00:00:17.040Hey for the wild community, it's Ayana here, and I wanted to let you know that this is
00:00:23.400part one out of a two-part episode with Bronte Velez and I also wanted to share that this is a
00:00:31.820very playful and also vulnerable conversation for Bronte and I. It's not like anything we've done on
00:00:38.820the podcast so far so we appreciate you sitting with us in this exploration and I hope that you
00:00:47.220enjoy what you're about to hear. All right now on to the show.
00:00:53.400I'm excited about the kind of power that is accountable to climate collapse right now.
00:01:01.360I'm excited about the kind of power that's accountable to consensual pleasure.
00:01:07.960Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:01:12.260So today we are speaking with Bronte Velez.
00:01:16.180Bronte, they, them is guided by the call that, quote,
00:01:19.480Black wellness is the antithesis of state violence, end quote.
00:01:22.680mark anthony johnson a black latinx interdisciplinary artist and designer they are currently moved and
00:01:29.500paused by the questions quote how can we allow as much room for god to flow through and between us
00:01:35.520as possible what affirms the god of and between us what is in the way how can we decompose what
00:01:42.980interrupts our proximity to divinity what ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative
00:01:49.400justice promote the memory of god which is to say love and freedom between us end quote they relate
00:01:56.120to god as the moments of divine space-time that remind us we are not separate the moments that
00:02:02.340re-belong us to the earth they encounter these questions in public theology black prophetic
00:02:08.020tradition and environmental justice through their eco-social art praxis serving as creative director
00:02:13.700for led to life design collaborative media director for oakland rooted farm and nursery
00:02:18.840replanting justice, and Black queer life ever committed to humor and liberation, ever marked
00:02:25.920by grief at the distance made between us and all of life. Oh my goodness, Bronte, it is so good to
00:02:35.560see you. It is so good to be with you in this moment. I wanted to start with this quote from
00:02:44.980Frederick Jameson, quote, it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism,
00:02:52.040end quote. But recently I started reading Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's The Undercommons,
00:02:58.340and I'd like to begin this interview with a passage from Fred Moten, whom you'd referenced
00:03:03.580in our first conversation. Quote, you talk about being able to be in two places at the same time,
00:03:09.820but also to be able to be two times in the same place in other words it's very much bound up
00:03:17.500with the jameson notion of the future in the present and classically the prophet has access
00:03:23.740to both of those the prophet is the one who tells the brutal truth who has the capacity to see the
00:03:30.140absolute brutality of the already existing and to point it out and to tell that truth but also to
00:03:36.220see the other way, to see what it could be, that double sense, that double capacity, to see what's
00:03:42.340right in front of you and to see through that to what's up ahead of you, end quote. And I just
00:03:48.600wanted to offer this passage to our listeners because it feels so very fitting for many of
00:03:54.320the topics we will be threading together in this conversation. So Bronte, thank you for being with
00:04:00.500us, for sharing this time with me. I love you dearly and deeply. And like I was saying earlier,
00:04:07.040being in relationship with you is one of the sweetest gifts that I have in this life.
00:04:12.460I feel very excited to be in conversation with you and just grateful to be here.
00:04:18.340So in the past, we've spoken about how you're thinking about the submission of white supremacist
00:04:25.260capitalist patriarchy and this being a submission that transpires through pleasure not shame and
00:04:34.600often we focus on the difficulty of transition or the impossibility of imagining futures so much so
00:04:42.560that we neglect to give creation to possible realities and I'm eager to hear you elaborate
00:04:48.940on your definition of submission in the context and the idea of a paradigmatic shift transpiring
00:04:57.900through pleasure-filled submission. So essentially, what would this collapse of white supremacist
00:05:04.740capitalist patriarchy look like, feel like, taste like if it's being done out of submission through
00:05:11.960pleasure rather than through shame? I think it feels somehow that collapse has felt paradoxical
00:05:18.180or antithetical to pleasure, I think that this moment of the fatalistic kind of notions
00:05:27.740accompanying late capitalist collapse feel like it just feels like about largely loss.
