Transcript: BRONTË VELEZ on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, PART 1 /139
Ayana Young Hey For the Wild community, it's Ayana here. And I wanted to let you know that this is part one out of a two-part episode with brontë velez. And I also wanted to share that this is a very playful and also vulnerable conversation for brontë and I. It's not like anything we've done on the podcast so far. So we appreciate you sitting with us in this exploration, and I hope that you enjoy what you're about to hear. All right now on to the show.
brontë velez I'm excited about the kind of power that is accountable to the climate collapse right now. I'm excited about the kind of power that's accountable to consensual pleasure.
Ayana Young Welcome to For the Wild Podcast, I'm Ayana young. So today we are speaking with brontë velez. brontë, they/them, is guided by the call that “Black wellness is the antithesis of state violence,” Mark Anthony Johnson. A Black, Latinx interdisciplinary artist and designer, they are currently moved and paused by the questions, “how can we allow as much room for God to flow through and between us as possible? What affirms the God of and between us? What is in the way? How can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity? What ways can Black feminist placemaking rooted in a commemorative justice promote the memory of God, which is to say love and freedom between us.” They relate to God as the moments of divine space-time that remind us we are not separate - the moments that really belong to us, to the Earth. They encounter these questions in public theology, Black prophetic tradition, and environmental justice through their ecosocial art practices. Serving as Creative Director for Lead to Life design collaborative, media director for Oakland rooted farm and nursery planting justice, and Black queer life ever committed to humor and liberation ever marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.
Oh, my goodness, brontë. It is so good to see you, and so good to be with you, in this moment. I wanted to start with this quote from Frederick Jamison, “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” But recently, I started reading Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s, The Undercommons. And I'd like to begin this interview with a passage from Fred Moten whom you'd referenced, in our first conversation, “you talk about being able to be in two places at the same time, but also to be able to be two times in the same place. In other words, it's very much bound up with the Jameson notion of the future and the present. And classically, the prophet has access to both of those. The prophet is the one who tells the brutal truth, who has the capacity to see the absolute brutality of the already existing, and to point out and to tell that truth but also to see the other way, to see what it could be. That double sense, that double capacity, to see what's right in front of you and to see through that to what's up ahead of you.” And I just wanted to offer this passage to our listeners because it feels so very fitting for many of the topics we will be reading together in this conversation. So, brontë, thank you for being with us for sharing this time with me. I love you dearly and deeply. And like I was saying earlier, being in relationship with you is one of the sweetest gifts that I have in this life.
brontë velez I feel very excited to be in conversation with you and just grateful to be here.
Ayana Young So in the past, we've spoken about how you're thinking about the submission of white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, and this being a submission that transpires through pleasure, not shame. And often we focus on the difficulty of transition or the impossibility of imagining futures, so much so that we neglect to give creation to possible realities. And I'm eager to hear you elaborate on your definition of submission in the context and the idea of a paradigmatic shift, transpiring through pleasure-filled submission. So, essentially, what would this collapse of white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy look like feel like tastes like if it's being done out of submission through pleasure rather than through shame.
brontë velez I think it feels somehow that collapse has felt paradoxical or antithetical to pleasure. I think that this moment of the fatalistic kind of notions, accompanying late capitalist collapse just feels largely about loss. And yeah, losing resource, losing power, losing status, losing kind of a historical way of - especially white men and white supremacy - knowing itself. And I feel like a lot of the ways we (and when I say we, I mean folks leaning towards an activist framework, or folks leaning toward liberation), the kinds of ways I think we request white supremacy to surrender power often looks like reifying the shame that they've placed us inside of. So a lot of it is about like, how can we continue to re-implement and make them feel the kind of shame that all of oppression operates from and that in that punitive response to what they've done to us, maybe they'll feel kind of a glimpse of what our ancestors and we have felt in all of this time. And I also think it would serve white folks though, and the Earth in this transition, and all of us as beings, if they moved from a place of pleasure and not shame.
