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00:04:50.600us in this work. Thanks everyone. And with that, now on to part two of my conversation with Bronte
00:04:57.920velez bronte velez they them is guided by the call that quote black wellness is the antithesis
00:05:07.620of state violence mark anthony johnson a black latinx transdisciplinary artist and designer
00:05:14.300they are currently moved and paused by the questions quote how can we allow as much room
00:05:20.060for god to flow through and between us as possible what affirms the god of and between us
00:05:27.060what is the way how can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity
00:05:32.340what ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative justice promote the memory of god
00:05:38.620which is to say love and freedom between us
00:05:41.540you know we've previously discussed talking about the idea of pleasure in the apocalypse which i so
00:05:55.600often come up against the idea that we can't find joy because the world is burning and I know a lot
00:06:02.480of people feel that way and that we can't be in our bodies because we need to be in the struggle
00:06:06.980and of course I'm drawing upon so much of Adrienne Marie Brown and Audrey Lord's work who negates
00:06:13.340this and proclaims that actually when we're in our pleasure our capacity is stronger because we
00:06:20.680can't be powerful if we are denying ourselves our full existence. So I'd love to hear you introduce
00:06:28.000your thoughts around this. And if you have any thoughts on moving beyond the binary of pleasure
00:06:34.640versus suffering, and you kind of started touching on that or like around the proximity of suffering.
00:06:39.940Yeah, well, I want to first name like, I've been really grateful for Pinar from Queer Nature's
00:06:46.860reflections on concepts of pleasure are often only sexualized. So what I'm about to speak to
00:06:52.500is like the dynamic ways we might encounter pleasure that could not be sexual or the expansion
00:06:58.560of the erotic into, you know, something that is maybe not just encountered sexually, though I
00:07:05.160encounter it. I encounter pleasure often sexually. I didn't know it was going to be so hot. You know,
00:07:16.020The sun's really beaming down right now. I feel like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. And I have a lot of compassion for the immense suffering that is happening, has happened, is happening, and is going to continue to happen to those most vulnerable to climate apocalypse and collapse.
00:07:46.020And just the ways that, you know, ways people are already not getting their basic needs met, the ways that that will intensify.
00:07:54.220And it's scary. And it's hard to imagine what you're saying, a capacity for still being enjoyed when it really feels so unknown.
00:08:05.220unknown. It feels so mysterious. It feels so scary. I feel like for me, pleasure is a daily meditation
00:08:12.940of embodiment, listening into a pulse of, does this feel right to me? And does this bring me
00:08:21.180joy? Does this make me come alive? And I think then we are more oriented towards what is ours
00:08:30.260to offer when we're listening into what makes us come most alive. I can't think of the
00:08:35.220I can't think of who it is that says this, but Esperanza Spaulding was bringing this up.
00:08:41.100It's in Farming While Black, and I've heard it multiple times, but it's someone who says
00:08:45.820we don't need people doing like what they think folks need.
00:08:49.340We need people doing what makes them come most alive because that's what we need right now.
00:08:54.800And I feel like that's at the center of us being in our pleasure, which might be our
00:09:01.100I think it's important to interrogate if our relationship to what brings us pleasure is from a socialization of continuing injustice.
00:09:14.480I think we should interrogate what brings me pleasure and why, because some people right now are down for stuff that brings them pleasure that is harmful to the land, that is harmful to other people.
00:09:27.420I don't think that's an accountable form of pleasure, but I feel like this idea that we're going to be liberated through continuing feeling suffering or like feeling grief or being wrapped up by isolating ourselves or letting it all fall on top of us.
00:09:45.460If you're going through that, and I can see how people may not be resourced to not, you know, not go through that own collapse. Yeah, I've been like in this submission role with collapse and with the earth of just like, take me, I'm on my knees. And I want you to tell me what position do you want me to be in? Because I'm in a place of like, what do you need from me? What are you asking of me? I'm devoted for you.
00:10:12.120I'm fully devoted to you. I'm on my knees to the earth right now. And just like, and to Black people, Black people's liberation. I'm like, what is needed for me? And the voice that I keep hearing is being your gifts, being your power, being your love, being your pleasure, because we need that vibration right now.
