Dead Tulips
In the summer of 2020, I received beautiful, healthy pink tulips. 14 days they sat on my bedside table and transitioned from alive to dead. Truthfully, I didn’t even notice the process. One minute they were blossoming and healthy, and the next the petals shriveled, stems drooped, and the water turned putrid. My mother asked me to throw them out.
“No”, I said. I still saw beauty in them and was unable to let go.
Either you have begun to pick up on the metaphor, or you are lost, wondering why I am talking about dead flowers. That summer was overwhelming to say the least. Every day we were consuming a vast amount of content around George Floyd and the greater Black Lives Matter movement and making decisions about how to respond. What is the correct thing to say? What are the correct things to like/share? If I choose to focus on my impact separate from online is that okay? Or is it a form of silence if I don’t make my stance known to the circles that I can reach through social media? We witnessed mass confusion surrounding the ethics of posting a black square.
Personally, I was focused on how to respond in a way that is meaningful to me. I want to harness my skills to reach beyond the surface. I want to educate myself and I want to support others. Those two components made up the basis of this idea. Another important piece is people. I have a wish and a need to know people. Individual narratives are powerful: this we saw evidence of as people across the country and around the world watched George Floyd plead “I can’t breathe” and responded enough is enough. I want to know about the man before those fatal 9 minutes. Though it is important, I want to understand George Floyd outside of the context of police brutality, tragedy, and injustice as it should be.
These are the things I found myself reflecting on as I sat staring at my tulips. Eventually, thoughts of death and decay evolved into hope. There was something to do, something to make, with these flowers. I began to put together the plan for a project called #shouldstillbe.
The premise was that I wanted to learn more about the black deaths which should still be black lives. I would go name by name, and I would research their stories, their lives before, the things they were passionate about, the people they loved. From this, I would create a still life image to encapsulate the things that I learned. Each image would be accompanied by a written statement on what was learned and the meaning of the image. Though I expected that this project would be adapted in the process, this was the intention.
Prints of each image will be available as either a postcard or poster of which ALL PROFITS will be donated. My hope is that I will be able to contribute the money made by a particular person’s image to resources which either their family has asked to be supported or which is directly related to their story in some way (eg. George Floyd Memorial Fund).
While every name deserves to have their story heard, I will have to begin with only a few. I invite anyone and everyone to participate in #shouldstillbe whether that means creating something in your own way or in a different medium, sending me stories and personal accounts, notifying me of resources and places to donate, or anything else that you can think of. I know that this does not even begin to scratch the surface, but this is just one way that I will continue to participate in the ongoing battle against racism. Now it is time to turn away from my narrative and focus on the narratives of these people who deserve to be remembered as more than tragedies.
#blacklivesmatter