For The Wild - November 23, 2022


SLOW STUDY： We Will Dance with Mountains Preview

Topics
we will dance with mountains into the cracks colonial sickness allocation
MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds ⧸313 THENMOZHI SOUNDARARAJAN on Annihilating Caste Systems ⧸314

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

113.22

Word count

1,781

Sentence count

98

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 hey for the wild community it's ayana here we are taking a pause this week from our regular
00:00:08.000 episodes to share a special snippet from our first slow study with bio komalafe this offering
00:00:14.660 originates from bio's course we will dance with mountains into the cracks and is an edited
00:00:20.240 curation of recorded lectures prayers musical accompaniments and practice prompts offered by
00:00:26.420 bio and co-conspirators. The preview you are about to hear is from session one and includes a portion
00:00:32.600 of bio's lecture, as well as the corresponding practice prompt by Geordi Rosales. Each session
00:00:38.700 within the course includes a practice prompt for deeper exploration. If you're interested in the
00:00:43.660 full course, it can be purchased via For the Wild's website at forthewild.world.
00:00:56.420 hello everyone i'm ayana young the host and founder of for the wild we are so excited to
00:01:07.800 be hosting dr bio okoma laffe's insightful course entitled we will dance with mountains
00:01:13.560 with this year's focus on going into the cracks bio has been a wonderful thought companion and
00:01:20.360 guest on several podcast episodes and we are grateful to have even more of his wisdom housed
00:01:25.780 here. The course is structured around lectures, offerings, music, and practice. It brings new
00:01:32.180 meanings and insights to this modern world, reminding us what matters and how to root into
00:01:37.380 community in dark times of catastrophe. In this introductory piece, a bio is joined by
00:01:43.440 our beloved Joanna Macy, Giordi Rosales, and Ilu Oba to bless the course and delve
00:01:50.280 into new ways of being. Happy learning.
00:01:55.780 Transcription by CastingWords
00:02:25.780 Good evening. My name is Bayo Akamalafe and together with a teeming community of thinkers
00:02:39.140 and fugitives and drapetomaniacs and children and parents and grandmothers and grandfathers
00:02:48.860 and public intellectuals and dancers and cooks and painters and poets and creatives of a marvelous
00:02:56.460 variety. I am your host for We Will Dance With Mountains Into the Cracks, the fifth iteration
00:03:05.180 of a series of courses and journeys and experiences that are calibrated to exploring
00:03:13.420 the otherwise, and what forms responsibility might take in these post-activist times.
00:03:22.560 And I welcome you to this moment.
00:03:25.420 Last year we had more than a thousand people from across the world, from across the planet,
00:03:31.920 join us in this expedition into the cracks.
00:03:36.000 We had people from favelas, artists from favelas, thinkers from Africa, people from Asia, from
00:03:49.300 Europe, the Americas.
00:03:52.140 Join us on this expedition to the otherwise via cracks, via notions of failure.
00:04:02.800 If you're here listening to this, you probably couldn't join us, but you know the Igbo people
00:04:09.100 have a proverb, the Igbo people are from Eastern Nigeria, that a bird that flies off the ground
00:04:19.920 and settles on an anthill is still on the ground.
00:04:24.400 So in a very real sense, this study, this community, this expedition, this inquiry, this exploration of the otherwise, this exploration of potentially new worlds, hidden in glimpses of cracks, this unlearning of colonial mastery,
00:04:49.060 This asking of the question of what it might mean to respond to our crisis-ridden civilization
00:04:56.680 is still here with us.
00:04:58.620 And if you're here, and if you're watching this, then I invite you to participate, to
00:05:04.240 gather around your community food and drink, and let's go into the cracks together.
00:05:12.460 You will be in touch with lectures and song and sounds from the class that convened.
00:05:24.400 You would be in touch with insights and questions and exercises that might help you develop
00:05:33.340 your own practice of making sanctuary in these times.
00:05:38.020 So wherever you are in the world, especially in these troubling times, I invite you to
00:05:45.020 Truly join us.
00:05:46.720 The study continues.
00:06:13.280 So I want to ask you guys.
00:06:15.020 what do we mean by bodies fall sick is there something there we can play with
00:06:24.900 we're in the cracks now okay is there something there that isn't quite
00:06:29.500 true something that makes itself available for tinkering for the trickster for instance
00:06:39.280 what body are we talking about in the anthropocene where the body can no longer be
00:06:45.960 distinguished from ecological processes what do we name as the body what ideologies performances
00:06:53.140 concepts stories narratives agencies agendas are present when we name a body a body is it a stone
00:07:01.480 body is it a human body if we say it's a human body then we must ask who is allowed into the
00:07:08.800 space of the human. Who's human? What does human body mean? Who is allowed that great honor of
00:07:18.640 being human? And then when we talk about sick, we must also invoke the politics of that.
00:07:28.300 Now, what does sickness mean then? The stories that were told is that, of course, bodies fall
00:07:34.460 sick. It's a simple biological fact. The body goes wrong. Cells atrophy. A virus, a bacterial
00:07:45.280 community. I learned recently about the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Just the number
00:07:51.620 of things that could go wrong with bodies. Monumental. So, but what does sickness mean?
00:07:59.680 What are we talking about? Is there something, you know, to use the old terminology, silently ableist when we speak about sickness?
