singing in public

By David Chavannes

some publics can’t be public. being public transmuted us into lightning rods. toilets. bruises. punch lines.

so even before “social distancing” we were grasping at each other through fungal-brokered exchanges, electric prostheses for our thirsty roots. and even before “social distancing” our learning was a prison, a factory, a narcotic, a buttress in the almighty edifice of racial capitalism. we tried to chisel out of calcified colonial upbringings, meeting through screen like sugar through phloem. i began to sing then.

today, i sing for the others like us, dispersed by windy chance, aching for home and making new ones over and over and over. i sing because its vibrational force can mold the thick fog of our future. i sing for the givingness of it, the relationality of it, the companionship of it.

i sing to find you, public or can’t-be-public, and that you may find me.

Featured Image: tree dance by Andrew Niess.