It is the last day of the year now, and HEAVY is still the Big Bang, the beginning, three lifetimes of ebó, the Genesis, Old Testament, New Testament, Future Testament, and Revelation of books–books in general, Black books, Black southern books, books, of just books, mane, of just all the books, mane. It is a book about where we’ve been, where our bodies have been, where we say we have been, and where and how far we can go with each other if we commit to getting heavier–more rigorously loving and honest with the people closest to us, and more especially with the folk we open our mouths to say love. It is about more, too: at least sixteen more rivers of inquiry and their innumerable tributaries are there. But it seems that getting heavier is the stillest one, and thus the one that most urgently requires our investigation.
This is my conversation with Laymon about his gift of a new beginning to us at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee on the night of the 2018 midterm elections. Dive in and don’t float.
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