fortunate son

road notes part 1 // brooklyn to marfa

written by tai lee

with contributions from Leila Zalokar, Nell S., Cody Lee, Clare R., Cameron Dunham

intro – golden ring // February 2022

I hadn’t seen Mike Crumplar in a week which was unusual given how frequently we had been seeing each other for the past three months. He fell off for a few days and stopped responding to text messages but had been tweeting photos from DC. Annoying but par for the course…he’s an internet guy…I thought. Regardless, I was excited when he hit me up that morning.

“7:30 at Twins Lounge?”

“Absolutely.”

I’m waiting up at the bar at Twins. Tequila rocks in hand, half-focused on reading Dworkin while keeping an eye out on the door. He strolls through with a big shit-eating grin on his face and lifts his left hand up to wave at me. The orange and yellow light ricochets off a slim gold band on his ring finger. He is married. This is news to me.

I wave back. My gut protests. I’m struck by a pang of nausea. I run to the bathroom. I splash water on my face. I walk back out to the bar and sit down next to Mike. The ring is gone.

Three days later we hang out again, back at Twins. No ring.

I take a shot of mezcal and ask him, “What was the ring about?”

“The ring? Oh, the ring. Yeah! It’s open..it’s nothing that serious. She’s not from here…she’s not American…she lives in DC.”

movement 1 – no exits, brother (nashville) // July 22-23 2023  

Mike is white knuckling the steering wheel and breaking abruptly with zero finesse. Unsurprising for a Northern Virginian who wears shoes that resemble Sketchers Shape Ups without a hint of irony. It’s day 1 of our month-long road trip and we are en route to Nashville, Tennessee.  

I’ve got Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Hoo, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

Green hills in a blanket of blue mist roll past the passenger window and I’m singing under my breath…it ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son no no…dreaming of west coast mountain ranges and bison on the plains and Mike is mumbling about the NRA headquarters off the side of the highway..this must be NOVA, infamous NOVA, this is the place that birthed the crumplar failson..it ain’t me it aint me I ain’t no fortunate one no…he’s still mumbling “my dad is a weapons guy, he’s a war guy, he has government clearance, it’s warhawk shit but I’m not like him. I’m really not” same spiel..classic crumps..he’s going on and on about the substack but Fogerty is spitting and the grip of the city is leaving my body and my wrists are getting limp and it’s a tiny bit of ecstasy it is distance and road and new time..my time.

“Tai. I feel like you’re not listening.” He shuts off the radio like an indignant PTA parent.

“Why would you do that?”

“I’m feeling anxious and you’re not listening to me.”

“Well..what’s your issue, big bad Crumpy?”

“I left the weed at home. On purpose. I have anxiety driving with it. And the Crumpstack is risky. Who knows? The feds probably want to shut it down.”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright dude.”

“No I’m being serious. The stack is hot…Thiel opps might be out here and we’re driving across the country. It’s dangerous.”

“…you…left the weed at home…...because you think your dimes square blog will result in state repression? Am I getting this right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a target on my back.”

“You turned off CCR to tell me this.”

“yeah, I’m like really nervous about it. They want to shut it down. And driving through the south west, it’s just too risky.”

“Mike, you are a white man from a wealthy, military family writing about downtown manhattan.” I flip the radio back on.

Half of my suitcase is occupied by bags and bags of state funded psilocybin. I figured out a way to buy shrooms with my EBT card.  

-

We are staying at my friend Lenin’s house while he is away dancing in Los Angeles. He lives just north of downtown in a hippie bungalow in the middle of a wooded canyon. As we get settled in, the sun sets over the Nashville skyline. We are 14 hours away from home.

I crack open a beer on the front porch and the cicadas start humming, Mike is pacing about and wringing his hands in the way that lying men do.

“You alright?” I say.

“Uhm, yeah. Yeah. I just need to take a call.”

I nod. I keep drinking my beer. He is staring at me. He gestures towards the door.

“…can you?”

“You want me to go inside so you can have the whole outside world to yourself?”

“It’s just private, that’s all.”

Pick and choose your battles, my dad used to say.

I make my way into the house and perch up on the windowsill to observe him through the cracks of the blinds.

His hairy calves protrude out from under his pink floral shorts, if the streetlights catch him right it looks as though his knees are bent backwards, hyperextended, reminiscent of an ancient reptilian walking on its hind legs. I’ve never seen someone look so helplessly alien in their own body. He’s hunching over the blue light of his screen and the ridges of his vertebrae are visible through his shirt. His jaw slacks downward until it is almost grazing his chest. The posture of the online millennial. Years and years of 4chan “research” deformed his spinal column, a fishhook on the end of a wire.

