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JOHN COLTRANE AND GEORGE FLOYD ♦ BILLY CHILDS ♦ TROPOS ♦ JT 50 ♦ ENDLESS FIELD ♦ FAREWELLS

There is a motivic whirr to the blade of a helicopter that makes me think of the rhythmic pulses in John Coltrane’s music. This is perhaps because a chopper over a city is analogous in my mind to something having gone wrong, that needs putting right.

On the first day of June, 2020, I was at my desk in Boston at 6 a.m. working, when I heard helicopters in the sky, news crews, no doubt, focusing cameras on the city below to relay footage—bird’s-eye style—of damage caused by rioters and looters following the previous day’s protests of the killing of George Floyd.

I posted something on Twitter, having read that a Walgreens had been looted, which seemed another kick in the collective gut when one thinks about people requiring medicine, and someone piped in to say that protesters looters, and some looters are surely cads who roll in when there are windows to be smashed and no repercussions with which to deal. But I don’t get into Twitter wars unless doing so is paramount to something: the advancement of an idea, legitimate assistance, defense against a charge that has been leveled. What I could have remarked, were there purpose in doing so within that context, is that I see many people like this one individual—who is a poetry professor with a Ph.D.—advising others, before gatherings like the one in Boston, to “f--- them up.”