Devil's Pie, the first slice
Greed, Materialism, and Praise for D'Angelo
Greetings, beloveds ~
When I began this letter, maple tips were fiery red. As I write today, the foliage has fallen to the forest floor leaving trees bare, visibility opened through their stretching limbs. This letter began when D’Angelo died and has meandered for more than a moon cycle, through many musings and headlines, as it is with my mind, circling like a vulture, one of my spirit birds. As I release these words into the digi-verse, I hope they serve.
In the global north, we’re in our yearly descent to the dark. The Sun’s retreat parallels darkness in many realms. While there’s much light, and hope and goodness to celebrate; there are also horrors I can barely face. We sit at many thresholds. Agents of chaos and destruction move freely about, without care of consequence, conscience or casualty. In U.S. cities, and abroad where there are resources to extract, supremacist violence runs amok, poorly masked as protection. The night before ICE raids in NC, I dreamt of people, faces covered, bringing terror. Fear slipping in. People have long been under threats of their government; people around the world have been under threat of our government. But things feel more unhinged these days. We know billionaires rule. But do different ones rule each political party? Or perhaps some of the wealthiest are sly enough to back both parties and the dramatic duality and division they deal.
I wish this were the dying gasps of cruel and oppressive systems, that seem so painfully outdated. Yet, it seems that no amount of affirmation, revenge, power, money or sexual conquest will ever fill the voids driving the diseases shaping supremacist systems. I do pray that the ravenous hunger that plagues many in power — and the ghosts that possess them— could be satiated. And that the wounds that carved the chasms could be healed. And, I pray that each one of us gets to know where pain and hunger live in us so that we can also heal—know satiation, nourishment and enoughness.
America is built on hunger, on scarcity. Scarcity is an idea, an assumption, a mindset that there is not, nor can there ever be, enough. Poverty is real. Starvation is also. It’s happening every day around the world. Our government just took away food subsidies from the poor, from children, at the turn of winter. Real hunger will get worse. Some of our ancestors have felt it, or dealt it. As we’ve witnessed in Gaza, scarcity and starvation are manufactured as an act of war or genocide. Controlling resources controls people. Power is intoxicating and addictive. Some of our ancestors fled to Turtle Island in famine and hardship and have, consciously or unconsciously, created or perpetuated systems of hoarding as a remedy, a prevention for future starvation and discomfort. Others have manipulated and perpetuated scarcity-thinking, divisive systems and disparity because they’re good for business. And envy of what others are or have or do, keeps the wheels turning.
Real or imagined, scarcity breeds greed. As Dr. Daniel Foor, one of my long-time teachers says: greed feeds into all intersecting supremacies: there aren’t enough resources, and we (insert group of superior/more virtuous ones) deserve them over those people (insert group of demonized/lesser ones). Greed needs the unworthy. Greed breeds all manners of isms and schisms to justify violence, disparity, animosity and a population of consumers. America’s flavor of greed needs criminals, gangs of people to arrest them and high-profit prisons to house them. The only form of legal enslavement that remains in the U.S. is imprisonment.
The system depends on materialism. Materialism is defined as “a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values” or “the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.” When only what’s visible exists, material goods, other humans, entertainment and sensorial pleasures become our only paths to sustenance and connection.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about experiences of the senses and pleasures of the body. Everyday, I give thanks for waking up and sharing in this embodied experience. I’ve devoted most of my life to moving to the exquisite range of music created here on Earth. The Yoruba call earth the marketplace, a realm where ideas are circulated and exchanged, where we attempt to fulfill our destinies, despite abundant distractions. Here on earth, our karmas ripen, learning happens, we refine and exchange our gifts in service of the whole, and we get to participate in the dance of creation.
But when our focus is only towards the material world, when inner or outer orientation is out of balance, when we avoid deeper healing, when the dead before us are still trembling, we’re more vulnerable to intentionally or unintentionally enact harm on ourselves and others. We’re more likely to be possessed by outdated thought-forms, perpetuate cruel systems or compromise our values for temptations. Devil’s pie comes in many flavors. In this system, resources may be limited. But there’s an always an abundance of ways to fill the void, quiet the pain, flood the fear with empty calories or fleeting pleasures.
