Random Acts of Flyness S2E5

***note the following scene is a collage of multiple video clips from various time and spaces. The time is added below if you want to see the actual video

Terence: Price is a pirate.
Michael Jackson is a king.
They both died in their 50s of the same thing.

An attempt to medicate the metaphysical pain of isolation.
They would've lived if they had each other.

So what is a king?

A king lives in a castle and governs from there. A king builds effective alliances, and with these alliances, holds power, wields it to sustain life, and when necessary to protect the kingdom, to destroy it. The king meters their language in service of the kingdom's goal be it fascism or communalism, healed or toxic, shadow or light.

Ava DuVernay: True power's not demonstrative 'cause the most powerful person in the room doesn't have to say it.

Terence: The king has an heir. They were an heir and must sustain their family's rule. They sustain illusions of control and dreams of liberation, illusions and dreams whose "reality" kings must remain wholly convinced of.

Person 1: The 32nd law play to people's fantasies.
Person 2: People who can conjure up fantasy are like oases in the dessert. Everyone flocks to them.

Terence: Kings have money and access to it, but conditional access. Kings are big on conditions. Arrangements, laws, bylaws, sections, articles, amendments, dogma, words, rules. Kings need to know because that's how they survive. Kings survive.

Michael Jackson is a king.
Beyoncé is a king.
Oprah is a king.
T'Challa is a king.
Bill Gates, king.
Professor Xavier, king.
Shawn Jay-Z Carter, king.
Martin Luther King.

on screen: I [heart emoji] KINGS

on screen: DISCLAIMER : This was written by a pirate, biases are present

Terence: So what is a pirate?

A pirate roams the open seas in search of treasure, treasure that almost never exists. Pirates have a faith in what isn't there. They convince themselves of an illusion and materialize it between dream and destiny.

The journey is often revealed to be more transcendent than the destination.

Pirates don't be explainin' s*** when n***** don't get it because n*****, if you know, you know.

What is family to a pirate? Chosen.

A pirate might kill as a matter of passion, but never diplomacy. Pirates often pirate their own s**** in order to take control of it

A$AP Rocky: Frank, he literally, figured out how to give 'em a bulls**** album, get out his deal, and then, "Blond," he already go a $20 million check from Apple from that s****. Do you know how embarrassed the record industry was? Do you know how hard they've been whippin' artists since then? Like, this s**** is some real slave s****.

Terence: Pirates disappear and then reappear wherever the aroma of the untasted lies. Pirates survive.

Prince is a pirate.
Iyanla's a pirate.
Kanye's a pirate.
Killmonger's a pirate.
Steve Jobs is a pirate.
Magneto's a pirate.
Kendrick is a pirate.
Solange is a pirate.
Malcolm X, pirate.

Every king needs a pirate and every pirate needs a king. If we want to do more than survive, if we want to sustain our liberation and thrive.

Take for instance the film "Black Panther," a monumentally successful film about a king, T'Challa, who discovers that he has a cousin, Killmonger, who is a pirate. It is a fable meant to heal as evidence by the films's profound and tragic ending. T'Challa, king, kills his cousin, Killmonger.

Kings rarely kill for passion, only diplomacy. T'Challa does so reluctantly removing the blad from his cousin's body on a mountaintop in the land of their origin. His death is their death for the second consecutive generation. Only the king survives.

The film is honest. It is a fable that illustrates the conception and price of survival for kings. Killmonger was a toxic pirate.

On screen: Naky was the healed pirate

Terence: T'Challa was rendered a traumatized king, weighing his loyalties to his people against his loyalties to the world of beings, who are invisible to their ancestors. He tried but he could not solve for the wound without battling his cousin to the death in the mouth of the beast.

on screen: shown Black Panther mountain with a Panther statue mouth at the entrance

Terence: The King survived
.
.
.
A wounded pirate is a thing to be... a thing to behold. If I didn't known then, I know now that every king needs a pirate and every pirate needs a king if we want to do more than survive, if we want to thrive.

So, which are you? Pirate or a king?

Notes to Screenshot For Post Episode Discussion

1. Pirates and kings are just two of many amoral archetypes. There are toxic pirates, healed kings and vice versa.

2. There are more than just pirates and kings - there are jesters and priests for example. Some of us are neither, but none of us are both

3. There is no spectrum - one is either a pirate or a king - to suggest you are both is an individualist urge that renders collaboration non-operative . (See Baldwin: "I can do things that he can't do, he can do things that I can't do...")

4. Liberation will require more than collaboration between these archetypes - as captivity is a mutating condition which requires mutating confrontations.