For The Wild - TRICIA HERSEY on Deprogramming from Grind Culture ⧸318

00:00:00.400 To listen to the extended version of this episode, support us on patreon.com slash for the wild.

00:00:09.400 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Tricia Hersey.

00:00:18.620 What I do is I lean on the past. I lean on my ancestors. I talk about that in the book so much.

00:00:24.840 I lean on the ideas of what they were doing and how they were able to be in the system, but not of it.

00:00:33.040 How they were able to still find joy and pleasure and have family and still come up with inventive plans to escape.

00:00:41.060 Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native with over 20 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian, and community organizer.

00:00:49.960 She is the founder of the Knapp Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance and reparations by curating spaces for the community to rest via community rest activations, immersive workshops, performance art installations, and social media.

00:01:08.680 Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma.

00:01:14.840 she is the author of the upcoming book rest is resistance a manifesto which will be published

00:01:22.160 in october 11 of 2022 you can learn more about her work and pre-order the book at thenapministry.com

00:01:30.800 we are kind of just in a really good riff about where we're at in the world what's happened

00:01:41.240 since the pandemic. And it's interesting because our first interview was originally released in

00:01:49.740 June 2020. And holy moly, the world has witnessed a deluge of resignations and general burnouts

00:01:59.540 within jobs, within life. And yet it does not seem that we have come close to reckoning with

00:02:08.180 this reality. And instead of actually taking a break, many people have been forced into new

00:02:15.460 forms of exhaustion and exploitation as the companies that continue to exploit just have

00:02:21.440 gotten richer and richer, kind of unbelievably richer. So your new book comes really at a vital

00:02:31.240 time for us here because I do still think that we can turn the tides so I'd love to just you know

00:02:41.820 start with hearing a bit about your book what motivated you to write this right now and what

00:02:49.180 you hope the world might gain from it yeah that's such a good question it's a deep question because

00:02:57.220 I've been thinking about that I thought about that from the moment I knew that I would be writing a

00:03:01.040 book I knew I didn't want it to be maybe I can talk about what it isn't I didn't want it to be

00:03:07.540 some quick fix tip advice guide that you pick up and think you're going to be done I knew I wanted

00:03:15.040 it to be a manifesto because I love manifestos I love the history of a manifesto I've studied them

00:03:20.980 since I was younger I love history and archives and I really knew that I wanted this piece this

00:03:28.760 book to really be an attempt to bring a new reality into existence. And I wanted it to

00:03:34.720 challenge and provoke. I wanted the form to feel like an incantation over people's heads,

00:03:40.480 over their bodies as they read it. I wanted it to be a field guide and a collaborator on this

00:03:45.860 lifelong pilgrimage we're going to be on to be able to start unraveling ourselves from

00:03:51.460 the grips of grind culture and white supremacy. It had to be something that asked the question,

00:03:58.080 What do you believe? What can you imagine? What can be? So I knew I wanted the form to be

00:04:05.180 something that felt like me, you know, felt like my background as a growing up as the daughter of 0.96

00:04:12.420 a Black preacher, a Black Pentecostal militant preacher, wanted someone who has studied homiletics,

00:04:19.060 you know, the science of creating a sermon and who's a poet. So it's poetry in there. It's full

00:04:24.660 of stories about my family. It has a little bit of memoir. It's really trance work. I will uplift

00:04:32.080 it as feeling like trance work because there is a lot of repetition. I've always named the work

00:04:37.780 of the Nat Ministry as being a deprogramming tool. The reason we exist is to be a tool to

00:04:46.460 begin to help you to deprogram from the brainwashing that Grind Culture has given to us

00:04:51.680 since birth. So I've been naming it as a brainwashing since the beginning of this whole 0.72

00:04:56.560 work. And so I knew I wanted it to be something that could counteract with that, that could be

00:05:01.840 a counter narrative to the brainwashing that we have been under our entire lives, the brainwashing

00:05:07.780 of social media. I wanted it to feel like something that could begin to work in the underground, work

00:05:15.020 and come at people from a different way. So I want people to lay down while they're reading it

00:05:20.940 and to feel that it is something

00:05:24.880 that is demanding the impossible.

00:05:26.760 And so any manifesto worth reading

00:05:28.540 demands the impossible.

00:05:30.880 And I just wanted this to be like this

00:05:32.560 on the ground feel guide.

00:05:34.660 Like, so while we're all on the ground

00:05:36.500 in our trying to like dismantle

00:05:39.380 and come against these systems,

00:05:41.240 like it can be something that is a support,

00:05:43.720 something you can stuff in your bag

00:05:45.900 or have under your pillow,

00:05:47.340 something that you can open up

00:05:49.340 and it be a guide to help you as we all begin to like go in deep around the idea of resting,

00:05:57.440 saving our lives, of resting, being a resistance to all the systems that want us working all the

00:06:03.420 time. That was a really beautiful explanation. I really saw the book and maybe I want to go into

00:06:12.220 the numbness a bit yeah and really explore what rest is and what rest isn't because I think people

00:06:19.640 are even confused about that oh yeah and I think actually this design this strategic design to keep

00:06:29.380 us weak and it also wants to keep us unmotivated towards that wholeness and you know you work so

00:06:38.720 hard that you can't take care of yourself or your community or the earth. And I guess also I'm

00:06:46.140 thinking about this word lazy, which I've heard you speak about. Well, I guess I'm interested in

00:06:51.660 how laziness and work are a part of the capitalist design. And within this, how is the rest you

00:06:59.520 offer different from what we're told we earned through capitalism, like sitting and scrolling

00:07:04.320 through Instagram or Netflix because there's this, I think there's this idea of, oh, you're so

00:07:10.320 exhausted. You're going to get home and you know what? You're just going to put on the internet or

00:07:14.480 the TV. And finally you get to quote rest or lay, you know, but I'm like, is that rest? And when you

00:07:23.420 look at our ancestors, they were very strong people. And I am concerned about the way we are

00:07:32.920 offered rest which i don't actually think is the regenerative rest that you're speaking right

00:07:38.180 exactly yeah that's another reason i'm gonna keep going back to the book when you talk about why i

