Blue and gold skin.
Belts of coins and skulls.
Gold headpieces on furious hair.
Vague foreign chantings in amongst techno breakbeats.
Fire. Lots of consumption of fire.

It’s a clear reference to Kali and Krishna.
But there are no displays of compassion, or creation after destruction, or transformation.
Just savages with a million hands screaming and terrorizing an audience captive to gas-smoked mouths.

I shiver, uncomfortable at what I find perversions of sacred spirits.
But these are not my deities. I know not whether They will react amused - or bemused.
It is not my place to say.

*****

The main thing that gets me about confronting racism in the creative arts is not the act itself. People have different educations and can’t be expected to understand the nuances of every symbol ever.

It’s the defensiveness.

Defending your work and saying your confronter saw it wrong.
Defending your pride and claiming that they’re only out there to put others down.
Visceral backlash crying that the questioner has ill intent - for claiming that the performance may have ill intent.

It’s not that we want to cage you in.
It’s that we want you to let us out.

Everyone has different perspectives - and often they clash.

Can we appreciate that before mauling someone who is already battered and just wants you to stop the pain?

*****

I can’t call them out on it anymore. Not directly anyway.
Last time I did, things went wrong, and there was no point really.

Maybe one day she’ll realise that she does a lot better when she doesn’t have to subvert someone else’s story - because her own stories are beautiful.

I leave early, suddenly aware that I am one of three people in there who’ll be pegged for not being local.