Four

Shoot to Kill

“And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to Black people, and all of this is old for Black people.”²⁵

2012

Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Michael Eligon . . .

I was confused a lot

I ate a lot

I spent a lot of time avoiding the news

I didn’t talk about my feelings

2014

Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice

I was confused a lot

I became angry

I ate a lot

I wasn’t sleeping

I became irritable

2015

Walter Scott, Freddie Gray Jr., Jamar Clark, Bettie Jones, Sandra Bland, Samuel Dubose, Nathaniel Harris Pickett Jr., Richard Perkins Jr., Andrew Loku, (The Charleston Nine: Clementa C. Pinckney, Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons Sr., Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson), Kaleb Alexander, Marc Boekwa Diza Ekamba, Darrius Stewart, Alex Wettlaufer,

I was confused a lot

I became numb

I ate a lot

I drank a lot

I bottled things in

I wasn’t sleeping

2016

Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Terrence Crutcher, Deravis Caine Rogers, Jessica Nelson-Williams, Cynthia Fields, Abidirahman Abdi,

I ate a lot

I cried a lot

I ran a lot

I wasn’t sleeping

I became irritable

I became paranoid

I became depressed

I started using ______________ to cope with the depression

2018

Botham Jean, Olando Brown, Stephon Clark,

I ran a lot

I cried a lot

I was using ___________________ a lot

I wasn’t sleeping

I went deeper into paranoia, becoming distrustful of everyone around me

I was late for everything

I became unmotivated

I lacked drive or determination to complete tasks

2020

Clive Mensah, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Rodney Levi, Chantel Moore, Ejaz Ahmed Choudry, Abraham Natanine, Stewart Kevin Andrews,

Black and white illustration of a gun. The gun is constructed in a way that the muzzle points the opposite way, towards the person holding the gun. There are small tendrils of smoke coming off the muzzle.

I cried a lot

I ate a lot

I talked to my parents a lot

I talked with my therapist a lot

I ran a lot

I contemplated my wants and desires a lot

I cocooned a lot

I watched a lot of The Office²⁶

I decided to use my voice

I created this mixtape

25 Shout out Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World And Me.
26 American version.

Free / For You & Me

Music and Lyrics by Iain Ellis Lidstone

drums and guitar start together and play a slow, melancholy blues progression before a lead guitar melody soars over top and vocals begin. the lead guitar accents the lyrics, chiming in with improvised melodies at the end of vocal phrases.

Bad, bad times

Living in a world not of my design

Living in a world full of hate and greed

Shooting people down, putting necks under knees

lead guitar improvises briefly, ending with a note that bends and rings out hauntingly before rhythm guitar and drums begin the second verse.

This world’s not meant for me

If we don’t get no justice, they get no peace

Oh, this world’s not meant for you

We gotta organize, abolish the police

’Cause this shit affects you too

rhythm guitar and drums change their dynamic, playing softly and allowing room for the vocals to command the listener’s attention.

Oh I see names on my newsfeed day after day

Of Black trans women and men whose lives were taken away

Six Black trans women during Pride month alone

Deadnamed in the media, disrespected even when they’re gone

lead guitar plays a melody that signals a change in dynamics, with rhythm guitar and drums beginning a gradual crescendo. vocals evoke a sense of urgency, with lead guitar adding scorching melodic accents at the end of each vocal line.

The Black trans femmes of my community

Continue to put their lives down for free

Transmisogyny is running thick

We gotta dismantle the patriarchy and racism to fix it

guitars and drums reach the peak of their crescendo as the lyrics launch into the chorus, spelling out the thesis of the song.

Oh this world is ours to keep

Ours to take away from legacies built on genocide and greed

Oh this world is meant for you

You’ve been asleep for so long

So now what you gonna do?

guitars and drums play quietly and sparsely, and the vocals take front and centre boldly of the mix.