00:07:43.960 wrote the book one of the main reasons why i wrote the book is so that i could dispel some of the

00:07:49.660 stuff that people were thinking because i will be on ig you know social media is this beautiful

00:07:54.820 technology most people think it is they think it's this beautiful i don't believe it they think

00:08:00.180 at this beautiful technology that brings us together and connects us. And while it does

00:08:05.240 have the opportunity to do that, and we've been able to remix it and be inventive around using

00:08:10.680 it to connect with people all over the world, that's not why it was created. It was created

00:08:14.400 simply to keep you scrolling, buying, consuming, and online distracted. That's really what it was

00:08:20.500 for. It's another extension of capitalism. And so I wanted to take away the idea of what people

00:08:27.220 were consuming online about rest they would be like oh the net ministry this is about resting

00:08:32.400 I'm going to lay down or this is about resting so that I can be more productive to do more for

00:08:36.960 the system I can do more at work if I rest today I'll do and I was like so much many things because

00:08:43.280 of the way social media is created it doesn't allow for deep nuanced conversation and so

00:08:48.680 this book needed to be a part of the literary canon it needed to be a part of the um of the

00:08:54.300 world so that people can have something that they can hold on to to be able to get the facts to be

00:08:59.300 able to start to begin to read a sentence to be like oh my goodness that's what she meant by that

00:09:05.280 you know I really wanted to help people to deepen and slow down and to really get offline so I'm so

00:09:11.820 glad this book is written so that people can put down their phones and sit and lay down and turn

00:09:17.180 the page and read chapters where I'm like this is what rest is this is what rest isn't so I'm very

00:09:23.160 particular about that there's a whole section where I talk about what rest is and what it is

00:09:28.420 and rest is not what any of us think it is because remember we've all been trained and taught under

00:09:35.220 the curriculum of white supremacy and capitalism grind culture grind culture has taught us

00:09:41.500 everything that we know about what resting is about our labor about what our bodies are about

00:09:47.440 who we are and so because of that you we can't trust that we can't trust the information we

00:09:53.680 can't trust the professor of capitalism the professor you know the person's teaching the

00:09:58.700 class on the whites on that curriculum can no longer be trusted and we have to not be keep

00:10:04.200 spewing its ideals we have to totally ignore it totally um dismantle from it and deprogram from

00:10:12.140 and to begin to slowly bring ourselves

00:10:14.920 to what's really true.

00:10:16.500 We've been bamboozled most of our lives

00:10:19.520 understanding what it is.

00:10:20.700 So people don't know what rest is.

00:10:22.500 They think productivity is something that it's not.

00:10:25.800 And so to me, resting is anything

00:10:28.200 that slows you down enough

00:10:31.060 so that your mind and body can connect.

00:10:34.400 So we start thinking about the semantics

00:10:36.380 of our body and our mind.

00:10:37.800 When you think about what it means to be exhausted,

00:10:40.320 to be sleep deprived,

00:10:41.520 when we look at the neurology of what's happening in our brains when we're sleep deprived we're not

00:10:47.200 moving and thinking and connected in a way that's at the full potential of what our brains can do

00:10:52.760 our brains are being in a lot of ways traumatized by our sleep deprivation and because of that

00:10:58.380 our bodies are also deeply traumatized by it but then also spiritually we're disconnected from the

00:11:05.260 divine dwelling place that we have our bodies are an antenna for for the creator for divine ideas

00:11:13.400 for knowledge our bodies hold so much information for us they are the teachers and so when we aren't

00:11:19.640 connected to them when we aren't slowed down enough to begin to slowly do the connecting

00:11:25.120 process our brains and body needs to kind of catch up with each other to support each other

00:11:30.980 to um soothe each other and hold each other up we continue to be zombies and numbed out and so

00:11:37.100 when I think about resting I think about anything that can slow you down it can be

00:11:42.260 you know not returning a phone call immediately listening to music dancing walking you know

00:11:50.640 crocheting meditation I mean it's infinite so I could be on this thing for four hours just with

00:11:57.940 a list. It's infinite. But when we can begin to listen to our bodies, to say, what does my body

00:12:04.920 want? Why do I keep ignoring my body? My body wants to rest. My body wants to slow down. My

00:12:11.180 body wants to wander. It wants to linger. And instead I say, no, you can't have that. I'm

00:12:17.100 going to push through. I'm going to burn a midnight oil. I'll sleep when I'm dead. That feels lazy if

00:12:23.020 I do that and so this idea of laziness I do not use the word laziness I don't use the word lazy

00:12:28.840 at all I believe that any person specifically I want to talk about black people black people

00:12:35.980 use the word lazy so much and I'm like you know that that's what you know our ancestors were 0.83

00:12:42.100 hearing while they were on plantations working 20 hours a day so you don't come from a legacy

00:12:47.500 of laziness you don't come from a legacy of um not working i mean you should not be calling

00:12:54.400 yourself lazy because that's simply language that the oppressor has taught you language of

00:12:59.320 the oppressor it goes back to our deprogramming and decolonizing from all the lines we've been

00:13:04.020 told and so this idea of laziness i think i wish it could be like totally eradicated from my

00:13:09.380 vocabulary from my um our imagination like there's no such thing as lazy in a capitalist world who

00:13:15.980 could be lazy here when the world goes on 24 hours a day seven days a week pushing output

00:13:21.980 pushing production pushing this tool for us to continue to make the empire richer to make the

00:13:29.520 empire more wealthy and so there is no room there is no one who is lazy in a capitalist system there

00:13:35.760 is no human body that i believe that is also lazy and so i reject the word lazy and i want people

00:13:42.460 to begin to place that word in the system that they live in and so a lot of people don't realize

00:13:47.800 that they're living in a system that doesn't even see them as a human being that you're

00:13:52.240 aligning with a system that merely sees you as nothing but a tool and a machine and so

00:13:57.940 that grief the grief of that of knowing that that's what someone feels about you the manipulation

00:14:03.360 of knowing that that's what you're you've been born into it we we can't go on without resting

00:14:09.800 we're not going to be able to make it without resting we're not going to be able to make

00:14:13.800 without connecting with our bodies and with the earth and with each other we simply aren't it's

