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mindfulness + emotional safety + connection to self + connection to/with others + culture + creative skills + tactile skills + ecological remembering

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mindfulness + emotional safety + connection to self + connection to/with others + culture + creative skills + tactile skills + ecological remembering

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The Ancestor Abiodun Tells Me About the Time She Forgot Osun

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The Ancestor Abiodun Tells Me About the Time She Forgot Osun

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From "The Ariran's Last Life: A Memory Work" by Maria Asunbimpe Hamilton Abegunde

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imagining Margaret Walker as stand in for Ra's mothers elders named in "exile..."

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"exile in Pursuit of the new south" by Ra Malika Imhotep

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"exile in Pursuit of the new south" by Ra Malika Imhotep

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b. 1990's Atlanta

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b. 1915 Burmingham. Lived and died in Chicago.

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Resource mapping inspired a workshop by Aurielle Julia from Black Spacial Relics on the concept of "Scalable distillation/Proof of Concept" framework

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Resource mapping inspired a workshop by Aurielle Julia from Black Spacial Relics on the concept of "Scalable distillation/Proof of Concept" framework

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How do your unique cultures position you in a place of resource?

What customs, rituals, beliefs can be used to support your creative endeavors?

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What types of access do you have to acquire material connections for free/low cost (ex: venue space, studio time, left over supplies, etc)

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What talents do you have?

What talents do your friends, colleagues, loved ones, community have?

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Who already believes in you and your art?

Who already supports your wellness and sustainability?

What access do the ppl/spaces you're in relationship have that you don't?

How can you stay in relationship with these ppl/spaces?

How can you learn to ask?

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How can we expand our definition of "resource" to include non-material resources (ex: knowledge, mindfulness tools, relationships, etc)

How does Capitalism benefit from us having a limited understanding of resource?

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Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective resources on pod mapping -Written by Mia Mingus

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Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective resources on pod mapping -Written by Mia Mingus

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Svengali (2022)

Director - Rahil Ashruff

Art Director - Christopher Pasi

Art Direction/Styling - Andre Landeros Michel

Director of Photography - Michael Della Polla

Reference/Lineage: Looking for Langston (1989) film by Black gay British filmmaker Isaac Julien

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Cakes Da Killa  - Svengali  (Official Video)

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WHAT CAN WE INFER ABOUT THIS SCENE? WHAT FAMILIAR NARRATIVES ARE PRESENTED THROUGHT THE IMAGES & QUOTES?

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Ana Tijoux - Somos Sur ft. Shadia Mansour (Official Music Video)

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"Hip-hop feminist consciousness serves as a formative lense for dissecting the ways in which women of all sexualities and Queer individuals of all gender identities mediate statuses of “other” in hip-hop culture given the dominance of heterosexual, masculine, and cisgender subjectivities (Clay 2007; Hill 2012; Shange 2014). As Joan Morgan asserts, it is not enough to analyze oppressive systems as they act upon the marginalized (2012). Research concerning marginalized identity development and artistic expression cannot simply be defined by the sum of our pain, as it denies “the very magic of who we are” (Morgan 2012, 418). To expand our understandings of marginalized voices in hip-hop we must listen to what they are saying, not solely what is being said of them."

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here is the scene: first, a loud, distanced trill. a warning? a cry? a path clearing for the drum a heartbeat. precise. rhythmic body activating. accented in the surety of her word. “Music is the mother tongue of the world/She supports our existence, she protects our roots”. direct and unwavering. to open air a closed fist raises amid protest. dance. stomp of the ground. pulsing up to an emcee’s mouth scowling, one side up. she is leaning into you, baring teeth: “Here I am with those who suffer , and not with those who sold you.”

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Liberation Ecotherapy with Phoenix Smith (In Conversation)

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Although many therapists are beginning to understand the importance of the natural world in healing and overall mental health — for example by recommending “time in nature” to help with depression and other mental health challenges — very few also address the connected issues of economic and raci…

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Stream/Buy "The Berlin Years 1984-1992" Doc 

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Stream/Buy "The Berlin Years 1984-1992" Doc 

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Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992

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Melodies For Lorde Playlist by Aja Lenae

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Melodies For Lorde Playlist by Aja Lenae

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Moor Mother - "Made A Circle" / "Mangrove"

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My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing also. - from "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism"

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Audre Lorde "Harriett" - Reading at Amerika Haus Berlin 1984

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Audre Lorde reads Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power (FULL Updated)

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Audre Lorde "Echoes" - Last reading in Berlin 1992 - incl intro

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To search for power within myself means I must be willing to move through being afraid to whatever lies beyond. If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies' arsenals. My history cannot be used to feather my enemies' arrows then, and that lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself -  from "Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred and Anger"

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This is an abstract riff on the poem “Blackstudies” and a practical tool for contemporary lesbian educators of color to connect to part of the teaching legacy of Audre Lorde circa 1974 by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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"Audre Lorde’s energy continues to turn us toward each other with passion and possibility."- Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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On the first day of this month over 200 people decided to let the Lorde take the wheel. In the midst of back to school readjustments a conservative backlash and a an aggressive co-optation of our most radical beliefs we turned to Audre Lorde whose prescient insight in "A Song for Many Movements" and other poems is as relevant as ever. In the wake of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Audre Lorde, working as an educator and a co-founder of Black Studies in the US academy wrote about the shift she saw happening in the way oppression worked. In the face of mass awakenings (did someone say woke?) it had become to cumbersome to keep assassinating oppressed people expressing critiques of the status quo, instead the move became to incorporate those people, and even some of their language without significantly changing the deadly impact of the existing oppressive system.