He's talking on speaker phone. It’s his wife. He’s pacing and pacing. He throws his head back. He’s grabbing at his hair. It’s giving time out in kindergarten. It’s giving just been eliminated in dodge ball. He’s shaking his head no no no.

I’m giggling, he’s in trouble. I cannot contain my jouissance. He makes his way back up the lawn towards the house. I busy myself.

He walks through the front door, dragging his feet. Eyes diverted downward. Scaled tail between his legs.

“Uhm. Tai. I need all the info for our accommodations.”

“You have all the info. I made a google document when I planned the entire trip. You approved of everything, it’s all in your email.”

“Yeah but please just…can you show me the hotel bookings?”

Lazy would be a compliment. I pull up the reservations and hand him my phone.

“FUCK,” he says. He jumps up and runs back outside.

I assume my position on the windowsill. He is back on speaker phone. He’s pacing and pacing. He throws his head back, he’s grabbing at his hair. It’s giving lunch time detention. It’s giving the principal called home. He’s shaking his head no no no.

I’m giggling, I cannot contain my jouissance. He makes his way back up the lawn towards the house. I busy myself.

He opens the front door and stands in the doorway.

“I have bad news.”

“Oh, no. Are you in trouble?”

“Jessica is very upset with me. She. She. She doesn’t want us staying in the same hotel rooms.”

“Well, Mike, I sent you all the reservations months ago and you approved of them. Also, why is she this mad if it’s basically an open green card marriage anyway?”

“I…I..It’s really complicated. Jessica loves me. Okay? It’s serious, it’s like a real marriage to her. She loves me. Now she’s really upset with me.”

“Hand me your fucking phone.”

“What?”

“Call her now, I’m going to speak with her directly.”

“Well. Well. I..”

“Call her now, Mike. I’m not fucking around.”

He calls her. She answers and she is sobbing. Uncontrollable sobbing.

“Hi Jess, this is Tai. I’m here with Mike on speaker phone. What is going on?”

“He’s lied to you. He’s a fucking liar, he is lying about everything.”

Mike is gasping for air, a fish on a boat deck suffocating on sea breeze.

“Can you elaborate please? I have no idea what is going on.”

“You’re alone there with a liar and I’m so sorry and I bet I sound insane to you right now but I’m not crazy. I promise I’m not crazy. Mike cheated on me at the start of our relationship. That was years ago but it broke so much trust, I still don’t trust him now…”

Only Mike could be unfaithful in what he had called an open marriage. Do beta men dream of a “green card wife” who weeps? He is pulling at his hair and rocking back and forth. He wants to disappear entirely.

“That’s why I’m mad about the hotel rooms. He promised to respect my boundary. He promised to respect that so I would let the trip happen. He’s lying to you. He’s lying. He didn’t tell me you were leaving today until less than a week ago. I was practically begging him to just come with me to see my family in Germany. I’m so sorry, Tai. I hope you don’t think I’m crazy, he has lied about so much. FUCK YOU, MIKE.”

She doesn’t even know the magnitude of the lies he has told. He has lied about his lies. She does not know about his hidden ring, about her diminished status in the segregated autofiction(s) of his life. There is set of lies A and set of lies B. And here I am, stuck in the middle of Tennessee with $200 to my name, alone with this man. Who is this man? More importantly, who is his wife? How many lives has she lived?

“I’m speechless, frankly. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to pull anything over on you, I still don’t really know what is happening. But I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. I’m sorry I’m dealing with this. I’m at a loss.”

“I know you planned the trip thinking everything was fine. This is on Mike, this is what he does and I am sorry. I can imagine this is probably a lot for you. I mean, you’re alone with him. And have you noticed? He can barely take care of himself. All the groceries in the car? I bought those. The sandwiches he brought? I made them. He didn’t know what to pack. He’s a child. His mother still wants to watch him like a hawk. It took me years to delete the tracking app she put on my phone; I only took it off last month.”

“Wait, what? Tracking app?”

Mike is staring straight ahead, still and dead eyed. What a sorry face he gets to wear.

“Yes, a tracking app. That family is horrible, miserable. I want you to know about all of it. You need to know about the au pair stuff. His mother basically had to bribe him a wife – me. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I wish I had more to say but I’m really speechless.”

