◉⌁ I See Tings - The Culture Is For Sale and Yet No One Is Purchasing
- Kiing Curry
- 15 hours ago
- 7 min read
How much energy we spend displaying culture while refusing to invest in it.
How much energy we spend celebrating freedom while refusing to practice liberation.
◉⌁ I See Tings- The Culture Is For Sale and Yet No One Is Purchasing
PART 1
The Day After
A few days ago was Juneteenth.
The day after, I woke up having slept a full night.
This isn’t flare maintenance.
This isn’t exhaustion talking.
This is reflection.
The second pop-up is done.
It was a long day.
A windy day.
A complicated day.
A day full of joy and frustration and contradiction.
A day that left me thinking less about Juneteenth itself and more about freedom.
Or maybe what happens when freedom becomes a federal holiday.
What happens when liberation becomes a branding exercise.
What happens when a people who were once legally enslaved begin celebrating a version of freedom while still living inside systems that depend upon their labor, surveillance, and obedience.
I spent much of the day thinking about overseers.
Not historical overseers.
Modern ones.
The kind that wear badges.
The kind that carry cameras.
The kind that carry clipboards.
The kind that tell you where to stand.
The kind that decide who belongs.
The kind that document your existence so they can later prove they supported you.
Yesterday was Juneteenth.
And everywhere I looked I saw freedom and surveillance occupying the same ground.
The Federal Holiday
The future has literally become a corporatized federal holiday.
Juneteenth colors everywhere.
Merch everywhere.
Lift Every Voice and Sing sang for the 2 millionth time without a lick of care as to why.
The song has become ritual.
The meaning has become optional.
Everybody knows the words.
Nobody seems interested in the question.
Why?
Why this song?
Why this day?
Why this history?
Why this memory?
Why this freedom?
I kept looking for curiosity.
I kept looking for relationship.
Instead I found symbols.
Lots and lots of symbols.
But no watermelon or red punch.
No okra and green verdant tings that explore our historical abundance and African foodways.
No invitation into memory through food.
No invitation into lineage.
No invitation into asking where these traditions came from and why they survived.
Our bellies now distended from alcohol and processed foods.
Cause nigga we made it.
Or at least that’s the story we’re supposed to tell.
And that’s what struck me.
Not what was present.
What was absent.
Because culture is not a color palette.
Culture is not a T-shirt.
Culture is not a logo.
Culture is not a federal holiday.
Culture is relationship.
Culture is memory.
Culture is practice.
Culture is participation.
The culture is for sale and yet no one is purchasing.
You’re not supporting vendors but you’ll show up with your cult wear (frats and sororities etc) and act like that’s a liberatory legacy.
And before anybody gets defensive, let me be clear.
The event itself rocked the boxes.
Our accommodation and accessibility needs were met.
People clearly put labor into making the event happen.
Which is part of why this is worth writing.
Because a shallow critique would be easier.
A shallow critique would allow me to dismiss everything.
But that’s not what happened.
What happened was more complicated.
The event checked boxes.
The event met requirements.
The event produced a gathering.
And yet I kept wondering whether it produced relationship.
The Difference Between Gathering and Relationship
There was a portable skating rink.
And honestly?
It was cute as hell.
The kids were having the time of their lives.
Laughing.
Falling.
Trying again.
Showing off.
Being children.
I stood there smiling.
Because joy matters.
Especially Black joy.
Especially now.
But even standing there watching, another question arrived.
Where was the story?
Where was the history?
Where was the invitation into curiosity?
Where was Black skating culture?
Where was the lineage?
Where was the context?
A timeline.
A sign.
A QR code.
A community board.
A story about the people who built the thing.
Anything.
Anything that connected the activity to something larger than itself.
Because gathering and relationship are not the same thing.
This might be the central question I left with yesterday.
What is the difference between gathering and relationship?
Because we know how to gather.
We gather for Juneteenth.
We gather for church.
We gather for football.
We gather for elections.
We gather for concerts.
We gather for festivals.
We gather all the time.
Gathering is easy.
Gathering can be purchased.
Gathering can be sponsored.
Gathering can be photographed.
Gathering can be documented.
Gathering can be counted.
Relationship is different.
Relationship requires curiosity.
Relationship requires investment.
Relationship requires responsibility.
Relationship requires a willingness to know something beyond the surface.
And what I saw all day were people trying to create relationship inside systems primarily concerned with producing a gathering.
Those are not the same thing.
One produces community.
The other produces attendance numbers.
