Skip to main content

Riding Shotgun

Of the hundreds of teens my arts program has reached in the past 12 years, fewer than 20 have sat shotgun in my car.  Many were bashfully grateful for the ride, murmuring turn-by-turn directions to their front door.  Some were intimidated by my banter; others were uncomfortable with any silence.  All of them left behind bits of their story, perhaps as fare, and I would wait for them to wave back at my car before disappearing into an open screen door. I would drive away, counting the coins of their hard and glimmering truths.

Nakila made me rich.  She filled every minute of our rides with her observations, dilemmas, musings and questions. So many questions, with that one.  In the early years, she asked about poems and slam and her team and how our program started and how I started and where was I from and why did I write and what did I believe in and how would she know that she’d found her voice too.

In a recent interview, artist Dario Robleto said, “I didn’t know what an epiphany was until I had one.” The statement made me think of the tender and defining years of my students, of their gallery of “aha moments,” of their inevitable blossoming, of Nakila. From that passenger seat, I watched her flights of questions manifest into poems and performances, into leadership, into a four-year college scholarship, into ride-or-die friendships, into a love affair with the boy she would love into manhood and heartily, I’m sure, beyond the day she died.  She evolved from sequestering herself away from life’s uncertainties to unapologetically baring the insides of her skin to the world. Nakila wore her uncertainties as boldly as her absolutes, which made her endearing and enchanting to anyone who met her.

“Dasha Kelly, I have questions for you." This was less than a month ago. She wasn’t in my car this time. She was sitting on a café stool in my kitchen, peppering me as I put away my groceries with queries about adult slams and self-publishing and writing residencies and her first post-graduate full-time job at a youth center.

Over the next few weeks –her final few weeks-- I watched Nakila coach and mentor a new branch of
writers on our ever-expanding family tree. Traded text messages about the absurdity of the large outing of white children evacuating the swimming pool when her large outing of black children arrived. I listened to her long-time love make casual references to lifelong plans, wedding songs and kids’ games. I watched her beloved friends coo and vibrate at the news of her upcoming performance. I clicked ”like” on the show photos.  I clicked “like” on the memorial photos people posted after she’d gone, too.


I’m convinced that Nakila has merely converted into energy. She was too full of fierce electricity and love to simply transcend and leave nothing of herself behind. Our community family collapsed with her death and clung tightly to help one another back to our collective feet. As we gathered and laughed and wept and celebrated and held ourselves open to one another in my backyard, I felt Nakila turning to wave at me, letting me know it’s safe for us all to drive on.


Journal Sentinel Obituary: Nakila Robinson
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Deborah Brown Community School ~ It is quite a feat for a small charter to make national news.  It is perversely disappointing, however, to read that a charter school led by two black women is systematically persecuting students of color for celebrating the natural textures of their hair. As an educator, I understand and value the impact of comportment.  Indeed, many ills of the contemporary school environment can be aggravated by lax guidelines on conduct and appearance. Nonetheless, your policies against natural hairstyles levels a much more serious attack against your students.  Rather than teaching them how to be “presentable,” your policy forces the concept of “acceptable” at a disastrously early age. Yes, the school should vigorously mandate “neat,” “modest” and “respectable.” These are essential expectations.  Denying the option of neatly, modestly and respectfully showcasing the heritage of their hair, however, reinforces a wickedly...
4 comments
Read more

dashaFEST 2013

It's here again, dashaFEST.  What started as a single event exactly 20 years ago has evolved (exploded?) into a month-long celebration of ME. Wait, I know how that sounds.  Let me explain. I've always enjoyed throwing parties. The theme. The games. The food and drink. Stirring around my divergent circles of friends and associates inside the same space.  I feel a small tug of pride when unlikely acquaintances can trace their connections back to my living room. Over the years, that one, overstuffed birthday party has unfolded into a calendar of events. A women's only event. An artistic event. A group activity.  A party. Something for my daughters. Something for my immediate family. A performance showcase of some kind. The enterprise is wholly ridiculous, and I am fully aware of this.  But giving myself permission to be absurd for a change is, actually, part of the appeal.  For what it's worth, I'm not obnoxious about it.  I don't keep tabs of who...
3 comments
Read more

Kissing Jimi's Sky

I was born in 1969. Around the time I was finally sleeping through the night, Jimi Hendrix was resigning to a darkness of his own. He died the following fall at the age of 27, when I was one month shy of turning one. Had I been an older girl, wide-eyed with the turbulence and fireworks of the times, I might have easily joined the pilgrimage of women yearning to stretch themselves and their lives naked beneath his musician’s trance. By the universe’s exquisite design, I was not yet capable of rolling onto my back. I’ve held barely a thumbprint of Jimi Hendrix’s story until recently (another reason why we should vote for Netflix in 2016). I was enthralled by his lifelong romance with music, to learn he was never ever without his guitar, by the enormous chunks of obsessed practice hours and simmering stock of chitlin circuit years that brewed the ingredients of his genius, by the divine precision of daring to reach up and seize his star just as one was whizzing above his head...
Post a Comment
Read more