00:14:19.360 just like not possible and so I feel like I keep hollering from a bullhorn like we're not going to

00:14:24.840 make it if we don't stop and sometimes I feel like can people hear me who's hearing me you know

00:14:32.340 who's this message touching who is it for who's available to grab it because we're in such a

00:14:37.960 crisis that sometimes it feels like, what can I believe? What can be really sweeping change for

00:14:46.980 us to be able to move past this? And I believe and know that resting will be one of the many

00:14:53.800 tools that we use. I'm thinking back to one of our unrecorded conversations, and I know that we both

00:15:03.820 have a lot of concern for folks to even get to a place where they can make the decision

00:15:10.980 to say, yes, I'm going to commit to this meticulous practice and it's going to be

00:15:18.200 long-term because so many of us have been really wrapped up in the programming, in the duping. And

00:15:26.600 so we're busy and we're burnt out and we're numb and we're not even reading emails and we're not

00:15:32.700 even focusing anymore because it's the um the programming and also the addiction to capitalism

00:15:40.860 has been so reinforced like you were mentioning earlier in this conversation about how challenging

00:15:50.200 it is for people to even believe that they are worthy or because i think capitalism has become

00:15:58.660 so quick and witty and um it look really intelligent on working off our psychology so

00:16:06.620 we may say oh we want to break away and then something says but you want to buy this

00:16:11.380 and so right okay well well then yeah yeah yeah you know what we do want to buy that we buy that

00:16:15.500 and i'm like okay now we're fulfilled but you're not and so there's like the capitalism really

00:16:21.600 really understands our psychology there's entire um theories on disaster capitalism where

00:16:28.340 Capitalism will come in when we're at our lowest, like a substance, and take us and really, really enmesh us in our addiction and what we think of is our need to keep within the system, to keep working, to keep grinding.

00:16:43.960 And so, you know, I'm, I'm going back to this place of like, okay, we're talking to each other when we haven't yet committed for so many reasons to this meticulous love practice. And it's obviously by design why it's hard for us to commit and we could have hours where we're just discussing that.

00:17:05.520 But it brings me to this quote that you wrote.

00:17:09.000 And it says, quote, the earth, the plants, the animals are who we should be collaborating

00:17:15.040 with right now, because humans are not tapped in right now.

00:17:19.840 Trust spirit.

00:17:22.160 That's hot off the presses.

00:17:23.960 Yeah, that's hot off the presses.

00:17:26.700 That's what I'm feeling right now at this moment.

00:17:28.820 And when I say this moment, I mean, like the season that we are in, you know, it's not

00:17:34.940 thinking about time in a linear way but it's like yeah I feel like we have to tap into spirit and I

00:17:42.380 think a really um way to do that right now is to connect with the earth is to connect with plant

00:17:49.220 medicine is to connect with um animals and other spirit beings and um the sun and the sky and like

00:17:58.600 our breathing like we are not tapped in we are so pulled away like capitalism and white supremacy

00:18:06.380 and grind it has us so deeply wrapped up I mean it's I feel like I've noticed it worse now that

00:18:13.640 we are in this pandemic and we're almost three years in like I've been tracking this I've just

00:18:18.300 been watching like people are more and more this cognitive dissonance people feel more numb they

00:18:25.300 feel very like exhausted you can almost read it and feel it on people like my son is 15 years old

00:18:32.080 and we were talking about it someone was driving and they literally just were like driving so crazy

00:18:38.100 and like almost hit us and he was like I've noticed that people just seem disconnected I was

00:18:43.160 like do you have you noticed that he was like yeah I've noticed that since the pandemic like how

00:18:46.760 it feels like people are not here and I and I'm one under understanding what what a COVID mind

00:18:53.740 a covid body what's left behind after we're trying to like heal ourselves and stay alive

00:19:00.480 when there's this um thing out here that could make you really sick and just or disable or kill

00:19:06.340 you and so i'm like what has that done to us mentally what has that done to us spiritually

00:19:11.840 that another person feels seems dangerous you know the idea of being around another person

00:19:16.880 and them breathing on you at the beginning it was dangerous it was a dangerous thing to think of a

00:19:21.700 body a body is dangerous it's spreading this and we have to isolate we're in quarantine we're away

00:19:26.840 from each other I think there's been a moment of deep deep collective trauma and what that trauma

00:19:32.840 has done to the brain the studies tell us that trauma absolutely affects the brain I mean those

00:19:40.020 have been done for years and so I'm wondering what a COVID brain is like what a what what will

00:19:46.080 be left behind what's left after what's the residue effects of us attempting to survive a

00:19:52.440 global pandemic of this happening across the board what is we're still in the middle of it

00:19:58.420 you know the pandemic is not over people are still getting sick with it and I'm wondering what it's

00:20:02.740 going to look like five years ten years and we begin to continue to see like the mental health

00:20:08.340 crisis that comes up from this and the the deepening of our numbing the deepening of capitalism and

00:20:14.560 how people are truly not tapped in i always say that to people rest is a portal go there often

00:20:23.060 go tap in you know tap into your body tap into spirit tap into your ancestors tap into what you

00:20:30.820 can't in any way shape or form tap into when you're in an awake state because your awake state

00:20:36.000 is this numbed out consumed state where you're just watching and seeing and scrolling and just

00:20:42.280 consuming all day and night but what what if what would it feel like and what could it be when you

00:20:46.980 go into this dream space when you can go and work things out in this other portal in this third

00:20:52.140 space and I believe that resting is another dimension it is a third space it is a portal

00:20:57.720 for us to go inside of to invent to imagine to simply heal to have space and so I'm wanting

00:21:05.980 more people to see slowing down and resting as the antidote you know always the antidote but

00:21:12.920 deeply now even the antidote to what has happened to these our pandemic bodies our pandemic brains

00:21:19.360 and we all globally are collectively going through this immense anxiety and trauma and grief we've

00:21:27.520 lost so many people when you think about the number of people who died from COVID it's unimaginable

00:21:33.040 that there are people walking around holding all of that like I've lost my dad I've lost my mom

00:21:38.080 my sister passed or this and they have all these this loss around them and they're still just

00:21:44.700 walking outside putting on a mask maybe and then just going you know just hoping for the best and

00:21:50.320 so I don't know what will become of us and I want rest to continue to to be a guidepost I know

00:21:58.920 for sure that um resting can save us and I know for sure that I'm trusting on rest and I'm trusting

00:22:06.340 on my body over anything I won't I don't trust any of the systems to in any way care for me and I'm

00:22:13.820 leaning on community care and rest and our own inventive power the subversive power that I've

00:22:21.460 learned from my ancestors on how to be in a world but not be of it you know we're in this world but

00:22:27.120 We don't have to be of it and be a part of it.

