Transcript: THREE BLACK MEN on the World as Ritual /368
Ayana Young Hello For The Wild community. This week we are thrilled to bring you a special conversation from a dear friend of the podcast, Bayo Akomolafe. Recorded while in Ghana for the Three Black Men tour, this conversation features the voices of Bayo Akomolafe, Resmaa Menekem, Orland Bishop, Victoria Santos, and Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin—all of whom were involved with the conversation and presentation of the Three Black Men tour. In 2023. Resmaa, Bayo, and Orland shared space as they visited three cities across three continents, tracing a diasporic route in reverse from Los Angeles and the United States to Salvador and Brazil, and finally to Accra in Ghana. These three visionary Black men, sharing their leading edges are inviting us into a radical re-imagination of how we respond to our time. They sense into emergent possibilities triangulating towards a synthesis of new forms, new magic, and new directions.
In their beloved writings and teachings, these explorers investigate community, racial and social justice, individual and collective trauma, ritual and healing new cultural forms, the promise of the monstrous, and deep interior capacities. Their theme connects vibrant conversations on matters of embodiment, exploration of the sacred and the ancestral, and visions of other places of power and alternative futures. This conversation offers insight into the thoughts that moved through the team as they undertook this journey.
Orland Bishop is the founder and director of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combined new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. Shade Tree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland's work in healing and human development is framed by an extreme study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology, and Indigenous cosmologies primarily those of South and West Africa.
Resmaa Menekem is an American author and psychotherapist specializing in the effects of trauma on the human body and the relationship between trauma, white body supremacy, and racism in America. He is the founder of Justice Leadership Solutions, a leadership consultancy firm where he dedicates his expertise to coaching leaders through civil unrest, organizational change, and community building. Menekem created Cultural Cymatics which utilizes the body and resilience as mechanisms for growth. He is the best selling author of My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies and was described by On Being's Krista Tippett, quote, "Activates the wisdom of ancestors in a very new science about how all of us carry the history and traumas behind everything we collapse into the word 'race' in our bodies."
Bayo Akomolafe is the chief curator of the Emergence Network, a speaker, author, fugitive, neomaterialist, compost activist, public intellectual and Yoruba poet. But when he takes himself less seriously, he is a father of Alethea and Kyah and the grateful life partner of EJ as well as the sworn washer of nightly archives of dishes. The conveyor of the concepts of post activism, transraciality and ontofugitivity, Bayo is a widely-celebrated international speaker, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books: These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, Letter to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home, and We Will Tell Our Own Stories: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the executive director and chief curator for the Emergence Network and hosts the online post activist course We Will Dance With Mountains.
Victoria Santos' work is rooted in a far reaching vision of human potential. She has a deep commitment to our collective liberation. Her work emphasizes intersectional awareness, individual and collective healing, and compassionate action. She is the founder and director of the Center for Healing and Liberation, an organization focused on healing wellness and racial justice practices. Additionally, as founder and co-executive Director of BIPOC ED Coalition, Victoria is part of a cultural change movement that prioritizes health and wellness. Victoria advocates for more resources to flow towards BIPOC-led nonprofits and calls in philanthropic partners and other allies to reimagine their roles and commitment to working with BIPOC-led organizations in more powerful ways. She is the co-creator of the BIPOC ED Sabbatical program, and the Respite and Restoration program in Washington State. Victoria knows the power of community and the wisdom that can emerge from it. Her work is guided by the deep knowing that everyone is needed and that when we offer each other our compassionate listening, we cultivate our collective freedom. Victoria is a Spanish fluent, Afro Latina immigrant born in the Dominican Republic living on land of the Snohomish People. Although somewhat nomadic as of late.
Omonblanks is a creative director, festival curator, producer, and programmer. He has a 15 year career in music, film, and as an indie label and record producer. He is the founder and creative director of TAC, The Art Concept organization, a documentation and archive focused platform interested in studying African and Black societies from community, city, and country perspectives. This is where he researches documents towards the building of an archive.
