Our time, all of our time, has converged here, in this summer that should have set fire to all the plantations in the colonial world, in this rhythm that would unstick any living soul from their seat in Puerto Limón, South Africa or Ghana. The rhythm is like an invisible thread connecting us, it’s the strength that has brought us all to this improbable conjunction, inscrutable until the music starts and the universes overlap, until a neck, a leg, a hip, reveals the spirit inhabiting a vessel of any colour. That’s how we were built: out of historical circumstance, a mysterious process that landed us all in this cooking pot, in this blockade, including the cachaco and the other mixed folks who chat and share the need and spell of San Andrés, who question and refuse. We’re all beset by the same pressure on this island that weeps and dances, and we’re more than skin. Engrossed in the rhythm, I think, we’re like the salt that makes the seas, simmering in the heat of a History as acidic as wound-healing vinegar. My abstractions evaporate. In this enormous womb, I know we’re like salt crystals, refractory, luminous, mirrors for each other.