00:22:29.580 We can find these like small ways to resist and be maroons and be outlaws against it.

00:22:57.120 I really hear the call to trust spirit and to trust our bodies I think the compounding

00:23:15.280 lies that we have been told are being told will be told is outrageous and it's exhausting in and

00:23:25.040 of itself like there's the exhaustion of the work but then there's the exhaustion of navigating

00:23:31.340 the lies of our culture not trusting our leaders not trusting global systems not trusting that

00:23:40.100 will be cared for like you said so that is a psychological exhaustion on top of the physical

00:23:46.680 exhaustion and then when do we have the space within that to have grace for ourselves for each

00:23:52.800 other to take care of ourselves for our community to um actually cook a meal like what are we left

00:24:00.880 with when we are just uh i mean so it is a violent attack and i think with the pandemic

00:24:08.360 um it's really it feels wise in this moment to pause and say you know what actually the last

00:24:20.820 three years have been really challenging psychologically for us this anxiety and the

00:24:27.040 stress of the beginning when we didn't know what was happening to the lockdowns to this to the fear

00:24:32.900 I mean there was so much and then all of a sudden it's like okay now airplanes don't you don't need

00:24:38.180 to wear a mask it's like what what has happened here like I know and I mean that in and of itself

00:24:44.340 where there was so much pressure and anxiety and information and who do you trust and who this and

00:24:49.480 then all of a sudden it's as if it didn't happen but it is happening and and this is the same with

00:24:54.980 climate change it's like there's this big thing and it's gonna get us all in the apocalypse but

00:24:59.680 you know what keep doing what you're doing and go to mexico and and it's like what are we yeah

00:25:05.020 buy more amazon it's okay but the world is burning but keep buying but it's like what

00:25:13.400 how are we not how can we be clear when we are I know the messaging from every angle

00:25:22.080 is literally of course we're numb of course we're in this place where we're crawling in confusion

00:25:29.240 I just want to like take a moment and um have compassion for all of us and be like yeah

00:25:35.100 it is so confusing it is so hard it is so it is not easy this is not going to be easy work

00:25:44.820 this is dark work like people they come on and see oh the nap ministry that sounds so cute in

00:25:50.820 the nap bishop and it's oh yellow and this is some you know what i'm saying like pillows and

00:25:56.480 blankets and clowns like this is some real deep dark work okay this is some some deep dark

00:26:01.720 realization. This is some underground dystopian nightmare ideas around like what is really

00:26:08.300 happening to us. And what I will say to that is what I do is I lean on the past. I lean on my

00:26:14.380 ancestors. Like I talk about that in the book so much. I lean on the ideas of what they were doing

00:26:21.020 and how they were able to be in the system, but not of it, how they were able to still find joy

00:26:27.220 and pleasure and have family and still come up with inventive plans to escape. I uplift Harriet

00:26:33.660 Tubman and Underground Railroad. I uplift people jumping off slave ships and hiding out in caves 0.83

00:26:39.540 and maroons of North America. I really uplift the ways in which resistance and refusal was like 1.00

00:26:48.460 not, there was no, I might do it or I might do it. It's like, it was freedom or death. It was

00:26:53.420 life or death for them to be able to make in these choices and how within those choices they

00:26:58.620 continue to um float on this spaceship of uncertainty that they created i think about

00:27:03.840 my grandmother or leaving the deep part of the south because she had saw lynching and she was

00:27:09.480 like i don't you know like millions of other people in a great migration they left and they

00:27:13.020 just floated on these little spaceships of hope that they created with like a twenty dollars in

00:27:19.080 their pocket and a little note on how to get there and they just really trusted spirit and

00:27:24.260 the guidance of spirit I think about Harriet Tubman not ever getting caught when she was on

00:27:29.380 Underground Railroad how she was actually stopping to pray at certain points to be like where does

00:27:34.680 she go how she was reading the sky how she was a master astronomer and could read animals and

00:27:42.840 could read the earth and how she was a nature woman and was able to use the earth and use the

00:27:48.420 stars and listen to bird sounds and use the plants to be able to find this medicine and this

00:27:55.700 tapping in so when I say tapping in that's what I'm thinking about like she's literally on the

00:28:01.140 run running for her life with a bounty on her head and she's stopping to pray and to get plants

00:28:08.100 and to listen to the owl sounds she know where to go and to stop and get a word from her ancestors

00:28:14.460 and pausing and prayer is a form of rest and so she was waking up from prophetic dreams saying

00:28:21.240 my people are free and just like prophesying about their freedom and so this is what I hold

00:28:26.780 to and this is why history and the archives are so important for this work and are so important

00:28:32.380 for any future that we're trying to like build out if we don't go back and listen and tap in

00:28:38.300 and get those inventive ideas and expand on them we won't make it and so they have been my guys

00:28:45.580 they have been what have kept me going when I'm looking around and being like oh wow things are

00:28:50.500 on fire but I talk about that in the book I say you know let's let's torch it then you know like

00:28:57.080 let's get off if grind culture is what's killing us then let's get together with some matches and

00:29:02.420 let's torch the grind you know let's torch it so that we all can burn it down and begin to

00:29:07.020 build something new and so I'm not hopeless because I've done because I'm a historian and

00:29:12.940 because I'm a researcher and because I am connected deeply to my ancestors what they were doing

00:29:19.100 is brilliance is inventive and they were doing it with so much less they were doing it without

00:29:25.220 a smartphone they were doing it without uh ID they were you know they didn't even have his ID

00:29:30.840 they weren't even they weren't it weren't even they didn't have even autonomy of their own bodies

00:29:35.280 They were quote unquote owned by someone else. They were not letting that idea hold them. They were remixing and being subversive and understanding that there are ways to resist, that there are ways to connect and they did it no matter what.

