The Pendulum of Care
Written on Sunday, August 4th, 2024
Right now, in my body, I’m mourning a pendulum of instability that threatens my ability to show up for myself. This is a milestone week that I have honored a commitment I made to practice in public within Assemblage. It’s also a week where my shoulder blades are pinched & my sternum feels like it’s sinking. I’m mourning many things at once: an unrealized/denied moment of collective grief when we lost millions of people in a pandemic & returned to business as usual, that we are witnessing multiple genocides around the world & people have returned to business as usual, & that we are dealing with an election where people want to show up in the name of continuing business as usual. Today I’m also mourning the ancestors, in my blood lineage & gathered lineage, who did not get to actualize their artistic dreams.
I’m thinking about how many of them had countless ideas they desired to bring earthside & because they lacked the funding, resources, and societal freedom over their lives we never got to see them actualized. I make the distinction between societal freedom & freedom because freedom doesn’t have to be externally approved. Here, I am thinking of the intentional knots of the legal system that labeled people as property—societal freedom—versus an embodied sense of knowing you are free even within systems that do not recognize you as such. Yet I know that an artist isn’t an artist because they are renowned as such. Lucille Clifton didn’t start sharing her poetry until she won an award after letting her poems exchange hands twice. Even then, she was still a poet prior to that moment where the passages slipped between cartographic inscribed palms.
“I’ve been writing poems with serious intent since I was a girl, I was 12 11, & I saw Robert Hayden’s name in a book. I thought Robert Hayden, he’s a colored man. So I sent him some poems, & oh Baraka was there at Howard too when I was there. And A.B. Spellman, I’ve known them 47 years. And I sent the poems to Hayden & he took them to Carolyn Kaiser who was at that time the head of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature program. Carolyn took them to the YMHA & I won the discovery award in the year. I had never heard of the Discovery Award. Plus I didn’t believe there was a YMHA. Cause I know YMCA, I mean I’m not a fool right (laughing). And at that time I was 30-something years old, I had six children, the oldest was seven, and I had never imagined such a thing but I had taken great care in my work.” -Lucille Clifton (in conversation with Sonia Sanchez in a talk entitled Mirros & Windows 23:37 -24:48)
I suppose taking great care in my work is what this moment in my life exemplifies. Despite the actions or inactions of people around me, I can honor myself through my words. Moreover, I can honor getting still & listening so that I may honor whatever needs to come through.
I know that I am exactly what I say I am at any given moment in time. This does not require validation or approval from anyone. It is truth.
What I also know is that I would have loved to have seen June Jordan’s Skyrise For Harlem erected. I would have loved to be able to see Augusta Savage’s 1939 World Fair piece entitled The Harp in person & beyond photographs. I would love to know more about Kay Brown’s work & life beyond the footnote that she helped to found the collective Where We At.
I adore June Jordan’s architectural design, which she collaborated on with R. Buckminster Fuller, which earned her the 1970 Rome Prime in Environmental Design. I wonder how these pillars would have actively resisted the gentrification that is taking place in present-day Harlem. I can only imagine families pushed out of the borough would still live there today. It seems like with Black creatives things have a way of disappearing or not being seen to full fruition. Such is the case involving the work of Augusta Savage.
While I love witnessing The Harp through archival photographs it saddens me to know it was demolished shortly after the fair. According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, “no funds were available to cast The Harp, nor were there any facilities to store it. After the fair closed it was demolished.” Unfortunately, Agusta never had enough money to cast her final pieces in bronze to preserve them for us to see. The New York Historical Society Museum & Library expands on this unrealized dream stating “Leininger-Miller—who’s working on a biography of Savage—now estimates that of the approximately 160 documented works by Savage, about 70 have been lost, mostly because Savage never had the means or support to cast them in more durable material.”
Augusta Savage’s piece was inspired by the poem, turned song, by her friend James Weldon Johnson entitled Lift Every Voice and Sing. My favorite lyrics, based on the octave and minor chord change alone (if you know, you can hear exactly how it sounds), are typed below.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Regarding Kay Brown, the only facts I know about her are that she was an artist, helped found Where We At with Faith Ringgold, & we share the same name. The image below is the only image of her I have ever seen. I know very little of her life & have seen few works of her art.
There is no doubt that Black Women tend to our work with immense care. However, there are obstacles we have no control over regarding whether that care is preserved for future generations to witness. It is possible, in some cases, that artists whose names I do not intimately know felt that the perseverance of their work was not a necessity. It is a possibility that the process of making their art was what enabled them to persevere from day to day & the culmination of those days—their life was enough. Indeed, our lives are always enough. The ritualist process of gathering to make their art empowered them to live life as art—an Assemblage. Indeed, our lives are always enough.
June & Agusta’s, I’m unsure of Kay’s, life was riddled with financial insecurity & poverty. Thus impacting their daily lives & informing the work they created. As I write this, I am reminded of when
shared in a Seeda A World (facilitated by ) open studio that the origin of the word wealth means well. I’m trying to hold how to be well in a world that would rather see me die trying to save everything but myself. We live in a world where wellness has been packaged into a new self-care gadget you must purchase.In my world, where I actively move from on a daily basis, I am much more interested in the extended arm carrying the folk in Augusta Savage’s The Harp sculpture. Who is lifting up your spirit, affirming/honoring your gifts, & thus encouraging you to sing out loud? What does that level of care & community look like when the very Assemblage of the statue was destroyed because Augusta couldn’t afford the long-term perseverance & sustainability of the piece? How do I care for myself in a world that tries to vehemently make it impossible?
