"What Remains" The Road to Zion (Part 3)

Yo, Madan, pull over for a minute.

Yo, Patrick, what's going on?

I've been trying to reach you all day.

Henry, I just want to say give thanks for everything that you've done, but I made a decision.

This ends tonight.

You know, Zion can finally rest.

Wait, wait, Carly, just listen to me for a minute.

And after that, no matter what you do, you have my support.

The guy's righteousness.

Broadcasting live and direct from a magical place at the intersection of words, sound, and power, the Roots Land podcast stories that are music to your ears.

When I was a senior in high school, my best friend Seth changed his life.

Seth was the drummer in our reggae band, and he was also the one who first introduced me to Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

At Lawrence High School, he was something of a legend.

Artists, athletes, nerds, stoners, everybody loved him.

They all claimed Seth as their own.

Then one day, he showed up to school wearing a yarmulke, a Jewish religious cap.

He stopped smoking the after school spliffs, no longer flirted with the girls who adored him, and started studying at a yeshiva in Far Aqaway, Queens, which was a Hebrew biblical school.

The turn shocked everybody.

Maybe no one more than me.

So one day, I asked him, what happened?

Why this sudden turn to God?

Seth didn't answer me.

He just told me a story.

He said, once there was a rabbi, a spiritual leader, who prayed his whole life for a son.

For years, nothing happened.

Then, late in life, a miracle came.

His wife became pregnant and gave birth to a.

But not long after that, the child fell ill and died.

The rabbi was devastated.

He loved that boy more than anything.

He couldn't understand why God would give him a son only to take him away.

So he began traveling, searching the world for answers.

Eventually, he was told about a wise teacher, a man some believed had reached near spiritual perfection.

The rabbi went to see him and told the wise man the story about the loss of his son.

The wise man told the rabbi to sit down.

He said, one day in heaven, God looked at one of his angels and asked him, if you could have anything in the universe, what would it be?

The angel said, the only thing he has never known was the love of a mother and father, and that as a child, he didn't live long enough to fulfill a holy covenant.

God listened.

And then he said, one day, I will find parents strong enough, with enough faith and enough strength to bring you into this world for a short time.

Not to keep you, but to let you go long enough for that soul to know what it was sent for before returning to heaven.

Then the wise man looked at the grieving rabbi and said, you and your wife, you were chosen to give that gift to the angel.

And, you know, I never really understood what Seth was telling me until the night I told that story to Patrick.

When I heard the story of the rabbi and his son that died, it felt like it was written for me.

I have always been spiritual.

Studied the Bible through and through since I was young.

And I always felt like the stories, the tales in the scriptures were metaphors, but just ideas that are bigger than just words and pages and not just the Bible, just allegories and mythical stories.

On a whole, when I heard the story about that rabbi, it was an awakening.

Like a lightning bolt.

It moved me away from the abyss, the darkness, and gave me a new perspective that there may be a bigger reason for his passing.

Black Zion was put on this earth for a purpose.

And that somehow, someway, there was a plan behind his life.

That some higher power brought this guardian of the light into our bitter, dark, ugly world to shine a small light.

For a brief moment.

Zion's passing forced me to turn that light on myself.

And I didn't like what I saw.

Everything I had built myself, and it wasn't real.

And what made it worse was that I was one of those who knew better, but opted to avoid that better to suit circumstances.

Zion exposed that to me.

So I gave the Spanish town gangsters back their gun.

Much to their disappointment, of course.

I told them that the mission was off.

It's true.

The Patrick I met before Zion's death and the Patrick that emerged after Zion's death were not the same man.

But in another way, they were really not that different.

Patrick Curlylocks Gaynor had always been a contradiction.

A man raised in one of the most marginalized communities in the world, yet obsessed with books, ideas, and questions that stretched far beyond the Garrison.

Like many youth who grew up in those neighborhoods, he learned how to survive.

You learn how to read people.

You learn how to move through danger.

You learn loyalty.

And you learn silence.

Those instincts become tools, but they can also become chains.

Chains that bind you to a version of yourself.

The streets recognize, even when you know there is something else inside of you.

Patrick carried both worlds.

The curiosity of a student and the instincts of a Garrison youth.

And like many men who grow up in places like Kingston 13, he remained tethered to that world by an invisible chain.