00:10:32.120We need a vibration right now collectively that is centered around us being able to have the capacity to dream something else into being.
00:10:43.100And I think that that comes from a place where we're in orgasmic, ecstatic states.
00:10:49.440Like, I think that will come from like creating cultures of healthy ecstasy that bring us into trance, into listening, that jolt us into like letting our bodies be channels and conduits for liberation.
00:11:06.960and that that can be like really exciting to be in that place where like I can't even access
00:11:12.320what the earth is asking of me and my role and responsibility right now especially if my shape
00:11:18.100for example folks who can't see I'm like turn inward and like shrinking how is the energy of
00:11:25.320love and freedom able to enter me when I'm like literally my shape is like this and I know people
00:11:31.540experience chronic pain, chronic suffering. And there's so many ways that I was talking with a
00:11:37.160former professor, Greg Childs, about he was talking about the ways the academy of white
00:11:41.920supremacy deforms us and limits our capacity for pleasure physically. Because some of us,
00:11:48.120especially folks encountering environmental racism, depression from this six mass extinction,
00:11:54.700all of these things it's hard to feel your capacity for pleasure and I think that yeah
00:12:01.640that that can be elevated when we're in community with folks who are you calling in to help you out
00:12:07.900who is your support network who do you know who can who can you call together to be in some
00:12:14.140and to shift maybe just yeah isolation is going to create more suffering so and maybe it's not
00:12:21.220humans maybe you call upon maybe you call upon the land or ancestors or or benevolent like spirits
00:12:28.000to allow you to open up just the prayer of like opening up may my capacity for pleasure be opened
00:12:35.180make up my capacity for for joy be open I've been praying recently may I have so much space creator
00:12:43.420for psychic freedom please I need as much space for psychic freedom as possible please move any
00:12:49.760barriers out of the way that are preventing me from having psychic freedom so that I may
00:12:54.720facilitate that pleasure for others. If I'm feeling good, other people are definitely
00:13:00.040going to probably feel good. Yeah, that's liberatory.
00:13:04.960I absolutely agree with you that when one is in that orgasmic state of being alive and in their
00:13:12.580bodies and their pleasure and their erotic eros senses, people are drawn to that. People are
00:13:20.200hungry to feel alive and embodied in something that can shock us out of our autopilot
00:13:29.500mode of being in modernity. Being in modernity with technology and industrial civilization,
00:13:36.520I'll just speak for myself, it cuts me off from my orgasmic state because it takes my attention
00:13:42.240away from my body away from most of my senses other than just the sense that the screen you
00:13:47.680know per se is trying to capture at that moment and and and we're talking about regenerative power
00:13:52.920we're not talking about you know we're not talking about destructive power here but when one is in
00:13:57.920their power in this connection to the divine to eros to the erotic which i think is all the divine
00:14:04.780i think they're all synonymous with one another i think it also it sparks in people that wow could
00:14:12.040i feel like that could i possibly tap into that energy and then it's like this curiosity of well
00:14:19.080what do i have to release about myself about my identity about my conditioning about my consumer
00:14:26.200addictions in order to begin to feel this alive with the earth because it's always with the earth
00:14:33.340i don't think it can be apart from the earth body when we begin to feel our own bodies awaken
00:14:40.360with the pleasure of what it is to be alive even in this time and I think there's something
00:14:46.380subversive about being able to hold that amount of pleasure while we're also holding the hospicing
00:14:53.820and the grief and to be able to feel the intensity of all of the spectrum of emotion
00:14:58.540like what Jonah Macy talks about the beauty and the terror together it's such a delicious way to
00:15:05.040be in this time. Like I would much rather be in this empowered place of feeling at all than
00:15:11.000feeling like, you know, it's toppling on top of me and I can't, I can't possibly get out from
00:15:16.480underneath the bricks. Similarly, you mentioned thinking about the process of seducing people
00:15:22.860into liberation and questioning what is the capacity and limitation of sensuality
00:15:29.140in this paradigmatic shift? How does making movement's essential space open opportunity
00:15:36.980for different kinds of engagement to emerge? What is the role of playing with erotic energies and
00:15:43.480muses? That being said, it also feels incredibly important to me to name that this conversation
00:15:50.320takes on different meanings and interpretations for those who have experienced different forms
00:15:56.120of trauma and shame around sensuality. So what does it take to hold a container of safety for
00:16:04.340folks to engage with movements as a sensual space? I love it. I want to be in my senses.
