I discovered something interesting today...



While listening to the introductory track on Kanye West's Graduation, I became fixated on one line from the following verse:

Good morning, on this day we become legendary
Everything we dreamed of
I'm like the fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary
Detroit Red cleaned up

For some reason when I thought back on the song, I had remembered it as "by any means necessary." Turns out that the lyric was a play on the very same phrase, once uttered by Malcom X in a speech in 1965.

"We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary." — Malcolm X, 1965

HEAVY.

Malcom X brought this phrase into the lexicon of the public through that speech, but it's origins can actually be traced back to the play Dirty Hands by the French intellectual Jean Paul Sarte.

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary. — Jean Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands: act 5, scene 3. 1963

I think it's amazing how a rap lyric can lead you to a civil rights speech, which can then lead you to a play about political assassination. In a matter of minutes we go from listening, to discovering, to learning; spanning pop culture (and rap), activism, and institutional critique.

The internet is such a wonderful place...

A memory of a fantasy

There. A man.

He understands that he cannot even begin to grasp the breadth of what will happen to him in his lifetime.

He will not fully know the people he'll meet. What makes them tick. What machinations turn, clank, and whizz behind their faces as they introduce themselves.

He will not be able to foresee the consequences of a smile he gives to a child, a stack of blueberry pancakes he cooks for his family, or the applause he makes for a community play.

He will not appreciate the time it will take to go through a whole package of fireworks with his friends until one summer evening, many years later, the smell of fire and color helps him remember how the cold beer went flat in his mouth.

He will not realize that at the very same moment he feels chills go up his spine from listening to a street musician perform, fifteen other people around him are having the exact same physical response. The sheer amount of dopamine swirling through everyone's brains is enough to make anyone completely numb.

But, he understands that he cannot completely grasp these events, even as he experiences them. Their totality is one step beyond him.

Just over there.