Outro

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our narratives seemed
to flow into one another
as we told stories		         you know / 
almost like rivers merging	         if it inspires one person / 
with the ocean 		         then it’s gonna be worth it
as the waters empty 
the sedimentary deposits						What type of world
of story into one							 do we want to see?
larger collective body
of experience

what I want
is a world in which
it is easier for us to Love

so you have to 
listen

enter as an uncertainty 
& when asked what you are
when you exit say
you are becoming

listen

that was—
an extremely spiritual space

narrative is radical
creating us 
as the very moment
it is being created

I’ve noticed
I am my best teacher
or creating my best teaching
when I am co-authoring 

everything I’m not
makes me everything
I am 

I’d like to think of it 
as Radical Love

Radical Love

vividly inventing
the very identity
of everything

there’s so much
we can, we can
do & be
for each other

you mean 
I thought I knew
all of me
until I met all of you

you mean magic
& holy & sorcerer
you mean depth & ocean
& I am a wanderer
still not a swimmer
I clung to the sides
of your Everything

& I could tell you
you mean the world to me
I could tell you
you mean the moon & stars

you mean the one candle
lit in a dark room
you mean the one squad 
lit in the classroom

to see the profound effect
that it has on someone
five, ten, fifteen years later

we’re forever in process
& on our way
as we dream
forward

ready to imagine 
another world &
ready to fight for it

I know at the very least
I can still get to wear the crown 
& that would never
have to end

how lovely it is 
this thing
we have done together
  

Reprise: How Lovely It Is

I titled this song as “Reprise Outro” because a reprise is something that repeats, reappears, or resurfaces in music. In this composition, voices from earlier in the album repeat and overlap with my own voice and the voices of my participant-collaborators. I wanted to make voices collide and speak to one another. We hear scholar David Kirkland ask, “what type of world do we want to see?” and Paulo Freire responds that he wants “a world in which it is easier to love.” While it’s certainly possible to put these dislocated voices in dialogue on the page, there is something visceral about hearing the sounds of their voices speaking to one another through time and space. In this way, the webtext folds time and space into itself through a polyphony of sounds.

Collision, Overlap, and Improvisation

The notions of collision and overlap are Hip Hop aesthetics. I wanted to remix this idea and bring together my own voice as researcher combined with the voices of scholars, theorists, philosophers, artists, and my participant-collaborators. There are elements of chance, combination, and indeterminacy that resist orchestration. As I composed this track, I layered the voices on top of one another by triggering samples at different time intervals to create a kind of improvisation that I worried would get lost and smoothed out by my control over the technology. I tried to let go of that control and let the computer make some of the meaning. Throughout this process, I was in dialogue with machines, finding new ways to manipulate, bend, and humanize technology for the purposes of my research.

Polyphonic Narratives

The manipulation of time reminds of Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of the artistic chronotope, of which he said time “thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible” (p. 84). When we hear Paulo Freire’s voice alongside Toni Morrison’s and Aaleah’s, in what ways does that congruency thicken time and make it visible? Space is charged in these compositions, as well, whereas the passage of time in each song corresponds to the space each sample occupies on the musical grid. The way J Dilla manipulated straight and swing time to create a new musical signature reminds of Bakhtin’s theorizing here and provides a way of looking at music narratively. Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony (a musical term) resonates here, as well. The multiple, layered, hybridized sounds in each composition are a narrative feature binding the project together as one cohesive whole made of many voices. Toni Morrison’s (1993) invitation to consider that narrative is “creating us in the very moment it is being created” provides a way of reading these compositions as texts that we are co-constructing when we come to them as listeners and readers (p. 1). The nonlinear structure of this webtext represents a transactional process (Rosenblatt, 1938) in which we participate in the construction of meaning. In a sense, the webtext creates us, as we create it.

An Offering

Lastly, this track includes samples that relate to freedom-dreaming, world-building, and radical love. These are principles that inspire me to dream of a more just world, where the kinds of healing space we created together is not an exception but becomes the norm in schools and communities. The track closes with Toni Morrison’s words as a way to remind myself and my participant-collaborators that, yes, we did something “incredible” together, as Fatmata suggested. And yes, that was “an extremely spiritual space,” to use Aaleah’s words. We made this lovely thing together. Now, it is an offering to you.