“I chose an android because the android to me represents ‘the other’ in our society,” she said in 2010. “I can connect to the other, because it has so many parallels to my own life – just by being a female, African-American artist in today’s music industry. … Whether you’re called weird or different, all those things we do to make people uncomfortable with themselves, I’ve always tried to break out of those boundaries.”
Dirty Computer opens with an ominous voiceover spoken by Monáe, who coldly informs us of the bleak reality we’re about to enter. “They started calling us Computers,” she intones. “People began vanishing – and the Cleaning began. You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated. You were dirty if you showed any form of opposition at all.”
I look at my hands and as my nails grow too quickly, I wonder how these “dead” cells seem to carry on in existence. How do we know what is dead and what is alive? If I could sing in tune I would probably write a poem to sing. Instead I listen to old symphonies that make my chest rise and fall in harmony.
There are never enough words to keep me here. There is never enough patience to see me through until the end of a chapter, a page, a paragraph. My mind is like a metallic pinball, bouncing off the edges and reflecting the light of the sun.
would you believe i started drawing this when the finale came out? Now there’s some executive disfunction
[ID: Illustration of the cast of TAZ: Amnesty, seen gathered together outside. Minerva, Duck, Dani, Aubrey, and Thacker are all sitting in the foreground on blankets. Duck and Minerva smile at each other; Dani and Aubrey lean against each other and look ahead. There’s a white rabbit in Dani’s lap. Behind them are Indrid, Alexandra, and Janelle. The Hornets stand together behind them, and Mama and Barclay stand together at the side. Two people sit in the bed of a truck. Everyone is smiling. In the distance, there are trees, and the sun is setting, casting the sky pink, purple, and orange. /ID]
