Livin’ 4the City


 
 

Photographed c.2015
24” x 16”
Monochrome Pigment, Archival Rag Paper


Street Drummers in Chicago.
We all find ways to pay the rent.

Sitting on the steps of the Art Institute along with people from every walk of life, listening to these bruthas play. Enjoying the moments.

My brain hangs a hard left.
“Had these men been encountered anywhere else, how would they be received?”

A cursory glance beyond the plastic buckets revealed a particular type of Black masculinity, on full display. The Fear of a Black Hat: A metaphor for reasons to enslave, to jail, to lynch, to castrate, or to hide the white women… which I guess you don’t really have to do, if you’re successful at those other things.

Light Speed - the pace at which my brain races from Emmett Till to Amadou Diallo and back.
Sometimes I envy the blithely unaware.

So easy these days for folks who look like them, who look like me, to find themselves incarcerated or dead for “Living While Black.” I was considering the mortality of these cats, whose beats and rhythms had others happily bobbin’ their heads and stompin’ their feet.

I reconnect.
All around me, a multiplicity of local and visiting humans were hooked on a pop-up performance for life’s necessities. All of us in attendance at this food and clothing and shelter concert, in 4/4, 6/8, and sweat.