And this system depends on us feeling a sense of lack, of hunger, and fear of not having or being or doing enough; or of being persecuted ourselves such that we’ll compromise who and what we are for a slice.
Devil’s Pie
For those who don’t know, Devil’s Pie, is the title of a D’Angelo song that sings to the themes of this letter. Devil’s Pie is a concoction cooked from greed, lust, jealousy, envy, revenge, and materialism. We’ll get to the lyrics soon, but I’d like to take the opportunity to praise this musical genius who left our earthy realms at the conception of this letter.
Michael Eugene Archer, commonly known as D’Angelo, deeply impacted my dancing (and thus my entire) life. I could have dedicated an entire letter to him, his three albums, his musical ministry and the ways his music intersected with and impacted my life at an impressionable, important threshold. I’ll settle for a brief indulgence about the intersection.
In September of 2001, I was depressed from a break-up, in debt, hopeless about the state of the world and easing the despair with alcohol when I found a 5’ hula hoop and began spinning myself out of an existential depression. I’ve told this story many times before, but have not publicly paid tribute to D’Angelo’s place within it. His music moved me at every level. His soulful, sensual music and modern form of praise offered refuge. Voodoo remains one of my favorite albums of all time, one I played on repeat when I was learning to hoop. When I think about my earliest, solo practices, there were plenty of go-to CDs and custom mixes in my queue, but really, no other artist stands out like D’Angelo.
His music helped me to feel my skin, then go deeper in than I’d been. For the first time in my life, within his sound sanctuary, spinning and spiraling in a hoop, I found a pleasure and a love for my body and my dance that was about me, the divinity of my body, for her own sake, and the inner experience of beauty. There was less desire for another or need to be desired by another. His harmonies (and Questlove’s steady beat) helped me move my hips in safety—something I’d rarely felt in dance spaces or concerts or contexts—bringing the sacred back to the sacral. Forging novel pathways and connections, exploring states of consciousness—these became regular practices. Permission to momentarily put down the troubles of the world to practice being present to sound, circles, contact was a precious gift. Over hours, weeks, months and years, the practice helped me tap a root in my own body, and excavate deeper desires: creating beauty, cultivating joy, exploring the mystical through movement, devotion through dance, sharing with others, and ultimately building community around practice. These desires were less fleeting, nourished more deeply. A quarter of a century later, these desires persist, provide refuge and continue to evolve.
People are exquisitely unique. Us humans embody a range of sacred differences and paths to the divine, to purpose, to healing. Improvisational dance practices have opened doors for me; have helped me find a home in this body; have nourished my soma and soul; and have connected me with the seen and unseen; have allowed me to feel moments of oneness with the mystery that animates existence. Kinesthetic curiosity helps me listen, helps me feel what’s alive, helps me connect with others beyond words, helps me heal what’s been wounded. I’ve taken this indulgent verbal diversion to emphasize the point: If I had to meet the needs met by these practices with food, money, substances or sex, I’d never get enough of whatever I consumed. The nourishment wouldn’t fit the need. A deep hunger would persist trying to fulfill itself through any means in reach.
Of course, any medicine can be abused, turn to poison or steer us astray. Over confidence of any one way of doing or thinking can blind us. I don’t mean to proselytize, even when my inner preacher peeks out.
Wounds from the the womb, early childhood, past lives, ancestral traumas, the land itself, loneliness and shame lead to hunger. Desires to be healed, holes to be filled. Our materialist culture, with money serving as its main unifying god, continues to sell the myth that the material can satisfy all the needs, stand in for the metaphysical, can fill the void, no matter its shape or cause. Which brings us back to the Devil’s Pie.
If you want to listen to the song in full while you read the lyrics, here’s the studio cut on spotify, a youtube live version, a youtube studio cut and a moving, short A-Capella version.