I think adrienne maree brown’s work with Pleasure Activism is critical. I think Audre Lord’s politic of the erotic is critical. And for me, it will look like people hearing the call to submit and surrender to the Earth: collapsing, shaking, going fugitive, as a call into a fantasy that was unimaginable, into something that might be more life-affirming. And this I mean, specifically towards white people. Because in relationship to climate apartheid, I don't think that climate collapse might look like pleasure, I'd love to revisit that. But I wonder what it would look like for white people, and especially white men, to surrender in a way that felt like where the Earth is in this dominatrix energy right now. The Earth is out with these storms and with these… Yeah, they're in this moment of like, “I'm going to bring you completely to your knees, your project of capitalism, of expansion without reciprocity, without limits, without boundaries, your project of extraction. I'm not going to have it and I'm going to bring you to your knees.”
And I'm at this point of just that I had this vision of just wanting to see, especially white men in power, I want to see them on their knees, and I want to see them give up. And I know they're tired. I know they're so tired. So I want to see them give up and I want to see them release this exasperated sigh. And I want to see us all feel that release. There's so much to say about it. But I don't think that shame is a generative tool to liberate us. And I don't feel like white people working from that and realizing the histories that they're a part of, I think we're operating from the place of shame doesn't allow you to actually be accountable. And I think surrender leads us into some other kind of pleasure for accountability, and also, restorative justice.
Ayana Young I love that vision. Oh, my goodness, I love that vision. And I think there's something so alluring and seductive about surrendering in pleasure. And not from a place of a negative type of sacrifice, like oh, “I have to give this up or I'm defeated.” We can surrender without being defeated. And patriarchy can surrender as an offering of pleasure and joy, and it's pleasurable for both parties. It doesn't have to be painful for one to surrender, and I think there's so much to that and I love that vision of white men and patriarchy and all those in power who are being destructive on their knees and worshipping the Other so that they can then be worshipped. I mean, I think it is reciprocal when we can submit when it is our time to submit. And there's so much there. And, you know, it's curious to think about submission, at least in a context of sexual submission as the process in which one lets go of a personal responsibility, and what this means for accountability. Especially for folks who think accountability is necessary because the dominant actor then becomes completely accountable and responsible for the submissive one. Do you think we need to hold the powers that be for their mistakes and injustices that they perpetrated under this paradigmatic shift, or is it a part of the pleasure that they're promised relinquishment of responsibility?
And maybe I'll read this quote from Mira Zussman, Shifts of Consciousness and Consensual S&M Bondage, “it is the bondage which is sweet, for you relinquish free will and all decision making. It is freedom which is bitter and most hard to endure, for you must take responsibility for your actions.” So maybe that's a little more juiciness for your response.
brontë velez I think there will be in the same ways that there are subcultures of folks who are moved and pleasured by kink practices, I feel like there will be subcultures of how we believe liberation and accountability should be embodied. And I think there will be a select sacred group of us who want to be in those roles, who will receive pleasure from witnessing that kind of surrender and that kind of submission.
I think I may have mentioned this on the last interview, I'm not sure, but a brother named Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a Lakota Elder who was one of the mentors for a spiritual ecology fellowship that I was a part of, would reframe the powers that be as the powers who think they are which I really love. And I'm imagining calling in those powers who think they are with this kind of subgroup or subculture into some play with how power has operated.
It feels like such a difficult question because there's so much trauma wrapped up in the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy have operated. So I feel hesitant to play when I know people are seeking… Yeah, I know people today who’d be happy about Donald Trump being on a chopping block, like that feels like a righteous and dignified longing to see someone be held accountable in that way for all of the trauma he's causing and continuing. But yeah, I am curious, what might be possible in them, not necessarily relinquishing responsibility. I don't know exactly what's possible after the moment of submission and play. I feel like I'm just curious about that moment. And then to see what wants to emerge after. I think I have no frame of reference or imagination. Because I haven't seen white men be willing to surrender. I saw on Pose recently, where there's a moment where there's a white man (I won't give too much away), but there's a white man whose kink is he wants to be left alone in leather wrap, and he wants to be blindfolded, and he wants his ears to be covered, and he wants to not know that anyone's gonna come back for him or ever find him and that he might be forgotten about. And one of the women who serving as his Dom, a Black trans woman in the show whose character's name is Elektra, she's like, “do you know the privilege of what it is to request loneliness? The pleasure that you receive and eroticism from not belonging, and being forgotten about, that you could pay for that kind of option of a kink,” and starts to trace it back to the ways that trans folk, queer folk, especially Black trans women have that kind of loneliness is never an absence of belonging is never something someone would seek.
