I could quote entire sections of this book only to realize that, really, what I would like to say is that you should read it all.

A well-organized and thoughtful collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us is beautifully written and expressed. Even when Adurraqib was speaking of people, places, and music I wasn't familiar with, his words made me understand, and more, his passion speaks to the universal.

Even with the title, I don't know that I was fully expecting this to be a grief book, but it is. Interwoven through most every essay is a reflection on loss, on what he gains through music and performance, even as he continually grapples with the voids left behind by loved ones.

This is lyrical. Each essay in this collection is like a movement, changing its tempo from the beats of the live concerts he vividly portrays, to the mournful strains of his personal grief and loss.

Yes, it is a grief book—but not only that. It is also a love letter to music and art, to people and places. It is a stop and pause to consider the grit, and beauty, and fragility of a life. It is both an elegy for what has been lost and a celebration of what still remains.

“I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I'd rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone's life.”