“I’ll buy you a drink when you are back and tell you everything, Tai. And please know I’ve always advocated for you. I want you to get credit and be heard. I really do.”

“Thank you Jessica. I’m sad we barely know each other.”

Day 1 of the trip. No exits.

“We’ll get to know each other.”

…

…

I hit Lenin’s bong and disassociate.

“Hello….? Tai..? Please call me in the morning. Please.”

-

Mike storms into my room and wakes me up at 8am.

“Jessica wants to talk.”

“What?”

“Hi Tai…”

She is on speaker phone. She is crying.

“I hate that he was probably spinning a thousand narratives to you last night.”

“I’m sure he would’ve tried but I went to my room and passed out, I needed to leave the situation it was too much for me to handle.”

“This is a lot..but..I wanted to tell you this..I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I was trying to fall asleep…isn’t it funny how the anti-fascist It Boy treats his wife like a maid? Isn’t it funny how you do a lot of intellectual heavy lifting for him? Kind of weird how he idolizes Brecht, huh?”¹

I have nothing to say.

-

I’m walking through downtown Nashville. Mike is there. Crystalline skyscrapers are being erected on every block; Teslas crisscross with lifted Ford F-150s down one-way streets. Whole Foods, Boot Barn, vegan pizza, the Country Music Hall of Fame. You can almost hear Jason Aldean cranking the hog to pornographic fantasies of lynching­...his I’m-so-not-gay bellbottoms slumped around his swollen pink ankles. WASP-y professionals in collared shirts with bolo ties and Stetson hats wait outside of a bank lobby looking for their Uber Black. This is the New South.

In front of a progressive church there is a militia of armed fascists – black shirts ­– protesting a drag queen story hour happening that day. Their faces are obscured, they have signs claiming that trans women are pedophiles. They say that the nuclear family is under attack (not enough for my taste, considering all these white patriarchs are still breathing). They slam the GOP for going woke and they are calling for violent action against sexual deviants. I am a little brown faggot with a shorn head.

A couple of them are handing out fliers to passersby. The response from the Nashville civilians is favorable.

One of the fascists walks up to Mike, hands him a pamphlet and says,

“Hey brother, please consider joining us in the future.”

segue 1 ­– nash -> memphis -> denton  

We drive west on i-40 from Nashville to Memphis and stop for a cup of gumbo.

Memphis sits on two state lines with the Mississippi river flanking the city limit to the west. The streets are full of BB King and Elvis and I have visions of a young tai lee dancing in nothing but a diaper to Blue Suede Shoes.

Among cities with more than 500,000 population, Memphis is #5 in its poverty rate. This is the Old South. There are no signs of militant, organized fascism here. Fascism does not make easy bed fellows with the black working poor, it doesn’t take root in the Mississippi delta, it finds no historical lineage in the thunderous popular avant-gardes of blues and rock n roll. The New Right metastasizes in the gentrified hot bed of white professional Nashville. The sleek, clean surfaces of corporate top 40 country and metallic tech high-rises facilitate the flow of reaction without interruption. Nashville has more in common with the fascist ideological core of Dimes Square than it does with working class, black Memphis.

-

I force Mike to let me drive. He is a control freak, a surveillance drone like his Nazi mother. I drive us straight through Arkansas, the only state in the continental US I hadn’t cleared in a car. Just outside of Arkadelphia, an 18-wheeler tries to ram me off the road. The New York plates and buzz cut give off the scent of homo freak that must die. We exchange obscenities and play a game of chicken before the big rig backs down.

We finally make it to Denton, TX and stay with Clare. Her and I dream of feminist futures late into the night. She shares her concern about Red Scare grooming young women into anorexia. Mike sits doe eyed, only speaking about himself and “the stack”. Clare looks disgusted when he keeps mentioning that he thinks Aimee Armstrong (a woman who introduced herself to me, in person, as “trans and post-left”) wants to fuck him. Perhaps gout-having Yakubian, Curtis Yarvin, was on to something with the chaser comment.

movement 2 ­­– white settlement (marfa) // July 24-25 2023

There’s a mounting unease in the car, the sight of Mike is starting to get under my skin. He’s slurping his Bucc-ees breakfast burrito and ranting about how some dime store internet Hapsburgian calls Bucc-ees “based” when we pass a town called White Settlement.