We hope you enjoy this look into the pressing questions of our times as discussed by these incredible individuals.
Bayo Akomolafe It's good to be with you all in this turning of the tide, this crease, this beautiful crease in the fabric of our gathering together. It's been wonderful being here hosted in this beautiful country, Ghana, whose story is intricately tied with the saga of blackness. And I will first go around and let's introduce ourselves just to bring ourselves into the room. So I'll just start from the brains, the beauty, the heart, the muscle behind this beautiful project, Victoria.
Victoria Santos Thank you brother Bayo. My name is Victoria Santos and I hail from the Dominican Republic and so it feels really wonderful to be here in Accra, and in... my body recognizes this soil. Thank you so much, brother.
Bayo Akomolafe And before I get to brother Resmaa, I will introduce the spirit of this of this particular iteration. Brother Omonblanks is the organizer of the Ghana leg of this Three Black Men project and I'm just going to invite him to introduce himself.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin Yeah, thank you very much. So I'm Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin. I always now explain the meaning of my name. Okhiogbe meaning war, W-A-R, won't kill me. Omonhinmin, which is my surname means 'this child will save me.' So I'm a complete embodiment of my name. I find calmness in chaos. So, and also the entire foundation of this has been built on activated home. For me, my body's home. So what does it mean to be at home when you are away from your physical home? And that was the spirit for this. And I want to thank Victoria, because when we had our first meetings and series of meetings, I kept on saying, "Would you allow me articulate this the way I think?" and that permission was given. And yes, we are here now.
Bayo Akomolafe And Victoria was just chilling.
Unknown Which we never see. [laughter]
Bayo Akomolafe Just chilling and relaxing and vibing. Brother, thank you so much.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin Thank you.
Bayo Akomolafe Our gratitude, our long gratitude to you. And then, he needs no introduction. He wears sequined gloves and socks and he does the moonwalk on occasion.
Unknown With a purple guitar.
Bayo Akomolafe My big brother, Resmaa Menakem, as part of this trio of brotherhood exploring blackness, Resmaa, do you want to say something else?
Resmaa Menakem First of all, thank you, brother. Thank you for hosting this particular thing, but thank you for agreeing to go on this journey with me and do this. And I'm saying that not just to you, but to Omon, Victoria, brother Orland. This, this this... you know, you always hear people talk about, you know, this journey and stuff like that. But it's one thing to go on something together, it's an entirely different thing to stay with the experience. You could always go someplace. You know what I mean? But sometimes you get in the middle of going and you like, I don't know if I want to continue this. And I just appreciate how it's something that I'm working with in my life and that this trip has actually helped me. It's kind of seared some things in me. And it's the peace around tenderness and softness and flexibility in the kind of coming to grips with the warring pieces of me. And the kind of monstrous pieces in me that and this experience here in Ghana has really like just all the way down to the images of W.E.B Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah, and you know what I mean? Like, it's just like, I've... my elders have talked to me about them. And so then for me to go to W.E.B. Du Bois' grave, it's just like, you know, so I just want to thank everybody for this experience. It's just... It couldn't have... like this experience couldn't have been any better for me.
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you. And I will introduce myself as well. My name is Bayo Akomolafe and I, at this time, I'm acutely aware of the... of what prophecy is. And as I've been saying for some time, prophecy isn't merely predicting the future. You know, like forecasting or analyzing trends of futurism. No, prophecy isn't that. Prophecy is... prophecy doesn't look like a highway, prophecy looks like a crossroads. It's a reconvening of the past and the present in the future to do other kinds of work. It's an invitation to look again. And this entire project right from, you know, the outset the gates in LA, passing through Salvador and then landing here in Ghana has been a beautiful invitation to look again, to reexamine, to turn things over, to play with, to undo, to unfurl, to break open. So I'm grateful that we are here at this turning of the tide, and that we can do new things together, and the Three Black Men project.