So yeah, I'm curious what would be possible and playing with this on a structural level? The things that BDSM queer culture teaches us about surrender and domination, and how as oppressed peoples we might occupy a culture of dominatrix-hood. That's kind of what I'm calling in: what might that feel like for us to be in that kind of dignity? And to demand that these powers that think they are be brought to their knees? Yeah, very hard question. I'd be interested in hearing what other folks think about this too.
Ayana Young And I like how you keep using the wordplay because this is a play of imagination. This is something we get to swirl around in our minds and feel either turned on or turned off. And I'm also interested in just when I hear this, what happens in my somatic self. And it'd be interesting to also hear what happens for other people because I think there's something that the body's intuition when hearing these things may also give us direction on how stuff like this could unfold. Like how does it feel to even hear these things? And for me, it feels tantalizing. And it's like, oh, whoa, okay, well, what is that even? Because it's not something that I have been conditioned or maybe even allowed in a lot of circumstances to even think about. So I appreciate just having the space, this safe space with you. As hard as these questions are, it's really fun to play with them. And I'm wondering what spaces do we have to create in order to allow this submission to materialize, given that patriarchy has prevented a culture from forming that welcomes the exploration of power through relinquishment. And within that it's like, what language or terminologies do we have to drop or recreate in order to materialize this shift?
brontë velez Yeah, thank you so much for that question. And I want to kind of combine the last question and this question. I was wanting to share that I also think, for me, I'm speaking from a place as someone who has a politic that every being is worthy of redemption and liberation. So I truly believe that everyone deserves that. And I feel so much grief about the ways we've all been socialized. But I imagine that it (I don't use the F word), but that it really sucks to be a white man in America right now. Honestly, I can't imagine that it really feels like a pleasurable thing. When right now actually, that culture of dominance has brought them into such a deep place of not belonging, and are only belonging to themselves through continuing projects of domination, terror, trauma, lack of consent, lack of permission, extraction, capitalism, all these things. So I know that it is hard to imagine those beings being worthy of redemption.
And I also, for me, the politic of allowing someone to be in a place of surrender is that, say white supremacy surrendered itself? Where do they go? I think Afro-pessimists are like a Black militant perspective, which sometimes I lean towards on days that I'm enraged by the extreme violence of what white supremacy does, I'm like, “bye.” I don't know if there's a place for you. I don't know if there's a place for you. And other days where I'm really resourced and have capacity, which feels like a privilege to imagine something non-violent, and another kind of liberation and redemption I am like, what will happen for this community of people whose identity actually was marked by absence, marked by not having belonging, or having belonging to just power.
So I'd be curious what a Dom/Sub relationship (I love that we’re having this convo) would be with also submitting to reparations. To me, reparations are about the pleasure of giving back, the pleasure of getting on your knees and giving back, giving back the land, giving back the breath, giving back the water, giving back power to those who are in right relationship with place, giving back and over listening. Yeah, so I feel like the conversation around reparations could also be one that would be pleasurable for those who are empowered to redistribute what has been unrighteously taken.
And yeah, I think in terms of a language of what will come, or what would this look like to be in this kind of play? I'm curious about memes and consent culture and how people… what kinds of spaces might have been where and performance work might happen to reclaim sites where power operates most significantly, or most visibly, to encounter playing with the way power moves in those sites through performance: through kink performance, through invitations for people to surrender. I’d be curious about what protest could look like in that sense. Or, you know, ethical leather walk, you know, in terms of like people just in this dominant culture of pornography, patriarchy, violence, the ways we conceive of how we can use pleasure for liberation has been so, so distorted. So, yeah, I’d be curious what ways to reframe that loving the Earth at this critical moment, and loving the peoples of the Earth, and the beings of the Earth who would be most impacted by the violence of white supremacy would be a pleasurable redemption.
Ayana Young This vision turns me on so much to imagine the relinquishment being pleasurable, the reparations being pleasurable, and it makes sense to be reconnected or connected, for the first time ever, for probably many of these people holding destructive power. To be loved, to be seen as somebody who can take care of others rather than hurt others. I can't imagine that feels good to have on your psyche, that you are somebody who is making others suffer. I mean, obviously, there are some people who I guess are into that. But I think, for the most part, people don't want that. Even people in power, I think they have to tell themselves that they're doing the right thing a lot. And I don't think that they fully believe that. So to imagine the release and saying, like, “I don't have to hold this responsibility of destruction anymore.” That is so beautiful, and it's playful, and it is erotic, and it's embodiment.