00:16:11.420It's when I feel most wild and I feel most in my calling if I'm just able to feel myself as a part
00:16:21.480of the body of the earth we all deserve that that memory that knowing that wisdom that yeah we should
00:16:28.740all be able to access and I think yeah it feels sad that like in our ways that we play with like
00:16:36.740resistance work and encounter our activism yeah and especially I think in relationship to
00:16:44.240neoliberalism. There's just these ways that they're disembodied. The ways we're organizing
00:16:51.560are not accountable to people's bodies or people's rest or like what's actually the capacity of a
00:16:58.000human body and life to do a thing. I don't agree with like still taking us into these same sort of
00:17:06.800industrialized ways of getting towards liberation in like that we are like industrial
00:17:12.360machines that have no need to rest or to feel or to deserve especially yeah pleasure so
00:17:21.240I think sensuality is so important and I think for folks who have had experience with trauma
00:17:28.000and sensuality and and where that sadly for so many of us has been cut off so many of us that
00:17:34.760cord has been cut for what that means and just flattened for what that means yeah for me like
00:17:41.100being in our senses can come in such a multitude of ways. And when I just finished Ginny O'Dell's
00:17:49.140text around resisting the attention economy, for me, it feels like when we live in a culture
00:17:56.960that's so predicated on taking away our senses, literally everything about the culture is in
00:18:09.160design the experience of our technology right now is all about anesthesia what are the ways that we
00:18:16.680can make connections that reorient and redirect our attention back towards the earth and back
00:18:22.360into the vibration of our senses of our listening of our listening to our ancestors and for me
00:18:28.400the project of folks who so sadly are socialized who have learned to utilize sense connection in
00:18:36.000ways that are unjust in ways that are are harmful and when I think about like advertising I'm like
00:18:43.140it's so sad that like the culture of advertising is rooted in like actually really understanding
00:18:50.780what our eyes move towards like how our hearts are open how we connect to things what colors
00:18:56.780might we use what sounds might people like in and tune up to or or redirect it and focus their
00:19:02.500attention and I feel like sometimes in culture and politics of activism we're not appropriating
00:19:10.520this way that this whole culture of capitalism is moved both by our shame and also by like drawing
00:19:17.560us into our senses into our pleasures into our desire and so I think it's both about this whole
00:19:24.480thing about like making the revolution sexy and also like what would it be like to support people
00:19:31.040and reorienting what we think we desire, what we think we want, and to make being in the earth
00:19:36.980actually something that's very sexy. I think a lot about this as someone who grew up in young
00:19:42.940Black Atlanta, and I'm blessed to have grown up around support as a young artist and support with
00:19:48.480Black artists around me, raising me. And a lot of the people that I grew up with, a lot of people
00:19:54.240are like, they're just showing up and showing out. They're really, quote unquote, making it,
00:20:00.320They're doing their thing. And also, I've asked myself a lot, how do you ask a dispossessed people to renounce possession? How do you support the reorientation of desiring perhaps something that is life affirming and not like material oriented?
00:20:18.820And for me, I'm like, how do we gather in public space to reorient and redirect our senses? How do we appropriate propaganda? How do we think about the practice of memetics in our work? I think about that a lot with Lead to Life, of the work with Lead to Life, which one of the parts of our practice is transforming weapons into shovels.
00:20:38.860And for me, that's just about knowing, really. It's so powerful when people hear it. They're like, whoa. They're drawn in. They feel the power of it. But that's not really the work. We don't need to make more stuff. We don't need to make more things. That practice is wasteful.
00:20:57.340We try to limit like how many shovels we make, because what the real part is, is that we know that spectacle is what people are drawn to.
00:21:07.760People came to our ceremony in Oakland in January because I imagine they wanted to see a gun turn into a shovel.
00:21:14.700Not everybody, but like that's kind of fun to go watch.
