"CHARGE"
We change the charge of what we touch.
We change the charge of what we touch.
A collaborative hip-hop project by New Haven public schools graduate and New Haven-based educator-organizer Aaron Jafferis.
An inspired and inspiring message to students, parents and teachers wherever they are. Click "Read More" for lyrics and details.
Words by New Haven's Aaron Jafferis, music by Yayo Serka, movement by Jon Rua.
Dedicated to June Jordan, Zanette Lewis, and all our electric artist/teachers.
CHARGE
Back in the day...
No. I'm not talkin bout back in the day when we were young;
I'm talkin bout back in the day, when the world was young,
and each word, an invention spun from someone's uncertain tongue --
waaaaay back in the day, when languages were being born,
so there were just enough words to get through the day,
and people moved just enough to keep hunger at bay.
Back in the day,
people were grounded, as in close to the earth.
They worked, they ate, they grew old, they gave birth.
They settled down to sleep as soon as the sun was gone.
They got back up at the butt-crack of dawn.
They were grounded, like solid. They kept it real.
They followed their instincts and lived from meal to meal.
But there was one girl who wasn't so grounded --
she wandered and wondered, and floundered and blundered,
and when others tried to ground her, she would resist.
She'd make up words for things that didn't even exist,
words for feelings that you couldn't touch with your hand,
and the grounded people did not understand.
They gathered in a room. In the center was the girl.
They asked her why she couldn't be grounded like the rest of the world.
The girl opened her mouth and some strange sound came out,
that floated, and shifted, and hung in the air,
and a shiver moved through the people gathered there,
and as she moved her lips and limbs and drew things on the floor,
something happened in that grounded room that had never happened before.
Then and there, the ground was broken, and something new was born,
and the cold and grounded room suddenly became warm.
For the girl was electric, like lightning is electric.
Not grounded, but charged: a lightbulb waiting to hatch.
She was the synapse, the charge, the wire, the match,
the spark in a dark room that makes the fire catch.
And the people, the grounded people, were like the water struck
by the lightning, conducting electricity as soon as they were touched.
And the people leaned in to catch the next...word.
They held their breath in to catch the next...note.
They edged as close as they could get to catch her next foot step,
and the heat of all the bodies changed the weather in the room.
People shouted and gasped, laughed and wept.
Between the girl and the people, electricity leapt
and kept buzzing back and forth and when the performance was over,
and the people left, they left, not grounded...
but charged, astounded, their minds, enlarged,
ideas popping, colliding, and birthing inside the brain,
synapses connecting, collapsing and expanding,
each moment, with a brilliant, electric "bang."
The room became like lightning: electric.
Not grounded, but charged: a lightbulb about to hatch.
And she was the synapse, the charge, the wire, the match,
the spark in that dark room that made the fire catch.
And of the many grounded people who were in the room that night,
there were a few in whom a like spark was lit,
who became permanently ungrounded, who were charged, then and there,
who spun off furious and laughing into the static air.
And where we touch down, currents connect,
electricity pops and whirs; and we are its conductors,
electric and true. We take the tired and grounded world,
shake it, wake it up and make it new.
Because we are all electric, like lightning is electric.
Not grounded, but charged: lightbulbs about to hatch.
We are the synapse, the charge, the wire, the match,
the spark in this dark room that makes the fire catch.
We are the lightning rod, the lake, the tall, tall tree.
Like her, we are conductors of electricity,
dangerous and beautiful not just because we conduct,
but because we change the charge of what we touch.
We change the charge of what we touch.
We change the charge of what we touch.
Guest appearance at Lila Downs' concert at the 2011 Sundance Theatre Lab in Banff, Canada.
Words by New Haven's Aaron Jafferis, music by Yayo Serka, movement by Jon Rua.
Dedicated to June Jordan, Zanette Lewis, and all our electric artist/teachers.
