Let Black Folk Wonder
I’ve tried & failed to watch the hit show Sex & The City multiple times. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s about four white women who lead very different lives from my own. What I do know, is that the writing life of Carrie Bradshaw is one that I used to dream of. The short compilation video below is the reason why I desire my writing life to feel like hers.
Carrie was always allowed to wonder. The words wonder & wander have been resonating within my body for a while now. Yet, it’s something that society despises & is the exact opposite of what many people want from me right now. In May, it will be one year since I will have graduated college. Thus also marking one year since deciding to launch this publication & launching @disturbersofthesouth digital archive. These projects are things that I am deeply passionate about & able to sustain as a practice. What was clear to me, after doing college in three years (in a pandemic no less) is that I was exhausted & needed respite. While getting the respite I need has been challenging I am grateful for living intuitively.
One of the things that college forces you to do, in service of preparing you for the “real world,” is to stop listening to your intuitive needs. College forces you to hear your body’s desire for a nap, a walk around campus, spending time in community, & deprive yourself of it in favor of productivity. If you are extremely unlucky, then you not only deprive yourself of your needs but you stop learning how to hear them at all. Thankfully, I never stopped hearing my desires which may have been worst. Because I heard them & had to continuously tell myself no to get the degree.
I attribute this deep sense of attunement to my body’s needs to the double-edged sword that was my gap year. Before starting college, I lived abroad for almost a full year & was transformed. I transformed from a rigid box-checking type A person to a much more flexible & present one. I went on long runs, took pictures of flowers, & danced. It was during this year, that I started to realize that the life I had aspired to no longer resonated in my body. For the first time in my life, I was wondering & wandering. Once you allow experiences to transform you, and bring you closer to how you are meant to show up in the world, it’s challenging to accept what used to serve you.
Now, I find myself in a similar position except surrounded by the people & places I have always called home. There’s something about being away from all that is familiar to you & growing (turning theory into praxis) while there. The real challenge comes from turning theory into praxis in the places you have always dwelled. Here I am, working on projects that enable me to do just that but not always being supported. In my gap year, I was in a program, I had a part-time internship, & I was in a foreign language school. Moreover, I had a clear next step that was laid out in a defined structure…the college admission process. It was clear to everyone back home that I would apply, get in, & spend the next four years earning a bachelor’s degree.
Now, I have intentionally taken the time to not work for someone else & permitted myself to wonder. However, I am not a white woman like Carrie Bradshaw & people around me do not see the value in wondering. The people around me see value in what can be seen & materialized in reality. I frequently receive comments from family about the attire I choose to work in (since I work from home), how my hair looks, & how I’m not contributing anything (& therefore have no right to advocate for my needs). These family members are still waiting for me to have a solid structure where I will end up. Moreover, like many other people in society, my family members believe that these solid structures are institutions.
They fail to realize that I have nothing to prove & ample space to dream. If I had decided to deny my body’s need for rest, & pursued a structured path that slowly eroded my capacity, while pursuing my soul’s work at odd hours I would receive a thunderous round of applause. Because that is the vision of what it means to contribute & have value in life. Therefore, when you dare to assemblage a life centered on your own desires (will) it is repulsive & severely misunderstood.
Yet, the fact remains that sometimes receiving financial awards from institutions gives artists the freedom to choose their responsibilities. In an excerpt from her conversation with Charlie Rose, Octavia Butler tells him that “it was horrible at first.” More specifically, the period of time where Octavia was making strides to establish herself as a writer was horrible. It was after receiving the Macarthur Fellowship that she was able to be in “the best part.” At one point in the interview, Rose asks Octavia, “What’s the best part about being where you are now?” Octavia’s response emphasizes the sensibility of being unburdened & the importance of choice.
“I don’t have to worry about how to pay the mortgage. I get to write the stories that I want to write & not worry that maybe they won’t be accepted because they already have been.”
Ultimately, Octavia was able to write most of the day at her own will. What intrigues me about this clip is how acceptance from institutions must come before artists are allowed to wonder. This process seems to be backward to me. We should encourage emerging artists to wonder and wander, with expansive financial support, so that they may tell the stories their soul desires. Octavia’s sentiment of being able to freely choose the stories she tells after receiving this major grant is reminiscent of Howardena Pindell’s Free, White & 21. This specific work by Howardena is one that I continuously find myself returning to. Different moments of the film, draw me in based on how my life is presently shaping me. Like water, Free, White & 21 carve the landscape of my body to let emotions flow freely.
“You won’t exist until we validate you.”
In response to this haunting sentiment, which is the voice of most institutions, Theaster Gates offers a brilliant rebuttal.
“We’re being trained and conditioned to only make when there is a light,” he says. “Are you willing to make in the absence of light?”
Yet, working in the absence of light should not mean struggling through difficult times to support yourself. I won’t pretend to know the answer but I can point you in the direction of a source that I feel is taking “Giant Steps” (Coltrane) in a magical direction….Jupiter Magazine. Jupiter was founded by
& Daria Harper with the mission to create “ a publication invested in disrupting industry standards in service of creating conditions that support more viable writing lives.” In a realistic world, an artistic dreamer can face many challenges that attempt to silence our innate desire to create. However, as Akwaeke Emezi wrote in their Jupiter Mag contribution On Worldbending, “the best thing I can do is to tell stories and make art, and that is enough.”So what do you do when the spaces you used to frequent are no longer demanding more of you? How do you give yourself permission to wonder & wander to come into your own (even if others view it as an unrealistic goal)?
John Coltrane’s 1960 album Giant Steps, came out five years before his iconic A Love Supreme Album. John’s 1960 album was also recorded between session 1 and session 2 of the recording of Miles Davis’ A Kind of Blue (1959). At the time, I’m sure many folks believed John could do no better than to continue learning within the structure of the Miles Davis Quintet. Miles’ group had already been tested & proven to be a success.