00:05:37.300And, yeah, losing resource, losing power, losing status, losing a kind of historical way of especially white men and white supremacy knowing itself.
00:05:54.220And I feel like a lot of the ways we, and when I say we, I mean folks leaning towards an activist framework or folks leaning toward liberation, the kind of ways I think we request white supremacy to surrender power often looks like reifying the shame that they've placed us inside of.
00:06:20.020So a lot of it is about like, how can we continue to re-implement and make them feel the kind of shame that all of oppression operates from?
00:06:30.300And that in that punitive response to what they've done to us, maybe they'll feel kind of a glimpse of what our ancestors, we have felt in all of this time.
00:06:40.300And I also think it would serve white folks, though, and the earth and this transition in all of us as beings if they moved from a place of pleasure and not shame.0.57
00:06:56.560I think Adrienne Marie Brown's work with pleasure activism is critical.
00:07:00.760I think Audre Lorde's politic of the erotic is critical.
00:07:04.480And for me, it would look like people hearing the call to submit and surrender to the earth, collapsing, shaking, going fugitive as a call into a fantasy that was unimaginable into something that might be more life affirming.
00:07:24.500And this, I mean, specifically towards white people, because in relationship to climate apartheid, I don't think that climate collapse might look like pleasure. I'd love to revisit that.0.64
00:07:35.280But I wonder what it would look like for white people to, and especially white men, to surrender in a way that felt like where the earth is in this dominatrix energy right now.
00:07:48.020the earth is out like with these storms and with these um yeah they're in this moment of like
00:07:58.720I'm gonna bring you completely to your knees your project of capitalism of expansion without
00:08:05.760reciprocity without limits without boundaries your project of extraction I'm not gonna have
00:08:12.060it and I'm gonna bring you to your knees and I'm at this point of just the I have this vision of
00:08:17.900just wanting to see, especially white men in power, I want to see them on their knees and I
00:08:23.600want to see them give up. And I know they're tired. I know they're so tired. So I want to0.87
00:08:30.860see them give up and I want to see them release this like exasperated sigh. And I want to see us
00:08:37.520all feel that release. There's so much to say about it, but I don't think that shame
00:09:13.640Oh my goodness, I love that vision. And I think there's something so alluring and seductive about surrendering in pleasure and not from a place of a negative type of sacrifice, like, oh, I have to give this up or I'm defeated.
00:09:33.160we can surrender without being defeated and patriarchy can surrender as an offering of
00:09:41.520pleasure and joy and it's pleasurable for both parties it doesn't have to be painful for one
00:09:47.100to surrender and i think there's so much to that and i love that vision of white men and
00:09:53.640patriarchy and and all those in power who are being destructive on their knees and worshiping
00:10:00.680the other so that they can then be worshipped. I mean, I think it is reciprocal when we can
00:10:08.400submit when it is our time to submit. And there's so much there. And, you know, it's curious to
00:10:16.500think about submission, at least in the context of sexual submission, as the process in which one
00:10:22.560lets go of personal responsibility and what this means for accountability, especially for folks
00:10:30.200who think accountability is necessary because the dominant actor then becomes completely
00:10:35.520accountable and responsible for the submissive one.
00:10:39.240You know, do you think we need to hold the powers that be for their mistakes and injustices
00:10:43.520that they've perpetrated under this paradigmatic shift or is a part of the pleasure that they're
00:10:51.340promised relinquishment of responsibility?
00:11:21.420So maybe that's a little more juiciness for your response.0.92
00:11:24.700I think there will be, in the same ways that there are subcultures of folks who are moved and pleasured by kink practices, I feel like there will be subcultures of how we believe liberation and accountability should be embodied.0.87
00:11:44.000And I think there will be a select sacred group of us who want to be in those roles, who will receive pleasure from witnessing that kind of surrender and that kind of submission.