00:29:53.640 And so a lot of people don't know the history, you know, this culture does a really great job of erasing history, of keeping us from it, of taking it away.

00:30:02.960 We think about all of the drama and people trying to keep history out of schools.

00:30:08.060 And so I uplift in the book that this work all started with these fragmented parts of my history and that you can go back into your history and that you can read the history of where we're from.

00:30:19.780 I mean, you can look to the past and look to the present to be able to build this new

00:30:25.300 future.

00:30:26.380 But I love this quote Nikki Giovanni said.

00:30:30.160 She said it, you know, she was at a speech, I believe, at the University of Chicago years

00:30:35.340 and years ago.

00:30:35.960 I read this speech and she said, if my ancestors can believe, then I know I can.

00:30:41.900 And I just sit with that.

00:30:43.220 I'm like, if my ancestors can believe, then who am I not to believe in this moment that

00:30:48.320 I can be free and that my body belongs to me and that liberation is possible and so it's going to

00:30:54.520 be a deep deep individual work but also collective work but it's going to be work that people are

00:31:00.800 going to have to take on and grab hold to and slowly begin to do the unraveling and

00:31:07.960 healing work this work is an invitation to heal there's a quote from an interview you did with

00:31:14.740 Patrice Coolers and it's Q&A, Nat Ministries, Trissa Hersey, Talks, Rest, and Racial Justice

00:31:21.200 for PRISM. And you say, I want to go slow with it and be very realistic that this is going to be a

00:31:29.480 slow, deep unlearning. I'm very easy with people and tell them, be easy on yourselves. I know you

00:31:36.240 feel guilty. I know you feel shame. I know you grinded last night because you have to get some

00:31:42.520 extra money at work to live in a capitalist system, in a white supremacist system. I understand

00:31:48.700 there are the limits and the boundaries. So that's why I ask people to begin to tap into their

00:31:54.080 imagination. Rest is imagination work. It's about reclaiming and reimagining what you can be.

00:32:01.100 It's about tapping into your senses in a way that this world hasn't allowed you to.

00:32:05.340 you're gonna have to be flexible you're going to have to be subversive and I am thinking about

00:32:14.820 how when we when we hear your work and these quotes and we're reading your book and you know

00:32:22.620 some of us are going to be drawn to it and we're gonna feel and sense the truth in this

00:32:32.140 and of course there's this probably for some of us this urgent desire to figure it out and to be

00:32:40.100 good at it and to be healed and to be able to move on I don't know to what I'm not sure what

00:32:46.140 we're moving on to but I'm sure that there's that thing in our mind that things okay we can do this

00:32:51.740 word and so i i just want to talk about how we cannot nor should we try to be perfect in our

00:33:01.500 resistance and i realize also that perfection and purity are romanticized in a culture that

00:33:08.000 values output over the reality of people's lives so what might we learn by embracing the mess and

00:33:15.720 imperfection that comes with leaving behind the ways we have been brainwashed into mindless

00:33:20.580 productivity and on and on? Yeah, such a great question. Oh my, I love it. I mean, it really

00:33:28.680 is like where our healing lies. It's where all of the energy for any type of justice work is

00:33:36.680 going to lie. It's going to lie in the acceptance, in the messy, in the experimentation. I open up

00:33:43.260 a book saying you know this is this work is the output this is the imagination in the

00:33:51.820 dreams of an exhausted and curious black woman so I'm extremely curious I'm extremely open to

00:34:01.940 the idea of experimentation to invention to like being able to use this beautiful body

00:34:10.660 and brain and wholeness that I have to be able to say hmm what if you know it kind of asks this

00:34:19.680 question what do you believe so I'm always pushing myself and thinking about the idea of what if you

00:34:26.520 know what could this be and I know and I think that really I am when I think about it's because

00:34:31.100 I'm an artist you know I think my being an artist and having an art practice since I was probably

00:34:36.680 you know 15 16 years old being a poet a theater maker um installation artist a writer um a person

00:34:47.240 who really loves experimentation performance art you know ritual maker to be it also i think it

00:34:54.080 also goes back to the idea of how i was raised you know i was raised in the black church in a

00:34:58.380 pentecostal black church in a place where i watch people literally chant and pray themselves free i

00:35:05.720 watch people you know catch the holy ghost and fall out and wake up from it and look totally

00:35:11.060 different and be healed from drug addiction and be healed from all these things like I understood

00:35:16.640 and saw what embodiment could do like I'm not afraid of embodiment I'm not afraid of leaping

00:35:22.620 I'm not afraid of experimentation that comes to me easy to watch my ancestors and parents take

00:35:28.060 something from nothing and make it something and be able to like heal themselves and stay alive

00:35:33.960 and my grandmother being a refugee from Jim Crow terrorism and my dad, you know, working all these

00:35:40.100 jobs and still being able to be an organizer and activist and seeing how community care and

00:35:46.880 embodiment literally can save us. And so I know for a lot of people, they may not come from that

00:35:51.480 origin story. Maybe they're not an artist, but for everyone, everyone comes to this world with

00:35:57.200 an imagination, like our imagination, as Bill Hooks has said so brilliantly, is one of the

00:36:03.560 greatest tools of those who are oppressed it is she said the greatest tool that our imagination

00:36:09.060 Octavia Butler speaks in these ways as well as talking about the idea of what imagination and

00:36:14.860 how we can hope and how we can be and how we can be a part of the solution because there's millions

00:36:21.120 and millions of infinite ideas that are out there waiting for us and so I love that question and I

00:36:28.340 love the idea of people understanding that this is about experimentation and when I say that to

00:36:33.800 people they look at me kind of like what and I talk about the idea of imagination how I see it

00:36:38.720 being robbed from people younger and younger like when you think about young people and children

00:36:42.900 when I used to be a teacher working with young people I mean I'm talking about 11 to 18 you know

00:36:50.020 and they 11 12 year olds who are still who their imagination has been robbed like their whole idea

