Nikolai McKenzie

Sisy’s my bestie

Victory of the ppl. Keeper of the rolls. Curse breaker. Generational haunting. Bloodline cleanser.

Remember and move accordingly

Rehearsal archive from 8.2021 of “Algo en la cocina” by Arthur Avilés of @baadbronx A Boricua reimagining of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” as part of his “Super Maéva de Oz”✨ I rehearsed this with him via zoom while on a bicoastal tour-peep the mask-with an altogether different but also life-changing project. Grateful for all the journeys and pit stops and lessons up til now and still to come. 💐🙌🏽

Aquarian villain era loading

Lil twirl. Lil bald spot.

Ok,girl.

A Time Study *the video: 6/16/21- in the rice house, aka my mom’s sun room in Virginia where I danced every. single. day for a year and a half, many a thing, and even one that would eventually garner me an award I’m humbled to have, at a time when I felt so in flow, even when the world felt so uncertain. I felt like I was happening upon something. *The overlaid audio is from 1/2025, at a piano in Pennsylvania (original post lower down in grid if you’re so inclined to see it as it happened, tears streaming) a piano that I actually don’t know how to play, formally, but was moved to sing at after a wretched breakup, a fall in circumstances, and my second consecutive respiratory infection and THIRD Covid infection-excuse the pitchy vocals- my first forays into song-writing as well. Putting them together now in 2026- I know it’s not seamless or algorithm worthy but that’s dust to me…time is so elastic this way. I feel that person from 5 years ago. I hear that person from last year. I am this person now. Raw, unpolished but hewn and potent still. Seeing someone so full in vigor and hearing someone so depleted yet pure in spirit, and watching both now as right-drawn aspects of someone hovering In between. Judge me gently or pay me dust, either way I’m grateful to still be here after seeing the razor’s edge so close to my skin, the rope so close to my most vital artery. I hope I can share with you in future safety? ¿Porqué me culpe la cara?

The odds come out even to bloodclaat Stills from my solo “yellowbonin’” 2019 Pics by @mikehurwitz1

Shed Talk from a few years ago about mannaz and broughtupsy in Jamaican culture and the tectonics of color and class and how just because the phenotype gives one thing, it doesn’t mean the script reads the way you’d think. My mom’s family is from Rae Town, downtown KGTN daddy’s up, hence the interclass dichotomy but that in itself should lay bare just how nuanced all of our being is… funny how white Americans and Brits can cosplay all day and ppl are like hey you’re one of us but here I am with 336 years of receipts on that rock and somehow I’m not one of us? Mtchew, I doubt Chet Hanks has memories of picking peas out the pod in front of the mad house near the harbour with his granma. Just know that there is fluidity and vibrancy in all of us and that the real issue is class and the way so many Jamaicans are quick to right you off; demerits for the queerness, deductions for the skin, elimination Bcs of the transcendence of all of it. ✨out of many, one ppl. 🇯🇲

“…he had that look you very rarely find. The haunting…haunted kind…”

I shine, not burn.