Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)

by Hanif Abdurraqib

When there is nothing to point to as an excuse for distance, the distance looms larger, more difficult to push.

I think, often, about love strictly as a matter of perspective. For some, it is something they are receiving from someone whom they might slowly be draining the life from.

Anger is a type of geography. The ways out of it expand the more you love a person. The more forgiveness you might be willing to afford each other opens up new and unexpected roads. And so, for some, staying angry at someone you love is a reasonable option. To stay angry at someone you know will forgive your anger is a type of love, or at least it is a type of familiarity that can feel like love.

There is a way to read a poem, and then there is a way to allow the poem to exit the body and be read by everyone in the room.