Par Elisabeth Gomis
Avec toutes les prises de positions émanant d’artistes divers et parfois avariés sur la question Obama, celle-ci est de loin la plus surprenante de réalisme.
Saul Williams qu’on ne devrait plus présenter, s’est chargé de scander un discours qu’Obama lui même aurait pu écrire.
Le MC, poète et musicien, auteur du dernier “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust” se lance dans une joute verbale avec l’Histoire, une battle qu’on espère bien gagner ce mardi 4 novembre.
LA VIDEO
Dear History,
For too long have I pondered your meaning, memorized dates of battles,
years of servitude, decades of injustice, named eras after movements,
mourned the extinction of species, cursed founding fathers, worn
vintage suits and cloaked myself with references of your hold on me.
I have walked through museums wondering how it is that greatness had
lived and died all before my time. Parts of me feared becoming great
because it seemed to include a price of death and a postmortem glory
that my memory could never resurrect. I've stared at paintings dying to
catch glimpses of the painter, closed my eyes to listen to songs that
drunken ghosts dance to, and all the while I've fought to FREE the
present to BECOME.
In 1995, I stood with poets in the middle of the
Brooklyn Bridge, barking metaphors at the new moon of the summer
solstice wedging words into it's craters, sewing seeds through nightly
wind.
In 1996, I forced the ocean back with words, fathered planets, climbed
pyramids, and began to decipher the sirens song to conjure the
dream-filled Children of the Night.
In 1997, I stood with prisoners in our nations capitol bending bars
with the power of thought as wordsmiths served sentences and Hip Hop
diddy-dandified itself: stealing golden calves from the Old Testament
to smuggle into the lavish crib of Pontius Pilate for it's birthday
party
In 1998, I swallowed fear and sun-danced on film reels, projecting a me that had not been into a me that ever shall be.
And HERE I stand, ten years the difference and witness to changing hands.
Dear History,
I beat you. I stand a generator of generations bearing witness to a
world that we are holding accountable for past actions. Me and my
friends, we're changing our diets, re-inventing marriage, check-mating
capitalism, re-defining ethics, replacing cruelty with compassion, and
have sworn not to re-elect the sins of the father.
We are casting our votes for so much more than a lesser of evils, but
for change, and greater insight, for wisdom out of the mouths of babes,
for races that bleed into ONE.
Dear History,
You are behind us and we are no longer looking back. We are standing on
the threshold of new times, new days, new worlds, and charging forward
without battle cry or trumpet, while cynicism, apathy, and cowardice
take their place beside you, behind us.
Dear History,
We no longer believe in you. We have invested our our thoughts and
dreams into the present moment and opportunity to shift our reality
into one that does not resemble your dog-eared books.
We stand on the shoulders of those who have dared to dream and on the
necks of those who have wasted their time and ours proclaiming a past
past its prime.
Dear History,
Blitz! It's my turn now. You can have your mounds of flesh, leather
boots, cannons and sabers, nooses and guillotines, warships and fighter
planes, trails of tears and blood, genocides, dungeons and dragons,
ghost stories and fairy tales..........
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