Tag: Chance the Rapper

Light Amid Darkness

Frankie has been a consistent source of light amid this darkness. Upon waking from her nap yesterday, she asked to go to “Dada’s House,” with “house” sounding a bit like “horse.” Why have I been inattentive to her here in these trance-scripts? She likes Dada’s House. She requests that we go there, cries if we don’t. Cats; playgrounds. Beautiful tall houses ‘round a bend. What’s not to like? Perhaps tomorrow we can embark on a stroller ride ‘round town. Time to stop ruminating. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy,” sing The Tams.

By nightfall, my sentiments align with a line from Chance the Rapper’s “Blessings”: “When the praises go up,” he sings, “the blessings come down.” Blessings make us feel, make us like as they land in our lap. Let us ready ourselves with praise.

Time to communicate lovingly, share the love out on the streets, hang with neighbors, chat with artists, bond through shared love of Buffalo Poetics and Black Mountain College. I feel like a lightning bug: if not a social butterfly, still a giver of gifts. 2022 will be a Lovers Year. Right now, though, I feel a bit crushed. Hurt. Heartbroken. Awaiting something beyond silence — some new adventure. For tonight I feel apart from the life I imagined. The narrative coordinates that have held are about to change, thinks the Time Traveler, scalp pricked and hands stigmata’d by impetigo. The hope is that love will prevail. And it does, it does, as soon as I listen to the record of the year: Moor Mother’s Black Encyclopedia of the Air.

Tuesday February 26, 2019

Upon my eyelids, a multimedia facade similar to the one envisioned by Keiichi Matsuda in his “HYPER-REALITY” video.

Perhaps I should walk. Moments later, I write into my phone, “We are walking in our minds. Trees are our dendrites. Strolling under the branches, admiring their storage of light, I imagine myself as an explorer of a rediscovered memory palace.” A student of color rhapsodized, reminisced, spoke of the ongoing significance to him of Chance the Rapper. He’d been a fan, the student said, since the artist’s first mixtape, 10 Day. It made me feel a bit ancient, as if I were John Henry, surrounded by machines. And yet the heightened drama of the university recognizing itself as a corporate ruin shakes me back to attention. The line that leaps out at me from the mixtape: “I burned too many brain cells down to be worried about brain cells now.” That’s basically what some of my students seem to think about trees. The mythology is strictly Adidas chasing Nike.