Photo by Taylor Aldridge. Sound by Ash Arder.
Sometimes my heart is tuned to a frequency that makes my body vulnerable. The Blues show me how to make this condition - this visceral reality - into shelter.
Sometimes I am walking or driving or biking in familiar or unfamiliar towns. Sometimes when I am in transit like this or like that, I become tuned to a frequency so familiar I barely notice. The tuning first occurs in my heart, gradually sending signals to the rest of my body. When my eyes close, I know I am in tune. When my eyes close, I realize that my mouth has already been moving. That my spirit has already received the transmission. I wonder then just how long, and how loud, I have been singing. How long is long? How loud is loud anyway? This frequency is a trickster, laughing at the self-conscious adults that children with The Blues have become. This frequency shows me myself. That is how things work on this channel. Never will it show me you, or you me. Unless you are me. Sometimes, I am my father. Growing up, he was also my mother. A man and his daughter, in transit with The Blues.
“Got only one heart. One heart with no spare. Must save it for loving…somebody who cares. So you ain’t…gonna bother…me no more.” My heart knows this song better than my ears do. (“No More” by Billie Holiday)
My mother transitioned just one month before my first birthday from a condition that weakened her heart. She left behind a man and a daughter both with The Blues. My childhood home was blue. So was my father’s Cadillac.
“Blue gardenia…now I am alone with you. And I am also blue.” My heart learned this song before my mind did. (“Blue Gardenia” by Dinah Washington)
Sometimes I am in transit, and my heart recognizes a childhood friend. The heart is friendly with entities imperceptible to the eye. Broadcast #3, like many of my public-facing creative projects, is a student of and family member to The Blues. Sometimes my heart is tuned to a frequency that makes my body vulnerable. The Blues show me how to make this condition – this visceral reality – into shelter.
Photo by Ash Arder 
Photo by Ash Arder
Sometimes I am in transit and my heart tunes to a frequency so familiar to me I barely notice. Sometimes I get The Blues in public. Sometimes when we get The Blues we are killed.
Listen to Ash Arder read “The Bewitching Bag, or How the Man Escaped from Hell” by Henry Dumas.
One of my greatest fears as a child was the Devil. I didn’t grow up in a very religious household, but there was a Christian framework around many of the warnings and lessons I received as I ventured out into the world. Both sides of my family are from Baptist Southern roots, and often the Devil was the scapegoat for misfortune and evil. As I began to create deeply personal work inside of institutions rooted in systems of white supremacy, I began to consider my relationship with The Blues. How might I protect a heart tuned to a frequency of vulnerability from institutions tuned to frequencies of greed and extraction – especially in relation to Black stories? Broadcast #3 is a sculpture that, when activated with sound, becomes a literal tool for transporting living and organic matter from one place to the next. Road of Grace was composed as a present-day reflection on Henry Dumas’ short story The Bewitching Bag or How the Man Escaped from Hell. It is a parable embedded in sound. Entertainment for some, and a warning and lesson for others. Though this work was created several years ago during my time as a graduate student in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, the invitation to reflect on it has come at a particularly appropriate time. I am thirty-three years old. The same age Dumas was when he was killed by transit police in a case of mistaken identity. A Black man killed on his journey from one place to the next just as his career was gaining momentum.
Sometimes I am in transit and my heart tunes to a frequency so familiar to me I barely notice. Sometimes I get The Blues in public. Sometimes when we get The Blues we are killed.
“It’s not a place. This country is to me a sound of drum and bass. You close your eyes to look around.” (“XXX” by Kendrick Lamar featuring U2)
Ash Arder (b. 1988, Flint, Michigan) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Arder manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore mark making, mechanical portraiture and sound design as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines and the lands they occupy.
To learn more about the work of Ash Arder and listen to Side A of their album, Road of Grace, visit asharder.com / @asharderstories