No one knows you. No one has a story about who you are. No one is waiting for you to be the person you were yesterday. You're just a stranger in a chair by the window, watching a city that doesn't need anything from you.
It's the feeling that anything could happen. That the world is bigger than the walls you built around yourself back home. That the life you've been living is just one version of a life, and there are others, and they're not as far away as you thought.
At home, you're fixed. Known. You fit into a shape that other people recognize, and after a while, you forget you're even in a shape at all. But here, alone, somewhere new, the shape dissolves. You could be anyone. You could be more of yourself than you've ever been. No one is watching to see if you stay consistent.
Reading a book and coming across a character's name that you don't know how to pronounce, so for the rest of the book, every time you see it, your brain just goes ‘skdjfkskakfk.’
LONELY AT THE TOP 💿 artwork by Jahlil Nzinga
“This is an abstract interpretation of ‘Lonely At The Top’
There is a figure – surrounded by nothingness, or by everything. Whether it is nothing, or everything, it is pure. It is truth. Absent of all impurity.
The journey to the top however, is both within and covering the figure depicted as colors running downward. ‘Golden’ to prove the victory of ambitions actualized. It’s a draping of gold. There is ‘Red’ signifying the immense effort and toll it took to get there. Blood perhaps.
The eyes are blue and white.
Are those tears?
Is it sky?
Is it heaven?
Why is the figure looking down?
Is it sad?
Is it guilt?
Is it shame?
Is it loneliness?
Often – the relationship between album artwork and its music are literal, and linear. This abstract depiction is meant as a texture to elevate the listening experience – just as the drop shadow gently elevates the figure off the white background - The music is meant to elevate the artwork; and solidify it’s significance.
This image does not force the listener to see a world that you see, because they cannot see what you see. They are not at the top. If they look up; and they look hard enough; they still will not understand your world. They may think they see everything, when really they see nothing. Just you, and your spirit.
The statement is bold – and the artwork is hand-created. The work actually exists in the world, just as its listener does.”
- Jahlil Nzinga
🚨🇲🇱🇨🇦 BREAKING: MALI has SEIZED one of the country's LARGEST GOLD MINING OPERATIONS from a Canadian corporation who refused to pay taxes & royalties.