00:11:58.680I think I may have mentioned this on the last interview but I'm not sure but a brother named
00:12:04.640Tioka Sengos Horse who was one of the mentors a Lakota elder who was one of the mentors for
00:12:10.980the spiritual ecology fellowship that I was a part of he would reframe the powers that be
00:12:17.780as the powers who think they are which I really love and imagining like I'm imagining calling in
00:12:24.920those powers who think they are with this kind of subgroup or subculture into some play with how
00:12:31.520power has has operated it feels like such a difficult question because there's so much
00:12:37.700trauma wrapped up in the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy have operated so I feel like I feel
00:12:47.200hesitant to play when I know people are seeking yeah I know people like would today be happy about
00:12:56.420Donald Trump being on a chopping block like that feels like a righteous and dignified longing to
00:13:02.980see someone go into that yeah to be held accountable in that way for all of the all of the trauma he's
00:13:09.220causing and continuing but yeah I'm I am curious what might be possible in them
00:13:16.320not necessarily relinquishing responsibility I don't know exactly what's possible after the moment
00:13:24.720of submission and play I feel like I'm just curious about that moment and then to see what
00:13:32.480wants to emerge after. I think I have no frame of reference or imagination because I haven't seen
00:13:40.720white men be willing to surrender. I saw on Pose recently where there's a moment where there's a0.84
00:13:49.660white man, I won't give too much away, but there's a white man who his kink is he wants to be left0.93
00:13:56.280alone in like leather wrap and he wants to be blindfolded and he wants his ears to be covered0.89
00:14:03.500and he wants he wants to not know that anyone's going to come back for him or ever find him0.70
00:14:08.120and that he might be forgotten about and one of the women who's serving as his dom black trans
00:14:14.860woman um in the show whose character's name is electra she's like do you know the privilege of
00:14:21.680what it is to request loneliness the pleasure that you receive an eroticism from not belonging
00:14:31.100and being forgotten about that you could pay for that kind of option of a kink and starts to trace
00:14:37.780it back to the ways that trans folk queer folk especially black trans women have that kind of
00:14:45.420loneliness is never and absence of belonging is never something someone would seek so yeah i'm
00:14:50.900curious what would be possible in playing with this on a structural level. The things that BDSM
00:14:57.080queer culture teaches us about surrender and domination and how we might as oppressed people0.91
00:15:03.620is how we might occupy a culture of like dominatrix hood. That's kind of what I'm like0.97
00:15:10.400calling in of like, what might that feel like for us to be in that kind of dignity
00:15:15.160and to demand that these powers, I think they are, be brought to their knees.
00:16:06.140And it's like, oh, whoa, okay, well, what is that even?
00:16:09.140because it's not something that I have been conditioned or maybe even allowed in a lot of
00:16:14.300circumstances to even think about. So I appreciate just having this space, this safe space with you
00:16:20.660as hard as these questions are. It's really fun to play with them. And I'm wondering what spaces
00:16:26.580do we have to create in order to allow this submission to materialize given that patriarchy
00:16:33.380has prevented a culture from forming that welcomes the exploration of power through
00:16:39.600relinquishment. And within that, it's like, what language or terminologies do we have to drop or
00:16:46.980recreate in order to materialize this shift? Yeah, thank you so much for that question.
00:16:52.480And I want to kind of combine the last question and this question. I was wanting to share that
00:16:57.620But I also think for me, I'm speaking from a place as someone who has a politic that every every being is worthy of redemption and liberation.
00:17:09.620So I truly believe that everyone is deserves that.0.95
00:17:14.440And I, I feel like so much grief about the ways, especially we've all been socialized, but I imagine that it, I don't want to use the F word, but that it's really sucks to be a white man in America right now.
00:17:33.980Honestly, I can't imagine that it really feels like a pleasurable thing when right now, actually, that culture of dominance has brought them into such a deep place of not belonging and or only belonging to themselves through continuing projects of domination, terror, trauma, lack of consent, lack of permission, extraction, capitalism, all these things.