And I think so many of the issues we face right now are because we're not embodied. It's because we're desensitized. When we're embodied, we're embodied with the Earth; to be alive is to be one with the body of the Earth. And I'm so excited by the possibilities of when we're able to be in that sensory place and feel stimulated pleasurably. I think so much can happen and to think about the submission of patriarchy calls into conversation what some would define as feminine energy power, like the goddess archetype, etc. And I think of the historical disavowal of feminine power in order to marginalize, solidify gender binaries, and narrow scopes of power. And I'm also thinking about how our understanding of what feminine power or energy is, has become incredibly convoluted. So I'm wondering what is your definition and why is it important to tap into feminine power outside of its gendered or disguised manifestations?
brontë velez One of the failures of encountering femininity has been the gendering and then the ways we understand, or the socialization we've encountered also, find or encounter effeminate or women-approximate or anything associated with women as weak. And for me, when that's taken out of a binary conception of gender, but is moved more into - because I love the masculine connection in me and in the land, and I think it's beyond what we can understand in terms of masculinity and femininity have been so wrapped in notions of gender performance, that it's hard to know what those energies are actually asking of us.
For me, with masculinity being something that has become, I want to use the word intoxicated by imbalance, it operates in this way outside of patriarchal notions of masculinity. I feel like the masculine energy, spiritually, is about like a kind of support, a kind of carrying, a kind of lifting, a kind of holding it down, just a holding space - and then this feminine, wild feminine energy, for me, it feels like this mysterious, infinite, pleasure-centered, erotic, birth queen. Not in like a Kingdom thing but just this kind of a regal way that the Earth holds themselves. And like lots of other beings that are gendered as male birds, or male species are very feminine, are very queer, and are showing up in this way where - like I think always of the birds of paradise, where the “male birds” have evolved to dance, perform, put on a show, be in full-on regalia to get the punani and to continue the life of their community. So for me, I'd be curious about how we all, all beings, have capacity for the feminine, all beings have the capacity to be in this alive and awaken her energy. And yeah, it makes me sad the ways that that energy has been capitalized on, enslaved to the male patriarchal gaze and used for pornographic violent ways and distorted as weak.
I think right now actually, this call to rebalance with the feminine, and I feel like Vandana Shiva speaks a lot to this, I feel like that call to come into that balance, which is something in me I'm also encountering: yes, to come back into touch with pleasure and to come back into the rituals of being with the land and these kinds of ways that women have been assigned to be in - I feel like folk socialized as women have been relegated to the domestic space into the home. And in that, they've been in these like craft making, or land tending, or these care practices, maintenance work.
And I'm thinking of an artist - I can't think of her name at the moment but she's mentioned in Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - and there's an artist who back in the 70s, focused her work on what she was calling maintenance art and care work. She had a baby and then people were like, “do you do anything now?” and she was like, “this is the work. This is the work right here.” So I feel like that mother, and that culture of nurture, of nurturance, of caretaking, of attending to, of tenderness, all of these elements, I think, will facilitate a pleasurable, just transition towards being more accountable to the Earth and to one another.
Ayana Young When I think about feminine and masculine energies, something that really excites me is the freedom to hold both; the feminine energy is so powerful, and the masculine is as well. And I am so frustrated that they have been relegated to genders so much, and what that does to us as people we can't be fully in our divine humanity when we are not allowed to express in all of the ways and bring all of ourselves to the table.
And in my own personal journey, I've, as you know very well, I have really been wanting to embody all of it, and even things that seem like they're on the other end of the spectrum. It's like, “yes, I'm on this end of the spectrum, and I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, and I'm on here, and I'm there,” and isn't that beautiful? Isn't that complexity fascinating? And to learn about these complexities in others, and see where we feel similar, to see where we don't, and all of that charge that can happen when we allow the complexities of who we are in completely. It feels like the possibilities just open, it feels like there are whole portals that open that I couldn't have even begun to see existed until I was able to allow myself to embody the spectrum of masculine and feminine.