Painted on the side of a water tower is an image of a church, a factory and a fighter jet with the words “ON THE CROSSROADS OF PROGRESS.” This is the city seal. In 2005, the chamber of commerce asked the good citizens of White Settlement to vote on a name change (two alternatives presented were “Liberator Village” and “West Settlement”, obvious improvements!) and the measure was shot down by a 9-1 margin. White Settlement, home of a Lockheed Martin weapons plant, isn’t going anywhere.

Mike is still talking about the based-ness of Bucc-ees when I interrupt him to let him know that his father should consider retiring here.

“Oh, yeah. Texas is cool. Ha. So anyway, one time Logo Daedalus….”

-

It’s 101 degrees in the Trans-Pecos desert and we are on a tucked away two-lane backroad. In the distance there is a crude oil refinery with a gas flare spouting fire up into the big blue Texan sky. Telephone poles skirt the road shoulder, jutting out of the dirt like crooked crosses. Apocalypse Americana. Mike is driving, he’s going 105. I’m clutching on to the grab handle and my right foot is pushed up against the glove box.

The wheels are wobbling on the pavement, a big rig passes us from the opposite direction. He’s leaning forward into the steering wheel and bouncing up and down. Small thrusts, only slightly bigger than a tremble. His jaw is clenched tight.

“Mike, I’m obviously uncomfortable. Slow the fuck down.”

“But there aren’t any cops out here.”

“Do you only care about getting caught? That’s the only issue to you?”

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

He stays at 105.

“I’m not asking you to slow down, I’m telling you.”

He rolls his eyes and eventually relents.

-

Nestled between Big Bend National Park and the Davis Mountains in the Trans-Pecos region of the Chihuahuan Desert is Marfa, TX..county seat of Presidio County. Population 1,748. 62 miles southwest is the Mexican town of Ojinga. There are several species of whip-tailed lizards indigenous to the region that are remarkable because the animal has no males – only females who produce clones.

Hip Marfa residents have speculated that the town was named after Marfa Ignatievna, Grigory Vasilievich’s wife in The Brothers Karamazov but it seems unfeasible that somebody in rural West Texas in 1882 named the town after a Dostoyevsky character only 13 months after the original Russian publication. We all love our beautiful delusions.

The Blackwell School is a three-room adobe shack in the northeast part of town. Built in 1909, the segregated school served Marfa’s Hispanic population until desegregation in 1965. Six years later, in 1971, minimalist artist Donald Judd relocated here from NYC to start the decades long project of gentrifying a border town. Perhaps a more fitting name would be White Settlement.

Notable Marfians:

Forrest Blue – offensive lineman, 11 seasons in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts

James B. Gillett – Old West Texas Ranger, famous killer of Kiowa, Apache and Comanche Indians

Ramon Enrich ­– painter and sculptor, admirer of Donald Judd

Donald Judd – minimalist artist, founder of the Chinati Foundation

Robert Jay Matthews – American neo-Nazi and leader of The Order, an anti-communist and white supremacist militant group

Jake Silverstein – editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine

Eileen Myles – NYC literary It Girl, author of Chelsea Girls

Carolyn Pfeiffer – film producer

Christopher Wool – post-conceptual artist, admirer of Donald Judd

-

I’m baking in the desert sun, my eyes are drooping, heavy..I’m sitting the way an iguana would. Still and lazy but attentive. Full of spit and loyal, doglike. I just popped open an ice-cold Corona. I’m eavesdropping outside of the yurt that Mike and I are staying in.

He is on the phone with his wife:

Well, you just…domesticate me…you know? Like I need to be free.

….

No, no, no Jessica I’m sorry I’m sorry. I love you. I miss you.

when he says this his voice drops an octave

….

No, no I do love you. I just feel like you…domesticate me. I don’t know. I don’t want to be controlled.

….

Fuck. I’m sorry, listen I’m sorry.

His voice drops an octave, he takes on a baby tonality

I love you. I miss you. Bye.

….

He steps out of the yurt and asks me for a beer.

He asks me for a beer.

“Get your own fucking beer you absolute freak.”

“What’s going on? Did I do something wrong?”

“Did you do something wrong? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

“ARE YOU FUCKING THREE YEARS OLD? IF YOU DESIRE A CIGARETTE, USE THOSE FAT, SOFT HANDS OF YOURS AND GRAB A FUCKING CIGARETTE.

…

I’m not your wife, I’m not your servant and I’m not your maid, I know those are all synonyms for you so it’s good to be clear.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. I’m just not exactly sure why you’re mad and would appreciate an explanation.”