00:17:55.820So I know that it is hard to imagine those beings being worthy of redemption. And I also, for me, the politic of like, allowing someone to be in a play of surrender is that, say, white supremacy surrendered itself. Where do they go?
00:18:13.340I think an Afro-pessimist or like a Black militant perspective, which sometimes I lean towards on days that I'm, you know, enraged by the extreme violence of what white supremacy does, I'm like, bye.
00:18:28.580I don't know where you, I don't know if there's a place for you.
00:18:31.060I don't know if there's a place for you.
00:18:32.320And on other days where I'm really resourced and have capacity, which feels like a privilege to imagine something nonviolent and another kind of liberation and redemption, I am like, what will happen for this community of people whose identity actually was marked by absence, marked by not having belonging or having belonging to just power?
00:19:00.360So I'd be curious what a dom-sub relationship, I love that we're having this combo, would
00:19:06.380be with also submitting to reparations.
00:19:09.720To me, that reparations is about the pleasure of giving back, the pleasure of getting on
00:19:16.700your knees and giving back, giving back the land, giving back the breath, giving back
00:19:21.620the water, giving back power to those who are in right relationship with place, giving
00:19:30.360Yeah, so I feel like the conversation around reparations could also be one that would be pleasurable for those who are empowered to redistribute what has been unrighteously taken.
00:19:42.500And yeah, I think in terms of a language of what will come and what would this look like or what would this look like to be in this kind of play, I'm curious about memes and consent culture and how people, what kinds of spaces might happen where, and performance work might happen to reclaim sites where power operates most significantly or most visibly to encounter playing.
00:20:12.500the way power moves in those sites through performance, through King performance, through
00:20:18.700invitations for people to surrender. I'd be curious about what protests could look like in that sense
00:20:26.340or, you know, ethical leather walk, you know, in terms of like people just in this dominant
00:20:34.840culture of pornography, patriarchy, violence, the ways we conceive of how we can use pleasure
00:20:41.960for liberation has been so, so distorted. So yeah, I'd be curious what ways to reframe that
00:20:49.900loving the earth at this critical moment and loving the peoples of the earth and the beings
00:20:55.380of the earth who have been most impacted by the violences of white supremacy would be a pleasurable
00:21:29.740My touch is, my touch is, my touch is, my touch is,
00:21:53.840this vision turns me on so much to imagine the relinquishment being pleasurable the reparations
00:22:18.620being pleasurable. And it makes sense to be reconnected or connected for the first time ever
00:22:25.400for probably many of these people holding destructive power, to be loved, to be seen
00:22:31.580as somebody who can take care of others rather than hurt others. I can't imagine that feels good
00:22:38.960to have on your psyche that you are somebody who is making others suffer. I mean, obviously,
00:22:45.980there are some people who I guess are into that. But I think for the most part, people don't want
00:22:50.120that. Even people in power, I think they have to tell themselves that they're doing the right thing
00:22:53.820a lot. And I don't think that they fully believe that. So to imagine the release and saying like,
00:23:00.060I don't have to hold this responsibility of destruction anymore. That is so beautiful.
00:23:09.320and it's playful and it is erotic and it's embodiment and I think so many of the issues
00:23:16.120we face right now is because we're not embodied it's because we're desensitized when we're
00:23:22.440embodied we're embodied with the earth to be alive is to be one with the body of the earth
00:23:27.700and I'm so excited by the possibilities of when we're able to be in that sensory place
00:23:36.120and feel stimulated pleasurably, I think so much can happen. And to think about the submission of
00:23:43.720patriarchy calls into conversation what some would define as feminine energy, power, like the goddess
00:23:51.280archetype, etc. And I think of the historical disavowal of feminine power in order to marginalize,
00:23:59.500solidify gender binaries and narrow scopes of power. And I'm also thinking about how our
00:24:06.760understanding of what feminine power or energy is has become incredibly convoluted. So I'm wondering
00:24:13.780what is your definition and why is it important to tap into feminine power outside of its gendered
00:24:20.140or disguised manifestations? One of the failures of encountering femininity has been its gendering1.00
00:24:27.520And then the ways we understand or the socializations we've encountered also like find or encounter effeminate or women approximate or anything associated with women, those things as weak.0.85
00:24:46.180Mostly, yeah, weak. And for me, when that's taken out of a binary kind of conception of gender, but is moved more into because I love the masculine connection in me and in the land.
