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"When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It's like death."
- Dennis Quaid
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"By any means necessary."
- Malcolm X
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"When our memories outweigh our dreams we have grown old."
- Bill Clinton
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"Of the Catholic church he worked for peace, reconcillation, and disarmament.
- Göran Persson
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KRIS EX
An old woman walks into a therapist's office. She is a raisin in the sun, her black skin shriveled upon her bones. She wears oversized sunglasses. The therapist looks on in shock.
"I thought you were dead," the therapist says to the woman.
"Do I look dead, motherfucker?" she asks, cocking her head back with a coarse laugh that's a stampede of nicotine and rumbling menthol. She lights a cigarette, takes a pull and lets her arm drape her over-crossed legs. "Well," she asks, pushing out a stream of smoke, "Do I look dead?"
The therapist fumbles. "Well, no, err, obviously-" he composes himself and restarts: "It's just that some people have been saying that you were, well, dead."
"People have been saying that since I was born."
"Yes, but these are the people who know you best."
She shakes her head in amused disbelief, resting her chin on the fat of her palm. "It's weird, isn't it? When I was young, they only gave me a few years to live-if that long. Everyone thought I would die. Hell, I know some of those motherfuckers wanted me to die. But I made it through; had some growing pains along the way, but, I made it through."
One leg is bouncing over the other now-she's nervous or anxious, thinking about something she doesn't want to think about.
"Is everything okay?" her therapist asks. She doesn't answer. He asks her to remove her sunglasses and she does. Her face is bruised and blackened, her eyes are bloodshot, with ruptured veins. She's been hurt.
"Like I said," she says, "I had some growing pains along the way." She replaces her sunglasses. "But, you know what really bugs me?" she asks. "It's my family. They protected me when everyone else thought I was going to die. But once they saw I was going to live, they abused me, whored me, let me do anything, go anywhere. Now, they don't want me anymore, so they say I'm dead. Maybe they're scared that I'm growing. They can't control me anymore. And you know a motherfucker's gonna disdain anything they can't control."
"How does this make you feel?"
"Shit, I can't complain. I've been all over the world and left children every where I went. I've fed people, created jobs, created industries. I've changed the face of the world, rearranged cultures, restructured value systems. Hell, I've done more for race relations than anything since the Civil Rights Movement. I feel great."
"You think having black eyes is being 'great'?"
"Look, I grew up fast-maybe too fast. I've made some mistakes, associated with the wrong people. But haven't we all? I think that people expect too much of me. I'm not responsible for educating people about life, their diets and politics. There are documentaries for that."
"But you just said yourself that you have a global impact. Doesn't that imply some sort of responsibility on your part?"
She pulls out another cigarette, fumbling with the lighter. "Look, nobody ever says to Rock N' Roll, Hey, you have a responsibility to educate. You're a culture. Why do I have to bear the burden of the school system and people's parents? I got enough trouble of my own."
"But you're Hip-Hop. You're not Rock N' Roll."
"Yeah, and I've been toting guns, popping champagne and viewing women as sex objects since I came in the door. People seem to forget that part. Everyone wants to act like I was a virgin birth or something. I'm sick of the revisionist history. I been talking about money, clothes, cars and hoes. That's nothing new. I am who I am. Shouldn't that be enough?"
"I don't know. Should it?"
"Listen, I didn't come here to be mind-fucked. I just wanted to let you know that I'm alive. As they say, The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I'm alive. And I ain't going nowhere."
With that she gets up and begins to walk out the door.
"Where are you going?" asks her therapist.
"Wouldn't you like to know," she says with her nicotine and menthol laugh. And then she's gone.
She's definitely hurting, the therapist thinks to himself. But at least she's alive.
At least she's alive. The reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated.
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