It took me a long time to fall asleep the night after Terence Crutcher was killed. When sleep finally came, the dream came with it—one I’d had many times before. Though dormant for years now, it had once taken up space on every fourth or fifth page of my college dream journal, managing to seduce a normally-lucid dreamer into relinquishing control. It swept me up and placed me in a stark white room. Everything was white—the chair and desk I sat upon, the bookshelves that lined white walls and the books upon them. The only things that weren’t the color of freshly fallen snow were the slips of paper laid out in a grid in front of me on my desk. To call them paper, however, didn’t feel altogether true. They were skin, swatches of human skin, lined up in rows of various shades and textures. Each one belonged to some human out there—outside the room. I knew this the only way one knows anything in dreams, as pre-loaded knowledge that needn’t be explained, simply recalled. And just as I knew that each swath of skin belonged to some human somewhere, I also recalled the fact that I had a job to do about all of it.

Four white cups guarded the corners of the skin grid, and from their mouths protruded several ends of white popsicle sticks with names written on them. I was to draw these names at random, and then I was to place them on the grid, one at a time, vaguely aware that when I did so, the person whose name appeared on the popsicle stick would then become exactly like the person whose skin the swatch belonged to. The popsicle person would change. Not only would would he or she take on a different skin tone, but a different history, a different culture, a different worldview.

Hesitant to delay in the task I felt assigned to, I plucked the first stick from a cup and read the name. A pit formed in my stomach. It was someone I knew—a friend. The facts of my assignment suddenly became real to me. What would happen to them if I did this? What would they think of me if they found out I’d done it?

I placed the stick back, chose another, and read the name. Like the last one, it belonged to someone I knew. I realized then that they all were like this. The complete cast of characters in the drama of my life were all there, consolidated into this one collection.

“Don’t hesitate,” a voice whispered in my ear.

I rummaged through the cup with trembling fingers until I found the name I’d started with. I stared at it a moment, and then placed it down on the top left square. And somewhere outside the white walls, something changed.

I woke up. Finally, the waking world came back to me, and when it did, an idea came with it.

At the time of the dream, I had just wrapped production on my most recent project, entitled The Present Tense—a concept record comprised of songs written about the life experiences of thirteen of my close friends. At its core, the project was an exercise for me about how the specific can become universal, how by detailing my friend’s mother’s battle with cancer, for instance—a very specific story—I could resonate with all sorts of listeners, and not only those who’d had similar experiences themselves. Empathy runs deep in the human condition, and for hearts that are prone to go cold, stories are sometimes the most effective agents for breaking through, humanizing its characters, and in turn, showing us our own humanity. My thought when I awoke revolved around this idea, but with a caveat: I needed to do this again, but this time, I needed to tell the stories that humanized the people in my life whom our world, society, and culture has most dehumanized.

I knew right out of the gate that history was no stranger to socially privileged guys peddling stories of the oppressed for profit. The purest intentions I could cultivate mean nothing if the process involved commandeering and appropriating experiences that weren’t mine. I also assumed that for every misstep in this journey that I could see, there were likely twenty more that I couldn’t. I met with friends working in activism to run the idea by them, half-expecting to hear that I should ditch it and move on. I’ll never forget what my dear friend SueAnn Shiah told me.

“I think you must do it,” she said. “But you need to be prepared to take criticism. From all points of view.”

I remembered and re-remembered a simple truth during our conversations: I could either do something and accept the fact that I will mess up, or do nothing. There’s no excuse for doing something thoughtlessly or recklessly, because the consequences for such actions are severe, but there’s also no excuse for doing nothing.

With continued input from SueAnn and others, the process began. I started asking to collaborate with the dear friends in my life whom society marginalizes, confessing my complicity and contributions to that marginalization and imagining ways to work together to reverse it. I decided only to work with the people I already knew and loved, and they would have complete veto power over what content made it in and what didn’t. In some cases, they would be co-writers, and in others, the editors, the critics, and the interrogators of their stories in music form. But in every case, they would receive majority writer’s share of each song written about their experience. I also wanted there to be room to say, “I’m sorry for how I’ve hurt you or been complicit in your pain. I don’t simply want to apologize, but to fight with you, and my music and my pen are my best weapons.”

To sum the process up much too concisely, this project has revealed so many more pitfalls than could have been foreseen, which have demanded constant evolution and reconsideration. This is what’s at the core of the project’s title, Human Becoming. For those of us who benefit from the skewed mechanisms of society, our efforts to create justice in the system often only veil our deeper desire for absolution from the guilt we feel about our privilege. This doesn’t help anyone. The necessity of justice doesn’t end when one white person feels absolved from their white guilt. If we’re to truly see the human condition for what it is, we must know that all of our freedom is bound up together, and if that’s true, none of us will ever arrive until we all arrive. We are obviously not there yet. We hold our utopian visions in our minds and know we may never actualize them, but it still matters that we strive for nothing less. And in the meantime, we recognize that the essence of humanity doesn’t look like a flat line, but a trajectory. What if being human actually isn’t a state of being, but a state of becoming?

What is it?

Human Becoming is a collaborative concept record from Nashville singer-songwriter Blake Mundell under the artist name Courier. In it and through it, Blake explores with others in his community what it means to belong to other people and what things tie humans together. It features heavy collaborations from Blake’s friends who’ve experienced marginalization because of either race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or disability.

When will it be released?

Human Becoming is currently in production and has an expected release for 2021.

Where is the money going?

Each collaborator who contributed personal life experiences will receive anywhere from 51% to 99% of writing royalties.

All writing royalties from the song White Tears will be donated equally to Showing Up For Racial Justice, the Black Lives Matter Network, and Black Lives Matter Nashville.