00:25:03.540And I think it's beyond what we can understand in terms of masculinity and femininity have been so wrapped in notions of gender, gender performance, that it's hard to know what those energies are actually asking of us.
00:25:19.260for me with masculinity being something that has become I want to I want to use the word
00:25:26.780intoxicated by imbalance it operates in this way of like outside of like patriarchal notions
00:25:37.360of masculinity I feel like the masculine the masculine energy spiritually is about like a kind
00:25:44.400of a kind of support a kind of caring a kind of lifting a kind of uh holding it down just a
00:25:54.760holding space for and then this feminine wild feminine energy for me feels yeah for me it feels
00:26:01.800like this mysterious infinite pleasure-centered erotic birth queen not on like a you know
00:26:14.060kingdom thing but like just this kind of a regal um way that the that the earth holds themselves0.74
00:26:22.240and like lots of other beings that are gendered as male birds or male species are very feminine
00:26:30.700are very are very queer um and are showing up in this way where like i think of always of the birds
00:26:37.140of paradise, where the quote-unquote male birds have evolved to dance, perform, put on a show,0.63
00:26:45.580be in full-on regalia to get the punani and to continue the life of their community.
00:26:54.940So for me, I'd be curious about how we all, all beings have capacity for the feminine.
00:27:01.460All beings have the capacity to be in this alive, awakened, hearthed energy. And yeah, it makes me sad the ways that that energy has been capitalized on, enslaved to the male patriarchal gaze and used for pornographic, violent ways and distorted as weak.
00:27:27.420And I think right now, actually, this call to rebalance with the feminine, and I feel like Vandana Shiva speaks a lot to this. I feel like that call to come into that balance, which is something in me, I'm also encountering.
00:27:41.420encountering. Yes, to come back into touch with pleasure and to come back into the rituals of
00:27:47.320being with the land and these kind of ways that women have been assigned to be in. I feel like
00:27:57.300folks socialize as women have been relegated to the domestic space and to the home. And in that0.99
00:28:03.380they've been in these craft making or land tending or these care practices, maintenance work. And I'm
00:28:11.100thinking of an artist, I can't think of her name at the moment, but she's mentioned in Ginny O'Dell's
00:28:16.780How to Do Nothing text, resisting the attention economy. And there's an artist who back in the
00:28:23.46070s focused her work on what she was calling maintenance art and care work. She like had a
00:28:30.240baby and then people were like, do you do anything now? And she was like, this is the work. This is
00:28:35.300the work right here like so i feel like that that mother and that culture of nurture of nurturance
00:28:43.240of caretaking of attending to of tenderness um all of these elements i think will facilitate
00:28:51.480a pleasurable just transition towards being more accountable to to the earth yeah and to one
00:29:00.360another. When I think about feminine and masculine energies, something that really excites me is
00:29:07.540the freedom to hold both. The feminine energy is so powerful and the masculine is as well.
