there is a woman standing in a field.

the field is golden. the light is perfect.
she is wearing something beautiful.
the film is gorgeous.
the song is immaculate.

and somewhere in the background,
there are cranes.

always building. always looming. always there.
you can't make them go away.

solange knowles has been living inside this metaphor her entire career.

she wrote this song in 2008.

she was driving through Atlanta watching the construction cranes
go up everywhere during the housing boom.
then the boom crashed.
the cranes stayed.

all that construction and nothing got fixed.

the song is a list of avoidance strategies.
drink it. smoke it. dance it. change your hair. spend money. work more. sleep more. read more. pray more.

none of it works.

the emotional void is still there.
the cranes are still there.
you can try to outrun them but they are right there in the skyline
and the skyline goes everywhere you go.

she released the song eight years after she wrote it.
it took her that long to figure out what she was actually saying.

the answer: you cannot dance away what you have to sit with.
you have to take a seat at the table.

this is not a criticism.

this is the most honest thing about solange's story:
she knows you can't outrun it.
she wrote the proof.
she won a Grammy for the proof.
she performed the proof at the Guggenheim.

and she still gets introduced as "Beyoncé's sister."

the irony is clean.

the cranes are still in the sky.
she knows it better than anyone.
the song says so.

solange is ♋ Cancer. water sign. moon-ruled.

cancer is the sign of home, memory, roots, and the family you were born into.

cancer feels everything. cancer carries everything. cancer cannot turn off the emotional antenna.
the past is always present for cancer. the family is always in the room.

beyoncé is ♍ Virgo. earth sign. mercury-ruled. precision, craft, mastery, performance.

virgo builds the machine. cancer feels what the machine costs.

the dynamic between them is written in the elements:
water and earth — compatible, generative, one nourishes the other.
but earth is solid and visible.
water shapes itself to the container.

solange spent years finding a container that was entirely her own.
A Seat at the Table was that container.
it is a perfect record.
the container is hers. the cranes are still there.

in 2017 solange performed An Ode To at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

she closed the museum. she choreographed live dancers, musicians, and custom compositions
through the rotunda of one of the most important buildings in american art history.

she performed a concert inside a Frank Lloyd Wright building and the building was the set.

the Guggenheim.

not a stadium. not a tour. the Guggenheim.

and someone still asked her about her sister in the press line.

the cranes are everywhere.

solange knowles is one of the most singular artists of her generation.

the records are impeccable. the vision is entirely her own.
the Guggenheim performance was historic.
Saint Heron is a real institution.
"Cranes in the Sky" is a perfect song.

and she will be introduced as Beyoncé's sister until the end of time.

not because the work isn't great.
not because the shadow is fair.

because the cranes are in the sky.

they were there in 2008 when she wrote the song.
they were there in 2016 when she released it.
they're there now.

she knows the answer: you can't drink it away, dance it away, change your hair, work it away.
you sit with it.

solange took her seat.
the table is hers.
the view from the table includes the cranes.

that's the deal. she accepted it better than anyone would have.
925. with respect. always.