KILN: Findings Through Fire

VERSE ONE (GRIEVING HOME)

[Verse One]

We’re Grieving Home.
It’s October 2025. I’m standing by the firepit burning just outside of Atlanta’s Beats and Ballads show. I’ve barely been inside and my hands are freezing. But I can’t help but linger in the moment. All of my favorite Creatives in community — music artists, indie writers, curators, griots, intuits — are all here, outside talking around a flame. This is the show. Within pockets of my own conversation, I’m pulled into the vignettes of other folks’ dialogues:

“Is it really 10 o’clock already? It’s so late!”
“Are these marshmallows gluten-free?”
“I stopped shopping at the Whole Foods off Ponce. They don’t locally source their seafood...”

I think to myself, “Wow, it’s some real millennial shit going on out here...I love that”.

A single sentiment yanks me back into the exchange in front of me: “I’m just looking for somewhere to call my home.” “Oh my gosh, yes!” I spurt out from the congregation. And for the next thirty-minutes, myself and two other homegirls discuss the things – home ownership, family planning, third spaces, and the loss of our childhood homes.

In that moment, I realize it’s been one year since my own bed, clothes, and childhood keepsakes were finally delivered from a salvage company hired to retrieve what was left from an “accidental” fire that destroyed my former apartment complex. And even after a year, my new apartment still didn’t feel like anything more than a place to sleep. In this conversation though, I felt seen. “Home” was just as conceptual, nuanced, and elusive to other people as it was to me. And our frustration around not having a “Home” wasn’t entitlement. It was sadness.

It’s difficult to define “home” without one to call your own. Or when home doesn’t look the way you envisioned as a kid. Or when there are people at home that don’t feel safe at all. In all this, I do believe there’s something — a quiet expectation — that we grieve.

“Hopscotch” by Annie Lee, Oil on canvas (2003)

So, what does “home” look like for Us?

For a generation priced out of homeownership, home takes on different shapes. For some, home takes on the form of relationships. For others, it’s a job role or a sociopolitical identity. For me, home became my apartment unit. Once I’d finally managed to move to the top floor, it was my first safe space. My corner unit as silent as I’d often want it to be. It was the 10-foot ceilings that trapped so much heat in the summers. The windows I hated to clean. My patio balcony that overlooked the dog park where I could justifiably judge all the irresponsible pet parents. Spring mornings, the sun would paint the walls this incredible honey-pink color. I had all the room I needed to start (and set aside) any random art project for the day. Or shoot a lil music video. There was enough room for my goddaughter to play, my best friend to sleep over, and for me to throw surprise parties for my loves. I lived there for five years after several stints with roommates and awful apartments. I had finally found a place that could hold everything I thought I needed. Over time, it became a symbol of status filled with status symbols especially the further I moved up in corporate. And while I grew to despise our leasing office, my dysfunctional neighbors, and the barking dogs outside, I loved my apartment y’all.

Grieving home is grieving for justice.

If you told 23-year old me that some day I’d be sobbing over a rental unit, I would’ve said I was down bad, chile. But what does that mentally ill person know? It was mine And it stored memories for all of us: our only photo of us as kids. Our funeral program for Grandpa. The baby doll you sewed for me. The first house key you gave me. And in-between the artwork and the furniture arrangement, there was proof that I loved and was loved. Rental or not, well-defined or not, I do know this:

If housing is a basic human right, then losing Home is a catastrophic injustice.

I still cannot believe someone got away with stealing Home from me and 200 residents. Our forced and rushed goodbyes as we retrieved what salvageable items remained will never be enough. I want justice for it all. Accountability. I want other people to know that real lives were upended by the negligence of 100-plus partiers, the unmitigated incompetence of Metro Contents, and especially by the crafted evasiveness of Bell Collier Village (who are currently reopening years later as if nothing happened). I want our experience to be remembered as the real, preventable disaster that it was and not the juicy, ATL Scoop lore that so many Atlanta tragedies become.

What is “Grieving Home”?

Since that conversation at Beats + Ballads, I’ve been pondering more on “Grieving Home”:

What are we truly grieving when we mourn things we never owned?

How has Capitalism tricked us into believing ownership makes us immune to loss?

What does it mean to grieve something impermanent?

Does permanence make a loss more or less significant?

As a kid, I remember spending moments in my closet crying for home. And, in learning that Black children are only allotted specific decibel range to cry at, I would find a row of thick sweaters to wail into, “I want to go home!” I didn't understand that sentiment then, but I felt it. Deeply. I knew I felt unsafe and misunderstood. I knew I wanted warmth and stability.

We start to grieve home when security, safety, and assurances are lost. And as we make a home in other people, places, jobs, possessions, or ideals, we're most susceptible to the grief that their inevitable loss creates. We grieve home when the people we've committed to betray us. We grieve home when our bodies stop functioning in the ways we expect them to. We grieve home when the workplace “families” we’ve poured into (and burned out for) terminate us. We grieve home as we watch our parents age.

The unfortunate truth is that nothing on this earth is meant to last, or stay, forever. And while that's not to say that detachment is the answer, I do believe we suffer the more we assign roles for others. We suffer because we require people and things to play house…

My resentment and heartbreak is a direct reflection of my attachments, not a testament to any thing’s inherent value.

- My April Affirmation

Grief has become the central theme for my upcoming album, KILN: Forged in Fire. Within it are ten songs that soundtrack these last two years, the grief felt and wisdom learned, not just from the apartment fire, but from a true upheaval of my life. The loss of employment, the loss of a college friend, a close relationship severed, and even the loss (and embarrassment) of my expectations of moving into a new home that I helped construct and design. Like a molded clay, these last two years have left me feeling forged in fire. Fortified, and yet, still very fragile…

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum transforming fragmented pieces into a new piece of art.

KILN: Forged Through Fire is set to release late Spring. As an artist, I feel honored to share something so vulnerable and raw with you all. Songs like D.A.B.D.A underline my initial processing of grief, while songs like Red Cross address society’s collective discomfort and impatience with mourning. And still there was a complexity in grief that I'd yet to explore. By the end of recording, grief still felt like smoke. Elusive. Intangible. While grief has unraveled me and left me with a new inventory of valuables, it's also taken it’s toll physically, spiritually, and relationally. I'm thankful for it. I'm resentful of it. I decided to write more about it. Here. KILN is incomplete and I feel liberation in that! I've found that by sharing what abstract ideas can be captured, grief becomes the glue, piecing it and us together.

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