00:29:15.080And I am so frustrated that they have been relegated to genders so much. And what that
00:29:24.780does to us as people we can't be fully in our divine humanity when we are not allowed to express
00:29:32.500in all of the ways and bring all of ourselves to the table and in my own personal journey i've
00:29:39.520as you know very well i have really been wanting to embody all of it and even things that seem like
00:29:47.180they're on the other end of the spectrum it's like yes i'm on this end of the spectrum and i'm on the
00:29:51.180opposite end of the spectrum and I'm on here and I'm there. And isn't that beautiful? Isn't that
00:29:56.440complexity fascinating? And to learn about those complexities in others and see where we feel
00:30:03.720similar to see where we don't and all of that charge that can happen when we allow the complexities
00:30:09.240of who we are in completely, it feels like the possibility is just open. It feels like there's
00:30:14.940whole portals that opened that I couldn't have even began to see existed until I was able to
00:30:22.300allow myself to embody the spectrum of masculine and feminine. And yeah, I think that the feminine
00:30:30.720energy has completely been squashed. It looked at as weak, looked at as not as intelligent, not,1.00
00:30:38.160oh, that's just emotional. It's like, oh, well, okay, so there's no such thing as emotional
00:30:42.860intelligence you know all these things that make the feminine powers seem weak but i think that's1.00
00:30:47.640absolutely by design like patriarchy doesn't want feminine energy to be on top like why would they1.00
00:30:53.220want that then they wouldn't be able to control even within men you know has been squashed and
00:31:00.560it's not surprising and so i kind of want to take this idea of control and power and and move into
00:31:07.100a conversation explicitly that addresses power with you right now, yeah, with this power, I feel
00:31:13.100like there is this inherent attraction of it. And we can say that we don't want power or that power
00:31:19.560is evil, but every day we are giving other people power. We are supporting their power directly
00:31:26.000or indirectly or both. And so I'm curious to hear how you frame power or perhaps the
00:31:32.840reappropriation of power, you know, refusing to allow oppressors from holding on to power?
00:31:39.280I've been in my own process of asking questions about my own relationship to power
00:31:45.720and how, especially for me as a Black queer person who socialized and lives my life,
00:31:53.180mostly seen as a woman, I feel like I've arrived to where I am because there was so
00:31:58.000little space often where I saw representation of folks like me in places of power, i.e. only Oprah
00:32:06.920as a little girl. There were these notions that power was equal to a certain kind of status or
00:32:18.640a certain accumulation of wealth or a certain number of assets. Yeah, all wrapped up in
00:32:26.320capitalism. And I think often of this dream that I've had that I think is really important to share
00:32:31.940where I'm at the Eiffel Tower and I'm in Paris. And the Eiffel Tower is also a ride from Atlanta
00:32:41.080called Acrophobia at Six Flags. And Acrophobia is the fear of heights. So I'm getting on the
00:32:46.500Eiffel Tower as a ride and I'm getting strapped in. And it's a circle where the circle of people
00:32:52.140go up and then I drop back down. As I'm getting strapped into the ride, Donald Trump comes and
00:32:57.340is running up to me and he's weeping and he is my father. The energy is a clear thing that he's my
00:33:05.020father and he's profusely weeping and profusely asking me for forgiveness. And I am so upset
00:33:13.680because I'm being exposed because I've tried to disown him. So everyone's realizing that he's my
00:33:19.980dad and I'm at this point really powerful and I start to try and hush him up he's on his knees
00:33:28.020speaking of being on the knees he's on his knees begging me to forgive him and I'm going shut up
00:33:34.880shut up no like I do not want anybody to know we're related and then he's reaching out to me
00:33:42.960and the ride begins and I am ascending I'm ascending I'm ascending above the city0.84
00:33:48.560and my feet start to dangle and my stomach is in knots and I'm nauseous and I'm so high up. We
00:33:55.160extend beyond the Eiffel Tower and we're just above Paris. And at the moment where we're about
00:34:00.000to be dropped, I get ejected lightly off into the front lawn. And when I started to move into
00:34:06.800the work that's led to life, I started to have a lot of dreams about ascension and power
00:34:11.420because I started to embody my own trust and dignity
00:38:03.100We're not allowed to be our full selves or full humans.0.99
00:38:05.960as a woman, it's like, well, you can't be powerful and intellectual and feminine and,
00:38:12.900you know, sexual and erotic. And you can't be all those things. Like if you're a woman in the0.94
00:38:18.880science world, like you have to dress like this. You have to not talk about certain things. You1.00
00:38:22.640can't be overly sexual. You can't be all the things you are and still have respect. And that
