Silt and Salt: The Rhythm of Survival

"I know it can feel like forever we’ve been struggling... Jah love is our strength. Together we’re resilient." - Chronixx, Resilient

I live in St. Louis now, a city of brick and river-silt, but my internal clock still sometimes ticks to the cultural tones of my birthplace Kingston, Jamaica. Recently, as I watched the scenes of Hurricane Melissa battering the island, the distance between these two places feels shorter than ever. It’s more than water that connects us; it’s the rhythm of resilience.

Made with Gemini

I’ve been thinking about the space between Survival and Resilience.

Bob Marley gave us the blueprint for the first. His Survival album was a militant, necessary cry. It was about the crucible - the sheer grit required to keep your head above water when history and the elements are trying to pull you under. To be Jamaican is to have survival in your DNA. It’s the raw power that moves us from small island shores to big cities like London, Toronto, New York; in my case Fort Lauderdale, and eventually to the banks of the Mississippi. Survival is what keeps you breathing.

But then there is what comes after. There is the Resilience that Chronixx sings about.

Resilience is more than just staying alive; it’s the audacity to build something beautiful in the gaps. It’s the "togetherness" that Chronixx emphasizes, the strength to hold hands and maintain a vision of the future even when you’re "struggling forever."

St. Louis, also felt the weight of that word this year. When the May tornado tore its path through the heart of our beloved city, from the Central West End up through the historic streets of Fountain Park and The Ville; it left a scar that felt hauntingly familiar. Watching my people in North City clear debris of their houses felt like watching my people in Black River cleaning up after the hurricane. Different wind, different water, but the same test of the spirit.

In St. Louis, my resilience sometimes takes an urban and domestic form. It’s in the way I navigate this city as a Black man, a father, and a husband. It’s in my commitment to a plant-based life; a way of reclaiming my body from the legacy of the plantation. Every time I cook a meal that honors my health, or speak to my children about their history, I am moving past mere survival. I am practicing resilience.

Raising a family in the Diaspora is its own kind of "resettling." I am far from the salt of the Caribbean Sea, but the silt of the Mississippi River is fertile ground. I see my people back home right now, clearing the debris of Melissa, and my people right here rebuilding after the tornado. I recognize that same look in their eyes. We don't just endure the storm; we outlast it.
I am a man of the past, living the present, always reaching back to the ancestors to find the blueprint for the future. Survival got us here. Resilience will build us new homes.