00:36:57.000 of imagining something different has been robbed by the poverty of their communities, by the prison

00:37:01.800 industrial complex, by capitalism, by violence in their communities. Like they literally have been

00:37:07.460 robbed of this idea of imagination. And so I think about how resting is imagination work. There is

00:37:14.680 this idea of daydreaming and imagining a new way and how we won't be able to get there from an

00:37:23.260 exhausted mind. So if we want to have imagination, if we want to tap into the infinite ideas that

00:37:29.300 our imagination is waiting to give us, it won't come from an exhausted body and mind. Like it

00:37:34.340 just isn't possible from a biological standard, from a spiritual place, you know, we are killing

00:37:41.500 ourselves when it comes to our exhaustion and our sleep deprivation and our exploitation from

00:37:48.260 from work or abuse and so I say to people that daydreaming having space to just be

00:37:56.220 staring at a tree imagining and so I teach people how to daydream like I have these collective

00:38:03.740 daydreaming activations that we host and we're going to be having them at the rest temple here

00:38:08.040 in Atlanta pretty regularly where we bring people together and teach them how to reclaim

00:38:13.720 their imagination and teach them how to collectively daydream how to daydream with each

00:38:18.980 other how to let your mind wander how to experiment and so this work is really about repairs trying to

00:38:26.720 get people to tap into the things that are already within them that have been stolen from us

00:38:32.940 by these systems our dream space has been stolen our time has been stolen our ability to just be

00:38:40.240 has been stolen. Our idea of leisure has been stolen from us. The idea of having a hobby has

00:38:46.480 been stolen from us. Everything has been monetized by capitalism. Everything goes back to making a

00:38:51.060 dollar. And so this work wants for people to tap into this idea of imagination. So there's a whole

00:38:59.100 section in the book that's called Imagine. And it just speaks about deeply about the ideas of

00:39:05.400 imagination is and my inspirations for imagination and how this work resides in the spirit of that

00:39:12.560 and so I really want people to begin to slowly um see that their exhaustion will not give them

00:39:19.880 nothing but more exhaustion that it won't be generative that it's not gonna allow us to come

00:39:25.900 into these new ideas and that it doesn't take a lot you know this is the hopeful part of this all

00:39:30.280 10 minutes a day you know 30 minutes a day like my grandmother was sitting on her couch

00:39:35.100 resting her eyes daydreaming for 10 minutes staring sky gazing for an hour in the morning

00:39:41.680 while you're at work you know breathing and listening to your breath like we'll have to be

00:39:48.520 very pervasive and inventive and subversive to be able to try to snatch rest and to curate rest

00:39:56.000 in a system like this no one's going to give it to us and so we have to trust in our imagination

00:40:01.440 and trust in our bodies to show us the way and um i believe that our bodies and um our ancestors

00:40:08.480 and spirit is waiting for us to slow down waiting for us to lay down waiting for us to give us

00:40:15.320 ourselves the gift of of of space and silence and rest so that it can offer to us

00:40:22.780 the way forward so that it can download and give us the ideas that are necessary um for our um

00:40:31.200 liberation and so if we can slow down enough to be able to hear it I think that um our work will

00:40:39.360 be much um more easier it'll be um more connected and it'll be more uplifting it won't be coming

00:40:47.240 from a place of a pure exhaustion and burnout because nothing can come from that but just more

00:40:52.740 of the same.

00:41:20.280 I completely agree.

00:41:21.840 And I think it's really important to differentiate imagination from a place of the programmed capitalist burnout mind versus imagination from a rested place grounded in spiritual practice and liberation.

00:41:41.860 I think they're very different. And I think back to conversations I've had with Adrienne

00:41:46.800 Marie Brown about the imagination battle and how we're living in somebody else's

00:41:51.640 effed up imagination. And I really see that with so much of, I'll just say the environmental

00:41:59.560 movement or the climate movement, for instance, I feel like folks are moving so fast and imagining,

00:42:08.180 i guess they think it's progress um in this way that is frightening because they're selling it to

00:42:16.900 us as a escape out of the depths of despair or they're selling it to us as the solutions

00:42:24.420 and i see it more and more and more especially over the past 10 years the ramp up of the

00:42:31.020 technological imagination that will save us right which is very different than a grounded

00:42:39.300 practice with spirit to rest and imagine a way out of the mind that keeps creating and selling

00:42:48.000 and honestly extracting and i think that's really left out of the conversation when we're thinking

00:42:54.160 about these savior to imagine solutions it's the extraction is uh really out of control like i just

00:43:03.000 you know briefly want to talk about the imagined technotopian world of green energy for instance

00:43:11.920 uh in alaska they are literally trying to open up the entire land base to mineral extraction to

00:43:20.680 quote, save us from climate change and fossil fuels, which if we were rested and we were slower

00:43:29.220 and we could be like, wait a minute, actually, let's take a moment and think, huh, do we want

00:43:35.280 to burn more fossil fuels to extract more minerals to then create new infrastructure and new systems

00:43:41.760 to keep what going? Like, what are we doing? What are we trying to continue? And does that have

00:43:49.120 anything to do with our liberation or is this just a new form of these labor wars like it it

00:43:57.260 doesn't quite make sense but if we're too numb and too distracted and exhausted we are literally

00:44:03.420 going to we are in the midst of being duped in a whole other way and that frightens me like and it

00:44:10.960 and it kind of enrages me which is another topic you brought up in your book is rage so maybe we

00:44:15.960 could riff off that a little bit but yeah like that rage that i'm feeling even saying this of

00:44:20.840 like what are we doing we need to slow down and we need to shift our value system because

00:44:28.520 we're about to go into a whole other level of dystopian i mean we're in it we're we're not

00:44:34.380 about to like we're we're right here um and and it's and the last thing i'll say about that

00:44:40.220 the insanity of us grinding so hard to extract more, to buy more, just to throw it away

00:44:47.420 almost immediately. I'm like, what are we doing? It's maddening. It's so maddening. It's so

00:44:54.000 maddening that I sometimes, most of the time can't make sense of it or make my way out of it. Like I

00:44:59.820 don't even know where to begin sometimes. And I just feel like it literally, it's a spiritual