00:38:30.640is very frustrating and that's very disempowering to tell people that you can only have respect
00:38:37.080in certain worlds if you either look a certain way act a certain way shrink other parts of yourself
00:38:44.800highlight different parts of yourself and then you will have some kind of respect but you'll
00:38:49.680still never be fully in power even as for the wild as a non-profit it's like oh well you're
00:38:54.100a nonprofit, that means you have to hold events that look like this. You have to speak in this
00:39:01.220way that doesn't piss anybody off. I'm so tired of that. I'm so tired of the constraints of how
00:39:07.600to achieve being powerful and empowered at the same time and having to shrink, I can say myself
00:39:15.240in certain ways in order to have a type of acceptable power for my specific identity that
00:39:22.140people project onto so this question is a bit personal for me at this moment and also something
00:39:28.820that I just want to speak to for those of us who feel like especially in activist spaces I think
00:39:35.360there's something there people feeling like they have to look a certain way act a certain way to
00:39:42.560have respect and in turn I think it is disempowering to the movement in general when we put all of the
00:39:52.120these rules and regulations on who people can be and still be accepted in spaces and respected.
00:40:01.340And I know I felt that way at Occupy. I felt like, oh, I didn't have the look. I didn't have the look
00:40:06.960of the Occupy activist, and therefore I didn't feel as welcome. And I think that's really strange,
00:40:13.660especially in movements where it's like, we need everybody to care. And we shouldn't
00:40:20.400compartmentalize who gets to have power based off making people small or parts of their
00:40:28.540personality small now i'm not talking about like if you're part of your personality is to be rude
00:40:32.560yeah no like shrink that i'm not talking about those things i'm talking about
00:40:37.080it's like that that can go if you're in yeah you know it's like we don't need that kind of
00:40:44.500you know, part of your personality. Yeah. Yeah. I also want to talk about this other thing
00:40:51.960regarding power that seems important to bring up. It's about being in relationship to power versus
00:40:58.100letting it control you, especially if we're talking about playing with power in terms of
00:41:03.260liberation and collapse. You know, what is the importance of fluidity phases and seasons of power?
00:41:10.380Thank you. Yeah. Well, to speak to like shrinking and like not being able to like possibly embody a fuller self in certain communities that are working towards liberation, I feel like we just got to let that shit go.
00:41:31.900like anybody who's being judgmental and like let that shit go like I'm so tired it's it's weird if0.97
00:41:40.760like people have like a kind of idea of how who should belong to a thing um and then have an idea0.95
00:41:47.500about like what that aesthetic looks like and they're being actually an aesthetic to these
00:41:52.680spaces it's so funny because I have on my partner's earth first shirt and I'm thinking about
00:41:56.940being at that the rendezvous just being like yo what's this everyone has the same aesthetic for
00:42:03.180like punk anarchist you know vibes and just this kind of interesting way people create niche
00:42:09.780communities to cultivate belonging where there hasn't been so I see that need to create kind of
00:42:16.720a cultural agreements about yeah how people want to be with one another and I feel like it's
00:42:22.000it's historical and cultural to like have an aesthetic about a thing but I feel like when0.98
00:42:27.860that ostracizes people it's whack like we don't need that and like people being a hating ass
00:42:34.460energy I'm so I'm so done with it like yeah I've heard on the healing justice podcast and I'm sad0.60
00:42:41.400that I can't think of the name of the interview but it's one of the practice episodes it's about
00:42:46.880like how do people encounter safety accountability validation and belonging like or security and
00:42:54.320safety are kind of together and like how do they know those things and yeah I feel like a product
00:43:00.100of like being maybe traumatized or ostracized is you start perpetuating those perhaps those
00:43:10.160kinds of paradigms and it's whack like it's whack I think we should be able to come as our full selves
00:43:16.380who we are to the work from our unique personalities and essences and textures and
00:43:22.640vibrations like I felt for so long that I've I've shrank um humor in myself and shrink my my sexual
00:43:32.000being my erotic being my queer life in service to like a genteel kind of crunchy granola0.65
00:43:39.460palatable to whiteness kind of black girl and I'm like if I want to be hood I'm gonna be hood0.86
00:43:45.880in your space. If I want to look cute while y'all all look crunchy granola, I'm about to look cute.0.90
00:43:50.460I feel like us being in our true expressions is what will be ultimately liberatory for all of us.
