- He's dead now.
Memory is the only room in which we can hold him.
This was made possible by the physics
of puncture,
of blood,
of oxygen seeking freedom from his lungs
as if his open mouth were a gateway to God.
Before the bullet he was known to his family and friends
as a boy named Tamir.
After the bullet we know him as dead one.
The story of hip hop,
is in essence, a story of the dead.
With the help of the DJ,
dancers became breakers,
breakers were dancers in love with the break beat,
before the DJ the break beat only happened once.
After the DJ the break beat could repeat and repeat,
as if a horn player with the
longest circular breath of all time.
The story of murder is in essence the story
of a vinyl record with the gash on your favorite song.
The moments of the murder,
is the vinyl record preparing for the gash.
His mother may or may not have felt it coming.
The gash is more than scar from ceasarean section
The gash is the arrival of the squad car.
The gash is a 12 year old being too 12 for his own breath.
The moment before the murder
is the longest circular breath of all time.
He's dead now.
And it is so easy to forget that there was a life,
that preceded all of this.
There were too, those lives merged in a writhing of
sweat, skin, and want then conception,
then two lives were three.
There are moments when we are so used to miracles,
we forget when they happen.
There was a time when all of us
were nothing but possibility,
a glimmer of music leaked through an ultrasound.
There was a moment, a slow one
when it was natural to breathe within water.
This moment was not a promise
that we would complete it alive,
somehow we made it we did not slip away in a trail of red.
We did not exit the water body with the heart unplugged
before blaring when the bullet stills the heart
and closes the eyes.
How far does the erasure go?
Do his parents wake up each morning seeing
another hole where his cheeks had been,
his eyebrows, his neck, does the memory of
his birth now address as torment?
Is it now impossible to bless the conception?
The story of hip hop is a story of death
because death is only bone and scar
when it forgets how to dance.
When we forget the power of the record.
The break beat defined the gash.
What could a breaker dance to,
if nothing was worth repeating?
The beginning of the record has no knowledge of the end.
The middle of the record has no knowledge of the end.
What could a breaker dance to if the beat could not break?
Bullets are made to make things break.
- [Audience Member] Whoo. So break, break.
Be the water, break.
Somewhere right now a swollen belly
is slowly swaying to D'Angelo's Black Messiah.
The belly compresses the sound and the baby inside
does not know the difference between groove and swamp,
does not know what love should sound like now.
Black Messiah is angry.
Black Messiah carries too many bodies.
The baby does not know
the dead names carried in every note of the album.
The baby does not know when the music will end
or who will end it, or who will grieve it,
who will dance to it, who will kiss it like vinyl
and name it death.
Tamir.
I do not believe in erasure.
Do you see us here now,
dancing for you? - [Audience Member] Whoo.
We are here right now.
We do not grieve ourselves.
We do not lie still.
We do not know we are dead.
- [Audience Member] Whoo! (crowd cheering)
(applause)