7 Things I Imagined

That's Just The Way It Is

Tupac outside criminal court on November 29, 1994. 

I have been listening to Tupac in between other tunes and wondering what this means for my Brooklynite ears. Am I appreciating or am I imagining? Am I crossing over into some uncharted waters, that for most of my life I had held off from truly enjoying because #EASTCOAST? Has the news of a man who shall not be named in this letter collapsed and opened my ability to note the power of a good beat, sparing me from an imagined allegiance? Who are the bad actors? One? Everyone?

For what it’s worth, I have always adored Tupac’s appearance. I have watched Poetic Justice on repeat like the strange fanatic that I am; I lay my body into every single sentence. In that film, I was convinced that men with nose rings (and people in general) are fascinatingly, beautiful. So much so, I got one, too when O was just a baby; a time when these dreams that we are weaving in this current apartment seemed unfathomable. I would say the same about the state of the world?

Here’s what GQ wrote about the late rapper in a 2022 profile.

Tupac’s first two albums were painted in court filings and in editorials as a call to arms for potentially murderous teenagers, his writing on them fits rather neatly into the lineage of Black American art and political writing, moving between rage at systemic oppressions, sober looks at their social consequences, and optimistic rallying cries.

Sober looks and optimistic rallying cries. Over a meal today I realized that maybe much of my writing online for the last 13 years has perhaps been because of this threading between an acknowledgement of a very thin one. The clarity of what’s before, and an optimism for what’s ahead. Tupac died 28 years ago. Since, has the line gotten increasingly thin? Or has the understanding of the precedence of this world-climate we exist in become more potent?

I suppose this new lens strewn between my ears is good. I suppose, like many things, it interplays into the place I am in, we are in, within the context of our days and this world. There’s more to say to it, I’m sure. However, I think it’s been helpful to remember that despair and hope have always been in tandem; at varying degrees, at various times, and the hands of political power, which seeps down into our smaller communities.