Smoke that FIRE

December 21st was the culmination of RMV on Rikers Island. Here are three simple lessons I learned- some advise to anyone who may want to pursue work with detained or incarcerated individuals:

• This work is extremely difficult not because of the inmates, but because of the staff who are responsible for them. 

• You cannot do this alone

• You need to keep your promises

I dealt with new obstacles each time I ventured over to Rikers: Sometimes there would be a completely different set of students than those who had signed up, sometimes none at all. There would always be a different programs officer who never knew what I was doing there. One time the circuit bus (that takes visitors to RMSC once inside Rikers) simply never came, and I had to turn around and go right back home. On that night it was about 26 degrees out. One day my group of students had apparently "thrown shit..like they threw feces at an officer's desk," and thus wasn't allowed to receive any programming. I was informed about that when I got there, and again had to turn around and go back home. And on this final culmination day, there were scheduling conflicts with the Stellar Adler group from NYU that was teaching acting, and I wasn't able to have the room or the students that I had hoped for. 

What I ended up with was a couple of young women whom I'd met on the very first day of introductions. I hadn't seen them in the month since then, but we remembered each other. The workshop was held in their dorm room, with the buzzing gates and droning TV's. With me were three professional musicians: two beatboxers (world champs!) and a virtuoso jazz guitarist. I was slightly embarrassed as to how little of the group actually showed up, and how long it took for any programs officer to realize what we were even doing there. Nevertheless, we proceeded with the work.

We started with an exercise called "Lily Padding," a simple and fun exercise to generate couplets, or sets of two lines that rhyme. We asked the two young women what they wanted to talk about and received the obvious answer: going home. So we riff'd on that. 

"What does home look like, sound like, smell like?"

"Who's there in your home? What are you gonna wear when you get home?"

"What is the first thing you're gonna do when you get home?

"...Take the most peaceful shit"

A simple and honest answer broke the ice, and we continued to write. Here's what we came up with:

My little sister won’t get off me
I need a little peace, I need my coffee
I can’t go out, I can’t get lit
till i do my business and take a peaceful shit
i’m bout to go outside, i’m bout to get stoned
bout to call my home girl on my cell phone
she got what i want, she got what i need
she got..hey! bag of weed
Smoke that fire

After that, Kaila and Mark layered in some genius beatboxing, and Yuto backed them up with a seductive guitar riff. We put it all together and sang it back. It was actually pretty hot, not gonna lie.

Our time was limited, and we had to leave shortly after. I left my email and promised the young women that I'd be available to work on the song when they got out, and that regardless I'd continue to build on it and make something out of it. 

That is the next step: keeping my promise.

I'm planning to work with other community centers (not like Rikers is a community center) and come up with songs, inviting more guest artists into the mix. At the end of everything, I plan to have a concert of all the music that was created, record it, and give it all back to the individuals that helped create it, crediting them as songwriters.