00:21:17.780People are moved by these coliseum, these weird things, these kind of Roman traditions and paradigms of like going to see spectacle.
00:21:29.000And that has been used for terror for so long.0.66
00:21:32.180Lynching spectacle right now, the new technologies of racial terror lynching with watching Black people be harmed by police, that spectacle.
00:21:40.660And how do we reorient people towards encountering something that makes them pause, that makes them feel their body, that makes them feel their breath or invites them to feel their breath, invites them to remember their senses, invites them to rest.
00:21:57.380And yeah, I think art especially does that. And I think one of the main ways oppression continues is by taking away our senses.
00:23:59.200i feel like we've had this conversation around what it would be if the movement was sexier
00:24:14.500for so many years and the seduction of feeling good and and seeing what advertising uses like
00:24:23.920what does the dominant culture use to seduce us and why are we not using those tools to seduce
00:24:31.700people into another direction it's that same type of feeling of like you can't look like this you
00:24:36.500can't use those tools you can't be powerful you have to maintain a proximity to suffering in order
00:24:42.480to qualify as an activist in order to qualify as somebody who can be respected in certain movement
00:24:50.540spaces. And I'm really in a place where I just want to toss all that out the window and say,
00:24:56.500hey, whatever we've been doing isn't really working. So can we look at what does work
00:25:01.420and actually utilize those tools with integrity, with love, with devotion for a greater good,
00:25:08.400and also be creative, make art and have a fun time while doing it. And I'm not blaming anybody
00:25:14.700for this. I think it's a product of oppression. Now it's time in my mind to shift this way of
00:25:22.920relating to being an activist and not letting these cultural oppressive tactics bleed in
00:25:32.520and then stop us from being our fully erotic creative selves. But I do want to talk a bit
00:25:38.920more about the value of aesthetics. And more specifically, perhaps we could talk about when
00:25:45.700aesthetics are developed as a strong ideological alternative to dominant notions. For example,
00:25:51.620the creation and nourishment of Black aesthetics. So how is this an example of the importance of
00:25:57.620looking good and being empowered in the self through style and identity? What is beauty's
00:26:03.560role in liberation we definitely with led to life are thinking a lot about beauty and
00:26:10.180de-centering eurocentric concepts of how we understand beauty what shapes that looks like
00:26:18.700heteronormative concepts of beauty yeah thinking about the root of aesthetic just meaning sense
00:26:26.320senses that's what it means so thinking about like for me black aesthetics is about black
00:26:33.220senses and black cultural traditions that made sure people were down to still look good through
00:26:43.680and through. I'm so moved by like a culture of what feels like protection and reverence and
00:26:52.160camouflage, just the ways that stepping out maybe like brings attention to people, you know, like
00:27:00.760When you're out there looking good or when you're creating something that's looking good, that draws people's attention toward you. But I think in another way, also, it serves as an intervention, especially for Black people. Blackness has, there's been so many projects a part of white supremacy to eradicate the idea that Black is beautiful.
00:27:23.160So I think in a way to reclaim that, I'm going to still practice the kind of care it takes to adorn my body, which is a sacred vessel.
00:27:35.820I'm going to honor this vessel that has been unloved, that has been devalued, that they want to harm.
00:27:41.900And it makes me think of Baby Shugs, a character in Toni Morrison's Beloved, this section called The Clearing, where Baby Shugs is like, they're never going to love your body, so you need to love it.
00:27:56.340She brings all of these people in the community into this clearing and she has them touch up on their neck, touch up on all your organs and your body, your flesh, because they want to do away with your body.0.90
00:28:08.380And so for me, it's so important to me when I see people who like want to just to dress themselves and they're just their own body, like that is such an important thing.
00:28:20.780And then I think that like beyond that, like I think we're all kind of there's something from this documentary, The Cruise, where he's talking about rising to the occasion and just wanting people to rise to the occasion of the day, rise to the occasion of being alive.
