Robert Glasper - I Stand Alone (feat. Common & Patrick Stump)

The irresistible appeal of black individuality -- where has all of that gone? The very people who blazed our path to self-expression and pioneered a resolutely distinct and individual voice have too often succumbed to mind-numbing sameness and been seduced by simply repeating what we hear, what somebody else said or thought, and not digging deep to learn what we think or what we feel or what we believe. Now it is true that the genius of African culture is surely its repetition but the key to such repetition was that new elements were added each go round. Every round goes higher and higher, something fresh popped off the page or jumped from a rhythm that had been recycled through the imagination of a writer or a musician. Each new installation bore the imprint of our unquenchable thirst to say something of our own, in our own way, in our own voice, as best we could. The trends of the times be damned! Thank god we've still got musicians and thinkers whose obsession with excellence and whose hunger for greatness remind us that we should all be unsatisfied with mimicking the popular, rather than mining the fertile veins of creativity that God placed deep inside each of us. 

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Ah, the appeal of iconoclasm, the beauty of language firmly rooted in pride and conviction...

간만에 라디오를 듣다가 우연히 알게 된 뮤지션 Robert Glasper. 스트리밍을 걸어놓고 앨범들을 주욱 훑다가, 위와 같은 마니페스토에 귀가 훅 잡아채여 자꾸 듣고 있다. 밀리고 또 밀리는 글 한 줄을 아둥바둥 쓴답시고 낮밤이 뒤바뀐 채 좀비처럼 살고 있는 나의 정체감과 무력감을 조금쯤 덜어준(줄) 고마운 노래. 앞으로 몇 달간 꾸준히 들을 것 같다. 

작년 가을, 결코 일상적이지 않은 LA라는 곳에서 우연히 맞닥뜨렸던 Barbara Kruger 사진이 그러했듯이, 나에게 뜻밖의 동력과 확신을 느끼게 해주는 고마운 우연의 순간들. 이런 것들이 있어서 그간 잘 버텨왔겠지. 그리고 지금 이 시기를 잘 뚫고 나가겠지. 

아까부터 조용한 빗소리가 커졌다 작아졌다를 반복한다. 마른 장마라는데... 덕분에 저기압에 취약한 나는 살만하다만, 그래도 와야 할 비는 와야한다. 그러니까 지금처럼 자정을 넘겨서 오는 비는 언제든 환영. 

그나저나 이 분 때마침 서울 소울 페스티벌(?)인가로 내한도 하시던데... 가고 싶은데 표가 너무 비싸다 으앙.