“Serving a life sentence without any viable release date forces me to, literally, figure out alternate perceptions of reality. I must do this so that I am able to live in this prison-world as opposed to ‘serving time’. What’s the point of ‘serving time’ if it’s for the remainder of my lifespan? Even though I’m certainly aging, with already nearly 21 years in, starting when I was 31, I feel young in my mind, as if time stopped the day of my arrest. All my memories are, on the one hand, as if they’re from yesterday, while on the other hand, they’re fading with a simultaneous sense of terror that I’ll have no new memories to make. So, to ‘live’ in prison means to behave as if this prison-world is all there is, and to make this life worthwhile, I must be productive, creative, ambitious, especially diligent, and... as non-reactive emotionally, as possible. Living like I do, so often seems on the brink of ‘losing it’. When asked, ‘how do you do twenty years?’ I say, ‘I feel like I’m standing in the most awful line, forever waiting to get to the end and hopefully go home.’ Beyond that, I don’t know.”
Tony Ross Black is an artist currently incarcerated in Nevada.
