"Trap Queen" is Perhaps Our Generation’s Greatest Love Song.

This is perhaps as much about a love song as it is about the fact that, just for today, I didn’t want to write about the omnipresence of black death. Because, in this moment, I wanted to stop thinking about the fear carried by so many people I love. Because I didn’t sleep while Ferguson burned. Because I didn’t sleep while Baltimore burned. Because I wake up most mornings knowing that there is smoke still rising somewhere. Because I wake up miles away from the only place I have ever called home. Because when I go back home, I don’t recognize it. Because I have yet to decide on the life that I want (or need) to live, but I know this: every salve that arrives in these times has to be held close. Every chance we have to sweat from anything other than more anxiety stretching wide in our bodies must be embraced. The ripe blessings are harder to find in the mess, and because of that, we need them even more. Even if it means closing your eyes for three minutes and becoming the other you. The one that has never known loss, or panic, or the hunt that seems to wear your name on its tongue.

I write this with a painting of Otis Redding hanging above my desk, staring down disapprovingly at me, but no one wants to hear begging anymore. We want don’t want to hear about the love you have to get back, we need to visualize the present love. We need to know that it is possible, even for the worst of us. These are urgent times. Too many people aren’t making it home alive, and so perhaps we are past the age of supplication; we have gotten what we can get, by whatever means we can get it. We’re the generation of coming to terms. Of knowing what it is to keep our heads above water, or perhaps what it is to do whatever is needed to never be near the water again.

(All Art Done In Blender)