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11 Baltimore Uproar by Romare Bearden Upton/Avenue Market Metro Station, Baltimore, Maryland Get off here. This is a story you’ve been told: these streets before the trash, the rats, the crackheads nodding to ghost music. That past a distant gleam of notes, sound magicians dreaming, rising from these streets: diminutive personifications of the beat, rhythm made compact flesh; flamboyant fly-brimmed hipsters high on Hi de Ho, lexicographers of jive; and Our Dark Lady, transformed from turning tricks to trickster by the music, through her songs. From The Avenue to the after-hours you could hear it in the changes, the shift from working day to glittering night. Shattering twists of phrase calling out, the turn of a gloved hand sheathed in silver from fingertip to elbow to hide the tracks beneath. Rising from the platform, the scent of gardenias is in the train’s retreating roar, leaving departing commuters in spangled shards of sound. These multicolored stones are her petals, a frozen music always calling, calling back, urging on—Rise up. Get off here. Rise up ...

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