Maintain eye contact.

A list that started in my head as I finished painting the accent wall in my parent's living room:

- I like the smell of blue painter's tape
- I like a perfectly folded stack of laundry
- I like the act of polishing dress shoes
- I like the feel of a new pair of socks

This song still makes me tear up when I hear it.

I think it's interesting how strongly certain memories or emotions can be tied to a piece of music. It's not that this song was playing in the background at anytime during my last relationship. Nor was it ever a track that was shared between friends or bandmates (although Bows + Arrows was introduced to me by a dear friend in grad school). These two associations don't even occur within the same time frame, and are in fact years apart from each other.

For some reason though....whenever I hear this song, I can't help but think of these two things.

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