lyric,”How does it fee” -- “Everybody losin' friends, people change when they grow”
As i head out to discover the Audre Lorde Archives in Berlin, I was reminded of this song ( via pitchforks 50 greatest album list ) and how important its been to me all year long. In the spirit of feminist intersectionality i hear this song and first cite m difference in relation to it. I’m a white cis woman. However, my relationality to this song feels meaningful. I grew up on welfare with a single mom in governement ( subsidized housing ). My relation to poverty is an integral part of my identity as a queer woman.
This song not only teaches me about the embodiment of asking “how does it feel?” but also the notion of considering how it might feel to be a black woman who is rich. In this video you see her in a modest apartment with playstation and drinking champaign. She’s wearing a 1990′s fresh prince style silk street and dancing while singing:
I've been broke all my life Now wonder How does it feel to be rich? How does it feel to be rich? I done worked all my life Now wonder How does it feel to just live? How does it feel to just live?
This life affirming song about survival and female embodiment reminds me how vulnerable our life is when we’re living under precarious poverty.
I listened to this song a lot last year while i was sitting in the library and trying to adjust to being in grad school. Here I am finally able to afford groceries ( no longer needing to steal my food ) and big part of me kept asking myself “how does it feel just to live” after being broke all my life, this question about *just* living was actually a lot harder to adjust to. it was a strange feat to uncover stability after entering my thirties and being on welfare ( government assistance)
If you do anything this year, take a look at the songs you accumulated in your playlists, how have they helped you with grounding, embodiment and ‘just’ living? <3