Koala Space, Detroit. The B.O.A.T. is a boat. This is the manifest.

CRAIG LEON. Produced the first Ramones record, which is the record that made the thing possible, and the first Suicide record, which is the record that made the thing frightening. Later spent decades in classical music, where the people who bought the Ramones record never followed him. He carried two genres into existence and stood in a third. Boards.

THE SANTORINI DONKEYS. They carry tourists up the steps from the old port to the town on the cliff, several hundred steps, in the sun, and the tourists take the photograph from the top. The photograph does not include the donkey. In 2018 the government had to set a weight limit on who could ride. The donkeys were not consulted on the number. Board.

ARTHUR RUSSELL. A cellist from Iowa who made disco records in New York under other names and died in 1992 at forty with most of it unreleased. Most of what the world knows of him came out after he could not hear it come out. He carried the sound for twenty years and other people got the room. Boards.

LITTLE RICHARD. Co-wrote and sang "Tutti Frutti" and watched a cover version by a man in a cardigan outrank it on the pop chart. He called himself the architect of rock and roll, which is what you call yourself when the building has someone else's name on it. Boards.

DONNIE MARK. Sang "Hold On" with the Joyful Sounds of Soul, on a twelve-inch from 1996, and that is close to the whole of what can be said about her in print, because the record is the record and the rest was never written down. The B.O.A.T. does not require documentation. It requires that you did the carrying. She boards.

A JERSEY BAGEL. Carried across a state line in a paper bag to be eaten somewhere it did not come from. Nobody on the receiving end knows the water. Boards.

That is the manifest. Here is the rule, and it is the only rule: the boat is for the ones who did the carrying while someone else got the view. If you were on top of the steps, you are not on the boat. If you were the steps, get in.

The party starts when the last one is aboard. Nobody is in a hurry. That is also the best of all time.

— K. K.