00:43:57.620So I feel excited about that. And like these other beings, the more than human world is going
00:44:02.520off right now. They're being flamboyant. They're showing out and showing up. Okay. I'm like,
00:44:07.760we actually really need, I don't know if you're speaking to this with aesthetic, but
00:44:12.460aesthetic revives us into our senses. It brings us alive. I think coming from that place of
00:44:19.720being in the listening of who you are and bringing that forth is something that should
00:44:26.940be honored and being in our dignity about what we bring and trusting that us being in our gifts,
00:44:33.440in our light, in our expression is essential to our community's health and liberation,
00:44:39.380actually whether or not because they're always going to be haters but like just releasing
00:44:44.280releasing that that's been something I've been in of like and I just start being in my power the
00:44:48.740earth is asking that of us right now and yeah I think that that that should also be still though
00:44:54.680I feel like as long as our power is not harming anyone if it's not harming other beings to be in
00:45:00.920our energy if it gives life I say let's go for it and whatever like cultures of activism that are
00:45:08.160like putting themselves on a pedestal about ideas of you know your being more approximate to
00:45:15.340suffering makes you more loyal or down for the cause or are you willing to do you know x y and
00:45:21.000z we all have our niche in our role everybody not supposed to do each and every kind of each and
00:45:28.740every kind of aspect so yeah I've been in a deep learning of choosing humility over shrinking
00:45:36.040which I had been conflating for a while because I was told I was intimidating by white women and
00:45:43.120white leadership. And I'm like, that's because y'all not, you're, you're socialized to feel
00:45:50.140insecure around black women, black femmes in power. And that's not my problem. That's not0.98
00:45:56.380my problem. So I feel like let's be in our power. That should be pleasurable for you to see me in
00:46:02.860my power for you to see me in my brilliance for you to see me thriving and you should know that
00:46:07.680that it liberates you too well the church said
00:46:17.000well we got to be well well a pitted place well a seed
00:54:22.260We must cultivate a culture of discernment and counsel around us.
00:54:30.160I feel like if you're someone who is encountering that you have more access, more resources, do not go on that journey alone.
00:54:36.300The reason power has become toxic is because people do not have any accountability or counsel or community or rites of passage that held them to that and told them like, hey, now's the time for you to sit back or step down or shift, you know?
00:54:51.660So I think being in that listening of like, you know what, right now I'm a little off and I need to gain some perspective. I need to go fast. I need to go rest. I need to allow someone who knows maybe more than me than I, you know, sometimes we were off the mark a little bit.
00:55:15.160And so how to, to be willing to be in that emergence, adaptability, flexibility, so that we're able to listen to when we need to relinquish, shift, ecologize our access. Yeah.
00:55:27.300you figured out so much out there on your own now let us step in thank you for listening to
00:55:35.860another episode of for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young you just heard an excerpt from
00:55:43.300the well prophecy written by bronte velez and recited by bronte velez ra malika imhotep co-founder
00:55:51.240of the Church of Black Feminist Thought and Yasmin Calderon-Torres and Liz Kennedy from
00:55:57.720Lead to Life. The music you heard today was from the Lead to Life Oakland Ceremony and
00:56:04.280the incredible Esperanza Spalding. I'd like to thank our incredible team, Aidan McRae,