00:45:09.120 battle like i have to take it like back because my father taught me as a black preacher uh black

00:45:15.720 liberation theologian that we have to understand that um everything is is happening is is spiritual

00:45:21.840 you know that we are spiritual beings and i think we forget that that we're existing in this on this

00:45:28.360 earth in this planet on this planet in this dimension and we're forgetting that we are

00:45:33.500 actually existing as spiritual beings and that all of this goes back to spirit i think about

00:45:38.920 the civil rights movement and how if you spoke with any of them, Martin Luther King and any of

00:45:45.100 his colleagues, they would always call what they were doing spiritual work. They always knew that

00:45:51.060 human rights work and civil rights work and justice work is spiritual work. And I don't

00:45:57.060 hear people talking about that enough. They talk about it from this shallow layer of thinking

00:46:02.880 policy can change things. But that's the white supremacy of it all because indigenous 1.00

00:46:08.660 people know that this is spirit you know people who are in tune with the earth understand that

00:46:13.680 this is all a spiritual battle and so a lot of times I call technology and social media

00:46:20.060 demonic I just name it as demonic the same way I name white supremacy as a demonic force and I

00:46:25.740 don't think a lot of people want to get into it and go deep into that and I think that's what my

00:46:30.620 theology and my theologian um mind and interest are coming in where I understand that we are

00:46:37.440 battling against you know spirit there's a spiritual war happening that we're going to have

00:46:42.980 to tap into that and that's why resting being a spiritual practice opens up itself for us to lay

00:46:49.740 ourselves our weary bodies down into this spiritual place for us to gain some type of care

00:46:57.540 and soothing and some calm and a balm you know for us to go in and and receive these um these

00:47:05.440 spiritual powers that are waiting for us that resting is waiting for us to lay our bodies down

00:47:12.460 and and um and be and just stop and make sense and when you talked about us just keep going and going

00:47:19.320 and we're being duped it's like yeah we're being duped because we won't stop enough to be like

00:47:25.660 wait a minute no one's stopping anyone it's like all these people acting out of exhaustion out of

00:47:32.960 violence out of the lens and ideology of white supremacy and capitalism and no one's stopping

00:47:39.100 and being like hey wait a minute what's up with that and so I think people feel numb to speaking

00:47:46.400 I think people have no bandwidth you know I think that we are so exhausted on every level physically

00:47:53.320 mentally spiritually that we are so hemmed up I was just reading an article that um 70 percent

00:48:00.300 of Americans right now are looking for second and third jobs to be able to try to deal with

00:48:04.900 the recession. And I'm like, what? Like in this exhausted state that we're in with the pandemic,

00:48:11.580 that many people are working, looking for even more work, even more labor, even more time on

00:48:17.720 the clock to just be able to eat. And so when I think about the rage, the rage, I feel about what

00:48:24.380 the systems are doing to us, what they have done to us and our bodies, that they continue to push

00:48:29.660 us to the we don't have the energy to let alone be working one job right now not people to be able

00:48:34.620 to live in their homes afford rent eat feed their families they literally have to work three jobs

00:48:41.700 look for more work always be going and so every people's entire life is being surrounded by labor

00:48:47.800 and doing and there and so that's not being human that's not that's not a human being that's not

00:48:53.040 meant humans aren't meant to function like that you know we aren't meant to be working like a

00:48:57.560 machine so all i can say is that i hope i have deep hope for what the divine can offer i have

00:49:06.040 deep hope for um spirit and i have deep understanding that um what we um what we think

00:49:14.560 we see what we think is happening there's always something behind it there's always something

00:49:18.740 working behind the scenes and that um resting can help to amplify the spirit for us you know it can

00:49:25.620 help to bring that spirit um louder and closer so that we're able to grab on and hold on and so i

00:49:32.840 always tell people we won't make it without rest we won't make it without um connecting to this

00:49:37.860 as a spiritual practice as a political practice as a social justice ideal as a public health

00:49:44.940 practice i mean it lands in so many different ways that it's so important that we begin to

00:49:50.360 expand our minds and that we begin to just surrender to rest you know surrender to the

00:49:56.100 idea that we aren't going to be able to do everything and so I talk about that in my book like

00:50:00.540 how I got to this was literally I was dying I literally used rest to save my life I'm not being

00:50:08.000 you know this is I'm literally was feeling like I was dying you know and so rest became something

00:50:14.380 that allowed me to save my life and I focused solely on it and I just had to have a faith walk

00:50:20.460 I had to leap without a net and to say I don't know what it's going to be you know but it can't

00:50:26.320 be this similar to my grandmother who left the deep part of Mississippi to go to Chicago doing

00:50:32.740 a great migration running from racial terror there and she didn't know what it would be when

00:50:37.760 she landed in Chicago she just knew it ain't gonna be this and so this idea of hoping for the future

00:50:43.020 of leaping of imagining of trying to make space um to just be to allow yourself to tap in

00:50:50.740 to slow down and so i um am really hopeful about the idea of what we what could happen for us when

00:50:59.600 we are able to slow down and we're gonna have to do it we're gonna have to snatch it no one is

00:51:05.640 going to do it for us that's another um thing we're going to have to process and and really sit

00:51:11.120 with that everything in collaboration in this culture as far as not to rest. And so this is

00:51:15.960 an outlier movement. It's a movement of experimentation and investigation. It's a

00:51:21.680 slow movement. It's a political refusal. In a sense, the rage you're speaking about

00:51:28.400 is respectful. It's really acknowledging what people are going through and the oppression and

00:51:36.960 the yeah the hate that that the system must have for people because what's really outrageous is

00:51:44.860 that there is so much money in the world we see the folks on the mega yachts which are literally

00:51:52.740 mean nothing to them like these mega yachts and all the this luxury is so meaningless and yet

00:52:00.200 There's other people who can't even feed their families without going into massive exhaustion.

00:52:08.340 And it doesn't, again, it's like, who are we working for?

00:52:13.080 And there's enough money to go around.

00:52:16.440 There's enough money to pay people to rest, honestly.

00:52:21.400 There's abundance, like this scarcity model that we're living under.