“Oh, the genius critic is confused. The genius critic needs the basic framework of this experience explained to him. Would you like me to call up the front desk and ask for her to wipe your ass the next time you need to take a shit?”

“How do I deescalate the situation?”

“I want to chop your fucking head off.”

“C’mon Tai. I already don’t feel good about this.”

“About what Mike? I’m not even sure that you are feeling any type of guilt or shame about what you have actually done, I think you’re just mad that you got caught. What did you think would happen, genius? Did you think you would be able to continue lying to me about your marriage while taking your best ideas from me? Did you think you would be able to continue lying to your wife about your public presence? Were you just going to lock her away? What’s next? You gonna chain her up in the basement?”

“I want to, like, curl up in a ball and just die right now.”

“That would be great for all of us but unfortunately you are relatively healthy minus your inbred heart defect, which is the one good thing Sue Crumplar gave to the world.”

“That’s really low, Tai.”

“You would know, you’re an expert on the subject! You’ve got some real gall to tell that woman – your fucking wife that loves you – that she is domesticating you when you treat her like your servant and after spending days on end with you, I can see that you are completely incapable of doing anything yourself.”

“I know, I’m just another worthless, leftist man. Like I get it.”

“You get nothing. This isn’t even male-feminist-Left-bro-sexism, you’ve reinvented 1950’s patriarchy. Comparing you to Peter Vack wouldn’t be a stretch at all. You might even be worse, honestly.”

“God, that’s a bit ridiculous. He publicly humiliated me.”

“You think you’re better because you exploit women in private? Again, you’re just mad you got caught. You are inconvenienced not remorseful.”

“Exploit? I made you the main character of this Crumpstack season!”

“You are seriously unwell. You made me a character in a Crumpstack season? You aren’t a television show producer and I’m a real fucking person who has been your collaborator on all this shit. You know damn well that the best parts of the substack this year have come directly from me and my influence and this is how you treat me? You steal from me and lie to my face? Call me a character? You’re sick.”

“All I’m saying is that exploit is a strong word and Peter is like…an evil opp.”

“Your wife does everything for you. I planned this whole fucking trip, I shadow author your shit. Get real, Mike. We are supposed to be friends, collaborators, artistic partners. You are exactly like every person you throw stones at. I have you so clocked. You are so fucking done.”

I’m fighting back tears, he has never seen me cry.

“Fuck. I’m like really sorry you’re so upset and I know I’m owned.”

“You’re owned? This isn’t twitter, you fucking psychopath. I’m hurting. Your wife is hurting. You used us. You aren’t owned you are the one doing the owning.”

“I just. I really want to deescalate this situation.”

“Unbelievable. You are a husk, you have nothing inside of you. It would be funny if it weren’t so terrifying. How do you live with yourself? How do you live this lie? Such a meaningless existence, I genuinely feel bad for you.”

…

…

…

“Nothing? Jesus fucking Christ, Mike. Your paternalistic attempts to remove the agency of all the women who made your pathetic little life possible are blowing up in your face and you have nothing to say? Incredible. I’m stuck with your ass for the rest of this trip but who knows who we’ll be on the other side of this.”

…

His beady eyes are glossed over and looking straight ahead. I haven’t cried this hard in years.

…

“I bet this must be scary, Crumps. What little parts of you that can feel must feel really lonely right now. I’ve never envied anybody less.”  

-

I’m walking alone through the desert under a ceiling full of stars, it’s just past 2am. I’m 6 tequilas deep, the air is still and silent. They say there are mystery lights that appear out here in the middle of the night, nobody knows what they are..

..could be anything..

The blue and violet glow of St. Elmo’s Fire

The spirits of dead cowboys

UFOs

Electrostatic discharge

More headlights on some distant highway

The Apache say every light is a star falling down into the earth

but tonight, I see nothing. No psychedelic miracle, just empty darkness.

I shouldn’t be walking alone this late and this far out. Anything can happen to you out here if you’re a woman and the presence of the border patrol, the biggest gang of rapist murderers on the planet, makes it doubly unsafe. But I’ve never been too concerned with safety. Only distance, direction, speed. I want to be close to the heart of things. I want to break out of protectionist delusion.