00:28:36.280and I feel like we're not rising to the occasion of we're not rising to the occasion of being alive
00:28:43.840in the earth and that doesn't need to require money or makeup or any or these things to look
00:28:49.760good it's not about looking good again for like Eurocentric notions of beauty but like what makes
00:28:56.520you feel good and what do you see as beautiful and how might adorning yourself in that be a way
00:29:04.780of protecting your liberation and facilitating for others the trust that something else is
00:29:11.620possible. I know for some people, it endangers them to embodying what they feel is beautiful.
00:29:17.200For some people, they've had to neglect that because heteronormative and Eurocentric
00:29:22.580understandings of beauty, it's not been safe for people to actually like fully,
00:29:27.760to fully move into what they feel is beautiful. But yeah, what a courageous thing, I think, for
00:29:32.840like queer Black community to be like, I'm going to fully embody and dance into what I see
00:29:42.940as beautiful for fibs, for women, for everybody, for everyone to come into like, yeah, I want to
00:29:51.580be in my beauty. I think it's so important, especially when we've, yeah, we have so much
00:29:58.300shame and insecurity around ourselves I know I do all the time still and like it's so sad it's so
00:30:05.240so so so so so sad and I'm afraid sometimes not only in myself but just in what I what I offer
00:30:13.000to my relationships to to the earth I feel like I offer half of myself because we haven't been
00:30:20.480taught that it's safe to be in our air beauty especially when the ways I've heard you talk
00:30:25.660about this Ayana when oftentimes the ways we encounter beauty and the ways we relate to beauty
00:30:32.620is to extract is to take from is to is to think I want some of that so I think there's something
00:30:40.780that you spoke to about subversion and beauty I think there's something that we've been thinking
00:30:47.820about with led to life around how do we keep these kind of these boundaries and container around
00:30:53.700beauty where people are drawn into something very beautiful, very liberating, but where you can't
00:31:00.420take from it. It's protected. Yeah. It's fortified. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of liberation
00:31:06.360wrapped up there. To be able to just experience beauty and see a wild being and just have pleasure
00:31:18.120in just the experience of knowing that that exists is beautiful. We can see a rose that
00:31:25.360doesn't mean we had to cut it and then bring it into our house for us to experience the beauty
00:31:29.560of seeing a rose blossom. I mean, I'm using a rose because it's so metaphorical for beauty
00:31:34.500in our culture. But I do think that there is something about the safety of beauty. And that's
00:31:40.420something I've had to work through a lot around, oh, well, if I show up in my full regalia,
00:31:45.840will I be hurt in some way shape or form and I want to speak to those people who do feel scared
00:31:51.660and for true reason people have gotten hurt in their bodies and I really think that this
00:31:58.680experiment in our minds of how we can work through even in our own lives experiencing
00:32:04.400beauty without extracting it and then you spoke to adornment and I remember speaking with Martin
00:32:11.040Prechtel years ago, and he talked about the people in Guatemala and how they would adorn
00:32:16.240themselves to farm. They would weave these incredible tapestries over their body for the
00:32:21.400divine. This wasn't just for them to look good. No. I mean, of course, yes, I'm sure they would
00:32:27.200probably feel beautiful when they put on these incredible outfits. It's about courting the
00:32:32.780mystery, courting the divine, showing up every day in this erotic, beautiful way to say, hey,
00:32:39.420earth you are beautiful and i am going to show up to be beautiful for you i want to show up to be
00:32:45.320beautiful for my relationship to the divine there's a lot of depth to beauty that gets completely
00:32:51.080erased because of capitalism our relationship to it gets tarnished it becomes something
00:32:57.820pornographic rather than something spiritual and um i also want to say i was thinking about
00:33:04.120my last response yeah yeah yeah yeah i've i've definitely been feeling the connection to the
00:33:13.900erotic spirituality and and it's so much beyond sex it's not about oh you have this erotic energy
00:33:21.300you just need to have sex and then it will go away i don't ever want it to go away i don't i'm not
00:33:26.580trying to satisfy it's not about satisfying the erotic energy it's about tending to the erotic0.77
00:33:33.420energy it's about taking care of the erotic energy worshiping the erotic energy because
00:33:39.560that is this you sound grown oh i feel it i feel it so much and i i know patriarchy is very
00:33:47.440threatened patriarchy is very scared especially for feminine uh or female identified folks who
00:33:55.400and honestly queer folks too patriarchy is very scared for anything other than them to be able
00:34:01.080to hold the erotic energy it's okay for them to be wanting sex all the time or be erotic that's
00:34:06.240okay but somehow when it's the others that other than them it's threatening it's scary it's too
00:34:12.940much it's too intense and I really want to put resistance to that and tell all the people out
00:34:19.820there that are listening to feel a type of gratitude and honor to be able to feel so alive
00:34:27.240And there was something I wanted to speak to with my last response.