Fuck the slice we want the pie
Why ask why till we fry
Watch us all stand in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie
Drugs and thugs women wine
Three or four at a time
Watch them all stand in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie
Who am I to justify
All the evil in our eye
When I myself feel the high
From all that I despise
Behind the jail or in the grave
I have to lay in this bed I made
If I die before I wake
I hope the lord don’t hesitate
To get to heaven done been through hell
Tell my peeps all is well
All them fools whose soul’s 4 sale
Sitting next to the Jezebel
Demons screaming in my ear
All my anger all my fear
If I holler let them hear
In this spinning sphereFuck the slice we want the pie
Why ask why till we fry
Watch us all stand in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie
Drugs and thugs women wine
Three or four at a time
Watch them all stand in line
For a slice of the devil’s pieMain ingredients to this dish
Goes like this
Here’s the list
Materialistic, greed and lust, jealousy, envious
Bread and dough, cheddar cheese, flash and stash, cash and cream
Temperatures at a high degree
Where n****s come to feast
Hell’s this all about
Apocalypse ain’t no doubt
Everbody’s ho’ing out all the loot all the clout
Right or wrong
Do or die
Only the vengeance will pacify
Watch your back
And so will I
In these days and timeAin’t no justice
It’s just us
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Time has come for most of us
To choose in which God we trust
I know I was born to die
Searched to find
Piece of mind
With eighty five dumb and blind
There can be no compromise…All in line, all in line
for a slice of devil’s pie
All in line, all in line
for a slice of devil’s pie…--Michael Eugene Archer, D’Angelo, D, Michaelangelo, died October 14, 2025
D’Angelo knew the battle between the good and evil that played out within the human psyche, between the realms, within himself and in our greater culture; he knew the struggles through his own addictions. He knew that this impulse lives somewhere—in varying times, flavors and degrees- in all of us. He also experienced it firsthand with his fans who wanted to devour him. Ironically, while I healed to Voodoo, that tour took him down. Sexual projections and the hunger of those who desired him (throwing money at him on stage asking him to take his clothes off after his How Does it Feel video) derailed him and propelled a long retreat into intoxication. He almost killed himself. I don’t know much about his personal world, but eventually sobered up, made another child and another album, and finally toured again—seemingly healing some the scars from fame, fortune and being made into a sex object. While he may have lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at 51, it seems to me — with the outpouring of love and gratitude and admiration for his singular artistry upon his departure — that he won the battle with the dark.
Thank you, D’Angelo, for your devotion through music. I’m grateful our devotional expressions intersected when they did. I have and will continue to dedicate dances conjured by you, back to you.
Dance alone genuinely wouldn’t be enough to feed the hungers. Over the decades, new spiritual practices and relationships—with ancestors, deities, spirits of place, rivers and rain, earth and forests— have become part of my healing, devotional and nourishment journey. But we each have our own paths and puzzles towards satiation.
While the world (and those who rule most of it) gets in line and trades in a moral compass to fill the void, indulging disgusting and destructive expressions of lust, greed, deceit and materialism, let’s seek true nourishment and connection. And, let’s practice feeling satiation—which may be more of a choice than a state. Let’s get intimate with our values and let them light the way.
May the wounds plaguing our own addictive behaviors heal. May we get glimpses beneath the surface desires to our deepest longings, which may reveal remedies to the wretched within us and possible paths to our purpose. In this grand circus, may we know enough.
So that, as the song concludes, we DON’T go out for a slice of devil’s pie.
May D’Angelo join Prince, Sly, Otis, Marvin and his soul crew’s choir in the ancestral, heavenly home.
As folks gather and feast this week, may all be truly nourished.
If you made it to here, thank you for reading. The second slice will available soon— Devil’s Pie: Resistance to Return & Rahu’s Revenge.
Love this! Oppression feeds on Eros/soulfulness and positions itself as the only source for filling the hole it creates. Thanks for sharing your beautiful words and lifting up D’Angelo
Thank you ~ this was wonderful