Hair, Care, and the Cosmos
The conversations I wanted to have were different.
I wanted to talk about hair.
About care.
About the cosmos.
About curiosity.
I wanted people asking questions about themselves.
Not as consumers.
Not as demographics.
Not as audiences.
As people.
Living people.
Embodied people.
People carrying stories.
People carrying lineages.
People carrying worlds.
Because every time somebody came to my table asking about their hair, they weren’t really asking about hair.
Not entirely.
They were asking about care.
They were asking about memory.
They were asking about relationship.
They were asking questions they often don’t get permission to ask anywhere else.
How do I take care of myself?
What does my hair need?
What happened to the knowledge my grandmother had?
Why does my body work this way?
Why was I taught to hate this thing?
Why was I taught to fear this thing?
Why was I taught to ignore this thing?
Those are liberation questions.
Not because hair is liberation.
Because curiosity is.
Hair just happens to be one of the places Black people still carry memory.
And standing there yesterday, I kept thinking about how much energy we spend decorating the visible parts of ourselves while abandoning the roots.
How much energy we spend displaying culture while refusing to invest in it.
How much energy we spend celebrating freedom while refusing to practice liberation.
Wig laid.
Hair displayed.
But the scalp underneath is a minefield.
And the more I walked around the event, the more that sentence kept returning.
Because it wasn’t just about hair.
It was about everything.
The Things We Should Already Know
The conversations that stayed with me most were often the simplest ones.
People came over asking about my setup.
How I built it.
How I learned it.
What they should do moving forward.
How to survive a windy event.
How to keep displays from blowing away.
How to hold things down.
How to prepare.
And I realized how much knowledge is constantly being lost.
Black people don’t even know that these cheap ass tents come with attachments designed to hold sand.
People don’t know how to weight tents.
People don’t know how to prepare for wind.
People don’t know how to build accessible vendor spaces.
People don’t know how to protect themselves from avoidable problems.
Not because they’re incapable.
Because nobody taught them.
And what struck me most was that they wanted to know.
The curiosity was there.
The desire was there.
The willingness was there.
The relationship was there.
What was missing was the infrastructure.
I found myself hoping I’d be able to support myself through those conversations.
Through ingenuity.
Through care.
Through teaching.
Through relationship.
While simultaneously hoping I’ll be able to support myself when Black people don’t have coins for ingenuity.
Only the same ol same ol that is going to lull them back to distracted sleep.
And maybe that’s part of the heartbreak.
Because I don’t think we’re lacking culture.
I don’t think we’re lacking intelligence.
I don’t think we’re lacking curiosity.
I think we’re lacking investment.
The culture is for sale and yet no one is purchasing.
Not the living culture.
Not the evolving culture.
Not the people trying to build something.
The symbols move.
The merch moves.
The performance moves.
The relationship struggles.
And that distinction followed me through the entire day
Cosmos Watershed
Companion Current
✺ I See Tings: The Culture Is for Sale and Yet No One Is Purchasing
This essay examines a recurring contradiction: communities, artists, and cultural workers are often told their work has value while simultaneously being asked to give it away. Visibility is offered in place of investment. Attention is offered in place of support. The result is a culture that celebrates creativity while struggling to sustain the people who create it.
Companion Current
This essay explores what happens when movement, gathering, and everyday life unfold under watchfulness. Whether through policing, institutional oversight, algorithms, or social scrutiny, surveillance reshapes behavior long before intervention occurs. The body learns to anticipate being observed and adjusts accordingly.
Expansion Current
If surveillance enters through institutions, it also enters through ordinary life. This essay traces how safety calculations become embedded in routine activities, transforming simple errands into logistical and emotional negotiations.
Lineage Current
Observation is not inherently harmful. This essay distinguishes care from surveillance by examining the invisible labor of building environments where people can participate safely and fully. It asks what happens when systems are designed to support rather than control.
Counter Current
Where surveillance seeks information, community leaves traces of relationship. This essay explores how care becomes visible through small acts, shared infrastructure, and the material evidence of people showing up for one another.
Sacred Current
Both essays ultimately return to the same question: what does genuine support look like? If culture is valuable, who sustains it? If freedom is necessary, what structures protect it? This essay examines the long work of building ecosystems capable of holding people beyond visibility, attention, or observation.
◉⌁ I See Tings - The Culture Is For Sale and Yet No One Is Purchasing
PART 2 - ◉⌁ I See Tings- Freedom Under Surveillance
Comments