00:34:31.160I was talking about the pressure of the movement spaces.
00:34:34.860It's by design that these wounds are put into movement spaces.
00:34:38.740I really respect people in movement spaces.
00:34:41.580It's not even that I blame them for those things because I know it's not even them who
00:34:54.920And so I just wanted to clarify my thought because it wasn't thought out as clearly when I said that. But my own journey with the awakening to the Anthropocene, to climate change, to global suffering and the Arama scene, the age of loneliness and capitalism and colonialism and all the isms that are just horrifying.
00:35:15.800so much of my journey was a lot about shame and guilt and feeling so heavy and feeling like
00:35:23.880I can't possibly be happy, erotic, pleasured. I can't possibly have those things because that
00:35:31.440means that then I am not fully aware of what's happening. For me to be fully in my awareness
00:35:37.420meant that I had to be suffering alongside and a lot of self-inflicted suffering, a lot of self-inflicted
00:35:44.020guilt all the time. And that to me felt like, okay, well now I'm being more authentic because
00:35:49.460I feel like crap all the time. And everything is crappy out there that this must be a way that I0.90
00:35:55.340am a better human. I'm really seeing the realities and I'm really embodying the realities.
00:36:00.480And it's taken me a long time to get into this place where I feel that pleasure and feeling joy
00:36:08.520is actually beneficial to the movement.
00:36:12.360And I don't think that shame and guilt don't have a place.
00:36:43.240And it's a horrible, horrible feeling.
00:36:46.440And so I think the shame and guilt is important for us to really acknowledge and to know that, yes, many of us are complicit in this.
00:36:56.020I don't think that staying in that is going to get us out of it.
00:36:59.740I think it's an important place to acknowledge, to work through, to come to something like
00:37:06.400gratitude for what is still living and ourselves included.
00:37:10.960But yeah, the balancing of the shame and the guilt and the pleasure kind of goes back to
00:37:15.600this idea of just feeling the full spectrum that I think it's completely possible and
00:37:20.580something I'm really noticing in myself.
00:37:22.040I can feel completely somatically turned on and pleasured and at the same time feel the grief
00:37:31.500of what we're losing and feel the grief of my role and my complicity in the suffering of
00:37:38.880other beings. And it goes back to the thing like we can be all of ourselves. We can be the self
00:37:45.820that is getting it and looking good. And we can be the self that goes home and cries when we can
00:37:50.340be the self that then wants to, needs to rest. And we can be the self who just wants to power
00:37:54.320through. And I know for myself being able to come to a place where none of those pieces of me need
00:38:01.820to be shut down, the release that can come and then the power that can come to be on our knees
00:38:10.840to the earth and saying, I am all here. All of me is here. All of my beauty, all of my shame,
00:38:16.260all of my guilt all of my pleasure like is here for you to direct is here for you to tell me what
00:38:22.560I should do with this emotional capacity it's deep it's very liminal you can have a safe word
00:38:29.520with the earth I think people who really care right now who care so much who want who have
00:38:35.240like their compassionate hearts and love and want to want to show up you know similar to what I was
00:38:41.520saying about like creation I'm on my knees for you and like do with me as you please it's kind
00:38:47.140of like I would like to you know just with that prayer add on some more specifics of like and
00:38:52.860please be gentle on me and please please let there still be capacity for me to to find the imagination
00:38:59.980for pleasure in my approach toward liberating my complicity and systems of oppression may I have
00:39:06.760the capacity to imagine that there's pleasurable pathways. There's hilarious pathways. There's
00:39:13.240joyful, clowning, trickster pathways to do this. And it doesn't have to be through these modes of
00:39:21.360suffering that have gotten us here. That doesn't make sense for us to continue to embody that
00:39:27.200suffering and to just notice and touch into the ways we've internalized that and to ask for support
00:39:33.040where we can and how we can and to be mirrored in that, I think it's really important. I just
00:39:39.480feel excited for like liberation movements that touch into that capacity. I've done things where
00:39:45.100like recently I am completely embodying a refusal to be desensitized or to normalize what is going
00:39:53.620on right now, to normalize suffering, to be desensitized to suffering, to be able to scroll
00:39:58.580through suffering. I'm at a point where I'm willing to allow myself to encounter the
00:40:05.460indigestibility of it, to encounter the shock, though I'm not shocked, to allow my body that1.00
00:40:14.120space to touch into the suffering. And then to be also willing to know that it's not accountable
00:40:21.520to the earth to then isolate myself in that grief. That is not going to help anybody.
