Tempestt Hazel 🍃

curator. writer. artist advocate. archives all day. ❤️🖤💚 + 🏳️‍🌈 // Co-Founder of @fromthecenter.

[Tempestt Hazel 🍃 @tempesttdhazel]

...I'm still speechless. Trying to find my words. Still can't believe Soc of American Archivists (@archivists_org) gave me their advocacy award for @fromthecenter + our love/ dedication to archives. It means the world to be uplifted by them + the #Chicago #Blackivists. 🙏🏾#SAA2019

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

This is a beautiful letter from Fiona Apple explaining to her fans why she must postpone a concert date.

I am impressed at the way she was instantly able to make the decision to choose love over her career. Indeed, the world needs more of this.

Enjoy the story...

“It's 6pm on Friday, and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I'm writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.

Here's the thing.

I have a dog, Janet, and she's been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.

She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.

She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We've lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it's always really been just the two of us.

She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.

She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.

The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.

She has Addison's Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

Despite all this, she's effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.

I can't come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.

She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.

I know that she's not sad about aging or dying.

Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That's why they are so much more present than people.

But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She'll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can't leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I'm afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.

But this decision is instant.

These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.

I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable and comforted and safe and important.

I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.

Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.

When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I'm asking for your blessing.
I'll be seeing you.

Love,
Fiona”

[De La Soul @WeAreDeLaSoul]

Everyone help wish a Happy Birthday to @PlugWonDeLaSoul, celebrating another trip around the sun today! 🎂 #Posdnuos #DeLaSoul

[Missy Elliott @MissyElliott]

This kind of post I don’t wish on any1😢 at 1st I was in shock & now reality has kicked in😭i asked you to rap on Beep Me 911 & I played your verse over & over because I always loved your VA style 😞posting this is so heartbreaking I am so lost for words… 😭🕊️💔 #RIPMAGOO

[Outkast @Outkast]

50 years of Hip Hop 🙌🏾

[Artists of Colour @artistsofcolour]

COMPTON NOCTURNE, Alison Saar, 2012

[Liberal Jane @liberaljanee]

Disabled & chronically ill people's lives are not tragedies, nor do disabled people exist to be 'inspiration.'

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

Thomas Kong, beloved Chicago artist and owner of Kim’s Corner Food, passed away on May 1st, 2023. To remember him, @theneulithium asked members from Asian and Asian American communities to share how their life has been impacted by Thomas and his art. https://t.co/u3iTlVnnWQ

[Heaux History Project @HeauxHistory]

Tomorrow 💕

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

There's still time to sign up for our virtual conversation about preserving the history of Black Chicago with @theblackivists, the IL Chapter of the #BlackPantherParty, #altspaceChicago, and @LawndalePopUp this Sunday!

[Tempestt Hazel 🍃 @tempesttdhazel]

@Blackivists + Sixty (@fromthecenter) are co-hosting a panel to wrap up our Diamond in the Back archiving collab. Project partners IL Black Panther Party, Alt_ Chicago, @LawndalePopUp + @HeauxHistory will speak on their work + archiving Black Chicago—RSVP: https://t.co/JDeMxn9lpi

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

"[My most transformative moments are the] moments where I am in direct conversation with my ancestors or those who came before me." @ShabezJ on their experiments in video, photography, performance and family archives: https://t.co/k35Fpy9T7c

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

@tempesttdhazel spoke with @ShabezJ about collective family memory-making, how they remain rooted in Missouri despite living in New Orleans, and how ethics and integrity impact their use of archival materials: https://t.co/k35Fpy9T7c

[Arionne (Are-REE-ahn) Nettles @ArionneNettles]

It’s here. 🥹 My sweet little baby, my love letter to Chicago, is out into the world and available for pre-order. https://t.co/o8uVruqTmY

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

Sixty is looking for writing covering Midwest performance, dance, movement, drag, theater, music, sound art and more. Visit https://t.co/Qd8U0XNUCO to learn more and how to pitch your work!

[Tempestt Hazel 🍃 @tempesttdhazel]

Sixty Inches From Center (@fromthecenter) fits this list (pay is $150)—and is always looking for Midwest writers to pitch essays, interviews, reviews, poetry, photo essays, & experimental writing on art of all disciplines, archives, and labor in the arts: https://t.co/gtK5K4b4CH

[Adam Morgan @adamm0rgan]

Apropos of nothing, here's a list of 74 publications that pay freelancers (to write about books) that @ChelseaLeu and I put together last year. https://t.co/i2kDQLWZmF

[Tempestt Hazel 🍃 @tempesttdhazel]

@CharifShan so many! but Heavy by @KieseLaymon and Born A Crime by @Trevornoah are two books that I wish I could read again for the first time.

[Tempestt Hazel 🍃 @tempesttdhazel]

…love this for us.

https://t.co/wNoHoAA2ob

[Sixty Inches From Center @fromthecenter]

"Due to the history of colonization and erasure, a legacy that the majority of institutions still hold, it can be really difficult for [BIPOC] to walk into spaces where we don’t see anyone like us." @lightofyourvida on decolonizing the arts: https://t.co/WoFVcdcNg2 @ArtDesignChi