And just in the way, this is a co-emergent, open ended process, we've just had brother Orland join us. And brother Orland is part of this beautiful assemblage of power and the otherwise that is the Three Black Men project. Resmaa has introduced himself. I have as well. We're just going to open up space for you to also
introduce yourself and say something about what it means to be here. Brother Orland.
Orland Bishop Here is expanding every moment and I want to be more here for a longer time. And today, I realize it's coming to this point. But what I know is here is our relationships that I think will be for the lifetime. And to have returned, to resume what our ancestors had already started. Time is no longer just a lost space. But it's here. Time has been waiting for us. And I felt today that what I've integrated into my time body is a life story that have been in the different aspects of the soil, the rain, the sun, and the people. So I am very different. I feel myself to be so. And sleep works differently. Nutrition works differently. So this is kind of accepting myself again.
Bayo Akomolafe Accepting myself again.
Orland Bishop I think because the fundamental thing about initiation is return. Again, not to what was before.
Unknown Yes, yes, yes.
Orland Bishop But to the agreements, for me, that makes me more useful to what I'm trying to bring into the world.
Unknown Beautiful.
Orland Bishop So my will is open.
Bayo Akomolafe You're welcome, brother.
Unknown Thank you.
Orland Bishop You're welcome.
Bayo Akomolafe Brother Orland Bishop is from Guyana and with this beautiful village that has been traveling, we've been hosted and and welcomed to Ghana. And just before we say anything more about this exploration, for those of us who are hearing about Three Black Men for the first time, I think we just want to tell very briefly the story of the project. And sister Victoria will say something about the story. What is Three Black Men?
Victoria Santos Well, brother Bayo, you know, every time we tell the story it changes. And it changes because it's in some ways, more gets revealed every time because it's part of us seeing in each other and seeing ourselves within the community that gathers we see more and more. And so I can tell you that, for me, it started out with a dream and a desire to have you been in conversations with each other. And part of it came out of my own sense of almost desperation with what I was seeing the way that Black men in particular in the United States, which is where I live, we're being portrayed. And the dialogue that I was hearing did not help to elevate the consciousness. And I wasn't getting something and I was feeling I get the word that keeps coming to me and it's have shown up various different times is unprotected. Unprotected. And so I ended up spending time with my brother, my blood brother who lives in in upstate New York. And I had an opportunity to see his life and see the way that he has been over-policed, over-monitored and the hyper vigilance that he has in his body as well as the way that he have to navigate.
And I realized that I had been... because I spent the past 30 plus years working in predominantly spaces that were forming and shaping and looking at women's issues. And I realized that I actually there was a part of me that had really ignored, men, and Black men in particular, and ignore the plight that my brothers have been under. And when I kind of confronted it myself, I saw some counsel from a dear friend and she gave me some guidance, which was not... to stay out of the binary and not just be thinking, Oh, I'll have to have you have a conversation, but to really invite all three of you. And when you responded back after I sent the email and you were like, Yes, yes, it was. So it felt like the energy was so clear and so pure and beautiful. And I was so excited that immediately I called my brother Orland.
[Musical break]
Victoria Santos So, Orland, I want to throw it to you now, to just, you can continue the… what happened when you heard that, when you heard me speaking about this?
Orland Bishop We, brother Bayo and I, met in Brazil. I was like do we get to do more of that?
Bayo Akomolafe Yes, yes. Yes.
Orland Bishop You know, the relational space was quite clear. But I felt, also, that you don't ask for something until unless you know what it could be. You know, you're... You have nurtured a lot. And I felt intended, intention, to give something to you, in service of. So it wasn't just about us and was including the dream that you brought. And that there were times when you said you know, the three black men, I'm saying, And Victoria… because there's no three black men.
