Heavn Album | Jamila Woods
So, I fucking love Jamila Woods.
1. She named herself while in her mother’s womb. 2. She taps into my childhood and enlightens my adult mind through VRY BLK (feat. Noname). It follows the rhythm of the clapping game of my childhood schoolyard days…the one that goes “Miss Suzie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, the steamboat went to heaven, Miss Suzie went to…hello Operator…” except every lyric is with joy flavored blackness and systemic violence call outs. I’m about to find a friend who remembers the hand choreography and recite those lyrics till it is the original I’ll always remember 3. Black is Beautiful via celebration and fight.
The album is a celebration of blackness, a celebration that reminds me of the tones and insights of Eryka Badhu (think on and on) or Iniko (check out the king’s affirmation). There are preludes that make you pause and mental note to go back to as you get swept into rich groovy beats with richer messages of each connected song.
(prelude favorite) “We must love each other and support each other….we have nothing to lose but our chains”.
I do want to also comment on Gay’s entry where I found Jamila and Renee (another delight I will post on). I am uncomfortable with the scarcity mindset because it sits too close to home. It sat in my home, in the sinkhole of the worn couch and curled linoleum of the kitchen floor. In No. 35, Gay talked of the faith required to not hoard delights-there is no scarcity of delights to find. It was a re-rooting reminder that I have tried to plant in therapy…what was missing and broken did not just mean lack. Even in the reality of lack, delights still exist.
As I practice this delight awareness now, I don’t feel as strong a desire to hoard, and further, shut them away in the wooden box for fear I will forget them. Or lament for missing delights in a shadowed tunnel vision kind of day. There is beauty in the temporal and nothing damning in forgetting either because my present self still experienced it, digested it, and I am eager to think, will reveal itself in new ideas. Part of the seed of new directions, new movements that aren’t actually new, but enough time has passed you experience them as if new to your awe, become familiar to your muscles.
“How a good song makes my head rock like a boat in the wind”
Me, too, Gay.
[Book of Delights pg. 109 | No. 35 Stacking Delights]