Missing Witches - January 22, 2024


MW Rx.35 - Writing Love On The Ceiling

MW Rx. 34 - An Inter-dimensional Being WF Dr. Marion Gibson - It Almost Feels Like They Are Waiting There For You

Episode Stats


Length

27 minutes

Words per minute

149.56

Word count

4,048

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

21

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You know what she told me last night? 0.98
00:00:15.200 She was like, oh, next time you put out a match,
00:00:18.940 because I had lit a match, lit a candle,
00:00:21.620 I ran it underwater before I put it in the garbage.
00:00:23.840 She's like, before you run it underwater,
00:00:25.980 I like to look at the shapes and the smoke and see what I see there.
00:00:29.640 we do it at school okay which school like was she at hogwarts
00:00:36.700 but i recommend that i'm adding it to my divination practices for the rx
00:00:44.700 take may's advice look for shapes in the smoke after you blow out a candle
00:00:48.940 yeah continue here we are here we are welcome we're at this stage of winter where every brand
00:00:59.620 in the woods around my house is is like precariously holding like six inches of snow
00:01:06.420 like every teeny little branch is holding up this magical world of snow that's what it feels like
00:01:16.560 here today yes it's like both like luminous and threatening exactly lovely and precarious
00:01:24.580 yeah yeah yeah i mean i i um i was still living in ontario when the really big like legendary
00:01:35.420 montreal ice storm happened and i think you and i might have even talked about this before like
00:01:41.500 a year ago on the rx at the same time last year yeah about how you know by the time i moved to
00:01:49.760 the city people had sort of like giving birth you know like you you're so joyful about the result
00:01:56.440 that you know you sort of forget about the pain and that was kind of like the vibe where people
00:02:01.800 were just talking about like how neighbors came together and how they would have big sleepovers
00:02:07.680 like one friend still had power so everybody was just like in their bags and yeah it was like this
00:02:15.320 horrible event that somehow people manage to like snatch some some real love out of yeah
00:02:24.980 yeah it's funny i remember talking about that too that's one of my favorite things on podcasts i
00:02:32.880 think it's so funny when the podcasters are like we might have talked about this before and as a 0.50
00:02:36.720 listener i'm like you talk about that every fucking week but i don't care like put it put it in a new 0.74
00:02:42.440 context think about it out loud that's what it's like when we hang out with our friends 0.96
00:02:45.800 yeah I've heard my friends tell the same stories but I'm still I still want to go with them I hope
00:02:50.860 people feel like that also I'm sorry I've told the same stories and maybe it's really boring
00:02:54.540 um but that's how I feel about it I'm not too bothered I remember the ice storm and I and I do
00:03:00.100 this feeling of being under so much snow is similar it feels less deadly you know like when
00:03:05.800 things fall they're not going to like pierce my skull but uh but i might get pushed down um
00:03:12.220 and i'm just trying to so my prescription this week is this old diana ross song it's
00:03:19.920 making the rounds on tiktok like crazy i'm not on tiktok i just heard that it's on tiktok when
00:03:24.340 i looked at looked it up um and it's i think a spell for you know the as above so below
00:03:35.780 of it all as below so above the the like working really small and really close of winter and
00:03:45.980 and seeing that um laid out across the whole potential of the wheel of the year that we're in
00:03:56.000 so it's that song it's my house and i live here
00:04:00.920 it's like it's a song for loving your house for building your house with intention she says she
00:04:08.680 wrote love across the ceiling in that house you know there's a candle on the stairs like
00:04:13.380 you want to come over you want to stay here like this is a house built for love and i built it 0.98
00:04:18.640 it's my fucking house she doesn't say that but i do um and that's part of my prescription for 0.95
00:04:25.740 this week like i i want this for myself and for all of us like to want to like lean into the 0.99
00:04:34.780 confidence of knowing that you belong here like you belong in this space and it's yours you live
00:04:45.180 here you're passing your your one brief life right here on this stretch of earth and you may have
00:04:54.020 like aspirations for where you're going and what your next house looks like and the next evolution
00:04:59.880 of your life looks like but to get there from here I really believe we have to like write love
00:05:06.120 on the ceiling of this place you know we have to like fill this place with love and then I'm also
