Into The Light of a Dark Black Night.

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

This story is for the birds.

But maybe you’ll read it anyway.

In Maya Angelou’s famous book, the caged bird sings essentially because it has nothing else to do. The idea here is that the free bird is so busy living its life, it doesn’t have time to sing. It’s off being “busy”, doing “stuff”.

This has deep resonance for our time. The caged bird sings because it can. And it must. Many of us, and me… in quarantine indefinitely here in the Bay Area, are caged birds. What must we do with our time? And what does it really mean to sing?

A shot I took with my drone of Dolores park of the “pods” to enforce social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. How will we be safe and protect everyone around us, but still express intimacy?

What must a free bird, say a Bluejay, or an Egret, or Falcon flying over Dolores Park think of the image above I shot with my drone the other day? Caged birds?

Free birds, and I would extrapolate this out to the “free” and privileged white people of America, don’t sing generally, because they’re too busy being “free”, enjoying privilege, looking out for themselves. ‘Murca. Freedom. Individual liberties. America’s greatest export is “distraction”: consumerist distractions from the deeper meaning and beauty of life, of…