Risk. That’s how you end up in a place like this, walking through the West Texan desert..alone..under a ceiling full of stars. Risk led me here, risk leads you to poetry. Women are taught to never be risky. Women are taught all sorts of things, most of them lies written a very long time ago by men that look like Mike, but I learned quickly that nothing on earth will guarantee me protection. So to risk is to live with dignity. No matter how deeply we love or trust, to be woman is to be unsafe. This world is against us. Nothing short of a revolution will really change that. And if you want revolt, we must risk. If you want poetry, we must risk.

I thought I was leaving an enclosure only to end up alone with someone who knew nothing but labyrinths. He knew that was all he knew, and he hoped that I would get lost inside until I was too deep to contest. How many women trapped in those walls? Those walls aren’t his alone. Those walls are a thousand years old.

But my desires aren’t pure and simple, we don’t want in a vacuum. I want my voice to tower, to rip out into the world. I thought proximity to the mystique of the “great” male artist would help me get there but this is a pernicious lie. When we make these sorts of bargains, we diminish ourselves. We gut ourselves of character, integrity. Compromises with power can lead to cosmic disembowelment. And besides, the great artist was me. Why would I cast my pearls before swine?

Never again, I mumble to myself. Never again.

There are no short cuts, just long dirt roads.

-

Light is refracting down onto the bed through the technicolor ceiling of the yurt. My skin is expanding and contracting, full of breath. It’s all moving. Disgusting, mutant. Beautiful.

Kraftwerk is exploding out of the boom box. Lester Bangs’ words ring through my head reminding me that the Germans are more efficient and sleeker than Americans in every possible way. From amphetamine induced pop music to protofascism. Where the US had the wiry, speed freak meanderings of Blonde on Blonde, the Germans gave us Autobahn. Where the Germans had Freikorps paramilitaries, we get NoVa suburban son-of-a-warhawk incels lurking the internet.

Mike is sitting on the couch, on twitter.

I am astral projecting on state funded psilocybin. I have an unread text from my mother. I open it, it reads:

Sinead O’Connor is dead. I know how much you love her…it was suicide.

I’m shot back to hearing Mandinka for the first time on somebody’s myspace in 5^th grade.

I don’t know no shame

 I feel no pain

I can’t see the flame

But I do know Man-din-ka

Her voice tore through my chest, screaming and writhing in pain and joy and ecstasy. I ran to my dad and demanded he tell me who this Sinead O’Connor was (I didn’t know how to pronounce it. It came out like sin-ee-ad).

He told me she tore up a picture of the Pope on tv, she was bald and she was right about a lot of stuff. I printed every picture of her I could find. I worshiped her. Sinead. Brave Sinead.

She became my hero throughout my life. In every moment of tumult and upheaval, I would remember Sinead. She gave us so much.

In 1989, she performed at the Grammys with the Public Enemy insignia painted on her bald head to protest music industry racism and she wrapped her first born son’s onesie around her waist as an act of feminist meaning making. In 1991, she boycotted the Grammys and won. She is the only artist to ever refuse the award. She was an outspoken pro-abortionist in theocratic Ireland. She spoke with the eloquence of the organic proletarian genius. Her voice was fearless and bellowing. Her music was freedom music.

She never ripped up that picture of the Pope for cheap shock value, this was a life-affirming refusal of patriarchal indignity. A courageous assertion of truth against every system of power. When asked about it she said she was having a conversation with God. Transgression of the oppressed. She is our punk Pasolinian hero. She is revolution to me.

It wasn’t until a decade after first hearing Mandinka that I read Alex Haley’s Roots and it occurred to me that my first encounter with her music was an encounter with a protest song. Like Guthrie, like Nina.

It would be Sinead who saved me from the depths of near suicide in 2021, she would bring me back to music and liberation. Always, always Sinead.

18 months prior to her suicide, her son killed himself. I remember watching my mom bury her son, my brother. The depths of that loss are beyond comprehension. It is possible to die of a broken heart. I’m sure her heart was broken a million times over.

I am weeping for a fallen sister. A woman suicided by society. She was subject to abject cruelty from mediocrities that couldn’t hold a candle to her raw power but ‘til her last breath she was a woman of immense dignity.

“God bless Saint Sinead,” I say out loud.

“What?”

“Sinead O’Connor is dead. Suicide.”

“Oh. That’s sad.”

And he just keeps scrolling.

-

1. Mike plagiarized me and Leila Zalokar on a number of levels, including sentence to sentence and word for word which is easiest to prove..here are two examples from Spring of Narcissus and Rabbits:

Rabbits Plagiarism

Spring of Narcissus Plagiarism