Seethin' within: Imprecise words v 1.0
Earl Sweatshirt is rapping over this slow soul-sampled beat. And his lines hook me. Why ain't nobody tell me I was bleedin'? Why ain't nobody tell me I was sinkin'? Ain't nobody tell me I could leave.
It's easy for anything to build up inside. Easiest for anger. To grow. The Bible said we were made from soil, right?
I feel like a boiling, seething thing. Sometimes I can't even straighten it out into words. What am I angry at? Them? Me? What I did? What they did? If I try to write, imprecise words.1
Anger will grate behind my teeth and I clench them. Force a smile but a vein is tearing across my head. My tonsils must be burnt up now, charred and hanging limp.
I freestyled over this beat for several minutes. It was unlike writing; the words were not mine. Felt like I was stretching out my arms to snatch them: I reach some, some bristle against my fingertips. Some are too far. I recoil in shame? Anger? I laugh. I fail. I try.
It's different when I write. When I write, the words are on my thighs. I am just setting them on a board, arranging them, like Scrabble, like painting smileys when you have the pen and the yellow. I just have to do the do. I just have to type. My words drool, flow. I was freestyling and I could feel air in my head, the space between the thoughts a little scary. Unnerving? Is this how G* feels when I pound and say, write! write! pour your thoughts on the page! pour! And his words drip now and then. Diip, daap.
He's better now. He's filled a couple or so notebooks in a few days. Practice makes perfect, people say. It's cliché wisdom. I'd be grow this rapping. Give me practice. And time.
Earl is rapping over this slow soul-sampled beat. It's easy for anything to grow in your blood. You just have to let it. Even bat an eyelid for a second or two. Simple, tiny seeds grow into deep-rooted giants without effort. Our kettles are useless. Rain and ordinary sunshine can do the work. Time.
“Why ain't nobody tell me I was sinkin’?”
This is the echo of a man who found his own Enlightenment. One who bought his own Salvation. He can stab his fingers at the world. He came home somehow to see some thing was branching, veining, crawling over his house. Overgrowth. The place was submerged in a woody sea, of leaves and twigs. A slow, living monster, fed by time, by ordinary sun and rain. He set to work axing it. Alone. His neighbours simply walked by, back and forth. Walking to buy something at the kiosk. Walking their children to school. Walking.
Earl's voice is dull. You could feel it is bore riddim. Feels like suppressed anger. Pretend calm. Or anger mastered? The type that doesn't bare teeth. It just boils the skin from the inside. Scalds soft tissue till they are unfeeling.
I don't know if they knew he was sinking, bleeding. Is he sure they did? How come he himself didn't know at first? This type of blindness just wraps sore-soaked arms around people's eyes and around ours too. How did he come to know he could leave?
“Why ain't nobody tell me I was bleedin'?”
He's seethin' within. Kneading anger at himself, his blindness. At the world, at it's blindness? No. The world saw his crimson-drenched clothes. They thought it was wine? Maybe they thought he had come from a drunken spree. They envied him or cursed his hedonism under their breath. They didn't see him sinking because they only had their feet in the water, their heads were in the air, in the talk, while he grappled for air. His arms flaying like flags. No. They ignored him. Was it Bystander Effect? That curious phenomena where nobody moves to help a person, because they think someone else could? Someone else should? He's seethin' within.
I am slowly learning that most times the things we hate in others are in us too. Sons hate their fathers then grow up to be just like them. It's a cruel cycle. Hate swimmin' through your bloodlines. I am blind and still angry that another person was blind to my blindness. I seek help from victims. I judge. I cuss. We can only see the speck of dust in others' eyes when we have removed the beam in ours, right?
I am scared of this. Of being what I hate. I have seen myself become what I had previously despised. I call it change. I call it growth. Enlightenment is light, piercing haunted crevices of your life. Suddenly, those caves are illuminated. Those dark parts of you, you now flaunt.
I want to be more. But I am scared of becoming what I hate.
But look at tomorrow, two years from now; what am I growing into? What is time nurturing?
I don't know the point of all this. Should we let this simmer on and on? Building a castle of fuss out of useless beach sand? In a sea of songs, I'd make a pearl necklace out of a few drops? Am I pummeling Earl's simple words, the simple beat into a sagely classic work of philosophy? It's just how I feel. I just love the sound. Love makes me venerate. To see beauty that others do not see. To hallucinate? How would you know that Earl wasn't more intentional with every line, more than I am with this essay?
I am struggling not to end this as a lazy go-and-listen-to. I didn't write this as a song recommendation. I just wanted to arrest these feelings, these thoughts. It's wild. Not neat. But thank you for taking a stroll in the mud.
It's OK to be weird. To be you.
With love & ink,
Emmanuel
Fun fact: Earl sampled this phrase from James Baldwin's lecture, The Struggle.