00:40:27.580And I've done that so many times where I feel like I'm the only one feeling how I'm feeling and I'm feeling like this is just, you know, I feel mad. I feel sad. I feel mad. Like I'm crazy. I'm like going crazy. And I know a lot of people feel that sensation.
00:40:45.740and sometimes for me I'm somebody who it's very hard for me to reach out for help I feel like
00:40:53.560I've been socialized to be able to show that I can do things on my own and that made me successful
00:40:58.880or powerful is that I'm a powerful badass black woman because I can do everything I'm bad all by
00:41:05.000myself kind of kind of thing and it's been hard for me to say I need help it's been hard for me
00:41:10.620to say can you help me revive pleasure can you touch me like this can you hold me like this
00:41:18.360would you be willing to affirm me before you say something like that can you uh can you validate
00:41:25.540the grief that I'm feeling and then sometimes you know like if you see your friends or people
00:41:30.780in your community who are isolating themselves especially folks who are on the front lines or
00:41:35.200folks who are in movement work, reach out to them, ask folks how they're doing, like, especially I
00:41:41.600think people who people idolize or pedestalize and see them as figures. And that's happening a lot
00:41:48.520right now with social media and like kind of these like movement leaders who are helping us
00:41:55.020imagine another way as possible. That shit's got to go in terms of seeing people as like0.98
00:42:01.620these all-knowing figures who don't experience pain I think both for those who are empowered to0.99
00:42:08.300be transparent that we need support and then for people also to not hold people to that I feel so
00:42:13.720sad about like Greta Thunberg and Chutesca and these kids right now who are you know doing this
00:42:21.000youth v gov work and I'm just like how are these children doing are people protecting and supporting
00:42:27.880these children's health and wellness and pleasure like are they getting to be children are they are
00:42:33.600these kids going to be get to be kids if I have a kid will they get to be a kid you know the
00:42:38.900scariness of that yeah so I definitely you know it takes a squat it takes a circle it feels already
00:42:45.160really good and expansive to be to be saying yeah to be calling in like a pleasurable way of of
00:42:53.160moving towards liberation. And it's just something recently that I'm, I'm like, able to not just
00:42:58.840preach about, but to actually feel. I just want to shout out Trisha Hersey, who I name as my minister,
00:43:06.100the Nat Bishop of the Nat Ministry, who, Trisha, when we first met, I just felt like it was more
00:43:13.500worthy to be an activist that could talk about how tired I was, how exhausted I was, how much
00:43:21.240suffering i've experienced and that that made me more relatable and more what you're saying more
00:43:26.180authentic and i'm just i feel so much joy around adrian marie brown trisha hersey's politic of
00:43:32.360pleasure of rest of building up capacity um and i know that there's sometimes a privilege
00:43:38.460and oftentimes a privilege to be able to feel that so i'm feeling that gratitude and i'm like
00:43:44.700for those of us who have capacity to rest and to have access to the psychic freedom to practice
00:43:51.620non-violence etc how are we making sure we're facilitating more spaces for people to be in
00:43:57.300their bodies and their senses with the land yeah
00:47:01.760expansive to explore this with you and feel safe to just say these things that feel like
00:47:10.680I didn't even have capacity or access to before maybe even this year and I agree like what I
00:47:17.200you know when you were saying you may have preached these things but you didn't feel them
00:47:20.900embodied yeah I remember reading Adrienne Brown's work and I was like okay I like this concept but
00:47:26.480it's not me I'd always think that like okay this like the earth body is my body you know I'd hear
00:47:30.680these things I'm like yeah yeah yeah but that's not me and for the first time to be able to embody
00:47:37.020these concepts is so beautiful so I want to say too for the people out there that feel that they
00:47:43.400couldn't possibly embody what we've been talking about or things they've been reading I'd just say
00:47:50.620stick with it stick with it and keep keep listening keep slowing down enough to transition
00:47:56.980so I think that's what it took for me it took a lot of time to be in the questions and to be in
00:48:03.220my own frustrations with it and to be a cynic uh it didn't come quick and it didn't it didn't come
00:48:10.560when I wanted it to it just I feel like was like a lightning bolt strike where like all of a sudden
00:48:15.100it was just like here it is and I'm very grateful and yeah the privilege of being able to
00:48:21.780And choose pleasure is, I would say, one of my most incredible privileges of this life.
