1. |
Safe World
02:57
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I pat my pockets to see; wallet, house keys, and cell phone
K, I’m good to leave my house now
I touch the back of my head
I don’t have a two-mirror system so I can’t see my hair back there
If it feels alright, I reach for the door and go
But when I leave I don’t think about the people who could hurt me
The people who have hurt me
The chaos outside my bedroom
Oh, because I live in a safe world
I live in a world that’s safe for me
I live in a world that was made to be safe for people like me:
People with money; men with light skin; able-bodied cis-folk who just blend in
I’m not visibly queer
Half my family is white
I live in the heart of the empire so I’ll be alright
So, Nathan is driving the car and we are going real fast down 70 Eastbound and I am
Thinking about the role that the presumption of safety plays in my daily life, all the time
Fear simply underpins life for so many while I rarely ever feel threatened in a serious way
That’s a significant difference that I need to be mindful of
To be helpful to my friends and favs
I think about the function fear plays in my life:
Man, I’m freaked out by spiders and afraid of heights…
But no one’s gonna grab me when I’m walking down the street
And I never have to reroute to protect myself from creeps, yea
No one will deny my right to publicly exist
No shit bag vigilante will try to sell the gun he killed me with
No one’s gonna murder me while I jog in the park
No cop will shoot me dead while I just sit in my car
No one will assault me and then blame my clothes
No imperial lackey is ever gonna blow up my house with drones
No eight year old kid will ever call me “faggot!” on the street
And then high-five his bigot father while I panic-smoke furiously
No that’s not my life, but it is for my friends
It is for many more people than it’s comfortable to acknowledge
Some people live in a safe world
Some people live in an unsafe world
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2. |
Survive
03:15
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When the bombs fall, when the airstrikes get closer
When the world stalls and the state pulls your choker
When the chaos of the normal gets replaced with a new kind of terrible
Where will you go?
Where will you get food and water?
How will you survive?
When you leave home and you head towards the cities
When uneven development leaves you with no good options
Global den of thieves
When the aid worker pulls you to shore
‘Cause the raft sinks from overcrowding
Where will you go?
Where will you get food and water?
How will you survive?
When you’re kicked out, when your family says “fuck it”
When the shelter is scary
But your safety compared to a roof in the winter is a drop in the bucket
When no one will co-sign your lease
‘Cause you don’t have an income
‘Cause you don’t have a place to sleep
Where will you go?
Where will you get food and water?
How will you survive?
When the flood comes, when the coasts are submerged
When emergency relief agencies collapse
When there’s no more cots
No more wood to burn
When it’s all too much for existing structures to contain
Where will we go?
Where will we get food and water?
How will we survive?
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3. |
Go For Broke!
02:22
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A man named “Chick”
I never knew you
Raised on Liliha Street in Honolulu
Territorial American of Japanese stock
The generation of Inouye, Korematsu, and Kochiyama
Your dad and mama managed a tofu store down the block
You studied engineering at the U(niversity) of H(awaii)
Until the war came
Varsity Victory Volunteers (VVV) to the 442nd in your 21st year
To the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
Spent the war years in Chiang Kai-shek’s China doing secret shit
Then off to a base on Hokkaido
To screen out communist spies from POWs
In Sapporo, where dad was born
Then split your time between Japan and Hawaii, back and forth
After Korea left the army, hey
Joined the National Clandestine Service of the CIA
Served as an agent for six years and then
Got on Northwest Orient Airlines flight 710
Twin Cities to Miami via Chi-town (Chicago) went down
In southern Indiana on the banks of the Ohio river
I stood there last summer at the crash site
Where they only found your finger in the wreckage that night
Dad and Grandma traveled to Tell City to see you off
Dad was surprised that mainland barbeque had no teriyaki sauce
It does on the islands
He didn’t like it, he didn’t like it
I wonder what you would have made of me
Scholar of radical intellectual history
Just a punk rock teacher with too many degrees
And conflicted feelings about my nationality
You were a Cold Warrior of the first degree
A hero and a patriot, we’d all agree
Now your star is on the (Memorial) Wall for all to see
Died March 17th, 1960, believe me
If we ever got to meet I hope that you would like me
If we ever got to meet I hope that you’d be proud of me
I’ve got your hat and your name plate and your name
I know that you and I, we’re not the same, no way
Chiyoki Ikeda, rest east, okay?
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4. |
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Amiri Baraka in Cuba
‘All these young guys down here, they took power, they just did it, guns in hand’
Robert F. Williams in his big straw hat
Came to see the land where racism was falling back
A ripe 25, a riper 36 both embraced radical politics
Wouldn’t get their heads beat in
Rejected unilateral non-violence
Both took to the black revolution:
A Third World people colonized by the Red, White, and Blue
Which Harold Cruse and John Henrik Clarke thought too
But with a more robust theorization
They were way more impressed with Castro’s land reform
Than his proclamations of eradicating racial discrimination
But all four took a nod from Frantz Fanon
And saw black freedom as a decolonizing process, partially thanks to Cuba
(But only partially thanks to Cuba!)