And yeah, I think that the feminine energy has completely been squashed. It’s looked at as weak, looked at as not as intelligent, or “oh, that's just emotional.” It's like, oh, well, okay. So there's no such thing as emotional intelligence? You know, all these things that make the feminine power seem weak, but I think that's absolutely by design. Patriarchy doesn't want feminine energy to be on top, why would they want that, then they wouldn't be able to control it - even within men, you know, has been squashed. And it's not surprising.
So I kind of want to take this idea of control and power and move into a conversation explicitly that addresses power with you right now. Yeah, with this power, I feel like there's this inherent attraction of it. And we can say that we don't want power, or the power is evil, but every day we are giving other people power, we are supporting their power directly, or indirectly, or both. And so I'm curious to hear how you framed power, or perhaps the reappropriation of power, you know, refusing to allow oppressors from holding on to power.
brontë velez I've been in my own process of asking questions about my own relationship to power. And how, especially for me, as a Black queer person who is socialized and lives my life mostly seen as a woman, I feel like I've arrived to where I am because there was so little space often where I saw representation of folks like me in places of power, ie only Oprah, as a little girl. There were these notions that power was equal to a certain kind of status, or a certain accumulation of wealth, or a certain number of assets. Yeah, all wrapped up in capitalism.
And I think often of this dream that I've had that I think is really important to share where I'm at the Eiffel Tower, and I'm in Paris, and the Eiffel Tower is also a ride from Atlanta called Acrophobia at Six Flags. And Acrophobia is the fear of heights. So I'm getting on the Eiffel Tower as a ride, and I'm getting strapped in, and it's a circle where the circle of people go up and then are dropped back down. As I'm getting stepped into the ride, Donald Trump comes and is running up to me, and he's weeping, and he is my father - the energy is a clear thing that he's my father. And he's profusely weeping, and profusely asking me for forgiveness, and I am so upset because I'm being exposed because I've tried to disown him. So everyone's realizing that he's my dad and I'm at this point really powerful. And I start to try and hush him up, he's on his knees (speaking of being on the knees), he's on his knees, begging me to forgive him, and I'm going “Shut up. Shut up. No, like, I do not want anybody to know we're related.” And then he reached out to me, and the ride begins. And I am ascending. I'm ascending, I'm ascending above the city, and my feet start to dangle, and my stomach is in knots, and I'm nauseous, and I'm so high up we extend beyond the Eiffel Tower, and we're just above Paris at the moment we're about to be dropped, I get ejected lightly off into the front lawn.
And when I started to move into the work with Lead to Life, I started to have a lot of dreams about ascension and power because I started to embody my own trust and dignity that we can manifest another story of how we live on this earth with one another, and I could feel my capacity to integrate that with my community. And this notion of like Black prophetic traditions that we can call in what we want to see and we can live it. And then to notice some ways I was still so entangled with capitalism and hierarchy. And yeah, I have questions about like, do we mean the power that we seek when we talk about empowering people? Is it about empowering people with continuing the project of capitalism and white supremacy? Is that the power we just want to reverse who's in those systems? Or is the power we're talking about an energy justice, a spiritual kind of energy justice in which that merit is determined by an accountability to our ecosystems and to one another and accountability - a power that is about being in balance, being in what is ours to do at this moment, and being able to be given the space and trust to be where we need to be.
I feel like right now, so many folks who should be trusted with power (which is to say trusted with responsibility), and trusted with vision, and trusted with resource should be folks who are making life more livable for all beings. And yeah, I love when I'm in my power. Right now I feel like I'm excited about the kind of power that is accountable to climate collapse right now, I'm excited about the kind of power that's accountable to consensual pleasure.
Ayana Young How do we allow ourselves to be empowered by bringing all of ourselves to the table? Especially in activist spaces where there's this identity around what it is to be an activist, what we think we need to be in order to be accepted, in order to have power in the ways we can. And it's frustrating to me because sometimes I feel like there's all this constraint - that so many of us are hiding power because these constraints have gendered ways of understanding power and energy. We're not allowed to be our full selves or full humans. As a woman, it's like, well, you can't be powerful, and intellectual, and feminine, and sexual, and erotic, and you can't be all those things. Like if you're a woman in the science world, you have to dress like this, you have to not talk about certain things, you can't be overly sexual, you can't be all the things you are and still have respect. And that is very frustrating.