00:05:11.420 connecting it to this idea I think that comes to us from Anne Brayden which is a southern anti-white
00:05:23.180 anti-racist anti-slavery activist who at one point like quite a young activist
00:05:31.240 like pretty broken-hearted at the world at america trying to find her place in it all
00:05:38.100 was embraced by uh this lawyer real leader protecting uh labor movements social activists
00:05:51.600 black activists abolitionists um black lawyer william patterson and he told her like have faith
00:06:01.380 pledge your allegiance to that other america that's always existed that other america where
00:06:07.160 we have worked together you know beyond lines of race there's really incredible histories being
00:06:12.620 written now unpacking the fact that the south lost the war because they were fighting on two fronts
00:06:21.080 because so many white people left and joined maroon communities in the woods and resisted
00:06:30.320 and followed the wisdom of enslaved people on how to live how to survive how to conduct that
00:06:36.840 resistance you know we're allied to those enslaved people and learn from them 0.99
00:06:40.540 and that those communities are the other america and that's our fucking house like we live here 0.98
00:06:49.320 we live in that other house I pledge my allegiance to that other world you know I'm Canadian but I 0.98
00:06:54.580 pledge my allegiance to that other Canadian you know and fundamentally this land is not our house 0.95
00:07:02.480 this is stolen land but we live here and I pledge allegiance to being you know class trader race
00:07:09.940 traitor to believing in in a visionary magical re-enchanted tomorrow that has liberation for all
00:07:20.800 and and so I want to dance with Diana Ross around my house as I believe in that you know I want my
00:07:29.060 resistance to be joyful and I want love written on the ceiling and that's my prescription for this
00:07:34.880 week yeah i feel like january really is sort of like symbolic of that feeling because on on the
00:07:44.080 one side it's like a new year and a new dawn a new day a new star and a new all this but at the same
00:07:51.660 time like if you live in a climate like ours like you're buried and freezing and it's dark at 4 30
00:08:02.980 in the afternoon and it can really be like literal and metaphorical like a massive weight
00:08:11.840 on you that's trying to stop you from having this new new world and and this is how we operate within
00:08:19.800 history too right like we know that you know to quote Anne Shirley Anne of Green Gables like
00:08:26.640 tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it but at the same time like but yesterday you know
00:08:32.800 People were being enslaved. And this morning, people are still being enslaved. And we have the whole weight of human history that almost wants to convince us that it's not our house, that we just need to be sad and contending with the past.
00:08:54.380 You know, how do we make the past work for us? How do we, how do we bring it into the present? How do we build a house out of, out of tools that we cobble together? You know, how do we do that?
00:09:07.140 And I am under this weight, you know, it's like a physical exhaustion having to like very zen in its way because it is just like moving snow from one place to another and then moving more snow that fell while you were moving that first snow.
00:09:29.180 It's like, it's never going to stop. You're always going to have to keep working until summer when it melts. But then it's time to plant the garden or, you know, it's always going to be something.
00:09:40.760 But I brought somebody that really like, for me, musically encompasses this January vibe of like, me personally, depression, exhaustion, anxiety, like that give up feeling of like, it's not going to make any difference anyway.
00:10:00.560 This is like the depression monster that lives in my head and talks to me.
00:10:05.220 um but also like jubilation like norma tenega did i say the name yet i didn't um i brought
00:10:13.000 norma tenega who is like um a california folk singer you know came to prominence in the 60s
00:10:19.580 kind of typically um of of mexican heritage and i brought a few of her songs because
00:10:27.000 she's probably most famous for the song you're dead which um became the theme song for um what
00:10:36.600 we do in the shadows and so that's the theme song for that there's a show about vampires so you know
00:10:42.520 you're dead you're dead you're dead it makes sense but i sort of like imagine the lyrics this
00:10:49.700 of this song as like my depression personified. It's like that voice in your head that's like,
00:10:57.980 I'm going to read you some of the lyrics and you listeners, Risa, you can tell me if this
00:11:02.520 like resonates with the bad voice in your head. Don't sing if you want to live long.
