Outro
| Accessible Plain Text Transcript
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 (1984) 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" (28:27) provides a way of reading these compositions as texts that we are co-constructing when we come to them as listeners and readers. 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.