And that's very disempowering to tell people that you can only have respect in certain worlds if you either look a certain way, act a certain way, shrink other parts of yourself, highlight different parts of yourself, and then you will have some kind of respect, but you'll still never be fully in power. Even as For the Wild as a nonprofit, it's like, oh, well, you're a nonprofit, that means you have to hold events that look like this, you have to speak in this way that doesn't piss anybody off. I'm so tired of that. I'm so tired of the constraints of how to achieve being powerful and empowered at the same time, and having to shrink, I can say myself in certain ways, in order to have a type of acceptable power for my specific identity that people project onto.
So this question is a bit personal for me at this moment, and also something that I just want to speak to for those of us who feel like, especially in activist spaces, I think there's something there, people feeling like they have to look a certain way or act a certain way to have respect. And in turn, I think it is disempowering to the movement in general when we put all of these rules and regulations on who people can be and still be accepted in space and respected. And I know I felt that way at Occupy, I felt like oh, I didn't have the look, I didn't have the look of the Occupy activist and therefore I didn't feel as welcome. And I think that's really strange, especially in movements where it's like, we need everybody to care. And we shouldn't compartmentalize who gets to have power based on making people small or parts of their personality small (and I'm not talking about like, if your part of your personality is to be rude, yeah, no, shrink that. I'm not talking about those things - that can go - it's like, we don't need that part of your personality).
I also want to talk about this other thing regarding power that seems important to bring up - it's about being in relationship to power versus letting it control you, especially if we're talking about playing with power in terms of liberation and claps, what is the importance of fluidity phases and seasons of power?
brontë velez Thank you. Yeah. Well to speak to shrinking and like not being able to possibly embody a fuller self in certain communities that are working towards liberation. I feel like, we just got to let shit go - anybody who's being judgmental, let shit go. I'm so tired. It's weird if people have a kind of idea of who should belong to a thing, and then have an idea about what that aesthetic looks like, and there being actually an aesthetic to these spaces. It's so funny because I have on my partner's Earth First shirt, and I'm thinking about being at the rendezvous just being like, “Yo, what's this?” Everyone has the same aesthetic for like punk/anarchist vibes. And just this kind of interesting way people create niche communities to cultivate belonging where there hasn't been, so I see that need to create kind of cultural agreements about how people want to be with one another. And I feel like it's historical and cultural to have an aesthetic about a thing. But I feel like when it ostracises people - it’s whack, we don't need that. And like, people being a hating-ass energy, I'm so done with it.
I've heard on the Healing Justice podcast, and I'm sad that I can't think of the name of the interview, but it's one of the practice episodes. It's about how do people encounter safety, accountability, validation, and belonging, or security (and safety are kind of together), how do they know those things? And I feel like a product of being maybe traumatized or ostracized is that you start perpetuating perhaps those kinds of paradigms, and it's whack, like it’s whack. I think we should be able to come as our full selves, who we are, to the work, from our unique personalities, and essences, and textures, and vibrations. I felt for so long that I've shrunk humor in myself, and shrunk my sexual being, my erotic being, my queer life, in service to like a genteel kind of crunchy granola, political to whiteness kind of Black girl. And I'm like, if I wanna be hood, I'm gonna be hood in your space. If I wanna look cute while y'all look crunchy granola, I'm about to look cute. I feel like us being in our true expressions is what will be ultimately liberatory for all of us. So I feel excited about that.
And like these other beings - the more than human world is going off right now. They're being flamboyant. They're showing out and showing up, okay? I'm like, we actually really need… I don't know if you're speaking to this with aesthetic but aesthetic revives us into our senses. It brings us alive. I think, coming from that place of being in the listening of who you are, and bringing that forth, is something that should be honored. And being in our dignity about what we bring, and trusting that us being in our gifts, in our light, and our expression is essential to our community's health and liberation, actually, because there’s always gonna be haters, but just releasing that, that's been something I've been in. I need to start being in my power. The Earth is asking that of us right now. And yeah, I think that that should also still be though... I feel like as long as our power is not harming anyone, if it's not harming other people to be in our energy, if it gives life, I say, let's go for it. And whatever cultures of activism that are like putting themselves on a pedestal about ideas of “you being more proximate to suffering makes you more loyal or down for the cause,” or “are you willing to do X, Y, and Z?” We all have our nation, our role. Everybody is not supposed to do each and every kind of aspect.