00:11:08.520 They have no use for your song. You're dead. You'll never get a second chance. Plan all your 0.93
00:11:15.480 moves in advance. Stay dead. Stay dead and out of this world. Run fast. Don't stand in the sun.
00:11:23.500 There's too much work to be done. Don't ever talk with your eyes. Be sure that you compromise.
00:11:31.000 Hear the unloved weeping like rain. Guard your sleep from the sound of their pain.
00:11:37.080 when you smile and it tears your face it's time for the inhuman race now your hope 0.99
00:11:45.860 and compassion is gone you've sold out your dream to the world stay dead 0.99
00:11:53.200 like holy fuck right but that's that's the level like we hear you know therapists all the time 0.99
00:12:01.520 are like if you if you talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself like you wouldn't have 0.98
00:12:06.720 So this song to me is like that personified voice of like, don't sing, don't stand in the sun, there's too much to do. You're already dead. And when I say dead, I don't even necessarily mean like corporeally, but like that feeling of being dead inside, like, that's what depression is for me anyway.
00:12:29.000 And again, listeners, maybe your experience is different, but it's just like your body refuses to care about things that you used to love and you don't get the excitement.
00:12:42.020 You're dead.
00:12:44.220 And stay dead, because that's the safe way to protect yourself from hearing the unloved weeping in the rain. 1.00
00:12:52.780 Guard yourself so you can sleep through that sound of the pain of other people.
00:12:59.000 So if you're in that space, like, let's give this song the personification and then let it go.
00:13:07.420 You know, we've listened to you, we've listened to your message, now you can go and I'm going to flip the Norma Tanega record and we're going to go into, like, Exaltation, Jubilation is the name of the next song I want to bring.
00:13:21.300 Like, it's so funny that Norma really captures, like, maybe she was manic-depressive, I don't know, because these two songs are very much like, I'm in a depression, and now I'm manic, and everything's great, and I've got all this energy, and let's dance, and let's run, which can be amazing, but also just, like, equally oppressive, you know?
00:13:43.420 But jubilation goes, like, come free with me.
00:13:49.580 Come and love me.
00:13:51.940 Jubilation, jubilation, it's the time to live.
00:13:56.020 Come be one, two, three with me, you.
00:13:58.840 And it's bouncy.
00:14:00.160 Like, you're dead is very like, and jubilation is like,
00:14:04.940 but there's a place that Norma goes in between these two places,
00:14:11.520 which is the absurd.
00:14:13.420 You know, for me, The Absurd is, like, this separate category of, like, existing in the world, and that's a song that I think was kind of her first hit, and I'm using hit in quotation marks, you know, she's kind of an outsider artist forever.
00:14:29.100 um and it's a song called walking my cat named dog and it really is just like i'm walking around
00:14:38.140 the town and talking to people and my cat's name is dog and dog is a good old cat and what do you
00:14:43.920 think of that well that's where i'm at the end of the song is just that's where i'm at that's where
00:14:49.920 i'm at that's where i'm at happy sad and crazy wonder choking up my mind with perpetual dreaming
00:14:58.260 And so the absurdity of that to me is like that place between depression and mania, where you just sort of recognize that the world is an absurd place that we're just trying to navigate.
00:15:13.480 And most people don't know what they're doing because we're contending with a constantly changing world, like that movie Inception, where they're inside dreams.
00:15:25.060 And so the laws of physics are changing. Like, that's how I feel sometimes being in the world. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, I just want to sit by the fire. I can't contend with the laws of physics changing around me and the ceiling becoming the floor. It feels like that.
00:15:43.200 But that's a comfortable place for me within the absurd. So again, I just want to, like, encourage myself and you, Risa, and our listeners to sort of be with Norma Tanega in her artistic processing of, like, the whole range of human experience, you know?
00:16:05.220 We can write songs about our depression. We don't have to pretend to be happy. And we can write songs about our jubilation. We don't have to be sad all the time because the world is not a perfect place. We're still allowed to have jubilation.
00:16:20.280 But we're also allowed to just, like, walk around town with our cat named Dog, talking to the neighbors and swinging your feet.
00:16:29.680 And that's where I'm at.
00:16:31.540 That's where I'm at.
00:16:33.240 That's where I'm at.
