i was raised a yearner by studlicia

on The Diary of Alicia Keys and yearning

In 6th grade, I had a crush on a boy named Mac.

He was in the grade above me and every time we were in our school’s alleyway, I’d sneak glimpses of him. We’d talk here and there, our families almost carpooled. After school, I’d go home and write songs on my piano about him. With lyrics like: “only if you will ever notice me,” I was pilled up off Alicia Keys, and I was down bad. In fact, so down bad, that when my mother played Tyler Perry plays, I’d think of Mac during lengthy monologues where the men would profess their deep love for a woman. Perhaps this is why I always leaned a lil “masculine” in my expression of affection, between Alicia Keys and Tyler Perry, but I just related to the sincere act of expression.

One time, I went so far as to transcribe an entire monologue in my flip phone, and sent that to him. Lucky for me, I didn’t know where the space bar was and so naturally he said he didn’t read it. I don’t think I knew much about love at 12 years old, but I did know about warmth, and the earnestness that comes with wanting to share that warmth with another person. Kinda like those ooo’s that flutter in on You Don’t Know My Name, it’s a frequency that I wanna sync up on. Yearning is a text message without spaces but the message still needs to be delivered.

Contrary to popular belief, i am a lover.

N when i say lover, i do not mean in the over romanticizing n jumpin each other’s bones kind of way, but lover as in would you allow me to gaze upon the gapin wound of your vulnerability and nod with understanding? I’m a lover in the key of Aaliyah’s One in a Million and Mary J Blige’s Be Without You. But I was always compared to Alicia when I was a child, just cuz we both lightskin with almond eyes, but I listened to The Diary of Alicia Keys. I related to her voicemail sonnets n aspired to be just as smooth. Deep voice, bold, calm, confident, I was raised to be a lover on her music. I am a lover girl in the scent of weed smoke and devotion. with my hands in service. My love is dramatic as Alicia’s yearning because it’s just that serious for me. I’ve seen the nights where death slinks in the shadows of crowded bars and takes niggas out in silence. so I ain’t tryna be alarmist, I am simply just as urgent as Death with my Love for everybody.

Released in 2003, The Diary of Alicia Keys is a hybrid R&B album that functions as Keys’ auditory diary mixed with songs.

Incredibly personal, we are let into her world of relationship tumult. I didn’t start listening to Alicia Keys until I was in 5th grade in 2005, but her album became a backdrop to my every day life. I had a boyfriend in 5th grade named Max and My Boo feat. Usher became the theme to our relationship. Her music added a layer of meaning to my mundane existence going to an upper class private schoosl, I’d look out the window on the way home and imagine being in love, having friendships, missing dead relatives, the window was a portal for me to imagine through and through it I ideated on love and grief in all its forms.

I got crushes here, I got crushes there, I got crushes everywhere. I’m not hopped off the rom com romance juice but moreso am motivated by sincere connection. It’s terrifying to let another person in, regardless of whether it’s platonic, sexual, emotional, spiritual - letting someone into your heart and giving them the power to say, “damn bitch you live like this?” is a risk. A worthy one. But it’s still one that I understand people shy away from. After enough heartbreak, you can’t help but become a lil stone cold. I feel like Alicia Keys’ music addresses all this directly, head on, with songs like “Karma” and “If I Was Your Woman,” Keys is a reluctant optimist with hesitance - the perfect formula for a yearner.

In Of Black Study, Joshua Myers writes on hesitation saying,

“Hesitation is a creative force. To hesitate is to pause and consider. It is not merely not knowing, or the absolute state of being unsure. Rather, it is being sure that we can only be unsure of a certain kind of unsureness, a certain kind of closure. Space must be created in order to ensure we don’t close off other kinds of possibilties. So, hesitation is a moment of both refusal and imagination. It is never one or the other. But it is not closure. Hesitance is not the achievement of resolution. Resolution is only possible when a destination is chosen. Hesitation is a break that nevertheless allows us to remain open, listening for what can be. For what has never been.”

There’s trepidation and then there’s still deciding to go for it, but that hovering in between is what I consider yearning.

That waver between “refusal and imagination,” where we are “listening for what can be. for what has never been.” R&B as a genre carries that deep in its DNA. R&B reaches through the ether and extending an open palm, as if to say, the stakes are high, but let’s try to love one another through it. And maybe it’s because I also was just a lil kid who played piano, Alicia Keys did somethin to baby Walela. She made me want to venture into the world of love, entire heart on my sleeve, hair whippin in the wind from an open window, carryin all the possibility in tryna make new kin.