Fast forward to 1967
Honorary Prime Minister of the BPP (Black Panther Party for Self Defense)
And former SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) chairman
Stokely Carmichael called for Black Power
In a book of the same name that posited how
The state built an internal colony
Which precluded the achievement of substantive racial equality
Meanwhile Baraka promoted black arts
Cultural self-determination
To cultivate a counterhegemonic identity to precede the black political nation
Casa de las Americas and ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos) in Cuba did the same thing
It’d be hard to draw a causal link
But the similarities are more compelling than you’d think
But over the years it became very clear that socialist reforms had not unmade
Cuba’s racial oppression
But the general consensus among the top brass was to say “No Way!”
Thus pushing (American) black radical activists away from the Castro regime in significant numbers
Baraka and Angela Davis stayed
But (Robert F.) Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and (Stokely) Carmichael went the other way
But all told this whole generation of thinkers shared some critical paradigms
Black Third World identity
The internal colony
(Black) Nationalism
And state violence
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5. |
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Frat house on Ashford Street
I heard a bro say gleefully
“I’m going down to the bar
Gonna fuck whatever bitch”
Yadda yadda then I stopped listening
I’ve been walking quickly past the same place for eight years
And always the same shit
I’d really like to end it
Start thinking like the (Black) Panthers did, yea!
Start a feminist posse
Hang in Allston with our weapons drawn when the predators go prowling
Let’s show them what ‘collective self-defense’ means
When the powers that be won’t keep safe our streets:
Rich kid rapist, GET ON THE PAVEMENT
Let my friends walk without hesitation
‘Cause you’ll be accountable when we’re out to roam
Yea your reign of goddamn terror will come home
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6. |
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Two millenials sit
Hole-in-the-wall, hype restaurant
Hole-in-the-Waldorf Astoria prices
Food like: What the natives really eat!
Conversation like: Sitcoms taught me how to speak!
Always on camera, always on phone
One talks about student loans, the other replies
Roth IRA
…
We are adults, we know what a Roth IRA is
We listened to that wiz kid friend, that older colleague
That online article that taught us what a Roth IRA was all those days ago
“Contributions not tax-deductible but upon withdrawal no taxes yo!”
But did that other table hear us though?
Did they hear me say Roth IRA?
I'll bet they are impressed; we are impressive; we are adults
We worked for this tabbouleh
Drop hints to wealthy family—
“Need to buy that condo now, need some help for payments down,
Need to generate greater wealth across generations!” well…
What else would you be if you were me?
With privilege, money, health, and greed?
Don’t sit in judgement, please, and don't moan all, "police & poverty"
We worked for this tabbouleh
Drop hints to friends and family
We are adults, we are 'real,' we are adults, we are 'real,' We are adults, we are ‘real’
These are the dumb things that keep our minds at ease
When full tummies, weed, and high salaries don't quite cut it…
…Emotional rut in…
…Just not feeling like myself today…
Perhaps my golden throne could use a memory foam cushion?
…Better text Mom.
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7. |
Fame Swoll (27)
04:20
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You own a house and take care of a baby
I've got 72 likes on a Facebook post
I'm hanging out with undergrads on a Friday night like I'm not 27
Past the point of "oh my gosh, my friend got married!"
To the point of "all my goddamn friends are married..."
I've been in clean work-out clothes
Alone in my apartment, sitting in the dark on a Wednesday
Scrolling through my contacts, wondering where a friend is
I don't wanna spend my late 20s watching Netflix
I'm trying to get Fame Swoll now don't wanna drag ten people to some shitty bar show downtown
Cup or cone at JP Licks with Rena after dinner
Or on the road eating rest stop pizza on I-80 in the summer
I remember where I'm at
And remember I'm not jazzed about it
Cause I might spend the next year living worse off than the last one
And I might not enjoy my job as much as I do now
And I might waste a decade chasing meaningless credentials
I might wind up feeling lower than I have since college
Shit that's a scary thought
So now I live in a 9x8 foot room
I've got them non-linearity of progress blues
I wanna live better by the metrics that mean something to me
I need degrees, I need prestige, I need famous friends who say hi to me
I crave that elitist bullshit that makes me feel superior
I need it
But you can't chase that shit forever
Eventually we wake the fuck up or we settle on our own terms
I've got this false credibility my scene points bought me but I'm not really smarter than anybody else
And when you root your sense of self in the power you've garnered
You shackle happiness to hierarchical garbage
And I know I'm not some punk seventeen year old with a chip on my shoulder
I'm lazy and bored and ten years older
Ten years.
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The Michael Character Boston, Massachusetts
It's political music, whatever. Based in Boston, MA. Absolutely willing to drive very far to play for you and five of your vaguely alternative friends in your combination kitchen/laundry room. Hit me up. I'm fully serious.
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