Singer, songwriter and rapper, Frank Ocean has written a powerful open letter on Tumblr capturing his feeling in the wake of the Orlando shooting.
Known for his A+ writing skills (Ocean has also ghostwritten for artists including John Legend, Justin Bieber and Brandy), his Tumblr is often a source of great insight and wisdom. While he doesn’t use the channel all that frequently, when he has something to say, it’s carefully considered, powerful and moving.
As one of the most famous representatives for the LGBIT community, his words and experiences have been a source of hope and encouragement to many around the world. In his latest message, Ocean draws on his past, articulating the hate and suffering that he has witnessed people face. He draws on his own relationships with his family and questions the hate crimes and atrocities towards queer people around the world.
We’ve broken his note in to paragraphs to make it easier to read on screen. You can see the original on Tumblr here.
I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground.
I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed.
I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year.
So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard.
I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?
