006: Art is a mirror & a time machine

Transforming grief and making magic, but over time
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I’m grieving. If you’ve known me for more than ten minutes, you know that my mom died in 2021 (on Mother’s Day!!!!). But I was grieving before that, and the grief continues to compound. Grief is a big thing, and it can easily become the biggest thing. I can go from grieving my mom to grieving my dog, my friend, a friendship, my health, my technically-grandmother* died, Black lives in America, Palestinian lives in Gaza, microplastics in our bodies, the breakdown of society –

*more on that later

First, let me tell you that I’m not coming to any conclusions today. I’m writing this the day after the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams. There are a lot of theories about why they went through with it, in spite of hundreds of thousands of people speaking up to protest against killing him – including the prosecutors and the victim’s family. 

Today, I’m just feeling hollow and heartbroken. I don’t want to explain what it feels like to be Black and to see how our lives and bodies can be discarded, degraded, destroyed. I’ll write about that another time. Maybe. Instead, I want to write about Williams’ poetry. About the fact that my father’s mother recently died. And about how making art is both a mirror and a time-machine. 

The poetry of Marcellus Williams

During his 24 years on death row, Marcellus Williams wrote a lot of poems. Here’s one:

At last…Another’s heartbeat

the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun
they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir
standing there in silence holding hands
no rush to go back inside
there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…
– amidst sounds of buzzing
chirps
crickets
the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind
fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon
how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own –
finally love.

You can read more of his work here. 

I read this poem when I first heard about him, about two weeks ago. When I first read it, I was delighted by the gentle clarity of the scene and the rhythm of the lines. I wondered who he wrote it about, and what love looked like for him as an incarcerated person. 

I read it again this morning, and it felt completely different. The images, the single-word lines, the pace of the language all landed in a new way, knowing what I know now. 

My father’s mother died a couple weeks ago

She was not really a grandmother to me. I saw her very few times throughout my life. When she died, it was a strange feeling. I didn’t ‘lose her’ because I never had her. She lived a hard life and I exist because of her. I didn’t know her. I hold love for her. 

Over the weekend, I played this song in Boston. Like many of my songs, it started with a real situation: I wrote this when I made a new friend that I was intensely drawn to but also felt intimidated by. I wanted to capture that tension in a song. The result is something that most people interpret as a romantic narrative. 

But for some reason, my ~grandmother popped into my head just as I was about to start playing the song. So I took a moment to speak about her, telling the audience what I knew about her, and how she made me feel during her life. How her death made me feel. The harm that she caused during life. The tenacity that means I exist today. Then I sang the song. Here are some of the lyrics:

The way you look at me makes me want to tell you who I am 
but I don’t know how it goes. 
[...]
Everything I learn about you makes me doubt myself
and I’m going for the gold. 
I shouldn’t be loving you this way, but I do. 
The way you wear your hair, 
the way you act like you don’t notice that I stare
has me tangled up inside. 
[...]
I see myself as the starry sky and I see myself as the moon
you’re hidden in the dark of my night. 
I shouldn’t be loving you this way, but I do. 

I spent the song clutching my hands together, moving through an increasingly intense experience as each line I sang fell further into place, telling the true story of my feelings about this ferocious, fascinating woman. When I sat down in 2019 to write this, I had no idea who I was really writing about. 

Or did I?

Art as mirror & time machine

Art reveals that which you are ready and able to receive. If you haven’t lost someone, a song won’t remind you about your dead mom. If you haven’t had your heart broken, a breakup song won’t make you cry over your ex. 

It feels trite in some ways to say “everyone interprets art differently!” but in the truest sense, art shows us all different versions of the same thing: we all see a person in the mirror. We all see ourselves as we know ourselves, while the world sees us from an infinite number of perspectives. In many ways, the person who sees you with the least clarity is you. 

Art reflects who you are when you receive it. And that impact changes over time. 

Art is a time machine in that I did write a song about a new friendship. And then years later, the song did become about my ancestor. The meaning changed completely, neatly, deftly. Without me noticing. 

Marcellus Williams’ poem reflected what I knew about him before he was murdered, and when I read it again, it reflected the fact that he had been killed. Every word changed in meaning. 

My song was about a friend. And then it was about an ancestor. Every word changed meaning. And the space in between the Before and the After is ripe with meaning and movement as well.

Most importantly, art (whether trapped in time like a recording, a published poem, a painting or dynamic over time like a live performance) has an ability to connect the past to the present and vice versa. It can transport us into an imagined future, and it can act as a small thread tying us to the last time we heard a song, watched a movie, or went to a show. It’s an opportunity to look back and reflect on where you were and how far you’ve come. 

There are so many songs and poems that I associate with grief. “At last…another’s heartbeat” by Marcellus Williams will always have ties to this time in my life. Sometimes I will come across the poem again and I will be in worse health, struggling with a broken heart and spirit. And other times I will come across the poem and raise my chin. Light a candle in memory and sit in my resilience, my strength, and my certainty. 

The last thing I have to say is that we need to ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY. Marcellus Williams was innocent, but as someone said on Threads, guilty people shouldn’t be executed either.