Gannet
Every assumption and belief she had was built on the possibility of being wrong—that’s why it was an assumption or a belief. We had words for the possibility of wrongness—words like, in my opinion it was purposeful, or, it’s hard for me not to assume he was lying. Both accounts leave room for inaccuracies, more than inaccuracies—they actually leave room for fallaciousness while simultaneously asserting an undeniably subjective truth. Her mind went to a writer she heard being interviewed just a few days ago. His name was Theordore Zeldin and he said, “History is the account of all human experience and philosophy is the attempt to make sense out of that. To discover what is a full life—what is worth doing using the experience of the past. Not to obtain lessons but to obtain provocation of the imagination.” All human experience the woman thought. Meaning the right and the wrong, the fallacious and the subjective . The assumptions and the truths. An individual philosophy and the collective philosophy were different in the woman’s mind. They had to be because the collective was not her and she not it — unless the collective included nature as sentient beings that held wisdom too and the collective didn’t so she couldn’t be a part of it just like some people wouldn’t be a part of a collective that didn’t include Jesus and his father. It was confusing to think about a collective that only involved humans just like it was confusing to think about one person deciding that another person was acting purposefully or even worse — lying. There was so much room, an entire oceans worth of room, for interpretation.
When it came to a multitude of significant arenas the woman didn’t tend to share the philosophies of the collective. There were many she knew who, like her, consciously rebelled from this group think—who felt it wasn’t actually a philosophy at all but more like a manipulation. For example a collective experience in the euro-specific population-of the United States might be that the physical attributes that come with aging are challenging for most people. One of the mainstream, promoted philosophies tied to that experience is that surgery, botox, hair dyes, extensions are a great way to reconcile this dissatisfaction with the aging body. That attempt to make sense of the dissatisfaction did not make sense at all to the woman. She understood the reality of the shared experience yet she was directly opposed to the philosophy that followed, a philosophy that undeniably involves utilizing a purposefully generated discontent to influence spending by offering unnatural and expensive alternatives to keeping something that can’t actually be kept. There’s that word again — purposeful intent. Oceans and oceans of interpretation.
Part of her opposition is her knowledge of entire societies where the change that occurs to the human body via aging is considered beautiful—a shared experience embraced internally by its people. The woman would go even further and say that an aging tree is more beautiful than a sapling — a tree without wrinkles and knots would be disturbing to the woman and so she couldn’t think of herself without them. To the woman the philosophy of trees is more aligned with what it means to live a full life. A life worth living. The philosophy of her society presents an issue of internal depression and conflict for her and makes life feel less full—less worth living. Yet, there is no right or wrong when it comes to philosophy there is only the seeking of truth, and all the answers and actions offered are an attempt at that, yet some attempts are guided by an unhealthy starting point — a starting point separate from nature. A starting point that sounds like money can fix your issues, just give us the money and we’ll help you achieve what you so desperately want. Just give us the money and we’ll cut down the wrinkled trees to build a sleek and agelss building filled with plastic, mirrors and cold metal tables for you to lie on while we cut your wrinkles and knots away.
It was the part of the definition that followed the experience and the philosophy and the life worth living that ruptured something in the woman though. It was the phrase “provocation of the imagination”. It felt like those four words linked together represented everything she cared about in the world. What each of these rebellions left her with was an intense, aggressive need to imagine something else. Entire worlds that weren’t driven by a money hungry, capitalistic collective — minions and lemmings looking for the next fix to a problem that wasn’t actually a problem at all. Philosophies that dismissed nature entirely forgetting that lives were defined by the collective leaves, that the salts of its seas and layers of clay and shale were there before them, that water and rock would remain after and that without age and growth and change nothing would be as amazing as it is. The woman was provoked daily, provoked into the characters and worlds of her mind. A place where she got to make sense of the fluid that spilled from her pores, like sap from those old, voluptuous maples, like magma pushes through vents and fissures in the earths surface. A place where the crane and the raccoon tip toe through rivers contemplating flight. A place where provocation of the imagination is the only option that saves you from cutting parts of your body away or infiltrating pores with flat sheets of stainless steel.
Transmissions 2018
Birds-Eye-View Spotlight Artist
If you want more from The Birds — Check out Melanie Charles— There are very few artists whose sound can capture the sentiments of a generation. The Brooklyn born and raised, Melanie Charles, is one of these artists. Over the past few decades, she has made a name for herself through dynamic engagements with jazz, soul, and R&B. Her bold genre-bending style has been embraced by a range of artists including Wynton Marsalis, SZA, Mach-Hommy, Gorillaz, and The Roots. In 2021, she appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk and stunned with her eclectic style. Through it all, she has remained committed to making music that pushes listeners to consider new possibilities—both sonically and politically. “Make Jazz Trill Again,” a project that she launched in 2016, demonstrates her allegiance to everyday people, especially the youth and is focused on taking jazz from the museum to the streets. “I love jazz, I really fell in love with it deeply. But I was interested in young people interacting with it,” Charles says. The album Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women is reflective of Charles’ tremendous versatility and imagination as an artist but of also her deep care for community.
