Tyler Skyy and Erik Chirkoff’s performance at Brewsitr’s Cafe was an IV drip of love for Houston.
Their latest album, “I now pronounce you, in love” is more than what the artists call, “As cliche as it sounds, nothing but love songs.”
It is a marriage between genres. Skyy’s resonant rap style, combined with Chirkoff’s pop-acoustic branding, is a tribute to those that dare to be vulnerable.
People are afraid of the things that make them excited.
In places like Houston, where self-expression is ridiculed, people have good reason to fear the hate-culture.
But when a former Houston resident like Skyy returns home to share the unapologetic work he and Chirkoff have created, the outcome is a stir in the collective subconscious.
Everywhere non-mainstream interests are ostracized, and then later ridiculed once more when a collective surfaces to say, “We are no longer afraid to love what we love.”
This pattern of the underdog rising to centre stage, and what was once centre stage becoming the new underdog, is a cycle so subtle that society does not recognize its contribution to hate-culture.
It is hate-culture, not the subjects within it, that create segregation.
I am grateful to the people in this world, like Skyy and Chirkoff, who choose to rise above the waves that discourage people from shining their light.
Strict categorization is a tactic of self-preservation. But this segmentation inadvertently targets everyone, including ourselves.
Like the rainbow that decorates Skyy’s and Chirkoff’s album, there are different colours to the spectrum of types of people in this world. Some colours over lap with others, and all of them have an uncountable number of shades.
How shallow of us to us to simply each other.
Difference is met with hate, which is only a reaction of fear, because social safety has been challenged.
Our intelligent brains process situations to determine the common result as what can be expected. If we know what to expect, we feel safe.
So when little variations occur in our social tests, we run amok.
If instead we met it with kindness, as Skyy’s and Chirkoff’s “Nothin’ but love” tour promote, then maybe one act at a time we’ll have our arms open with love.