They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

It is one thing to be good at what you do, and it is another thing to be good and bold enough to have fun while doing it.

Even in my decade-plus of loving Bruce Springsteen’s music, I have always known and accepted that the idea of hard, beautiful, romantic work is a dream sold a lot easier by someone who currently knows where their next meal will come from.

Eventually, as the song winded down (ironically with the line “die young and save yourself,” a line that I used to have scrawled on a notebook before I got older and started to quite enjoy living, or at least stopped finding death romantic), I watched the boy sit up, shake his head, and gingerly stand up.

So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I’d rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone’s life.

A total stereotype of early-20s apathy, I spent my time working a shit job at a dollar store in the neighborhood where I grew up, mostly because I could walk there and walk home with something in my headphones.

This is the part of death as art that isn’t always noble: the idea that the death, before it is art, is still death. There is still a person leaving, leaving us behind.

And so what I’m saying is that our heroes spill from their heroes and their heroes before them, and at some point, everyone wants out.

It occurred to me that this, perhaps, was truly the way to show off: keep most of what you have at a whisper, but keep just enough of it so loud that it won’t be forgotten.

The feeling I love most is walking into night air after spending hours cloaked in sweat, dancing in a small room with strangers. If the night air is cool, the way it sits on your skin is a type of forgiveness. A balm for all of the heat you’ve leaned into. Sometimes, I think I still only go to shows for the way it feels to leave them, everyone pouring out of a bar or an arena, a collective gasp rising after everyone feels the same breeze at once.

What makes the dead body worthwhile is that it was once living.

When you love a place, coming to terms with its lesser qualities and learning to apologize for them is commonplace.