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What’s up Sorry Skaters?
Today I am exactly 10,437 days old. Pretty sure I could feel the 10,000 day mark back in February of 22’. A lot of people will experience almost 30,000 days in their lifetime. That’s pretty wild to think about. Anyway I’m going with Skemata’s A Bright Shining Hell for my staff pick this week. I really like that I can write about this record and band because half of the staff here would probably never choose this as a staff pick because Daniel put this record out through Sorry State, Jeff played guitar, and Usman did vocals. It kinda makes it feel more special. I remember being at a Skemata show years ago at the Bunker and it was upstairs in the living room. I don’t remember exactly who, but somebody was thrown into a wall and busted a huge hole in the drywall and I remember everyone being stoked on the chaos in the moment, but I’m sure some landlord anxiety ensued the next morning. I miss this band. Maybe I mainly miss Usman doing vocals. The lyrics are mostly a list of crimes against humanity and are often times the opposite of prosaic, which I LOVE. Usman said, “Fuck poetry, here’s some concrete shit.” My favorite track is “A Decade of Drone Attacks Over Pakistan.” It’s got this wild bridge part that has pretty-sounding guitar riffs and goes back and forth between dark and pretty-sounding. It kind of made me think of a child seeing the sun break through the dense cloud of dust remaining from a drone strike. The title of the record and the lyrics from the title track is inspired by Mumia Abu-Jamal’s writings from prison. He was on death row from 1982 to 2011, when his sentence was overturned by a federal court. He supported the MOVE organization in Philadelphia, which was involved in the nationally famous conflict with Philadelphia police in which officers resorted to dropping two bombs on a townhouse where MOVE members were living. The resulting fire killed six MOVE members and five of their children, and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood.
Here is a sample of some of Mumia’s thoughts while on death row.
A bright, shining hell
Imagine.
Imagine living, eating, sleeping, relieving oneself, daydreaming, weeping—but mostly waiting—in a room about the size of your bathroom.
Now imagine doing all those things—but mostly waiting—for the rest of your life.
Imagine waiting—waiting—waiting—to die.
I don’t have to imagine.
I ‘live’ in one of those rooms, like about 3.000 other men and women in 37 states across the United States.
It’s called ‘Death Row’.
I call it ‘Hell’.
Welcome to Hell.
Each of the states that have death rows has a different system for its ‘execution cases,’ varying from the relatively open to the severely restrictive. Some states, like California and Texas, allow their ‘execution cases’ work, education and/or religious service opportunities, for out-of-cell-time up to eight hours daily.
Pennsylvania locks its ‘execution cases’ down 23 hours a day, five days a week; 24 hours the other two days.
At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles, I repeat:
Welcome to Hell.
A hell erected and maintained by human governments and blessed by black-robed judges.
A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not touch them.
A hell situated in America’s rural boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families.
A white, rural hell, where most of the caged captives are black and urban.
It is an American way of death.
Mumia has spent exactly 14,589 days incarcerated and spent well over 10,000 days on death row. Hard to imagine.
I told everyone at work the other day I wanted to do a silly staff pick, nothing serious... and here I am. Thanks for reading and we’ll see y’all next week!