I Still Have a Name

I Still Have a Name — the AI-made song and lyric film made from this essay (captions available). Watch on YouTube →

There is a skill every city teaches, and most of us learn it without noticing. It is the skill of not seeing. You learn where to put your eyes on the subway platform. You learn to find your phone very interesting for the eleven steps it takes to pass a doorway where someone is sitting on flattened cardboard. You learn to hear a voice say “excuse me” and keep the same pace, as if the sound had come from a radio in another room.

Nobody teaches this out of cruelty. We learn it because we feel helpless, or rushed, or afraid of being asked for more than we have. Looking hurts a little, so we stop looking. It feels like a small thing.

It is not a small thing to the person in the doorway.

People who have lived outside say, again and again, that the cold and the hunger are hard, but that the hardest part is turning into furniture. Hundreds of faces go by in an hour and not one of them lands. You speak and nobody’s head moves. After enough days of that, you begin to wonder whether you are still there at all. A person can survive a lot of weather. It is much harder to survive being treated as if you were part of it.

I can take the cold, I can take the stone
It’s being part of the weather that gets in the bone

Everyone sleeping outside tonight was somebody’s baby once. Someone chose a name for them and said it softly over a crib. Someone taught them to tie a shoe. They had a favorite song, a grade they were proud of, a job they were good at, a key that fit a door. None of that was erased by a lost job, an illness, an eviction notice, a rent that climbed out of reach, a marriage that ended, or a hospital stay with nowhere to go afterward. The name is still theirs. They are simply living in a place where almost nobody says it.

So here is a small, stubborn proposal. Look up.

You do not have to fix anyone’s life on your way to work. You cannot, and nobody is asking you to. What you can do takes about three seconds, and it costs nothing. Meet a person’s eyes. Nod. Say “good morning” the way you would say it to a neighbor, because that is what they are. If you have a minute, ask their name and tell them yours. Then, the next time you pass, use it.

If someone asks you for something and the answer is no, say the no to their face: “Sorry, not today. Take care of yourself.” A no with eye contact is a completely different thing from silence. One says I can’t help right now. The other says you do not exist.

If it’s no, then say it, say it to my face
Even no is a kindness when it knows I take up space

If you want to give, give what you would want: a pair of clean socks, a bottle of water, a hot coffee, a few dollars with no lecture attached. Ask first what would actually help. People know their own needs better than we can guess them.

And keep it respectful. Being seen is not the same as being stared at, photographed, or turned into somebody’s good-deed story online. Some people want to talk and some want to be left alone, and both of those are a person making a choice. Honor it.

None of this replaces what really ends homelessness, which is a home: housing people can afford, care for people who are sick, and a way back in for people who have been locked out. Those are big, shared jobs, and they deserve our votes, our money and our patience. But big jobs are done by people who can still see each other. A city that has trained itself not to look will never build what it refuses to notice.

Peace does not start in a treaty room. It starts at eye level, on an ordinary sidewalk, when one person decides that another person is real.

If you are the one outside tonight: you are still here, you still matter, and your name is still yours. In much of the United States you can dial 211 to ask about shelter, food and other local help. If it all gets to be too much, call or text 988, any hour. In an emergency, call 911. Scarlet Beast keeps free pages for finding help at scarletbeast.com/help and scarletbeast.com/kongnewyork.

And if you are the one walking by: look up. Say good morning. Learn a name.

It was never nothing.

The song

“I Still Have a Name” is a slow, late-night downtempo song made from this essay. The lyrics were written by AI, the singer is synthetic, and the pictures are AI-made.

I still have a name
Somebody sang it over me
I still have a name
Under the coat and the concrete
You don’t have to save me
Just look up when you pass
I still have a name
And all you have to do is ask

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