Earl Sweatshirt Drops An 8 Minute Music Video
here, we have an opening shot of the boy sitting on the floor
with his back against a mountain of chairs, so, we have a boy,
leaning against all the different ways he could get off the ground,
and he’s looking up like he’s going to find all the answers there,
now Earl’s hair is longer and so is mine and the score is tied to an old
record that his dad probably played and didn’t my dad play guitar?
Earl takes off his sweatshirt and I let my hair down and my dad
digs deep into the earth and these roots are long and gnarled. now,
an open casket filled with hands. my dad is getting older.
before he left to work he patted me hard on the back, Earl lost
his dad, we got our daddy’s hands though, and my dad’s
palm presses into me, determined, and I almost fall into his
fate line. he works so hard, the crags in his knuckles are gorges.
when my father moves his arms, he moves canyons. gorgeous.
Earl’s dad was a poet and his son is a musician and my dad tells me
about the musicians and poets from his fatherland, tells me how they
lost fathers and sons and he did not lose but gained sons in this land,
told me, I was an artist like you once, and I hear the hollow song
he plays reverberating off my fingers, he holds a hammer and I hear
the strings turn ballad turn lesson turn let me play the family record
for the record, Earl records off beat, I get off beat, yet often we
beat records, and there’s vines around a statue, and now my father,
and now a tree, and the boy is swinging off the branches, there’s a
phonograph playing jazz, a tire swing, my father is tired, I get in,
the wind pushes me forward, guiding me, then the gust is breeze is whisper
is breath, leaves, and now there’s stillness and I can’t feel my own hands
and how do you build momentum if the pendulum has no father time
to hold on to, no hands to grab, just the sound of empty through nothing,
I reach my hands into the air and Earl is a basketball coach and he
tells his kids to keep their hands up, outstretched, keep jumping,
higher and higher our hands extend, like we’re past the ceiling, like
our past was sealed and now look, we’re open! we’re open! I’m not
sitting on the bench anymore, I’m on my feet, I’m taking my stance,
here, I’m singing my story and I’ll write it in the key of my father,
he hands me the keys and says put your signature here, it’s your name,
Dang, who in time, I became my dad, who at one time, was me.
Alex Dang is an internationally performing poet, TEDx speaker, and slam poetry champion. Featured on HuffingtonPost, UpWorthy, and EverydayFeminism, his work has been viewed on YouTube over 2 million times. Dang has performed in over 50 cities, 30 states, 6 countries, and wants to know what your favorite food is.