Relfection Eternal – 2000 Seasons
Given that “A Tree Never Grown” has been on my mind with all of the death we’ve been collectively mourning in this country and elsewhere, it’s perhaps not surprising that this song also has been playing around on the turntable of my mind quite a lot over the last 72 hours. “2000 Seasons” is the flipside of one of the greatest late 1990s “underground” songs, “Fortified Live,” a song so good that it would be easy for a whole lot of people to not even bother with the flipside. But in some ways “2000 Seasons” is more extraordinary, and it’s the song that I come back to more frequently, especially in moments like these that require a great deal of reflection. Kweli begins the song with a quote from Armah’s book that feels particularly apt in these times and in similar times.
“For who do we aspire to reflect our own people’s death? For who’s entertainment shall we sing of agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers aspiring to extinguish us will suddenly suffer remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream that dream is dead. He was killed by the saviors of his own dream…” Ayi Kwei Armah – Two Thousand Seasons (1973)
“Two Thousand Seasons” by Armah is a complicated work, attempting to condense two millennia of African and African Diaspora history into single work of fiction, highlighting, perhaps above all else, how oppression is always met with resistance, but how we see that resistance or understand it depends on our perspective. Kweli has mentioned that he purposely made his rhymes as dense as the book that inspired them. But for me, I never viewed them that way. They act as companion piece, and the song not only acted as a introduction to someone that over the last 20 years has become a cherished artist for many, but also introduced many to Armah’s writing. There are a number of lines that have deep emotional resonance for me. Whether it’s Kweli’s first verses that set the tone (“I’m not a human being getting on some spiritual shit, A spiritual being manifested as a human that’s it.”) or his critical assessment of our nation while welcoming back into the community those who have been incarcerated (“I welcome them back to the world they think is run by laws, The world is run by men who use laws for tools.”) there is much to dig deeply into with this song.
At this moment though, the line that I keep coming back to is this, “Under grey clouds Black butterflies still be soaring…” While this past week has been gut-wrenching for a lot of folks, even those of us who are well versed, informed and active in struggles for equality, especially around Policing, as the anger has subsided a bit, it’s been humbling and heart-warming to see many different types of people coming together as never before and showing solidarity. That keeps me hopeful, that one day, we SHALL overcome.