00:16:34.860 Thank you, Norma Tanega.
00:16:36.160 you know speaking of processing that strange like bouleverse or like that strange like
00:16:46.420 tipping that happens in our minds like and in our lives through art you remind me of
00:16:52.060 Anna Halperin so I'm gonna add this uh if it's of interest take um to the prescription of these
00:17:00.560 songs she she she's kind of one of the four runners of like dance and art therapy and in part
00:17:09.840 because she was very sick she was looking at the ways that dance especially community dance could
00:17:14.800 bring people together and then she got very sick but what happens is she she describes like
00:17:21.200 she would do this process where she would draw a self-portrait and then dance it surrounded by a
00:17:29.800 community that would call pieces out um and drawing is also you know scrawling words and
00:17:36.200 scrawling feelings whenever but she says she tried to do the self-portrait and she couldn't do it
00:17:40.920 she couldn't do the like self-portrait that felt um like it was being asked for like the
00:17:49.620 conventional self-portrait she couldn't do she couldn't draw herself the way she thought she
00:17:53.920 was seen um until she flipped the paper and she started to draw like the ugly thing that was
00:18:01.220 inside or like the the part of herself maybe that screamed we're dead you know that that it feels
00:18:09.140 like ripping when we smile like you know she had to draw that part first and draw where that was
00:18:15.000 in her body and then she had to dance that part and she says she danced it with her community
00:18:22.320 around her calling out to her that one they were holding her and protecting her and two pushing her
00:18:26.640 to go further like dance it deeper that that find it further go further scream further you know like
00:18:33.060 let it all the way out and only then after she had done that could she turn the paper
00:18:37.880 and draw and then dance a version of herself that was joyful and that was somehow integrated right
00:18:47.020 that somehow like knew that there could be a cat called dog that like that the upside downs of
00:18:52.020 everything are are there like they can't just be repressed it has to be all the way brought to the
00:18:56.500 surface and part of the picture and then of course like the piece for her is that that
00:19:01.880 helped cure her cancer or you know she went back and and went for a cancer diagnosis and it was
00:19:08.400 gone and she says she always forgets to tell that part of the story because it's not important to
00:19:13.140 her because she doesn't she's not saying this is like a prescription for how we cure cancer
00:19:17.280 but she does say that like these dance moments together can help us move through acceptance
00:19:23.860 and terror and all of those parts of reconciling like life-shattering new truths um that's what
00:19:32.380 that made me think of so add that and also in this if you if you listen to this prescription
00:19:37.880 on the podcast but you don't get our newsletter that's fine but um you could also get the
00:19:43.880 newsletter if you wanted and in it we do a weekly version of the prescription that links to this
00:19:51.360 audio but has a ton of other stuff and in that one this week I'm going to include prescriptions
00:19:57.860 that were shared from the coven this week um so a bunch of other of your picture them out there
00:20:05.400 in the world your hundreds hundreds member family coven offering you their thoughts on how they're
00:20:12.160 surviving this week there's a bunch yeah there's a bunch of good ones I'm excited um I just want
00:20:19.760 to say something about Anna Halperin like I remember watching this video where a different
00:20:25.560 dancer was performing something that Anna had choreographed for herself like she she was an
00:20:30.900 old woman by this point you know or older I don't know exactly she was probably like my age like 0.61
00:20:36.300 She's an old lady, the golden girls.
00:20:39.540 And she's so emotional watching this person perform this dance,
00:20:42.980 a very, very personal dance that she had choreographed for herself.
00:20:48.060 And you make me think about that and about,
00:20:51.840 I was talking to somebody about a project that they're working on.
00:20:57.160 And they told me, like, I want to keep it sort of universal.
00:21:02.480 I don't want it to be too personal.
00:21:04.900 And I was like, hold up, because this is where we find the universality. The deeper, more personal we go. And it seems, again, we live inside a paradox. We're witches, it's fine. It seems like, you know, the more personal it is, the less universal it would be. That's how those words are defined, you know?
00:21:25.780 But it's the opposite. Strangely and magically, the more personal we are in our story, in our dance, in our self-portrait, the more other people can relate to it and be healed by it.
