Can I get a witness?: A Triptych
a poem in three movements

hakim Bellamy

Preamble: One of the most persistent inquiries we encounter, as artists...both internal and external to the Academy...is “How can art move us to act?” I imagine Maestro Bernstein grappled with the same gnawing question his entire life. But what I’ve arrived at, is that I am continually reminded that art IS an action. And on my worst days, when my self doubt is the size of a migraine… I still believe this. On those days, even when I think making art in these times is as futile as singing in the wind, I give credit where credit is due, it is an intention turned tangible, even if it is only a notch up from thoughts and prayers. But on my better days, I am sure of it...of us...because art is creation...and creation is always the anti-venom to destruction. Even though humans create that too.

In the Afro-American/Black Church tradition...we have a trope. Kids nowadays would call it a meme. Because it is both participatory and recognizable...kind of like the “Mic Check” of the Occupy Movement, except Call and Response was originally brought over to this continent with enslaved Africans circa 1619. And a few hundred years later, eminating from a pulpit you’d likely hear a Black preacher go something like this...

I. Prophecy (You)

Turn to your neighbor,
and say, “Neighbor…
I don’t know who you are…

but I know that I love you.”

Now, turn to your other neighbor
and hug

...it’s the only way to know
we’re not in prison.

Even our cells have walls
The kind that keep us together
instead of a part…

But if you are not a hugger,
a handshake will do.

Whatever makes you feel safe
even though a handshake is just a socially awkward way of holding hands

May I have this dance?
Surely to be our last.

Make a ballroom out of this tongue,
this Tewa,
this vacant field
soon to be a battle of broken bodies
buried in the back of my throat.

The land will remember this kind of quiet,
and long for it
again…

It will prefer our bare feet to boots.
Our ballads to bullets.
Our learning to lying,
and lying down.

Because we will ever after
always have this holocaust in common.

This promise.
This practice.
This art of making the world not kill itself
one musical at a time.

WE are the music.
Last stitch instruments of change.

Desperately unsure if these people are deaf
to our walking symponies .
Our foot stomping and shouting
Mistaken for kicking and screaming.
Living and not leaving.

Listening for these cardiac kick drums
and the castanets of every kiss.
We are the cymbal of every hi five.
The church, that exists in the marrying of our wrists

If life is a dance partner,
Death is a friend.
But these songs
Between us

Look, taste, smell, yes sound,
and feel

like
love.

II. Profanation (Me)

There is a 19 year-old prodigy
seated at a baby grand
in the middle of a war zone…

anyway.

The only invasion he is party to
is invading himself.

Cuticles perched vertically
for pianos.
Not horizontal
for pistols.

The bravest fingers
to ever play a piece sign

to pieces.

Godforsaken hands
that were never suited for punching.

But instead of making weapons
he used the same meat hooks he came with
to make music.

Maybe even make a fool of himself.
All lovers do. But who
would dare sing at the wind
as the City goes up in a bonfire of sheet music.
Give soundtrack to chaos.
Providing a record
of all the things we stand to lose.

What kind of gall gives thanks
through the punishment?
Brings a baby to a battlefield?
What kind of bravery makes love

in times of war?

That 19 year-old child.
That Jeremiah.
That 19 year-old me.
That day

that Bernstein
fell Jerusalem in 26 minutes.

And it sounds just like a broken harp
every time.

III. Lamentation (Us)

Every warning
that goes unheeded

makes a witness out of us.

Art does more than make us possible.
Art makes it possible to survive this guilt.
The guilt of survival.

To imagine
an after.

And, frankly, uncertain what kind of who
would imagine a war.

Who among us will create
the opposite of destruction.

The very same notes and the letters
that we
are composed of…

The soundwaves that stitch an audience
across a concert hall together
like a cyclone.

Creating rivers between us.

The meals
that attach us in 8s and 10s.
First, to a banquet table.
Then, right back to the ground.

The out of body experience of theater.
The fitting of someone else’s skin.
The relentless practicing of the best
and worst parts of the human condition

for all to see.

Once we know we love each other
and no longer have anything to prove

silence comes easy.

When will we practice
the art of undressing our isolation?

Stop aimlessly wrecking into each other.
Stop making a potluck out of all our fears.
Do away with all three waves of grief

and stop repeating ourselves.

Our freedom doesn’t just
depend on us loving one another.

It depends on us
having a better way

of showing it.

© Hakim Bellamy & friends at the Academy for the Love of Learning August 25, 2019