00:52:25.040 There's so much abundance.

00:52:26.260 there's enough the earth can provide enough food and water and care and and lovers and um you know

00:52:34.800 money and ideas for all of us but because we have been trained in this scarcity model that because

00:52:41.460 this whole entire culture has been built on a model of scarcity um that makes people um so

00:52:49.180 deeply brainwashed to the fact that there is an abundance available to us and so it's so correct

00:52:53.940 when you think about the money when I think about the idea that there's trillions of dollars like

00:52:58.680 what is it what does even trillions of dollars look like you know when I think about the trillions

00:53:02.540 and billionaires it's like really like this is what we're doing like what is that necessary why

00:53:08.700 do you need to have more why do you need another dollar why couldn't some of that money go like

00:53:13.100 you said pay people to rest give reparations you know use the money so that climate change isn't

00:53:19.900 being isn't happening at such a rapid rate that we could be doing so much but that's when I start

00:53:26.500 to bring up the demonic nature of it all the spiritual aspects that we are fighting against

00:53:31.920 and that we are um within and uh Martin Luther King Jr. would call it a spiritual deficiency

00:53:38.120 he always called told the culture when he talked about what was happening with racial um terror in

00:53:43.660 the culture that he said it's happening because there's a spiritual deficiency upon us that

00:53:48.940 people are suffering deeply from a spiritual deficiency he he always wrote about this in

00:53:54.800 his sermons if people read his sermons he's he was always giving sermons and using the word of

00:53:58.840 spiritual deficiency and I always said with that word like oh like that's so deep the idea of a

00:54:04.360 deficiency of spirit and I feel like that he was saying that back in like the 50s and now people

00:54:10.760 are we're here now we're deeper into we have more things that are driving us deeper the technology

00:54:17.960 Like, I really believe that technology and social media is really driving us deeper and

00:54:24.600 deeper into deep, deep spiritual deficiency, deep, deep disconnection, deep exhaustion.

00:54:32.960 Really, it is a disease.

00:54:36.300 It's an addiction and obsession that if I talk about in my book, we don't begin to examine

00:54:43.380 it deeply.

00:54:45.060 I'm not sure what's going to happen.

00:54:46.860 You know, I'm not sure collectively what will happen.

00:54:50.420 And so I'm always offering to people to do these detoxes offline, to just put your phone

00:54:56.720 down, to go back to the ancient and vintage ways of connecting with people, to like turn

00:55:03.220 off that antenna and turn on your own internal spiritual antenna to be able to listen and

00:55:08.600 hear.

00:55:09.100 And so when I go on these 30 day Sabbaths and I'm like off the phones, off technology,

00:55:14.480 off emails I literally feel like a new person I feel like I'm like buzzing on another um level of

00:55:23.760 connection so much comes to me my sleep is so good I wake up I was handwriting 18 pages of like

00:55:32.480 notes around like ideas and poetry and journaling and it feels like an antenna is turned on and I'm

00:55:40.820 able to hear what really the earth wants to tell me what spirit wants to offer what what my body

00:55:47.200 wants to say and so until we can begin to turn off some of the noise and and dead in the noise and

00:55:54.560 have more silence and have more spaces to rest and we do that intentionally and with care and

00:56:02.820 we do that collectively and we do that meticulously that we actually make space for that we just say

00:56:08.180 no you're going to have to say no and it's going to might not be easy you're going to have to heal

00:56:13.220 from the idea of a bound not having healthy boundaries of of people pleasing you're going

00:56:19.600 to have to like really begin to hold yourself in such a graceful and merciful way to understand

00:56:26.480 that you will have to say no because the systems will continue to say yes they'll continue to put

00:56:32.180 push they'll continue to put things on your calendar they'll continue to say can you work

00:56:37.060 10 more hours can you get four more jobs you know I remember it was at a time when my dad was

00:56:41.500 working three jobs you know and I'm just like how is a person able to manage three jobs you know

00:56:46.620 how is that literally all you do is get up work and go to bed there's no living in between and so

00:56:52.640 we aren't living we're like the walking dead and I want to bring us back to life and bring us back

00:56:58.260 to humanness and that is through rest I believe rest will simply make us more human I just really

00:57:06.920 want people to understand this offering in long form is deep and it's something that you can

00:57:15.160 spend time with and get off the screen with and be with and pray with and meditate with

00:57:20.860 and pause with and go back to and you can share it with your community and and so I I really just

00:57:28.380 want to um bring it full circle to the beginning of our conversation that we now have a place where

00:57:36.340 we can be slower with you and I'm really grateful for that because I think that you know social

00:57:42.760 media is definitely in many ways evil but there's times where you can go on social media and see

00:57:49.760 work from folks like you and be inspired and it's like that little spark you you know it's it's a

00:57:56.420 spark and then you take that spark and you get off the screen and you go and you study and you

00:58:01.420 sit and you rest with. And so this is an opportunity for folks to do that. And I'm really

00:58:06.180 grateful for you for taking all the time and the attention that it must have been for you to create

00:58:14.200 a book and also share it with us. So yeah, Trisha, thank you.

00:58:19.300 A labor of love. Yeah, it's been a labor of love. Thank you so much. Yeah, I want this to feel like

00:58:23.240 a lullaby. Read it to yourselves and to each other. One of the reviewers called it a lullaby

00:58:30.120 of liberation they said it felt like a lullaby of liberation so this is a invitation to just

00:58:36.480 to slow it down and I ask all book groups who use it to make space during your book meetings for

00:58:43.280 resting for naps even for meditation to don't rush through this book to come back to it to

00:58:49.260 underline in it to highlight you know to offer up passages that feel like a meditative moment

00:58:56.500 And so I'm so grateful for the long form and for this opportunity for people to have it in their hands.

00:59:04.620 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:59:08.120 The music you heard today was by Real J. Wallace and Fabian Almasan Trio.

00:59:14.180 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glasfeld, and Julia Jackson.

00:59:20.680 As a reminder, an extended, edited version of this episode is available to our Patreon supporters at patreon.com slash for the wild.

For The Wild - January 04, 2023

TRICIA HERSEY on Deprogramming from Grind Culture ⧸318

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