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Twice this year I've had the great fortune to be moved by art. I'm not inside your heads - is that a lot or a little? I feel richer for it, anyway. The experiences linger.
The first was reading Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys. The plot is wrenching. Even a library catalog summary is enough to make you angry about the way systems and individuals in our country treat people of color, young black men in particular.
But the writing. The writing left me gobsmacked. Whitehead surely reached his very hand right out of the author headshot on the dust jacket and slapped me with his virtuosity. His prose is one of the Seven Wonders of the Literary World. The way he carefully doled out information and withheld other key details resulted in a powerful moment of realization that made me gasp, "hooooly shiiiiit" out loud.
The second was listening to Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters, as it seems like we all did at some point during the 83 years of this quarantine. On the first listen, I was surprised by how much I was into it. I appreciated the music, its moody complexity, much more than I did when she first got big when Criminal came out in the late 90s.
Then, the song Under the Table stopped me in my tracks. I was making dinner, chopping an onion, and suddenly it was no longer background music. I put down my knife, which I realized I was white-knuckling.
"So when they say something that makes me start to simmer
That fancy wine won't put this fire out, oh
Kick me under the table all you want
I won't shut up
I won't shut up"
How applicable is that sentiment to our current moment? The song is drawn from her own experience and, I imagine, a feminist perspective. But the rage is front and center. Nobody should be silent in the face of injustice. Hidden (or overt) forces will try to silence those speaking and acting out for justice, but we won't shut up.
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