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TENSE
Words That Do Not Kill.
You want me give you a testimony about my life
And how good he’s been to me
I don’t know what to tell you about him
I love him so much with all my heart and my soul
With every bone in my body I love him so much
Because he’s done so much for me.
Every morning
Every day of my life
I won’t always be crying tears
In the middle of the night, and I won’t always have to wake up
By myself wondering how I’m gonna get through the day
I won’t always have to think about what I’m gonna do
And how I’m gonna, how I’m gonna make it
How I’m gonna get there, because he…
He’s gonna be there for me
(…)
It feels so good to be free
To be accepted for who you are and loved no matter what.[1]
For someone growing up non-religious, this intro on Kayne West’s new album, [i]The Life of Pablo[i], made me understand something I never had before. The song starts in such a sensuous way, that I truly thought the singer was giving me an account of her longing for ‘him,’ a fleshy him, a human him, a flawed but trustworthy male. Instead, she was expressing her love and trust in God. This only becomes clear at the end of her pledge, in the last two sentences: “Oh Lord thank you, You are the joy of my life.” Interestingly enough, it was only then that I was able to enjoy this spoken song called “Low Lights.” As, when I still thought the singer was displaying her love for a human him (not Him), I considered the lyrics overtly romantic, overtly dependent. This of course says a lot about my own beliefs about love (just as much as it says about what we are conditioned to expect and recognize as love in music, movies, and other popular expressions).[2] As soon as I realized it was about her love for God, I was totally drawn in, immersed by the intensity of her submission to Him.[3] And suddenly I understood that it was her strong language that displayed, inhabited, shaped, constructed, and created her love and trust for him. Her language wasn’t just a true account of her worship, the language generated and endorsed the love. The love existed because of her saying it out loud.
Surrender
For me, growing up secular and without spiritual rituals, it seemed impossible to start believing in a higher power that can be named as ‘Lord.’ Theoretically, I may want to submit to one idea or force, but it is exactly this longing to surrender that seems to suspend the possibility of actually belief. [i]Wanting[i] to submit isn’t the same as submission itself – it is the incapacity of submitting to submission. Being able to view submission, as something one can [i]do[i], is exactly what withholds submission. However, when I heard this singer in “Low Lights,” I suddenly realized I could do [i]that[i], I could express a message in a convinced, rhetorical, and descriptive manner, without necessarily believing the content of this message.
I love language. I love language so much that I can sound very convincing saying just about anything. I could express submission, whether or not I believe that I am truly feeling submission. In this convinced language, by expressing surrender I would experience surrender because the language of worship and submission is not descriptive but performative. Words create. Words do not just describe, they are gestures confirming and producing realities.[4] As love is an abstraction, and not, for example, a chair one can point to, stating ‘I love him so much’ [i]is[i] the love.
My understanding of “Low Lights” comes from this trickle-down scheme:
1) Being unable to hear a person expressing Person-To-God Love (PTGL).
2) Rejecting Girl-To-Boy Love (GTBL), but expecting and thereby accepting GTBL’s existence.
3) Realizing that GTBL is actually PTGL; thus by acknowledging GTBL, becoming able to acknowledge PTGL.
It wasn’t just this trickle down love-scheme that allowed me to gain some understanding of the depth of expressing worship. It was the singer’s voice too. Her voice sounds so joyous and rich, it actually reminded me of having sex, of my lov
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1. West, K. 2016. Low Lights. [i]The Life of Pablo[i].
2. My expectation that her worship was meant for another human, might not only say something about my secular upbringing but may also reveal that I’m listening with white ears – taking in consideration that my white, secular Dutch background probably limits my interpretation of Kanye West’s music.
3. I’m here using ‘Him’ to refer to God, as the singer does. Let’s acknowledge that some also refer to god as She (‘I met god, she’s black’) or without using gender binary terms. Islamic scholar Amina Wadud refers to Allah as ‘Trans.’ I am also speaking about heterosexual love here, because “Low Light” refers to girl-boy love. This fits well with my argument, as my initial hesitation with the text – finding it overtly romantic – certainly has to do with encountering a surplus of straight love in songs, movies, commercials. As I state in footnote 1, I might be ignoring specifics about black love by considering this girl-boy love ‘straight.’ Scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Alexis Pauline Gumbs would argue that ‘black’ and ‘queer’ are interchangeable, as black people are never gender conformative in a world ruled by white norms.
4. Think about the way the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte defended the racist figure Black Pete (‘Zwarte Piet’). He stated: “Black Pete is Black, the word itself says it, nothing I can change about that,” pretending the nature of the figure itself creates the description ‘Black Pete,’ while not acknowledging that naming something ‘black’ [i]makes[i] it black, while reproducing the possibility of using ‘black’ as a description and pretending it is a description only.
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