Fieldnotes on How Roots Flourish Without Soil

FIELDNOTES ON HOW ROOTS FLOURISH WITHOUT SOIL

At best, this is a documentary endeavor following my friends. It is quite simply a collection of images with the homies in our down time, family time, and the other times.

When I’m asked to intellectualize it, I say in some ways this collection writes Black males in America into the narrative of the family unit, generally, and fatherhood, specifically, as there is a perception as Black men that we are neither present nor a necessity to the family unit. I believe that any child with present and available caretakers will know love and how to love the world. And it’s important to note families are relative; my community has always been bigger than blood. I’m an uncle to a lot of non-blood brothers and sisters’ kids; I have four moms; and damn near everyone I love is a cousin or a brother or sister. So this is a representation and documentation of the family unit as I know it.

Sometimes I contemplate how class struggles necessitate a camaraderie and unique collectivism that I’ve witnessed within our communities. We have a long history in this country of making a home where no one wanted us in the first place, planting roots wherever it is we come to exist. Fieldnotes is a record of our rapture and our ability to muster the joy that makes us want to love, just as surely as the pains teach us how to live.

I hope my friends’ stories provide positive images to hang onto, since we don’t have many of them for public consumption. Similarly, the images are not overly romantic, understanding that life’s arc isn’t fair but is still very poetic.

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