“So Miles’ band was a great environment for Cotlrane to grow, & he grew so much that he grew too big for the band. I mean he grew out of it. He couldn’t exist in it anymore.” — Ben Ratliff in Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (37:09-37:21) *The following quotes & time stamps are also attributed to this film)*
Yet, John heard a calling to wonder & wander through his music. Thus, he began to take Giant Steps towards honoring what he intuitively needed. When John did take the giant step by recording an album as a first-time leader he forever changed how listeners heard music.
“It was unprecedented, that it was something that forced all of us to call into question what we had been hearing as that which had been innovative.” - Dr. Cornell West (35:52-36:24)
Right after Dr. Cornell West tells the viewer this quote, Denzel Washington reads a quote from John that has stuck with me at 36:49-37:07.
“Writing has always been a secondary thing for me, but I find that lately, I’m spending more and more time at it. I’m trying to tune myself, to look to myself, and to nature and to other sounds in music, & interpret things I feel there.”
In these two sentences, John is describing the process of honoring the information your ancient body already knows. The language of tuning oneself is extremely helpful because it normalizes being knocked off the pitch by life. Yet, the language of tuning also gives us the solace of knowing that you can always tune yourself to be back in alignment. John gave himself permission to wonder & wander through the writing of a musical score. Furthermore, John tuned himself by being present in the moment between excruciating birth & unknown death…that little thing we call life. One must be willing to hear that you are horribly out of tune & do whatever is necessary to fix it. Even if that means wandering away from people & places you have always known. Because once you fix the pitch, everything else sounds incredibly disingenuous & dishonorable to what you have heard for yourself.
“He was actually saying to me he was gonna leave Miles Davis, he said I’m gonna leave Miles, because what I’m playing with that group sounds incorrect, sounds wrong. It’s like he took off a suit of clothes that he doesn’t want to wear anymore.” — Wayne Shorter 37:23-37:40
You’ve got to take off the suit that once served you to be at home within your skin. I have chosen the path of a writer, archivist, and artist & it is an unruly non-straightforward mark in the ground. There is no “right” way for artists to achieve our goals. I could get an MFA or not, work in big publishing or not, and work odd jobs to support my craft or not. But the reality is that I simply do not want to. Those paths are not something that would align with how I want my life to feel. Those are suits that I do not want to wear. When I think back, on my most difficult moments in college it was always when what I felt called to do caused tension with my academic requirements.
It’s the same tension as when two of Earth’s plates collide. Suddenly, there’s an obstacle, a mountain that wasn’t present before that I’ve got to figure out how to move over. Currently, doing what those around me consider to be productive would be moving around the mountain. This solution doesn’t change the fact that a mountain is present. I would like to believe that part of the journey of making a bountiful assemblage of life is exploring different views. When something appears from an intense crash, I believe maybe that’s a sign or opportunity to tackle something.
When I sit with myself & think of the freedom I have to honor my intuitive desires then I realize my life feels (work-wise) exactly how I want it to. I have slow mornings, ample time to pause when poems make themselves known to me, & naps when my body is dragging. This life that made itself known to me by buckling under the process of getting my degree was also made possible from wondering & wandering. While I’m not exactly where I want to be yet I am grateful that every day I get to wonder & execute the steps to get a little closer to the mountain top. I’m grateful that I don’t have to write around the edges of the day like Toni initially did.
I, like Toni, don't want to skirt around the day to fit my writing. I just want to center my writing practice & be paid handsomely for it. I believe in this interview Toni was in her late 30s & already tired. I am only in my early 20s and I'm starting to become tired. Along with earning my degree in three years, I worked three to four jobs to support myself. I chose to graduate early for financial reasons & also because what college asked of me was too much. College was asking me to live a life that dishonored my desires & that was ultimately unsustainable. I am glad I honored the desire to finish school early. When I think about being in school right now, (while the world is witnessing multiple genocides, an upcoming United States Election, & still being expected to complete graduation requirements) it makes me nauseous.
There is the expectation that even as the world is crumbling, we should not take time to wonder, wander, & dream a new one. To be fair, most people don’t have the privilege to take the time to do so because we have to live. Yet, the truth remains that it is not normal to carry on as “normal” during these times. Many people in my community have adjusted in ways that they have the capacity to sustain. This is where I believe the people I used to call home have a hard time understanding the way I am presently moving. Sometimes, I also feel pressured to adopt a more structured life path. However, the lifestyle, the pace, of working in law or at a museum does not sit well within my soul anymore.
I dream of gathering to make an assemblage of my life. I dream of writing & having my books be read by countless people. I dream of gathering herbs & flowers to assemblage beautiful arrangements encouraging people to be more rooted. I dream of gathering herbs to make herbal medicine for my community. I dream of being able to travel frequently & meet new people who will become family. I dream that the magical & unrealistic life that used to feel far-fetched materializes. I dream of being present & fully embodying uses of the erotic. I dream of never having to wear a suit.
These are the dreams I keep the closest to my heart. Furthermore, these are the dreams that flood my interior life. These gem dreams only made themselves aware to me because I dared to wonder without needing a structure to fall into. The only structure worth its salt is the red clay & Combahee river capillaries that make up my body.
Here are two songs that embody the ethos of wondering & wandering by Sudanese singer Gaidaa. As always, it’s free Sudan, free the Democratic Republic of the Congo, free Palestine, & all the other places empire tries to choke freedom out of. Freedom can not be killed.
Below are lyrics from “Something True” by Gaidaa that remind me that I don’t have to wear a suit.
Bonus: Gaidaa performed “Morning Blue” on A Colors Sudan Show four years ago & the song still resonates today.