Heroes Are Gang Leaders Leautoroiography

"Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) spoke the truth (and the truth under his tongue was sometimes a hammer, sometimes an anvil, sometimes a sickle, sometimes just a breath or a blast). Baraka had no tongue in cheek. Sometimes he drew his language (his thought) and in the barrel of his language (his thought), there was the cartridge of criticism, the cartridge of ranting, the cartridge of analysis, the cartridge of sedition, the cartridge of poetry, the cartridge of music. Heroes Are Gang Leaders have the same outspokenness that goes in all directions, that makes absolutely everything a target and that liberates what it touches, it is a gathering of the tribes, an assembly and an assemblage of poets and musicians who use the same miraculous weapons, as Aimé Césaire, a close relative of Baraka / Jones, said. In Paris, Hagl did this. They found the asylum, the outpost. They fired all their tongues. Like Charlie Parker's Back Home Blues or Jayne Cortez's Taking the Blues Back Home. And your eyelids are heavy. A great heat invades you, a torpor takes possession of your body. All voices, all languages are viruses, the stories they tell are virulent. A musical instrument, like a poetic instrument, is used to pick up and scramble signals. Don't wake up. Not yet. All that's left is to try and swarm. It is done now. Now you will open your eyes. You breathe deeply. Count silently to three, and at three open your eyes. Come back to yourself. Do not resist. Resist. It is 2021. Everything remains to be done. You know what to do. One, two, three... Open your ears."—Alexandre Pierrepont, 2021