00:48:31.300I feel so lucky to be able to acknowledge and choose to feel all the feelings, honestly.
00:48:39.880But I do want to give you a clean slate to say anything that hasn't been said,
00:48:46.220any projects you're working on, any ways people can support you.
00:48:50.180yeah thanks Ayanna yeah well if there's anyone like feeling that feels discouraged or maybe like
00:48:58.920the concepts of pleasure can I've seen things around like this kind of spa or capitalist
00:49:06.000cultures of self-care and pleasure making that don't have to be wrapped up in that and just
00:49:11.860Yeah, a friend who is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley in Black Studies and also one of the co-founders and co-conveners of something called the Church of Black Humanist Thought, Ra Malika Imhotep.
00:49:25.700My friend Raj talks about how she does this work that is the intersection between burlesque and Black women, literary figures or Black kind of women archetypes, just kind of encountering the possibility of an erotic life when women were enslaved or Black women who have experienced suffering.
00:49:52.940that there were possibilities for an erotic life and that people were, even in our ancestors,
00:49:59.600even who were navigating extreme horrors, still located pleasure. People fought to find their
00:50:07.720own kinds of paths of still finding pleasure, even if it was in small and quiet ways. So
00:50:13.740I just want to honor that. Yeah. I just feel like there's a lot of fugitivity available through the
00:50:19.540act of like being in pleasure embodying pleasure at this time that's a way that we can actually
00:50:24.820protect ourselves from the internalized oppressions that are that are trying to like keep us down
00:50:31.780keep us from continuing to support life trying to keep us burnt out like this whack and yeah
00:50:37.660please continue to support our work with led to life that is all about pleasure and we're moving0.93
00:50:44.660more into us as a queer collective that is committed to to beauty and pleasure in the world
00:50:52.280so you can visit us at ledtolife.org or follow us on instagram at led l-e-a-d the number two life
00:51:01.220and yeah me and my partner jordi are beginning a practice called kinesthetics which feels
00:51:07.500akin to everything we've been speaking to about how do we still continue to practice beauty
00:51:14.380with our artistry with our scholarship what would it mean to rewild our practices and our our work
00:51:21.760and to devote ourselves to the earth and to still to still show up to the to the gravity of beauty
00:51:27.500but it not being when that's not occupied by capitalism uh what happens to our imaginations
00:51:33.080and yeah more on that if you follow me at little nails on instagram then um how can people
00:51:42.400financially support your work? You can donate at ledtolife.org slash donate, or my Venmo is at
00:51:51.380Bronte-Velez. Thank you so much. Yeah.
00:52:01.140Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:52:08.600the music you heard today was from jennifer johns the members of the thrive choir and
00:52:15.620jordi rosales on cello both songs were recorded at the led to life oakland ceremony
00:52:20.880the opening music under our manifesto is jeremy harris i'd like to thank our fabulous team
00:52:28.200aiden mccray andrew stores carter lou mcelroy erica eckerman aaron wise francesca glassbell
00:52:36.680Hannah Wilton, Melanie Younger, and Suzanne Daliwal.