Lyrics For Setting The Tone For Exile By Thandi Ntuli (Live at Jazzwerkstatt )
Black love, a real thing
Ill-equipped, we find ourselves in a boxing ring
Open hearts, healing arms
Left wounded by the blows of men who couldn’t love
And how could they?
With all the rage, the trauma woven in their DNA?
How could one insignificant relationship
Love all your pain away?
Black love, a real thing
Ill-equipped, we find ourselves in a boxing ring
Open hearts, healing arms
Left wounded by the blows of men who couldn’t love
Who wouldn’t love, who couldn’t love
And how could they?
With all the rage, the trauma woven in their DNA?
All the rage, the trauma woven in their DNA
All the rage, the trauma woven in their DNA
How could one insignificant relationship
Love all your pain away?
Even as we place our final full-stop
Close the lid of our drying pens
And attempt to shut the book
Convinced that we have fully concluded our analysis
On the effects of our passion
Trying to quantify these effects
So that we can attempt to systematically heal
All that is a symptom of our trauma
Even as we attempt to move on
Because our pain thresholds protest
No more, I cannot dwell here anymore
As we try to strip ourselves from the cloak of false-self
That we have been forcefully dressed with
An attempt to gain an understanding of our limitless truth
Just as we reach that point
When our wings once again
Feel strong enough to take flight
A crash! Unannounced, unexpected
And a startling bolt of lightning across the dark sky awakens us
When the devil, we so badly tried to exorcise
Slithers into our protective homes
Our beds, our love
And once again, a blood-stains
Wounds resurface, more potent than before
We realize that, perhaps, the real trauma yet to be fully realized
Lies in this bashing of bodies and in the clashing of souls
In the clashing of bodies and in the of bashing souls
In this detrimental lack of awareness
In our zombie-like existence, our exile
Our yearning, our anxiety, our loneliness, our pain silenced
In this unspoken sense that we are, in fact
Living amongst ghosts of our spiritual genocide
The most dangerous of all wars
Packaged as the realization of this man named brand of freedom
And the conditioning that has brought us
To unconsciously embrace the illusion of our apartheid
Even within the safety of our own homes
Black love, a real thing
Black love, a real thing