A chain of loyalty, identity, and survival.

But Zion's death broke that chain.

Permanently, violently.

And the freedom it forced on Patrick Allowed something else to emerge.

His true voice.

I was always conscious and very aware of.

Of all the things that people didn't see.

But it was Zion's passing, the shock of his passing that brought me to a place in my consciousness where I no longer cared how I was perceived.

Everything started to come together like pieces of a jigsaw.

And all I needed to do was just sit still.

I realized I was never still before.

As for me, I remember Zion's funeral.

Zion wasn't the most talkative child, but the way he communicated was with his eyes.

And that smile.

This mischievous little laugh.

Like he knew something the rest of us didn't.

Those big bright eyes, that gentle smile.

That's all I could think about that day before the service.

There was a room where they held an open casket.

Viewing, one by one, people walked past to say goodbye.

Patrick stood in front of me.

He looked down at his son and said quietly, henry, look.

Look what they did to my boy.

I couldn't.

Maybe I wanted to remember Zion the way he was.

Or maybe I was just a coward.

We sat down as the service began.

Paul stared straight ahead, blank, his eyes angry.

Patrick had his head buried in a white towel.

I remember feeling dizzy outside of that room.

The days ahead would be filled with police reports, rumors, accusations.

Nothing clear, nothing settled.

But in that moment, all I could feel was guilt.

I had been producing and managing the Twins for years, and I knew success wasn't just about records and tours.

It was supposed to mean safety, security, a better life for a child.

Then the music began.

To isis, an a cappella group from Kingston.

They started singing the old reggae hymn by the Rivers of Babylon.

And I held it together until they sang the line there.

We wept when we remembered Zion by

the rivers of Babylon when we sat

down

yeah, we wait when we remember

Zion It'll be almost 20 years since Zion's passing.

And somehow all that time still feels like the length of a short flight from Fort Lauderdale to Kingston.

Another child lost in Jamaica.

No arrests, no justice.

A story like too many others, except one thing.

A man named Patrick Curlylocks Gaynor.

A man who stood on the edge of something and decided not to go over it.

A man who took the darkest moment of his life and turned it into something else.

A voice.

A voice that would go on to reach millions of people far beyond Kingston.

13.

And for me, he changed something, too.

Not just how to record a story, but how to hear one.

When to accept an ending.

And when to change what comes next.

Three days after Zion's passing on 13 February, I had a dream.

And in that dream, I saw him.

He wasn't crying.

He wasn't afraid.

He was just standing there, surrounded by this light.

This great light.

And he started pointing, as if indicating to me to look behind me.

And when I turned around, I saw another great and blinding light.

And when I tried to approach him, he was moving away from me with every step.

And he kept pointing that I should walk towards that light.

Then he turned to walk towards his light, just looking at me as if for the last time, the way he always used to.

And in that moment, I understood something.

Something bigger than my grief.

Something bigger than anger.

It brought me back to that story.

The one Henry told me that night.

And I realized something.

Zion never left me.

He became part of me, guiding me in ways I couldn't see before.

Through him, I rebuilt myself.

I reshaped curly locks into something different.

Everything was now about objective truth.

And I faced my humanity in an authentic way that I've never done before.

The man I've grown into over these past nearly 20 years is because of my son.

I took his memory and walked towards the light.

As parents, we are supposed to raise our children.

But in a twist of irony, for a small moment in time, I experience the son who raised his father.

He is the battery in the light that I shine.

I will be nothing without his small sacrifice.

So if you ever find cause to forget me, don't forget Zion.

Emmanuel Gaynor.

One love, One heart and roots Land Family make sure you check out Patrick Gaynor's books the Road to Zion and the first part of his trilogy Planet Hurt A Available on Amazon.

By the rivers of Babylon where he sat down and very well when he remembers Zion Father wicked carried us awake Captivity required from us a song

how

can we singing Alpha song in a straight love Father wicked carried us awake Activity required from us a song how can we sing King Alpha song in Australia?

Sing it aloud.

Sing a song of Kingdom Sisters

Sing the song.

I feel.

It.

We gonna jump and shout.

So let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart Be acceptable in thy sight over us so let the words of our mouth.

By the rivers of Babylon where is the dawn and there we Produced by Henry K.