It’s not pessimistic, brother, because this is the blues. We are blues people. The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark. That’s different.
Cornel West, laying it down for me.
That prisoner of hope thing is the only thing that wakes me up and makes me want to do better. Powered by despair, batteries not included.
I broke down, in tears watching the video of that man getting arrested for sitting on a bench. Couldn’t cry for weeks with Ferguson and all the horrible lack of justice permeating our black lives (so many stories, so many) and this one really brought the “I can’t” in my eyes.
Then to make sure I would be blue the entire weekend I watched the documentary Noirs de France on YouTube, the story of black people in France from the mid 1700s to now, reminding me how and why I have been feeling more and more uncomfortable there. The past year in Paris, because I had problems speaking French I went up a notch on the racist scale, I could read the “that dude is a fucking immigrant who can’t speak” faces but I didn’t care. I’ve seen more, enjoyed more and took more shit than you dear cashier so your pesky judgmental attitude can’t even reach my toes. Fall back.
It’s not just that I have hope I’m also living it more often than not, being friends with so many different and awesome people. In just three months my black ass got new white, black, Mexican and Jewish friends of course Gaza and Ferguson feel like a breach in space time continuum, an insecure past that doesn’t match what I’m living. August 2014 showed me how far society is from me and how fragile multiculturalism is. August 2014 denies my life so much I want to punch that month in the face and choke it to sleep. Fuck you, August 2014.