I don’t want to hear how you think racism doesn’t happen here

Don’t try to absolve yourself from complicity in problems that have always been there

What a privilege it is to never see racism in our “true north strong and free”

drums signal a change, switching to half time and continuing the momentum by keeping time with the ride cymbal and accenting the phrases with tom fills. over the course of the following lyrics, the instruments and vocals begin another crescendo, reaching a climax with a guitar solo.

When white settlers give Indigenous peoples their land, we’ll all be free

When the world is safe for our Black men then we’ll all be free

When the world is safe for Black trans femmes then we’ll all be free

We’ll all be free

an emotional psych-rock and blues inspired guitar solo takes the place of the vocals, soaring above the mix and telling a story of beauty, sadness, and urgency.

What does it mean to be free?

Oh

What does it mean to be free?

guitar, drums, and vocals slow down to half time again, gently closing the song, leaving the listener to contemplate the final questions as they linger in the air.

Barry Stewart Pt. 3

Instead of turning the TV on during the day when I’m here, I have music playing instead. So, I love music. And nothing is more soothing than nice soulful melodic Luther Vandross or Teddy Pendergrass or whatever. Marvin Gaye. I love music! That’s my passion I guess.

Black and white illustration of a vintage phonograph with a large horn.

Freedom (The Right to Anything?)

Eve Atoms

Freedom

Mine

Sacred

Spaces

Feed them

Lies

Take it

Waste it

Freedom, freedom

Freedom time

freedom mine

take it

freedom

mine

sacred

freedom

time

painted faces

need some time

make it make it

faces

lie

drink wine

Black and white illustration of a glass of wine.

taste it

sacred spaces

die

why

feed them lies

freedom mine

waste it

take it

mine

waste it

wasted

waste it

die

freedom blind

make it

taste it

mine

feed them

lies

waste it

take it

mine

sacred

sacred spaces

divine

find

why

mine

racist

hatred

lies why

divide

freedom

Was never promised to me

Was never in my fate

It was only a word used to subjugate

An ideology made to permit your insatiable greed

Your bottomless need to feed

Unquenchable

Breed

A nation of voracious Windigo

Crippled we fall to our knees

Replaceable

Another body moves into position

Willingly taking the place of submission

Grinding the wheels that pull us apart

Weakening the connection between mind and heart

We must get back to what makes us whole

Remember the space of the sacred soul

but some of y’all wanna gwan like amputees

Buying the illusion that you are free

Take what you want without respect

Ignoring that what you do has an effect

Using all manner of justification

but you can’t escape the fact that

We are One

Sing the song that sets you free

Fly into eternity

Sail across the open sea

Find your way back home to me

Black and white illustration of an old ship sailing in the ocean.

Kattawe Henry Pt. 2

I think that freedom is like super complicated and relational. But when I was doing my masters, my thesis supervisor said basically, there’s this quote from this one book said something along the lines of, our ancestors dreamed us up. And then worked reality around us, around that concept. And so that’s kind of what I think about when I think about freedom. I think about the fact that I’m my ancestor’s wildest dreams. So much of what I have is the result of a lot of hardship. And that’s not lost on me that I live in a space where I can move relatively freely in comparison to what has been. It was illegal for me to read and write at one point in time, but now I work in a university setting and I have gone to grad school. And I’ve done all of those things, and those things will also then therefore afford me freedom. So that’s kind of built on top of each other. And then, I also recognize how as a Black individual that freedom is also complicated.

So, it’s conditional in a lot of spaces and it’s even conditional within the Black community, because when you add various layers of identity within the Black community, that’s gonna dictate how your relationship with the Black community is. I think for example how folks like to put so much energy and time into things like Black Lives Matter typically for cis straight Black men. But then anyone outside of that construction is often harmed by their own community in a way that we don’t see necessarily to the same degree in other communities. So, for example, as a Black woman, the way in which the relationship that I have with other Black women and also with Black men, I think about how Black transwomen are impacted in the Black community. And then I start thinking about all these other things in relation to all of that. But I recognize just how complicated freedom is.