Concerning the power of shadows

I wanted to share a poem I wrote. It is about my research, or research more generally and was written for my Hip Hop Pedagogies course specifically. It was inspired by a series of posters created by NASA about recently found planets and moons. The picture here is an altered version of one of these posters. Because this was for a hip hop course, I have also sampled from other artists: Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam's song Moon Shadow and Harry Nilssen's concept album The Point.

As with all creative expression it is not perfect, but neither am I.

Concerning the Power of Shadows 

Hey but as long as we're up here
We might as well stay in sweet harmony

Flying high up in the sky, I wonder why I 

have to have another
Point of view to see me through
But now I think I'm gonna fall, I hope this isn't all
And on top of that I hope it's not the last time.

I’m bein’ followed by a moon shadow

Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moon shadow

From where do I peer out, hidden

in a deep green thicket of my own experiences?

How am I hidden, hiding, behind the variegated memories of lines I have read on pages and faces I have encountered and systems that have allowed me to grow upwards reaching for the sun and poisoned the soil from which I grow.

Now, in this moment,

As we sit and share.

The ways meaning is made

Spread out before us in pinks and greys and yellows peeking out at us from behind the foliage: and we watch the sun

As it sets and we observe and feel

and remember it, and we construct the ways the shadows

lay upon the land, looming and lingering leaving traces

difficult to delineate.

Together.

How many words for these cultural structures can there possibly be?

Frames and structures and discourses and politics and

norms and, and, and.

Aren’t we all talking about the same things?

These ways we make meaning from the meanings that have come before,

As we have been shaped by, and as we shape, our world?

Speaking across should get us to the real purpose

of what we do, what we hope to do.

To make this world more equitable, a better place to live and breathe and speak and stand and take a stand, to raise our hands. The hoops and degrees and clicks(ques) can often dissuade us and shake us and send shivers reverberating through our steely resolve to do better and to do good and to share the good of these meanings we make.

She came down from the mountain, down from the hillside
Down from the heavens, down by the riverside
Down to the village, down to the people

Down to the valley where the people all stay
Down to the valley, gonna teach the children how to play
Down, down

I’m bein’ followed by a moon shadow

Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moon shadow

The words we use, the actions we take, the allegiances we make and break with our communities and how we share matter. We all hold our stories and our lives and our forests very dear to us.

So easily can we plough

like soy companies, ravaging

the complexities of the animal and plant life in forest ecosystems; trading all that complexity in for a monoculture crop. It seems impossible not to smash

the tender saplings or bruise a flower’s petals; it seems easier to

identify the largest and loudest stories and perspectives,

the toucans and birds of paradise flowers, and leave the rest

in a pesticide-ridden dump heap.

Let us harness our ambition like wind and solar power.

As we construct and reconstruct the world

let us remember that

we are all in worlds of and beyond our own making,

that our shadows lengthen and decline and that

in the moments we construct others’ shadows

to take care.

We come down from the mountain, down from the hillside
Down from the heavens, down by the riverside
Down to the village, down to the people

We’re bein’ followed by a moon shadow

Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moon shadow