"Mourning, we come to mend. Withered, we come to weather. Torn, we come to tend. Battered, we come to better."

SEASON 4

Amanda Gorman: We're living in an important moment in Black art because we're living in an important moment in Black life. Whether that's looking at what it means politically to have an African-American President before Trump, or looking at what it means to have the Black Lives movement become the largest social movement in the United States. What's been exciting for me is I get to absorb and to live in that creation I see from other African-American artists that I look up to. But then I also get to create art and participate in that historical record. We're seeing it in fashion, we're seeing it in the visual arts. We're seeing it in dance, we're seing it in music. In all the forms of expression of human life, we're seeing that artistry be informed by the Black experience. I can't imagine anything more exciting than that.

- 'Unity With Purpose.' Amanda Gorman and Michelle Obama Discuss Art, Identity and Optimism. TIME

. . . the rose that grew from concrete. . .

by Percy Byshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said~ "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

- Langston Hughes

NAKED
IN THE FOUNTAIN

LIVE @ THE OCCC

OnLine CLASSES

LOCKDOWN performed by Ari Perez, Adara Harry, Neville DeAngelou, Tobias Clemens, Joan Moshett, Rev. Suzanne Moshett