00:21:41.640 We don't like to use the word healing too much because it sort of implies that there's something wrong with you, but I think that there's a place in that to feel better.
00:21:51.780 so maybe let's just instead of healing we could say like feeling better about or getting right
00:21:58.540 with or being okay with um so again I just I just want to encourage those of you who are listening
00:22:06.180 to to get deeply deeply deeply personal um with your dance and with your songs and with your
00:22:15.620 self-portraits because that that's where we find a connection to other people deep inside that
00:22:22.060 paradox of the more personal it is the more universal it becomes there's something really
00:22:27.920 fundamentally fucking beautiful about that to me so I'm going to add that to the prescription
00:22:35.960 get as personal as you can and see how that attracts other people to tell the truth too 0.52
00:22:42.700 yeah and i'll just add our covenant mate zoe uh drew attention to the audrey lord essay
00:22:52.460 um the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house and sort of feeling like
00:23:00.660 you know why i i won't paraphrase zoe but the idea of like centering the master is still
00:23:07.780 really sort of leaning into a white supremacist tool and structure of the world. And Zoe drew
00:23:13.880 attention to a later part in that essay where Audre Lorde writes, in a world of possibility
00:23:20.320 for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.
00:23:27.420 And so I want to sit in that part. That whole essay we'll link to, and thanks Zoe.
00:23:33.120 um so important to think through the context of that phrase that gets thrown around a lot
00:23:38.920 and let's lean into a world of possibility where we center our personal visions
00:23:44.040 because that personal vision for for liberation will will be those new tools hybrid tools i think
00:23:51.760 that and new and new vocabularies and new vocabularies you know i i'm always quoting
00:23:58.700 Audre Lorde. You know, it's like, it's like a fundamentalist Christian quoting the Bible. I'm
00:24:04.460 just like an evangelist for, for Audre Lorde. And that, that quote, I brought up in the, in the
00:24:13.140 context of like, we can't grind our way out of the grind. You know, we can't hustle our way out
00:24:20.600 of hustle culture. But in the same way that you and I, Risa, have sort of replaced like post
00:24:25.880 capitalism with pre-utopian I think that's what what Zoe's talking about and forgive me Zoe if
00:24:31.080 I'm wrong but like why why is this the vocabulary that centers you know notions of slavery so
00:24:38.420 yeah it's important to remember that we we can't grind our way out of the grind we can't hate our
00:24:46.800 way out of hate we can't you know cruel our way out of cruelty um my husband always says to me 0.98
00:24:56.560 when I'm like dealing with my family or whatever and just because they're assholes don't let that 1.00
00:25:02.020 turn you into an asshole because you're not an asshole and that was huge to me that was like a 0.99
00:25:07.940 revelation like my whole life I've been like fight fire with fire or if somebody's mean to you like 1.00
00:25:12.740 be mean back to them or whatever like you know don't don't stand down whatever nonsense i had
00:25:19.000 but like we need to come up with a new method we need to come up with a new vocabulary for
00:25:24.600 the pre-utopia not for post-capitalism but for the pre-utopia yeah and the larger context of
00:25:30.940 that essay from audrey lord is like you know she's she gave this paper at a conference where
00:25:36.240 she was one of two black women invited to talk at a feminist conference it's all these white women
00:25:41.260 And that's sort of the context is, like, we won't come up with anything new by doing things in the same old way with the same people. 0.95
00:25:52.280 So that's something we're always trying to learn from.
00:25:55.340 we will have our black witch council coming up in february as we do every year and more and more
00:26:04.820 um creating opportunities for us to learn from other people and from each other to build that
00:26:11.740 other america that other reality together with all the voices of possibility
00:26:17.540 because it's my house
00:26:19.820 I thought you were going to do Norma
00:26:22.020 it is
00:26:23.580 it's my house Diana Ross and Norma
00:26:25.660 Tanega like jubilation
00:26:27.540 jubilation it's the time to live
00:26:30.100 bless the 0.99
00:26:31.680 fucking me to that 1.00
00:26:32.620 and bless the fucking me 1.00
00:26:47.540 and all of me love myself and all of me i love i love i love myself and all of me 0.99
00:26:55.440 if you want to support the missing witches project join the coven find out how at missing witches.com