greydotmatters.

On a personal note, as many know (and as I’ve often spoken and written of), I owe a great deal to Assotto. Maybe we all do. As I’ve stated, I was there in the church that day in 1992 at the funeral of Donald Woods. I was one of many attendees from Donald’s activist family. I was one of many who read the program and saw the glaring omission of Donald’s poetry and activist work. The program also stated Donald had died of heart failure. I was one of many who witnessed Assotto speed down the aisle and take over the pulpit mid-service, declaring, “Donald Woods did not die of heart failure; he died of AIDS and he was a proud Black gay man. If you agree with me, stand up.” Half the church stood. Half didn’t. I stood up, as did Donald’s sister, Yvonne. I count that moment as one of a few where my path as an artist was revealed to me.

"We should take care so that we will loose none of the jewels of our soul. We must begin, now, to reject the white, either/or system of dividing the world into unnecessary conflict. For example, it is tragic and ridiculous to choose between Malcom X and Dr. King: each of them hurled himself against a quite different aspect of our predicament, and both of them, literally, gave their lives to our ongoing struggle.

When June Jordan said "life is action, inaction is death," I take that to mean that action is what repairs the diminishing of the heart, or at least slows it. And it is important for us to choose our actions, to be thoughtful about what our energy is spent on, to ask "what will repair this muscle?" — I, of course, still have my interests and excitements and obsessions and unfortunately you will very often still be subject to me shouting about, like, my favorite background accessories on 1970s funk album covers or whatever. That, also, repairs the diminishing of my heart. But principled revolutionary action and solidarity and care is also to priority driving all others. I would like my heart to survive so that my living might be useful to others, even if the world does not value any life, I cannot fall, allow myself to fall victim to the world's lack of care or imagination, even if it is seductive to do nothing. Life is action, inaction is death.

My past indifference to my own living has afforded me a kind of hard-earned inventiveness. I know how to get through a hard hour, a hard day, a hard week. I know how to pull myself from one minute to the next, in large part because I find that my depths of despair have afforded me a newfound curiosity. I am no longer wired to catalogue and sift through only my own internal horrors, and so, by the mercy of simply looking up and looking around, I can see that there are people willing to love me, and that I am willing to love them, and, yes, I cannot believe that this is the world we've got, but I am chasing the tail of the world's end, imagining that if I catch it (by way of tidying up my own spirit, my own heart, and also my own material communities), there might be something better than the present.

"What to do when there really is no future? When death and nonbeing are imminent realities and not profound theorizations and understandable reflections of depressed public affect? Feel deeply. Fight to be seen for the future. And love fuck hate rage laugh work and twirl, alively, in the present. Check your technique and innovate for the present crisis and future horizons. Admonish friends, accomplices, allies, and all who may listen, in whatever now they inhabit, to pick up your tools to finish the work toward an unpromised future freedom. Melvin [Dixon] knew his death was imminent. Projecting himself to this moment in which he speaks to us through his works, from the ether, alive and anticipating his demise, he insists: