like the bottom of the ocean. oh wait - it’s a mirage, i thought in my regular voice. i always forget about those probably because i don’t understand them. 

a red car drove past us. there was a man driving, maybe in his forties. it looked like his wife was beside him. it looked like they hadn’t spoken in years. 

highway1 by bahia watson © 2014