Just some July Thoughts

Living in a contradiction

Sometimes I wonder how is it that we continue to grasp for air.

That despite living within a deep web of contradiction, we continue to fight within the systems

We search for clarity using they tools, they schools, and following all of they rules.

We walk around searching for fame and recognition knowing that shit we might die soon.

As if using they logic will every amount to anything other than using the master’s tools.

As an artist I feel like I’m fighting to stay aware

Stuck between commodity and consumption with nowhere to run

Gas tank on E as I continue to produce “art” for something bigger than me.

I feel guilty clinging to entrepreneurship when I know that it is really rooted in capitalism.

But what can you do but live within the contradiction?

Capitalism leaves no way out, no exit, no escape, no landing

It acts as a wave of selfish destruction and invisible deception

It is a weapon of mass destruction wiping out the world as we speak.

I hope that one day we will be able to escape this contradiction.

1- Contradiction

This week I was caught in another productive wave but didn’t know whether I should enjoy it or feel shame for it. Sometimes I regret turning my art into a profit. Shit, it took me 4 years to even recognize that what I was doing was making art. I love my creative blast of energy but at what cost? Do I really want to make it? How will I even know once I have made it? Can I make it without selling my soul to capital? Have I already sold my soul to the capital? I know one thing tho: Capitalism can’t steal my creativity. I have to keep remembering that art is about living and, that if I do nothing else, living is enough. Art is about energy and sometimes you gotta let energy lead you,. Sometimes I really feel like I’m living in the matrix. The matrix is nothing but a big contradiction. We have the tools to get out but will we? We know these schools suck, but what will we do about it. We know that supremacy is well and alive, but will we rise to the occasion or just simply live within the contradiction?

2- teaching not by the book

As a young educator, I find it so hard to not get caught in this web of discipline and professionalism. I talked to Professor Stovall this week and he said it is always about circumventing living within the contradiction. When schools leave you with a punitive discipline, you actually move towards a more liberatory practice. Education is alive but schools serve as sites of death. Sites of epistemicide- the killing of knowledge. I refuse to be complicit. We find ourselves asking students to check themselves at the door, leaving behind the profanity, the swag, the authenticity. I refuse to be complicit within a system that feeds on the hopes and dreams of Black and Brown youth. I talked to Carmen Marseille, an education administrator on the Southside this week and she reminded me, “Being a teacher is being a lifelong advocate for students.” This is for me. I am meant to be here. Teaching fugitively. Teaching so that when it is time we can begin to run.

3- Badass Sonia

I am learning from Black Feminist/Womanists daily and I wanted to share this excerpt from a poem called Depression by Black Arts and Black Studies Movement giant Sonia Sanchez found in Homegirls and Handgrenades. Sonia Sanchez with her poetic militancy has brought me so much joy over the past few weeks. Her work has taken me through feelings of anger, joy, sadness, and love. Check this video to see her commanding words with such grace in her youth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQBKnWQ8ES8&ab_channel=BlackLikeVanilla