What I’m trying to uncomfortably rest in is the feeling of my sternum sinking again. I’m rotting in the concave pit hollowed out by the whims of lofty institutions deciding if my idea is legible, valuable, & marketable enough to take up space in this world. In some ways restfully rotting in this pit is difficult work, but it is also intuitive if I follow the steps as they appear without questioning. I’m thinking of the gathering folk who made an Assemblage of their lives. Instead of turning to external limbs of conglomerates, I’m looking to the limbs of the trees lined with the folks who gather me.
The fact remains, that for me to know that Lucille Clifton took great care with her work, someone or a group of people had to acknowledge that she was deserving of care. In this interview example, the extended arm of care that affirmed Lucille Clifton is Cave Canem.
But my pinched shoulder blades are a result of frictious care. The extended arm that is currently supporting me is punctured with negative spaces I never see but always feel when I fall through them. I have expansive ideas that I sometimes can’t imagine how to start gathering to make it whole. The fact that my vision is clear but the specificities on how they will appear earthside is daunting.
Upon my first viewing of the conversation between Lucille Clifton & Sonia Sanchez: Mirrors & Windows, I thought it bizarre that she didn’t imagine while creating. However, after living with her words more, I was able to truly listen & realized she said “I had never imagined such a thing.” Lucille did not say that she had never imagined, but that she had never imagined such a thing called the YMHA or Discovery Award. Not knowing that these things, potential pathways, existed did not stop Lucille from being a Poet. Lucille took great care of her work and imagined the possibility that folks would care for her words in return. What if imagination is compost created from the remnants of self-nourishment then used to seed dreams of desire & possibility for yourself & thus the collective? Imagination is tending to the work knowing it creates a regenerative cycle of nourishment that with each season surprises us with a new flourishing life. Isn’t that—taking what others percieve as wasted scraps, tending, & preserving them to enhance our environment & livelihoods—after all, the embodiment of the vernacular? If imagination is compost, then it requires the fearlessness of our breath (oxygen) to break down discarded materials rich with value to nourish the growth of what is undoubtedly soon to come.
Let me ro(o)t
As such, I will continue to tend to my work with great care. I must care for myself through the work, my environment, & body to ensure that I can create a vessel that acknowledges other folks who are deserving of care. No, I’m not discussing creating a solution because “who else will if not Black Women.” No, I’m also not discussing thousands of Black Women organizing Zoom calls & raising millions of dollars for a presidential candidate who looks like them. The people in Zoom calls helping the candidate to reach a historic campaign goal that could have easily been made if they stopped funding the genocide of Palestinians, the Congolese, or the countless other atrocities around the world. No, I’m not wasting my words to discuss Black Women answering the call from a burning house we did not create & that never protected us. I’m penning these words to discuss how creating a vessel is the only choice I have to ensure a life beyond mere survival (heavy on the choice not obligation).
I will tend to my work in the hopes that rooting & rotting where I am will break down everything I need & flow through me through the soil on which my feet stand. I will tend so that I may participate in the regenerative process of imagination to care for my work. The gathering folk will find each other rooting around a kitchen table, river, mountain, pasture, dinner party, and/or on the dance floor. Let us ro(o)t. Let me ro(o)t so that what emerges may nourish future assemblage makers.
Below, you may listen to a recording of me reciting the poem I wrote below entitled Where Are the Folk Who Gather.
Where are the folk who gather—
who collect clay to shape
who gather vegetables from gardens
who collect wildflowers to make furious bouquets
who gather what the unruly wind, ancient trees, & shimmering streams speak
their dreams & feel it as one.
Where are those rogue folk
who validate that knowledge can not be capped
& that the language we fiddle our tounge to
isn’t mastery but
trust—
in the fact that you know how knowledge be—
haves in your mind & body
Where are the folk who find materials
covered in rust & dust & know it’s not the end of life
but a new pace to function at,
these folk know rust is the same song in a different tune—
beautifully reshapen.
Where are the folk who gather others’
trash knowing the disregard of time
attention
hands on education
stops nothing
& the rotten center
reshapes to compost
nothing stops this growing bloom.
Where are the rooted folk who gather
broken timelines & spells
to activate a resurgence,
of seed knowledge—the folk taught & led
by no one but themselves.
Where are the gathering folk
gathering love
accepting nothing less
creating a bountiful, beautiful,
Assemblage that is life.Here are two songs that have been on repeat the past couple of days prior to me writing this. I don’t have language, nor am I interested in describing my embodiment at this time, for how this Elmiene song makes me feel. So, just give this gem a listen.
A song described by the singers, British-Nigeran Bellah & Duth-Sudanese Gaidaa, as a love letter to yourself 💙. A bonus song is Gaidaa covering Iron Sky!
Please remember if you choose to quote this piece, share this piece, or any piece on this publication to always CITE BLACK WOMEN. Please always include my name (Kay Brown she/her pronouns) and a link to the publication of the Assemblage: Baby’s Breath substack in your sharing practice.
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Lastly, remember, that referrals are now available! This means you get to speak the name Assemblage: Baby’s Breath out loud to your community while receiving unique grounded gathered gifts from me. Thank you for being here 💙.
💜
The recitation of your poem is now on repeat. 🔁🙏🏾