“No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” (c) Zora Neale Hurston

in 2024, i promised myself no matter what happened in november, i would pursue joy. i’m a black woman in america, raised by women who survived segregation in church pews and backyard get-togethers with a little something to drink, a cigarette they shouldn’t have smoked, and music to groove to. our pain birthed american art forms — the defiant joy in our tambourines and church stomps became gospel. the deep-seated weariness in our fingers birthed the guitar licks that became the blues and i don’t need to tell you how that became rock and roll. our swing became jazz. hip hop was born on street corners that became recital halls when urban schools closed their music programs…

i don’t mean to make this a sermon. i’m just saying i know joy. even in chaos and uncertainty, i know joy down to my bones, so it’s hard to live in a world where so few do. where we’ve abandoned eros for a soulless prison of logos. so many ideas on how to “do” life, so little living. and it’s permeated the arts — literature, music. everything is so painfully literal, repetitive, and just fucking boring. good lord, where’s the soul?

*takes deep breath*

i thought my brain was too broken to finish books until i devoured toni morrison’s sula in a single afternoon on a beach and realized it’s not me. i need shit with life breathed into it, created by people who live in their bodies. people who know spirit because it’s carried them when they couldn’t carry themselves. not the whimsy born of imagined worlds but from people brave enough to give themselves over to this one with all its beauty and ugliness because it’s the only one we’ve got.