Essence
https://invidious.devianze.city/watch?v=bckob0AyKCA
Today is inspired by Billie Holiday and the song Strange Fruit. The song started life as a poem written by Abel Meeropol (under the pseudonym Lewis Allan), who set it to music and performed it with his wife in the late 1930s. Billie Holiday then recorded her cover in 1939.
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastor scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouths
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rut, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
Really there is not much to say about today. Today is about deepening the emotional message. It’s about the essence of the topic that you’ve selected, the essence of what you wish to change, the essence of what you’re addressing here, the essence of the injustice that you’re working on. It’s about not getting bogged down in the thoughts or the details, in a way.
It’s about, for example, a table – what is the essence of a table? What is the essence of table-ness, without resorting to the aggregates, without resorting to describing the parts – these are legs, this is a flat surface – without saying that, just directly, what is the essence of table-ness? What is the direct experience of the struggle that you’re describing, of the injustice, of the thing that makes you feel completely helpless? What’s the essence of it?
This is a deeply personal and emotional thing; what is the center, the gooey chocolatey center? Even if it’s a negative emotion, it does have a chocolatey gooey center that can be expressed. So what is it? This is with the whole body and mind; how does it taste? How does it smell? How does it feel to the touch? What sounds does it make? In order to get to the essence, there has to be vulnerability and intimacy, and using all the senses is a way of doing that.
The essence of a pearl is a grain of sand; it’s an irritant that the clam experiences, and it’s an irritation so severe that it finds a way of handling it by putting layers and layers around it that creates this beautiful jewel. This is basically what we’re doing, we’re taking the biggest irritant, the biggest discomfort and creating layers around it, and then displaying it to create change and connection.
Though that is a long description, Strange Fruit addresses all of it without really saying a word about how.