#messageforghosts,"i'm going to Guinea!"

Lupe Fiasco has much to say in his records, but at 3:32pm today sitting on my couch watching his video he made this Taurean break her mold and write a post about the clip now, though i'm supposed to wait until tomorrow to see if this moment "stays with me". But we don't always have tomorrow, Lupe has reminded me. I watch him lift his arm to wipe his tears and tell Swift from MTV that he is crying "because some of them dudes is dead."

Go here to for the video: http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/819012/lupe-fiasco-breaks-down-over-the-ghosts-from-his-block.jhtml


I don't wait to write my post after watching the full 9:12 clip. By the seventh minute my brother and my brother's brothers are flashing through my mind on their street corners, standing in doorways of clubs, daring other brothers to step to them, with big teddybear hearts inside. I'm watching the project buildings on Madison and Chicago Ave where Lupe grew up and remembering the ones I grew up in. My mother kept us in nice homes by the time we were old enough to identify home as who you are. "Your parents were right. You got to get out."

Lupe watches the "ghosts" in his old video, the men who are no longer there standing next to the men who "will die there too". "I got out. I didn't like the hood. Dat shit aint cute." I think about this story being the same story for many black families and many people of any race--surprising our ghosts. Telling them I will be more than what I see around me--I will be what I want for me, what I see in my mind.

"Hey ghosts," I say. "I'm going to Guinea!" Telling my ghosts officially today that I am confirmed to go to Equatorial Guinea for 5 days to represent my work on transformational storytelling at a youth summit in August. Ashe.