Madye Stromboli’s Reviews > A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance > Status Update

The magic of it all. The literal magic, that which exists to give a suspension of belief. That which exists to wash away the knowing of a wretched world and replace it with another. What appears when there was once nothing. What miracles a love for our people bends us toward.

"In the early hours of the day after Michael Jackson died, my friends and I stumbled out of the basement of Hampton's on King at two-thirty in the morning and dragged ourselves home singing along to the cars and their open windows blaring Michael's old hits. This is how one should be laid to rest, I thought. Loud and with memories of their voice making the sky tremble."

I have imagined you unable to sleep or unable to work or unable to do anything beyond pray to still be alive and standing on the night when the bodies parted for you, and the song was a song you'd woven your body in between the notes of in some time before. Every time I take to the dance floor and can't keep up, I am looking back and praying you all will open up a path with some unbreakable light at the end.