Buffalo Stance
When I try to wrap my head around how much art I have absorbed in my sixty-two revolutions around the sun, it blows my mind.
The cornucopia of human creative endeavor that has accompanied my lifetime is really beyond comprehension. It seems impossible that I should be able to retain even a fraction of the music I've heard, books I've read, films I have seen, images I have consumed, and objects I have observed inside the 2.5 petabyte storage capacity of my human brain.
It seems even more miraculous that out of this oversaturation of cultural memory, a single bubble can rise all the way up to the surface of conciousness — even when I’m not looking for it.
The past few weeks on social media I've been seeing the meme that shows a bison covered in snow and ice with the caption "Bison are the only animals who walk into a snowstorm rather than away from it.
Every time it comes up, a line from an old-school hip-hop classic from my twenties pops into my head. "Buffalo Stance" by singer/rapper Neneh Cherry came out in 1988. Going on forty years later, the groove still instantly makes me nod my head, and by about 30 seconds in, her brash invocation of personal power starts to make me feel like I, too, can weather storms.
I've written before about what I call “music for the heroic gesture,” a wide-ranging internal playlist I draw on to refresh my sense of purpose and possibility. It includes music from my youth, as well as new additions over the years. Sometimes, I go deep into these songs. Other times, all it takes is a single line of a lyric or a signature melodic phrase to help me find my bearings and remember what it feels like to be brave.
One of my Art and Social Change students recently offered up the thought that "art points us toward our north star while organizing and activism represent the steps we take to follow it.”
I like this idea a lot. As an artist, I want to keep launching my beacons high in the sky and sharing them with my friends, students, colleagues, neighbors, and community. As an activist, I’m compelled to find ways to direct our communal attention to the wellspring of creative expression that can remind us of what is most human in us and those around us.
Neneh’s words challenge me to get in touch with my own inner bison. I think this moment is calling on all who stand for compassion, equality, justice, mercy, and inclusion to turn up the volume, feel the ground beneath our feet, and push forward, step by step in the direction of our stars.
We always hang in a Buffalo Stance.
We do the dive every time we dance.
I'll make a move nothing left to chance
So don't you get fresh with me.