Divergent Convergent Love

Love is one of the most complex and powerful social forces on the planet.  Who actually takes the time to diverge from the capitalistic, oppressive, and narrow conceptions of this omnipotent force in order to actually break it down and understand what it means?  Well, Stevie Wonder for one.  This piece from the rasx context @ kintespace may be years old, but it is probably one of the best things I ever read on the internet.

Stevie Wonder's Key of Life
Let me summarize in 1960s sci-fi terms: Stevie Wonder (Steveland Morris) set out on a “mission” like a “mad scientist” to “invent” the “greatest love song” ever. After the rise of the gangsta rap aesthetic, it should sound strange to a twenty-something in the year 2007 to imagine a time in pop music when self-described Black recording artists (with a capital B) would compete against each other with love songs. Just imagine gangs of Black dudes trying to out love one another! What is sad is that today’s youth would more accept the possibility of a singer or a rapper competing with knowledge of ballistics, vehicles, jewelry or food rather than this thing called “love.”

So, back in the day, Stevie Wonder lived and thrived in what is now the ‘alien’ world of the “love” song. And when Songs in the Key of Life was released September 1976, the opinion here is that our “mad scientist” achieved his goal in the form of a song called “As” (on CD disk 2, track 6). You see, one too many self-described Black pop artists in the 1970s put on African costumes and inconvenient disco boots—but few barely could see the nature of African consciousness. The poetic irony is that a blind man in America could catch a glimpse of the ancient African Old Kingdom. When you need the white executive summary of what ancient Africa was all about, the short answer is this: Africa was about the complex, technical challenge of populating the Earth in a responsible manner. So ‘we’ properly-trained Americans know about the “great” Space Race—‘we’ even accept the slang “rocket scientist” without a thought. Well, the great-society mission of our Africans of the Old Kingdom was being fruitful and multiplying.

Since it seems so easy for say, roaches or other vermin to breed and multiply ‘we’ as imperial minions may erroneously assume that developing humans from scratch is easy, simple—something “dumb” animals do. This is an imperial assumption because it is relatively easy to invade a preexisting “enemy” territory with indigenous, developed civilization, murder all the guys and steal all the girls. But what happens when there is no one ‘else’ to steal from? What do you do when you come from a cultural memory that is so ancient that there was no revolutionary concept of the ‘other’? What happens is sort of like the “love” that Stevie Wonder sang about in his song “As.” You have to read his lyrics to understand that Stevie Wonder is not singing about sexual intercourse. His powerful ancient message is that “loving” you is correct—quintessentially righteous. To not “love” you means nature, itself, is no longer existing as that which was previously set in place. No so-called “love” means the universe no longer ‘knows’ itself.

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