Flowers While You're Here
A Song of Friendship
The term Flowers While You’re Here is about expressing both gratitude and appreciation for someone you care, recognizing that this life is fragile and short.
It only makes sense that I recognize my homie today. This column was inspired by her music. When I met and became friends with Siairashawn (and her life partner OG BIG L.E.X.), it was her sincere tenderness that stuck with me most. We were in Brooklyn, in our twenties experimenting our ways through community. Queer Black community. It was the 10s, and I think, in retrospect the folks we partied with, hung out with, the community we were in, we were all trying our best to make queer family. It was beautiful, enthralling, it was sexy and at times it was hard, cruel and felt impossible. We were making our utopia but few of us had no more than the tools the world handed to us; tools that weren’t meant for queer and Black survival. Still we tried. Love (and lust) fueled a lot of the lives we lived. We hoped to find belonging, despite the ways some of us caused and enabled harm on one another. Still I believe we enacted a radical act and set a precedent in this Black power continuum, one that will have an enormous impact towards the liberation of generations to come. In a scene where folks were so image obsessed and cliquish, Siaira was a friend who didn’t care about social capital.
Living in Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Flatbush at the time when Black millennials moved into these historically black neighborhoods, brought about change. We were making culture, trying to make names for ourselves. We could afford the rent. We respected the locals. We were creative and encouraging one another’s endeavors. This time also signaled the visible onset of gentrification when it became clear that it would be impossible for the masses of us to stake a claim on the land, so we held on to each other. Still, it was an important time, and it should go acknowledged. I’m happy to have lived some part of it, and to have met Siaira who has become my family.
To have a friend who makes music, and to love that music is very special, it’s very rare. My friend Siaira is a prolific singer and songwriter. Her vibey R&B is a testament to her sincerity, she is a Black queer woman - crooning to women, singing love songs about the end of the world. It’s all very cool, and it’s affirming, it’s futuristic. I appreciate her commitment to her aesthetic and her revolutionary choice not to bend and distort who she is for the sake of an image. This is not to say she’s not thoughtful about the images that she crafts. It’s all deliberate. A call to those who she sees and who in return see her back. She herself is a vibe and she doesn’t have to do anything more than perform. The music is really good and she’s doing it independently. Brava! Her music has been the soundtrack of many lives, because of its relatability, and the warm tones of her voice.
She recently released a single, Racing Home, and I LOVE IT. So happy it’s out, play it on repeat! Listen to all her tunes here.
Thank you for always being a supporter, and now a reader and such a kind, sweet friend. Follow her on Instagram. Here are your flowers Siairashawn!
Yes to everything about this post! Here to add more flowers for Siaira 💐💐💐.