on average the mexican government confiscates approximately 30,000 illegal firearms per year when the guns are taken they get dismantled and the metal is used to make other types of weapons that will later be utilized by the military
in 2012, pedro reyes, an artist from mexico city convinced his government to donate the guns to him so he can turn them into musical instruments so somewhere a tambourine a drum set a guitar all made out of things that were used to take people's lives but now they create a sound that puts life back into people's bodies which is to say that a weapon will always be a weapon but we choose how we fight the war and from this i learned that even the most destructive instruments can still create a melody worth dancing to and sometimes don't we also call that battle?
i wonder how long it took to convince the first rifle that it can hold a note instead of a bullet but still fire into a crowd and make everyone move
and see when i was six i was taught how to throw a punch because in the 80's that was the anti-bullying movement i remember the first time one of my classmates took a "yo momma" joke a little too far i remembered my training so i hit the boy in the face i turned his nose into a fountain my fist five pennies i closed my eyes i made a wish i came home with bloody knuckles and it was the first piece of artwork my family hung on the fridge
i remember staring at my hands the same way you stare at a midterm when all your answers are correct i didn't know what class this was but i did know that i was passing and isn't that what masculinity has become? a bunch of dudes afraid of their own feelings terrified of any emotion other than anger constantly yelling at the shadows on the wall but still having to realize that we are he one standing in front of the light? we learn to dodge a jab we learn to step in before we swing we learn the heart is the same size as the fist but we keep forgetting that we don't have the same functions
we keep telling each other to man the f— up when we don't even know what the f— that even means
you see we turn our boys into bayonets we pull their triggers and fail to recognize all the damage they are doing in the distance
the word "repurposed" means to take an object and give it amnesia it means to take something and make it forget what it was trained to do so you can use it for a different reason
i am learning that this body is not a shotgun i am learning that this body is not a pistol i am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy i am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence and that shouldn't be anyone's first language
you see one day i came across this picture os a strange-looking violin when i read the caption it said that it was made out of a rifle and i thought to myself maybe some day that can be me
— rifle by rudy francisco
[ a/n ]
requested by another lovely reader💕 also, just know that i love you guys because, as i couldn't find anywhere to copy and paste this piece, i listened to it and wrote down all of it by hand (refer to photo below and excuse my awful handwriting) and then typed it all up on here.
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