Bayo Akomolafe Or Victoria and the Three Black Men. [laughter]
Orland Bishop So there was... because one thing I know, there are people who trust you with what they do in the world, or what they need to be doing in the world. And it felt like that was one of the opportunities. And yes, do you know how many people have tried to do this with us? And it wasn't either the right time or the right... you know, or whatever it was. But when I said yes, it worked for me and for us. Yes. So there's something else that wasn't just about our intentions alone. And it became clearer and clearer and clearer as we moved through. Look how many people have shown up to do it.
Bayo Akomolafe And from LA, we flew to Bahia, Salvador, Brazil… And, Resmaa, do you want to just say something about being in Brazil?
Resmaa Menakem Yeah. You know, and I think, for me, Bahia, Salvador— one of the things that did for me is that I kept hearing you two talk about technology, the technology of Black people and the technology of what we have. And tech... not technology in terms of Twitter or something like that, but technology in terms of what it is that we as Black people have that's so tied to creation that if we could just begin to cultivate it and act like it is actually intelligence as opposed to throw away things like Oh, it's just aesthetic, right? That's what Bahia did for me, like.. like I remember a couple of times where we would be talking and then people just breaking in dance and everybody started dancing, you know. And how much joy, how much... it didn't like... it didn't like usurp what we needed to say. It actually added to it actually. Like you know what I mean? It actually, that technology in Salvador, in Bahia, helped me go this is like, this is like real... like this… like a tangible thing. And so ever since then, I've been you know... I've been writing. I've been talking about the technology of blackness. The technology in... not just the pigmentation of blackness but the technology of it and Ghana just like blew the doors open for.
Unknown Beautiful brother.
Bayo Akomolafe And that brings us to Ghana, the organizer, the engine room for this...
Resmaa Menakem The conductor!
Bayo Akomolafe The conductor. Everything, his voice, his voice. The stentorian voice was powerful in convening us to space, attending. When it needed to be tender. It was tender. When it needed to be gargantuan it was [unknown]. Know that I'm Nigerian and, Everyone get on the bus. Everyone knew to get on the bus. And you need that. We need… we need in unprecedented times an organizer, a convener.
But Omon, do you want to say something about Ghana—what it has meant for you and the vortices of experiences streaming through and how you've been able to hold this space with the team?
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin What does it mean to make space for influenced space makers, you know? I wanted you all to see that time was slowing down for each of you. I wanted to make a pot of soup, I love to cook, you know. So I wanted to make a pot of soup that everybody can eat and it activates home. Not a pot of soup where everybody agrees that this is what we're eating for everybody has a different reality. You know, each plate presents something different. So, and that's not easy to make. That's why every time you see, I always say thank you to Victoria. It's not a thank you for giving me this it's a thank you for letting go. You know, so that I can make the space. So it's been amazing to see people come in, you know, and find the things that they need to find.
Yeah, so Ghana for me is it's [silent moment] this is how it should be, you know. And I'm not saying that in a prescriptive way, like, Oh, this is no… But this is how it should be or whatever that means. You know, this is how it should be. You know, when my grandmother transitioned last year, June. I cared for her until, and I don't mean physically the responsibility of taking care of her heart in this last bits of our life. You know, it's a responsibility that nobody can really explain. And in a transition, I've not been able to go back, you know, to see where she lived last, to see the things she has left behind. Nobody can access that but me, because everybody knows she has left it for me. But this thing that I understand is that I don't need to go there to get all the things she has given me. And that's what, for me, this space is. It's for every single person who has made it to be able to access things that are not tangible. Yeah.
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you, brother. Thank you, there's a lot going on there. And it only partly explains the warmth that we all felt being here. But it wasn't just the warmth of the tourist. It was the warmth of and the potency of future possibilities. It felt like you had located a crack in the sky. And you were, you know, conveying down gifts from this opening in the sky to our bellies and to our heads and to our arms and to our bodies. So, again, thank you very much, again and again.
