Heavy Pens: A Burdened Storyteller
“My stories are weighty because writing was how I leaned the burdens of my heart against everyone else’s. This was the only way for people to, get me.”
For writers, or any artist, you will be rejected. And with each “no,” meant to chip at the parts of you regarded expendable, still hold the fragments of your artistry together– you stay whole. Your words will fall on blind eyes or lack the donnish traits to pierce the minds of highbrow journalists and academics– black and white.
Stone hearts and gatekeepers will redirect unfamiliar voices, but we will, divinely, be heard by the right people– God will tell His story. We face the dilemma of being either writers or abstract artists– newsreaders or poets. Writing that lacks imagination or creativity won’t be remembered.
As well as this, narratives inform theories, and we must dress stories well if we want readers to preserve their information. Prose with no poetry is a drab canvas– and we are burdened to create portraits with words. In his Reflections on the Work of Nikolai Levkov, Walter Benjamin recalls, “This craftsmanship, storytelling, was actually regarded as a craft by Leskov himself. “Writing,” he says in one of his letters, “is to me no liberal art, but a craft.”
Storytellers sometimes bear the weight of telling a story without every fact– the dry and colorless truth. But it is also our experiences that make us narrators. The tale of the lion and hunter is fascinating because no one mentions the deer, who watched in fear and knew that it could die as a mere spectator in all its helplessness. The deer might be a more reliable voice for the story.
To open his autobiography, Blues All Around Me, B.B. King declares: “When it comes to my own life, others may know the cold facts better than me… Truth is, facts don’t tell the whole story. I’m not writing a cold-blooded history. I’m writing a memory of my heart– That’s the truth I’m after, following my feelings no matter where they lead.”
I’m writing these words for a lot of reasons. My story being told is no longer as relevant to me. Nowadays, stories get left in the past, and I realize that even my own, with every wound and broken bone that are remnants of a tragedy, is no different. My past exists still, only in my scars, and speaks from there– given the speed of culture, media, and enterprise.
I write this because, in November, I watched as everyone mourned Takeoff’s life for roughly 72 hours– leading up to the release of Drake and 21 Savage’s album, Her Loss– before we quickly moved to quarrel over an untimely, dangerously ambiguous, and substandard double entendre.
I write this because my passion is restrained by a culture that wants stories told first and fast, not correctly or crafted with concern. I can’t package everything my fleeting emotions leave me with into these words. But between the lines, as raw and scattered as my ideas are, I hope you find the story I’m trying to tell.
We must slow down on our journeys and watch as indistinguishable cursory figures become vivid images, or stories will go untold and pictures unseen.
Takeoff’s death cut everyone deep– just like when Nip was killed, Dolph was shot down, Pop Smoke was murdered, and other black men are at the receiving end of gun violence, whether scholars, athletes, or block huggers. I saw myself and my brothers. I remember where I was when I found out.
With every inch of imagination, many of us painfully tried to reckon what it’s like to watch someone you love drift while you sit helpless and desperate. No matter my past troubles, I don’t know this feeling and have no memories to help me bleed for an emotionally wounded Quavo.
The story has faded to a bygone as the culture speedily mourned Takeoff’s passing and then celebrated his life– equivalent to putting children’s bandages over deep cuts only for the blood to leak through. But tales must be told about hip-hop and its continual dance with death, America’s complicated relationship with guns and contempt for black bodies, and the rap world as a microcosm of the violent bedrock of this country.
Life doesn’t move at the speed of the internet, where conversations change before caskets are lowered into the ground. Even before we get all the news regarding death, the reality that someone has transitioned from this side of life makes any indisputable fact have to weigh against heavy hearts and burdened souls. You can’t talk or reason your way out of grief.
I’ve grieved many things in my reclusion– people, stories, opportunities, friendships, and loved ones. We all play scratch-off games with those we love; we hide to compel them to rub coarsely against our walls in hopes they would peel back our layers and see, us. And that which I’ve hidden from, I’ve also prayed for. My bruised knuckles have left dents in the door of God’s house. And like a child who irresponsibly left his key on his dresser, I sit on the porch and wait for my father to let me in, again.
Prayers have filled my room. Prayers for everyone, and that we would slow down, or that life, for me, would speed up. Or I should learn to wait. I said these thoughts were scattered, and, well, they are. Suffer, write, create, and grieve well next year. 24.
Told by: Kwon “24” Hosey
