Collective Cry: Riot, Anguish, Lamentation

Tameca Coleman, Kei Kaimana, Carolina Ebeid, HR Hegnauer, Emma Gomis, Cass Eddington, Mairead Case, Anne Waldman, Toni Oswald, angela, J’Lyn Chapman, Jade Lascelles, Evelyn Hampton, Kelly Krumrie, Andrew K Peterson, and Ella Longpre

Can someone say, “I do not care?” Could an artist say, “that is not my subject?” I do not think so. Even the most abstract painter is concerned and affected by the tragedies of the world.

—Raúl Zurita

Yesterday I watched two birds defending their young from a hawk, they drove it away screaming. The wind picks up the moths that fell from the blinds this morning, it opens the poppies, I dream of caring for children, I dream of broken glass, I hold a rope to my chest tightly and swing, the world vibrates to its own melodies of this wind, it rings out jealous and holy. History is a cloak time has taken off and left on the floor, time has begun a riot of its own, naked, it walks to the window going nowhere, indiscriminate and growing names. Is this world a promise made on a condition of mourning. Names cried out at the center of this world, molten, shifting, breaking its glass.

This is a collective cry, made from breath, scream, movement, lamentation, song, environment, puncture, dance, silence. Uttered in response to the virus pandemic over this globe, uttered in response to the racism pandemic in this country (Danielle Moodie). A desire to “wail and scream and beat the floor.” Some wrote that they could not channel or conjure any sound, a mournful silence. Some, to be added to the collective recording, I had to hold in my hand, up to a microphone at my chest, thank you for joining this witnessing. Recorded between May 25 - 31, 2020, across the US, on our phones, computers. These testimonies, from our chests.

—Ella Longpre

Special thanks to: M NourbeSe Philip, Erinrose Mager, Jaclyn Hawkins, Vincent James, Dennis Sweeney, and Joe Braun.

Special homage to Michael McClure, from whose Ghost Tantras Anne Waldman reads in this recording. Please find the full recording of Tameca Coleman’s Tribal Something -- Raging.