This Is My Rifle: When the Lights Went Out on Gil Scott-Heron

I don’t know how to write this. I’m unsure how to properly convey how I’m feeling right now and there really is no set of words that can describe the range of emotions that are passing through me. All I know is that I have to say something and so I’m just going to allow this to write itself.

When I first heard the news that Gil Scott-Heron had passed it struck me in way that was different from any other death that I have experienced in my lifetime. I didn’t cry; I wasn’t sad or upset. On the flip side, I couldn’t smile or find enjoyment in my day. I was instead caught in a moment of suspended emotional disconnection. As the weight of the news finally began to take hold of me I wondered if the rest of the world knew what had just left us. I sat and asked myself if there was another light that came to life as his flickered and disappeared. I went back through my own body of work and reminded myself how far I still have to go before I can even slightly consider myself as much of a master of the English language as he was.

Growing up I knew of his music and his contribution to humanity but at the time I had no idea the size of the impact he would later have on my life. I was always aware of Gil Scott-Heron and what he meant to Black America but I had no idea what he would eventually mean to me. I didn’t listen to every one of his songs and I only have a few of his albums ("Pieces Of A Man" & "Winter In America") currently in my music library. I can’t recite “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” word for word or tell you what his book “The Vulture” is even about because I’ve never read it.

What made Gil Scott-Heron one of the most important figures in my life derived from one song: “Message To The Messengers”.



It was a typical summer night in Toronto; a thick layer of dead heat frying the city and brutally reminding those of us who didn’t have air conditioning why we needed to find better jobs. I was about 7 months into my stay and I was having a hard time finding inspiration to push the buttons of creativity that brings new songs to life. So I bought a case of beer and burned a mix of music randomly selected from one of my friend’s iTunes playlists. It was this CD that would become the direct catalyst for the most major transition I have gone through in my life thus far. It was song number 8, Gil Scott-Heron’s “Message To The Messengers”, that would cause me to tear down everything I thought I knew about being a writer and re-build from the ground up.

I sat on my balcony listening to his every word intensely. Everything he said challenged who I was, what I was about and what I had done up until this point in my life. It was hard to listen to, knowing that I was perpetuating the ignorance that he was speaking of. For the first time when I heard a Black artist refer to “brothers and sisters” I didn’t see it as a letter written by and for his own people. This time it hit me on a broad scale. He was speaking not only to his own community but also to the disenfranchised, disrespected and misrepresented people of the world. He was stressing the need for all of us to see the reality we were living in and the trap that we were falling into. He was telling the undisputable truth.

I listened for hours. It was like the world was changing right before my eyes. Every time I skipped back to the start of the song chills ran through me constantly. I remember staring out over Queen Street and watching his poem come to life as the words ripped through the center of my brain. Never had I ever been witness to something so incredibly pure.

I walked out onto my balcony as a part of the problem and went back inside that night determined to find the solution. The next day I awoke and felt a personal change beginning. Simple observations became tangled webs of ideas. What I had previously viewed as unfortunate circumstances for some was now a condition that I obsessively analyzed and dissected on a daily basis. “Message To The Messengers” was the spark that lit the fire inside of me. That one song pulled me out of the fog and brought me into clarity. Quite honestly, Gil Scott-Heron saved my life.

This is the first time I’ve ever shared that story with anybody. I don’t know why I kept it to myself for so long. I was never ashamed of it or consciously made an effort not to tell it. I guess until now I never thought of it as being significant. It wasn’t until I got the news last Friday that he had passed that I came to understand just how important his work was to me. And now that he’s gone I don’t think that we know how big of a void the lack of his presence has created here on Earth.

I’m not angry that most of the Hip Hop community didn’t mourn for him. I don’t think he would’ve wanted it that way. I believe that he spent the last 30 years laughing at how unaware the North American public was about the role he played. I think he took enjoyment in knowing that without him, The Last Poets and a handful of others, this thing we call Hip Hop wouldn’t exist. Even though he publicly refused to take responsibility for being the forefather of this musical genre, I think he privately considered it a crowning achievement. It pains me to know that we disappointed him when he saw what we did with it, and in my opinion, his death symbolizes the extermination of that overseeing light that beamed down over the smaller ones. If rappers are individual stars then Gil Scott-Heron was the galaxy that made them possible. They might not have known he was there but without him they’d be drifting around infinity looking for purpose.

So it’s in his death that I re-confirm the meaning of my own life. I will continue to dedicate my own time and energy to finding and reporting what I believe to be the truth. Although I’m sure I will never be nearly as universally accurate or influential as he was, I will continue on in my uphill battle with a reinvigorated sense of urgency.

Thank you Gil Scott-Heron for your “Message To The Messengers”. You probably never imagined that you’d influence an Indian kid from Vancouver to positively change his life, but you did.

The revolution never was, never has been and never will be televised.

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can listen/download his most recent album, "Marvelous World Of Color", here and you can contact him here and here.)