00:08:13.460 Is there something with la coche politics about this?
00:08:18.480 I continue to speak about with la coche politics because with la coche, right, is the delicacy from Mexico.
00:08:24.800 and it's about looking at a pathogen, not as a sickness, but as a delicacy, something to eat,
00:08:31.940 right? So there's something also cultural and political about the ways that we name bodies
00:08:38.800 and sickness. Let me get to a point. I was speaking with a dear sister of mine prior to
00:08:45.780 the release of her book. Her name is Dr. Rupa Maya, and she wrote the book Inflamed,
00:08:54.060 But we had some conversations prior to that, and we talked about lots of things, colonization.
00:09:03.820 The premise of that beautiful book, which I would invite you to check out, is the idea that bodies don't just fall sick, right?
00:09:15.480 And the data might help us see why that is the case.
00:09:19.240 If you go to a hospital, the data tells us that the bodies that are in the hospital are disproportionately minoritarian. 0.57
00:09:28.500 Black bodies, brown bodies. 0.52
00:09:32.700 The bodies that seem to be well off are white identified bodies.
00:09:39.200 And so Rupa Maya asks the question, could it be that, and Raj Patel, you know, the co-author of the book Inflamed,
00:09:47.920 Could it be that it's not that we fall sick, but that sickness is manufactured, right, that there's something colonial about certain arrangements that inflames bodies, so that it's not just a matter of falling sick, it's that some bodies are arranged in such a way that they're more likely to be ill.
00:10:11.100 And in that case, it is already allocated. Oh, someone just put that. Sickness is allocated here, right? So it's colonial, it's theological, it's political, it's economical, it's arranged, right?
00:10:25.620 And I don't mean to refer to conspiratorial notions that there is some intention, some giant intention around this.
00:10:34.240 But I'm trying to say that sickness is not just a mere fact of nature, as if nature were a background to human activity.
00:10:42.300 That sickness doesn't just happen. Sickness is arranged.
00:10:55.620 Hello again. This is your janitor speaking, Jordi Rosales, giving thanks for your retroactive
00:11:06.940 participation in this journey. I know it's a different thing to join in on a course after
00:11:13.240 the fact as you've done by downloading this series, but I would invite you to consider that
00:11:19.300 the temporalities being summoned by this learning space are far from linear, are far from
00:11:25.320 stationary, that there are understandings that are only possible in the continued afterlife of
00:11:31.680 something, almost a year now since we began this iteration of We Will Dance with Mountains.
00:11:39.400 This is far from a podcast, but in the spirit of Spellcast, I would ask you to pause here at the
00:11:45.900 close of our opening and gauge your consent to participate in this space, to what degree you're
00:11:53.300 willing to attend this collective inquiry. And just as I asked the original group of a thousand
00:12:00.300 or so to process into the earth at the sound of Ilu'oba to meet in the cave, I extend that same
00:12:07.460 invitation to you now. I'll give you a spoiler of the sessions ahead and say that we never came up
00:12:14.500 out of the cave. This is not a hero's journey. We are still down there at large practicing what
00:12:22.000 we've learned, dancing, asking questions, and playing tricks. And you, our welcome guest,
00:12:30.540 are invited to come and meet us and practice with us, to make worlds with us, or greater yet,
00:12:36.880 to make home with us. That is our paradox of vocation, to make home at the end of the world,
00:12:44.100 in between worlds. The foot washing is a way down, so if you didn't catch that from the recording,
00:12:52.000 Feel free to wash your feet at your own timing in order to descend as water down into the earth
00:12:57.860 to prepare your body to marry the soil and meet us in the classroom.
00:13:03.760 It's not the only way down. You might know of other doors, but the water is one way.
00:13:10.800 At the end of each session, I'll offer a few practice prompts or questions
00:13:15.200 as a way to reposition the lectures into your own life.
00:13:19.440 Some questions will be sniffed out from BIO's talks.
00:13:23.360 Some might be elaborations on what was spoken.
00:13:26.200 Some might be complete detours altogether.
00:13:29.120 They're all optional, obviously, and given in the spirit of practice and integration.
00:13:35.760 You can also find these questions in text on the webpage alongside each episode.
00:13:41.840 I would suggest that at the close of each session that you take some time to journal
00:13:46.460 or whatever form of reflection is natural to the way you learn
00:13:50.460 before transitioning into the next part of your day.
00:13:54.720 Some of these sessions may stir things.
00:13:57.200 There's no shortage of provocation.
00:13:59.600 So I encourage you to take spiritual care of yourself while traveling with us.
00:14:05.100 To ask for care when you need it.
00:14:07.160 To be bold.
00:14:08.240 Reach out to a friend.
00:14:09.420 Talk about what you're uncovering.
00:14:11.860 Thank you for being here.
00:14:13.140 some questions for reflection from this opening session are as follows
00:14:19.940 what does it mean to be well in sick times
00:14:25.340 what does it mean to be whole in times of great suffering
00:14:31.200 in times of great dying and migration
00:14:34.100 what does it mean to make home
00:14:38.520 when the ecology that makes your body possible
00:14:41.800 is wilting? What if the ways we speak about trauma blinds us to possibility and flight
00:14:51.540 and transformation? What if the ways we frame health and perform justice are tethered to
00:15:00.100 something that wants to give way? What is that giving way to? Welcome.
00:15:11.800 Thank you.
00:15:41.800 You