Three Black Men is a spiritual vocation, a vocation in thought leadership, is a vocation in black scholarship. It's a vocation at the end of times when new kinds of thought, new kinds of postures, new kinds of prayers, new kinds of rituals need to be performed. And it follows... it's new and it's old. It's old because it draws and is nourished by the breasts of legacies, prestigious thought that has preceded us. The... I'm not going to drop names now because that will take 30 minutes to get through, but we are drawing powerfully from people that have gone before us to address these moments. I will pay particular attention to the words of Caribbean scholar Aimé Césaire when he said and C.L.R. James, particularly when he said Black studies is not just for Black people, it’s for addressing the man. And by the man, he meant the colonial enterprise of oppression that continues to put bodies under. How do we address that? Every time the world hardens, cracks are the first responders and cracks are the bedrock, or the space for blackness to thrive.
I want us brothers to speak particularly about the themes that have innovated this exploration, especially how we framed it in the beginning: trauma, ritual, and the promise of the monstrous. We had design ideas, and I don't think just for folks to know that the world is more than design. And the world has hidden careers of its own. It spills away from designation. But we did have themes guiding our meeting with communities, meeting with traditional rulers, meeting with villages, meeting with groups, meeting with people of all different kinds. I want brother Resmaa to speak about trauma, and how that has come in. What are the questions emerging for you? Or what's staying here?
Resmaa Menakem So for me, you know, my understanding of trauma has emerged and evolved since I've been in this project. You know, that's like... especially like trauma as it relates to the body, trauma as it relates to racialize trauma. Those are kind of like the ways that I move in. But this idea of trauma as a thwarting energy, as a drawing apparatus that thwarts what is emerging, possible, and resourced. Right, it doesn't kill it. It just thwarts it, right. And we can get conditioned by the thwarting. And one of the things that I've appreciated is that like even this experience that we have in here, one of the things that I've never been involved in a large project like this, in which brother Omon deliberately bought in intimacy and care. Like, like the level of intimacy and care in this type of project I've never... I haven ever seen this before. I've seen people be nice. I've seen people [unknown] schedule. I've seen that, you know what I mean? But not to the degree... I mean, so I'll just... let me just say like this. So down to the detail of us going to the dungeon with our shoes off, the somatic—and what I mean by somatic is from the Swahili word 'soma,' which means 'to learn to read.' And in the Latin word 'body,' right. Like, I've incorporated the idea of both those ideas of soma. And that, when we were... there was so much learning and reading that I'm starting to see now from a lot of the experiences that this brother has put into place. Like the walking barefoot into there and then peering off to the right and noticing the ocean and hearing the ocean as we're walking barefoot to the dungeon was such a genius move in terms of intimacy. Like before we even get there, there's an intimacy that's starting to happen with the cobblestones in the heat and having a walk on your toes and it was... [laughter] you know, what I mean? Like, like, like, in so, so...
So the Three Black Men thing for me has emerged and evolved into this really, kind of seminal understanding of intimacy and care which is the center of blackness. Like when we're talking about, like the sloshing of us as people right? When we talk about the gurg– ... I said this earlier the gurgling of creation which is blackness. It is that we are a representation of that and what we have to begin to do and brother Orland talked about this yesterday... we have to begin to strip away all of the things that people have put on blackness and put on these things and begin to like not return as in 'we were once kings and queens or black excellence,' you know sh— I can't say that word. [laughter] But would you know what I mean.. like you know, [unknown] 10th and all of that stuff, you know, and I'm not knocking my ancestors or people saying it. I'm just simply saying there has to be something more mooring—
Bayo Akomolafe Anchoring—
Resmaa Menakem And anchoring than that, that I know myself to be connected to creation differently. then just the pigmentation pieces. I'm not saying the pigmentation pieces aren't important. I'm saying that the pigmentation pieces have to be moored in the architecture and the principle of blackness and each step, each leg of this journey has deepened that peacefully.
