On the Eve of QUEEN & SLIM

It appears that we are here. We have ARRIVED at the feminine future.

We

Are

HERE.

We’ve been telling yall time’s up. It wasn’t a request.

The Dawn of a New Age

Wherein a black woman stands, with more black women, at the TIPPY TOP of their powers.

We are in a new place in the world and we are here TODAY. It’s just, simply, gonna keep happening, all around us, on a continuum where we have arrived at a new day of PRACTICE. Of Black Women taking S P A C E. Telling black love, and black drama. SINGULAR stories, connected and connecting to many others—one story at a time because THERE WILL BE MORE. So many more. Prepare yourselves.

Several more are coming any and every day from now on.

We here.

This is a new and another beginning on a continuum that began long ago and is far from its end.

There was an argument about Scorsese on Twitter a little while ago. Someone made a joke about Tarantino and his latest movie and the subsequent twitter argument proceeded, in short: “Fuck you if you don’t think Scorsese’s a genius.” If you take Scorsese seriously as a genius, as I do, you (I) must acknowledge a deep, abiding love for those films.

HOWEVER,

I’m past it. 

OK, Goodfellas is still in my top 10 of all time, but I haven’t made a new list in a long, long while. Because, as I continue on the continuum, I’ve been over “it” for a while—male existential angst in the form of violence, rape, patriarchy—even if it’s deep, human drama. That’s what Scorsese does best. Not simply guns blazing, but the emotional, existential angst of men, which takes the form of brutal violence, which keeps the stakes violently high. Tarantino leans more towards brutality as comedy, but either way it’s a male take, centering men, firmly, and I’m just beyond it. I’ve seen it. I want and need something else.

I am part of a growing audience for something else. I don’t think my mother had this expectation of entertainment, though she was sick of what she was watching too. She always found something to love. Me too, until recently. That’s how I know I’m no longer satisfied. It’s incredibly hard to meet my needs these days. I have been waiting, impatiently, for THIS TRAILER that I didn’t even know was coming. Unknowingly, my expectations have risen high as the sky!

In this moment, before I’ve even seen the film which premieres today, it does not matter how good it is.

Did you watch that trailer?

It’s as good as any trailer needs to be. That’s how it works. You build a buzz with a trailer and a campaign. And I love to follow the buzz, when I give a shit, which I haven’t in a long time.

I certainly don’t give a shit about Once Upon a Time in Hollywoood, even if it’s brilliant. I’ll probably see it, one day, but I don’t give one shit about the “buzz.” Not today.

The buzz can draw me in when the moment is big and right enough. One day, not long enough ago, I tuned into myself and realized that my gift, and my business, is in the elevation of my people’s progress. That buzzy feeling of excitement you get when your particular frequency lines up with the moment you’re in, that’s the magic of creation—the breakthrough to your next level. When you stand firmly in it, those sparks can ignite e v e r y t h i n g. You understand what’s truly possible in those moments, and it’s more than you believe in any other moment.

That’s your life force. That’s the creator in you, and it’s worth preserving, protecting, and promoting to power. It’s the current that runs through everything alive, and you know yours when you feel it. And I felt mine when I laid eyes on this trailer, of this co-creation, of a black American experience, led by black American women, who quite clearly know what the fuck they’re doing.

Bonnie & Clyde … ish?

Fleeing from the police of these United States?

And they get away with it?!

Is that the PREMISE??!!

But wait, do they get away with it??!!

They fall in love.

Do they stay in love?

Do they get over on the police?

Do they get free or nah?

They are in love.

DO THEY GET FREE OR NAH?

I am ALIVE at the thought of it.

Suck it, Tony Soprano.

I mean as a trope. And I say that to my favorite human drama in the history of television.

Silently, before I saw the trailer, I thought to myself, “I don’t want to see a black lives matter movie. Please don’t make one. It’s depressing. It’s not actually fiction. It’s verité.”

But THIS??!

This is not that.

The trailer asks us to go on an improbable journey where the #BLM avatars don’t get got … or do they?

That’s the tension, and we’ll see how it ends.

Fingers crossed there’s some On the Run tie-ins too.

To be continued …