Each time I had five hours of the poison going into me, I just pictured everything that needed to be burned away. I pictured wars, I pictured the things my father had done to me, I pictured brutality, and when it was over, I am light.

If you were around in the '60s, you already know that music and art and love are a critical part of the revolution. This is how we fight.

I am so grateful to be alive. It's ridiculous to be alive.

The world has done that already - possessed the Congo and pillaged her and dominated her and robbed her of agency and occupation. Love is something else, something rising and contagious and surprising. It isn't aware of itself. It isn't keeping track. It isn't something you sign for. It's endless and generous and enveloping. It's in the drums, in the voices, in the bodies of the wounded made suddenly whole, by the music, by each other, dancing.

Writing and giving voice to what I am feeling makes me happy. And supporting people in finding their voice, passion, outrage and resistance. There is nothing better than that.

I live with that contradiction daily. It is a constant struggle. I struggle very deeply. I don't think I've said this to anyone, but I've wondered if I just want to give up this world and live in the Congo and just be there. But I don't think that's what they need from me.

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.