[Musical break]
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you Resmaa. Thank you. We've been talking about the brace right? All the exterior exoskeleton that is taken on in order to preserve ourselves in a world that no longer seems like it's working for anyone, for anyone. And that brace, that exoskeleton is constantly curdled by the invitation of tenderness to lose its hard edges, you know, to lose his hard edges and to become a lot more porous. This idea of things, of the world being a practice. The world is a practice. The world isn't just world containing practices. The world itself is a practice. The world is ritual and that's what we're thinking about when we also encoded the story of ritual in this cross continental vocation we call Three Black Men. But Orland, could you speak to this idea of ritual, the stories emanating from this place, the invitations, whatever is coming from your depths about ritual, these times, and especially situating it within the journeys we undertook across the world.
Orland Bishop Rituals move energies within the context of thresholds, right? So something… Something is here and then it's not. It's a kind of vessel for what replaces what within the context of a noor, the lever, seeker—you know, the different titles for where the ritual begins and what flows because of the intentions of one of those roles in the idea that the archetypal world that forms the pathway for something to change requires someone to put something in. And this unique kind of divination for someone to look into the realm of possibilities and say, "I will actually reach in and bring something back that is needed now" from all of those things. Rituals have given us remarkable ways to create life and meanings around life. And at the time and space where collapse is what it is… what it is in our world, it's the fundamental thing that's left. Because we've created so many status rituals to position people in roles that have nothing to do with ritual.
Unknown Wow! Right.
Orland Bishop The rituals that people do now only actually avoid and denies the existence of other intelligences that can make a better world. So like, why would you choose, you know, certain people to put in power that actually makes the world less vibrant? So when they leave office it's like, okay, we're in debt. We're in, you know, we're in such dilemma because they don't know the role of ritual.
Unknown Yeah.
Orland Bishop So in this… in the sense what… why do I think we have restored in our... it's the architecture of mystery around a threshold or a door. So we went to the door of no return and came back out of the door of return, the same door. What is the conceptual intention that makes the same materials space different? And everything changes when you go through one side and then come back the other side. In a matter of just minutes you're a different person seconds on two different sides of the same reality. So for me, the human being is a ritualist. In the fact that we don't allow ourselves to just repeat things when we know the power of what we're doing. We can create. We can let go. We can change. We can heal. We could... And so I think for for for my practice with rituals will be what currencies are still with us that can make rituals a radical space renewing this world? What currencies do we still have? And can we activate them? Because we live in a time in which there's so many restraints, and substitutions for what actually allows life to be optimum in a world, rituals have to come back, more and more.
Resmaa Menakem Can I respond?
Bayo Akomolafe Yes, please.
Resmaa Menakem This piece of that… what brother said earlier about how things are here and then they go away... I think, I think, is it disconnected from ritual? In that part of what happens is that we think ritual means to do the same thing over and over and over again.
Bayo Akomolafe Yes, that's how we use the term.
Resmaa Menakem That's how we use the term. But what brother Orland is talking about really is a... is how it functions. How ritual actually functions, right? He's saying there is a time where a ritual begins to almost atrophy itself. It does. There's a loosening of muscle and there's no... There's not enough energy, people are still doing it and it doesn't take. There isn't...There is no muscle to it, it's just what people are doing. And what he's saying... What I hear him saying is that in those points, we need somebody else who understands. Like, we need a holder, we need a seer. We need those those roles have to be activated in a way--
Bayo Akomolafe Yes.
Resmaa Menakem That says that particular ritual there needs to be something else that needs to... That ritual is now creating the decay by which the other system can now come up through. It actually increased the nutrients. The decay of that particular ritual literally creates the nutrients for the new ritual to come about but if you don't have people that are... that don't need permission.
Bayo Akomolafe Yes. Yeah.
Resmaa Menakem You need the fugitive. You need the trickster. You need the seers. You need people to say, You should be playing. You should be playing.
Bayo Akomolafe Yes.
