The Free List : Issue No. 6
THE GOD HAS BECOME SUPERFLUOUS
// song as direct connection to ancestors >>
I talk about music or a song, rather, as something that arises or rises above the surface. The music is always present and sometimes it enters the realm of the heard, but it is not that when there is silence there is “no music”, or, when there are words that are not readily identified and qualified as “music” in the dying over-culture, that means that there is no song. There is always/all ways song. Song is entered and re-entered like river water.
Like identity in many ways (the, where are you from?, question), Genres have done me great damage artistically, but more importantly, spiritually. Genres have stifled and confused me. Genres have contorted and broken me into pieces because I believed the lie of their primacy.
Like the Berlin “conference,” genres used to confuse me out of understanding my connection to South Africa: the fact that the Bantu people are all over Africa, not just in one part. Not just the western part or the southern part. All African people are nomadic. Nomadicism, the fluidity of the movement of my people, leaves me free—restoring my ability and my right (“right” as in the correctness, and as in justice) to do that in my own life: to enter and re-enter a never-ending current of song. And to answer to call to sing.
Pan-Africanism is a fact because Ubuntu is a fact.
This is the embedded, embodied knowledge beyond national and international borders. Beyond the borders of the body. Songs live on sound and water waves and carry through Time. Songs carry us back, through, up, and onto our knees for prayer.
Songs have saved my life.
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Priestess of Odua, Egbado-Yoruba, Nigeria, 1975.
This god has become superfluous
I was alone and helpless and saw it grow dark and formless everywhere, and searching I ran to find out whither all the brightness had fled. And I saw a new building whose windows were radiant, and over its doors light burned clear as day, and I went in through a gateway and entered an illuminated hall. Many people had assembled here and sat silent and attentive, for they had come to the priests of knowledge to find consolation and light.
And just so had the God of War arisen, and the servant of wisdom explained clearly and distinctly where the first images of that god had been raised, and when the first sacrifices had been made to him—until later, with the triumph of knowledge, this god had become superfluous.
—Hermann Hesse, “The Dream of the Gods”, 1914.
What are the gods that have become superfluous that perhaps should not be? What are the gods that should be that aren’t?
Have-to’s and shoulds and stale obligations are gods. Perhaps the most invisible.
Why do you have to? / Who says?
Why should you? / Who told you?
Who benefits?
* Shoutout to James-Olivia Chu Hillman and Disobedience School for inspiring these questions. <3
NOW, PUMPKIN, JUST DON’T WORRY ABOUT APPLYING THESE QUESTIONS TO VOTING AND VOTE. VOTE FOR BIDEN, IF THAT’S NOT EXPLICITLY CLEAR TO YOU IN “VOTE”. LIVE TO VOTE ANOTHER DAY.
Hearing people mull and maw over whether or not they’re going to vote is absolutely horrifying to me, and not in the fun way we get thrills on this time of year. It’s not the “boo!” where someone pops from behind a bush and we squeal, scatter, and laugh as we remember, somewhere in the back of our minds that we’ll die one day and so we laugh because we’re alive. It is instead, the kind of “Boo!” that insists on the imminence and immediacy of death, especially Black death. Not that we’ll die one day, but that we’ll keep insisting right now on the deaths of so many who would be helped by very basic policy change and admission of national interconnectedness--interpersonal existence.
So here’s some good fright for you or for someone you know who needs it,
“Boo!,” we’re not on own out here. “Boo!” We can’t take the benefits of the nation without the responsibility. It’s actually impossible: “Boo!”
And, it is true: electoral politics are not a panacea. They’re a fire extinguisher. Sure, you can run from a burning house, and sure, it is your “right” to run away, but it doesn’t stop the house from burning. Pull the pin and put out the damn fire.
I’m also reminded of a conversation I was in this week with a South African Shaman (yes, I have conversations with Shamans :0)). He was asked about how you know you’re ready to answer your calling (once you realize you have one) and he said something along the lines of, “readiness has become so individualized. If you have a calling, the evidence is everywhere all around you and in your body. You have a calling. It’s not an individual experience. A calling is a calling and it’s not going anywhere.”
Early voting begins in New York this Saturday and ends on Haitian Gede, November 1st.
A few years ago, I started teaching myself more about this time of year in Black traditions. In spiritual circles, this time--October to December-- is known to be the time of year when the veils between worlds, particularly the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead, are thinnest. On Samhain (pronounced “Sow-ehn”), now more commonly known as Halloween, we see this as people dressing up like skeletons and eating lots of food that will kill them faster; the veil is not only thin on October 31st, but also, throughout every Indigenous people’s day, election season, Samhain and Haitian Gede. (The veil remains thin into thxgiving and the height of consumption season, Black Friday. Now, considered a "holiday" on the Goo-gorian calendar, Black Friday measures our fear and avoidance of the reality of death.)
Haitian Gede is essentially a day full of life, dance, and festivity to honor the dead. Offerings are made, rum drank, and songs sung. The connection between fertility--the what and how life begins--and the world of the dead is re-membered.
Haitian Gede is also known by some as All Souls Day/All Saints Day. As Gede goes down, billions of candles are lit across Mexico and the diaspora for Dia de los Muertos. Throngs upon throngs of people leave most of the sugary treats to their departed on the other side, keeping just a few for the little children, squealing and darting through the gravestones.
For the past two years, I have chosen my performance dates as close to Haitian Gede as possible. Songs of Speculation ran at JACK, November 1-3rd, 2019, and my Joe’s Pub concert, Blue Ink, happened last year on November 4th.
This year, I didn’t have to plan it out. November 1st, I will be celebrating the audio transmission of Songs of Speculation, Songs of Speculation (excerpt), winning a huge award with Third Coast International Audio Festival. Learn more about the honor here.
Hear Songs of Speculation (excerpt) on the incredible audio-experimental platform, category : other, created by Ben Williams. Thank you, Ben, for working with me on this piece and helping me honor the ancestors in this way. November 1st, we’ll be dancing and sugaring for many reasons.
Like I said, Songs have saved my life. <3
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All of the work here is brought to you by the gifts of our Ancestors; seen and unseen, known and unknown. May we remember our rising, may we light the shadows. May we all together thrive.