This is what brought us together. So why was there so much love, joy and purpose in the gathering? Because Audre Lorde's energy continues to turn us toward each other with passion and possibility. We started by breathing and dedicating our participation to our teachers (I dedicated to beloved Jacqui Alexander) and took a moment to revel in the abundance our teachers (of all species and ages) have given us. We continued by remembering our intergalactic assignments, beyond the specific situations of our livelihoods. And then we got into the deepest part of the Lordean work, addressing the fears that greet us in the very places where we seek to practice our purpose. We supported each other to listen to our inner knowing (and our inner knowing kept it real and very blunt in some cases!) and closed with a collective poem of witnessing.

Here is our poem as an offering to all of us who are engaged in our divine assignments in contexts that are sometimes raggedy, sometimes hostile, sometimes suffocating and always in need of transformation. Read out loud and notice the repetitions here. Our spirits choose each other. We have never been alone.

P.S. If you missed it an want to do the workshop via the recording you can do that here.
My Spirit is Choosing by the participants in "Our Labor Has Become More Important Than Our Silence": A Reflective Writing Workshop in Honor of Audre Lorde
"In a classroom on the 17th floor my spirit is choosing..."

-Audre Lorde, Blackstudies

My spirit is choosing truth

My spirit is choosing freedom.

My spirit is choosing to be seen more fully

My spirit is choosing me.

My spirit is choosing expression.

My spirit is choosing activation

My spirit is choosing liberation

My spirit is choosing to take the risk for love.

My spirit is choosing sovereignty.

My spirit is choosing pleasure

My spirit is choosing peace

My spirit is choosing my peace and the preciousness of it

My spirit is choosing care

my spirit is choosing care

My spirit is choosing to surrender, let go, be carefree

My spirit is choosing REST & RESOURCES

My spirit is choosing being, not doing.

My spirit is choosing belonging no longer in question.

My spirit is choosing choice

My spirit is choosing to notice.

My spirit is choosing ornate complexity

My spirit is choosing to love anyway.

My spirit is choosing joy.

My spirit is choosing joy.

My spirit is choosing joy.

My spirit is choosing joy

My spirit is choosing the risk of connection

My spirit is choosing bravery

My spirit is choosing balance

My spirit is choosing honest communication

My spirit is choosing to trust the love

My spirit is choosing an unknown soon

My spirit is choosing emergence

My spirit is choosing trust

My spirit is choosing to listen

My spirit is choosing fortitude for my own sake

My spirit is choosing courage for my own sake

My spirit is choosing to not to invisibilize myself, despite others wanting to

My spirit is choosing love

My spirit is choosing love

My spirit is choosing self-love

My spirit is choosing tenderness and doing things slow

My spirit is choosing release

My spirit is choosing to let go

My spirit is choosing to recognize my usefulness

and to tap into the covenant I made with my ancestors in the dungeons - love

My spirit is choosing my, OUR collective Self, OUR wholeness,

leaning unto our aliveness.

My spirit is choosing to ride constant heartbreaks

like gentle waves that teach me to move in new ways.

My spirit is choosing sweetness

My spirit is choosing rest

My spirit is choosing movement, always movement

My spirit is choosing is choosing rest, choosing play, and choosing to play ah mas.

My spirit is choosing courage

My Spirit is choosing transformation

My spirit is choosing art and creativity

My spirit is choosing to lean into, maybe love, what I do not know

My spirit is choosing the soil

My spirit is choosing magic

My spirit is choosing to listen to the walls of caves

My spirit is choosing surrendering to your rage.

My spirit is choosing the power of listening

My spirit is choosing healing as a way of being differently

My spirit is choosing to jump through the portals past fear.

My spirit is choosing it's particular place in the constellation of all

My spirit is choosing bare feet in grass

My spirit is choosing the power of listening

My spirit is choosing to remember the miracles

My spirit is choosing to honour instinct and the honing of the craft

My spirit is choosing to practice the art of discernment

My spirit is choosing the nurture cycle of creation and destruction

My spirit is choosing to dance through the feelings, any and all

My spirit is choosing connection

My spirit is choosing to grow like the trees, with an inner knowing

My spirit is choosing an approximation of stillness, and the quietest melody

My spirit is choosing to commune with my spirit

My spirit is choosing to be free

My spirit is choosing to speak and be known

My spirit is choosing the possibilities of nuance

My spirit is choosing be unapologetic

My spirit is choosing life.

My spirit is choosing excitement!

My spirit is choosing you!

My spirit is choosing us

my spirit is choosing you and us as we are, as we were, as we will be

My spirit is choosing to be moved by y'all

My spirit is choosing

We love you! Again if you want to do this reflective writing workshop you can access the video here. Or check out our other workshops here.

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My Spirit is Choosing: Thank You Audre Lorde - Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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On the first day of this month over 200 people decided to let the Lorde take the wheel.

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“I was not meant to be alone and without you who understand...”

“the great going forward…”

“other than the teeth of the dragon..."

Audre Lorde's work nurtures my creative, social, communal, and/or political practice by....

Lorde wrote that we each have a function and vital role within "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action". Looking at your own life, in what ways have you witnessed yourself (or do you aspire to) step into your own personal process of transforming silence? Has that personal process served a communal function/role? How so?

What are some "uses of anger"?
What have been some of the functions of suppressing your anger throughout your life? personally, communally, socially

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Audre Lorde interviewed by Judy Simmons for WBAI NYC 1979