Resmaa Menakem You should be playing, because in the playing that piece will begin to emerge forth. In the not playing… in the not playing you do a disservice not only to yourself, because your purpose is not emerging, but you do a disservice to creation itself is an investment.
[Musical break]
Bayo Akomolafe And I would just... I'll just bring us to a place. I'll say a few things about the monstrous, the space of the monstrous. First of all, just to trace where we've been... Trauma is connected to the loss or the rigidity of ritual, if you will. When things... when we brace up—when we become fixed—we have a crisis of form, which is, in other words, a crisis of ritual. And it's in that crisis that new forms of ritual are needed, but for new forms of ritual to take, new rules need to be proliferated. New energies need to burst forth. The archetype of the leader, the archetype of the priest, the archetype of the trickster all need to come up. And this is where the monstrous takes root. So they're all... these things are not disconnected and thrown together. They literally trace out a thematic score, if you will.
I've been thinking about the monstrous in terms of this edge, you know, and, or rather more playfully, as a jigsaw puzzle. In a jigsaw puzzle, you expect, if the company knows its stuff, to get a puzzle with all the pieces. Your task is to put them all together. Imagine a scenario where you have all the pieces together but... And you've put the picture together, it's complete, there's nothing else except this one piece that doesn't belong anywhere in the puzzle. It doesn't fit the shape. It doesn't look like any of the other puzzle pieces. It's just out, you know. It doesn't even feel like an extra piece. An extra piece will replace another piece in there, but this doesn't feel like a replacement at all. So you call the company or you're complaining, and you speak with a manager. Wink, wink. You insist that they explain to you this extra piece, but they cannot account for it as well. And so you either you do one of two things: you either pathologize a piece, you toss it away, or you hold that piece as something promising. Something. Maybe it doesn't have a name yet. It's not useful, but it's something to come. Right.
And I think that's where we are. Our rituals, our modern rituals have rendered us so useful, that we're trapped. So we fit in, finally, completely. We fit in and to fit in as fast as that Chinese apocryphal curse goes. If you are entirely useful and you fit in there, sometimes fitting in becomes deeply problematic. And you want a way out, you want a different kind of ritual. You need the illegible or the non-legible for that.
White modernity is the idea that the world is fully described already. Blackness is the invitation to consider that the world is still being made. It is still being made, it is still in formation. It is not done yet. And that is where creativity and emancipation comes from. And that has been the promise of the monstrous—that in times when Africa is going through a lot of trouble, the world is going through a lot of trouble, that there is space for agency.
Unknown Yeah.
Bayo Akomolafe There's agency, there's power, there's potency, there's ritual, there's a way to go here. And maybe I just want to bring us to a close, if you will. A close that is also an opening. I'll call it a clopening, along with some of my other siblings around the world. A clopening. Where is... How would you respond to the question, where do we go from here? Responding not only on behalf of this beautiful project, but on behalf of people who are listening, are probably leaning in and wondering for a different kind of convening. Like, where do we go from here? What are your words? If blackness is care, not just pigmentation of skin? If blackness is the materiality of care. What is the care we are offering to people listening now? I'll start with my sister, Victoria, and then we'll go to Omon and Resmaa. I want Orland to end, so I will say a few words and then Orland ends. Okay, Victoria.
Victoria Santos Where do we go from here and where do I go from here? I need some time to reflect. I want to go back and look at what we have done. The time has been very compact. As you said earlier, Orland, earlier, we did this in about six months and we touched a lot of lives in this and we also touched into a lot of hopes and aspirations. And I want to, kind of, now retrace some of those and go back and attend to some of those relationships. And then we, you know, we're making a documentary as well. So we need to look at what are the needs of the documentary? And focus some energy in that. And then there's already some other things that are kind of percolating based on who's been coming around us that I want to pay attention to, like Omon is going to be coming to the US in April and I'm volunteering to host him and so there's that and yeah. So those are some of the things and then hopefully more conversations with you three to figure out, you know, what you're needing to do within your own project and also maybe something collectively but...
Bayo Akomolafe Briefly has been not to interrupt you, but we've made plans to visit Orland's home planet of Mars. [laughter]
Victoria Santos Yes, and well, I wanna move there and I have my bags packed and you just need to tell me when you're ready for me to go. So yeah, anyway, that's the sort of things that I'm like, I'm gonna look up, but first, I'm gonna have a nice long rest.
Bayo Akomolafe Please. Rest, rest, rest Yes. Brother Omon.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin Where do go from here?For me, as I move through space now a lot my intentionality is to just be me. You know, just be me and this is exactly how I've been, you know. Like you said, sometimes hard, sometimes soft. You know there's the space to know that I can be rigid and fluid and not taking any particular side and to repeat do you understand this as an issue? You know?
Bayo Akomolafe So I have, the black and the red showed up every time, I noticed that maybe many people didn't notice it, but I saw it every time, black and red.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin Yes, yes, I have no space. There is no politics, you know. So for me like that black to that pot of soup… is everyone can access. Even those people that my physical body is in disagreement with, still can enter the space. I think that's what comes next.
Bayo Akomolafe Beautiful. Radical hospitality. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Brother Resmaa...
Resmaa Menakem I'm gonna make this weak and short. Rest. I think what's next is rest. I think rest is actually a revolutionary experience for the Black body. I believe our... we've been conditioned to be overridden and be workhorses. And for us to actually claim rest and naps and mint juleps and Black men frolicking, and all of that stuff. Think, I think... I think rest. So that's what's next.
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you. Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother. I'll like brother Orland to say something and just...
Orland Bishop I have some review to do. I have not reviewed Los Angeles. I have not reviewed Bahia deeply enough to say that the architecture over time becomes consciousness. So if I'm looking at that, I'm also looking at what has moved through me—place, time, the patterns of conversations that are articulated. So the film was to show something different than my review, unconscious. So, for me, in a way I love to utilize my energies particularly in hosting the invisible realities that will never be caught on film.
Resmaa Menakem Absolutely.
Orland Bishop But in review, it comes into imagination.
Resmaa Menakem Yeah.
Orland Bishop And it's important that I have an imaginative way to look at what happened, not just a literal way. It's something… has to go into the deep, deep, deep, dark aspects of my life where the camera can't go.
Unknown The camera shouldn't go.
Orland Bishop Can't reach. And I can only do it because there's something else as a faculty for that kind of observation. So I also need the time to do it. So yeah, I'm going to make that space. So thank you brother.
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you. And I will not add anything at this time except to say thank you for the conversation. Thank you for... We've been up on a mountain. We've eaten the food of the gods. We've drank the wine of the spirits and we are here now. Mortal bodies need rest. And it is good to rest. It is good to go down now to descend again, but in an action of resting. So—
Orland Bishop Somewhere along the line someone promised us Nigerian Jollof rice. [laughter]
Bayo Akomolafe Yes, I wonder who that person is? [laughter]
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin I want to say— [laughter] I want to say that someone has been enjoying Nigerian food and...
Victoria Santos Everyday.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin But before you leave, there will be some Nigerian food. You would get pounded yam. You will get Jollof rice.
Resmaa Menakem I need some pounded yam with some simmered chicken.
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin Bayo will get his pounded yam. And Victoria, you'll get your [unknown]. You'll get your [unknown]. Yeah.
Bayo Akomolafe Thank you so much, everyone, and we'll meet you out there. Good night. Good night.
Victoria Santos Good night.
José Alejandro Rivera Thanks for listening to this episode of For The Wild. The music that opens and closes this episode is by 808 X Ri. And with courtesy of the Leaving Records record label, the music breaks you heard today are by The Growth Eternal. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Julia Jackson, Erica Ekrem, Jackson Kroopf, Evan Tenenbaum, and José Alejandro Rivera.