So, yeah, I've been in a deep learning of choosing humility over shrinking, which I had been conflating for a while because I was told I was intimidating by white women and white leadership. And I'm like, that's because you're socialized to feel insecure around Black women, Black femmes in power. And that's not my problem. That's not my problem. So I feel like, let's be in our power, that should be pleasurable for you to see me in my power, for you to see me in my brilliance, for you to see me thriving. And you should know that it liberates you too.
[brontë velez reciting ‘The Well’]
Well, the church said. Well, we got to be well. Well, a pitted place. Well, a seed. Well, the echo. Well, so deep. Mark says, “Black wellness is the most radical act against state violence.”
And we say, well, we become so well, so well, that we are the well, a reservoir of joy, absorbing all light and laughter. This skin made of soil can sip on. White supposed to reflect all light that enters it, all these reflections and they still can't see themselves. But we got to keep on being there. We got to keep on keeping on. Because we got to be well, so well, that we are the well.
We learn about the sovereignty of our prayer, ceremony as a place for the unhomed. Where Black ain’t a vacuum, ain’t the shadow of whiteness, but its own grace. We so Black now, we done decompose darkness as evil out our mouths. We love the night so much that we became the night. We love the unknown so much that they ain’t never gonna find us. Our laughter made us fugitives under the spell of numbness.
And we say, well, the prophecy has already been written. No need to conjure nothing new. Tubman already let us know. My people are free (My people are free). My people are free (My people are free). My people are free (My people are free).
And Alexa said to us, may we continue to breathe in the presence of our freedom. So we inhale, trust it is already here. Nothing future about our freedom. Because my people are free (My people are free). Right in the here and now. My people are free (My people are free). So if we already free, all we got to do is lay down everything that makes us unfree. All we got to do is be well.
Someday, we let go of all of this. Even this language won't last on our tongues. Now we know too many prayers, the shape of freedom. And English never hold that kind of imagination anyway. We in our bodies and not afraid of them. We in our bodies disciples of listening. We in our bodies entrusted to our flesh. We created the initiations to prepare us to hold the earth while they are birthing us anew. We learned to dance inside the contractions. Learned to shake and shapeshift. Ancestors taught us to strut, swirl, drop it low and close to the ground, orbit our own flesh, to fall in love with our body and the many shapes they can take.
The Earth taught us to do this as they got warmer from ignorance and waste. As the weather became more erratic, as a disaster was declared, we listened to the Earth and followed suit. While they became enraged and flamed, a fugitive in their own body, we listen and they asked us to heal ourselves, to bring the huracán and terremoto to our center. We started to shake and rage and shift shape as a reflection of the Earth taking their body back. We dance ourselves back home to source, til there was no memory of separation.
Because this is not our apocalypse, we have already been revealed to ourselves. This is not our apocalypse, we have come to lay white supremacy to rest. This is not our apocalypse, my people are free (my people are free). This is not our apocalypse, we have come to lay patriarchy and greed to the ground. This is not our apocalypse, we are giving it back over to the soil to do their work. This is not our apocalypse, we are just offering the eulogy. This is not our apocalypse, we are the doulas.
We have been to the mountaintop. We saw that, in truth, the Earth itself had become the nigger of the world. They were unearthed and howling, ripped open to make weapons to take Black folks from this Earth. We have been to the mountain tops, the mountain tops said they don't want nothing to do with that.
So we're crying out with the stones. We are crying out with the soil and the volcanoes. We came to bring the weapons back to the Earth. So the geography of ossuaries, column hoods, column ghettos, column God, each corner some memory of some memory, too many of the same story. Too many Black children gone too early. We wanted a new story to live by. We wanted sanctuary. And we didn't need to do anything to make the ground holy. The ground was always holy.
And there was nothing we needed to build. Everything was already here. There was nothing we needed to do. Just shift. Just love. Just be. And it wasn't easy. We were so entangled. Got liberation and accumulation confused. How you gonna ask the dispossessed people to renounce possession. And yet, this is what is really to really be free. Because we found that reparations also meant we had to repair with the Earth, our only real home. We wanted our breath back. So we took our breath back with the artifacts of war.
We brought the oaks back, we undammed the creeks. We planted medicine everywhere. The chorus of other beings who missed the trees are singing with us. The ecology done return. The Earth wasn't a metaphor. We had to really ask them, “what do you need?” trusting that our needs will always be in alignment with their health and wellness.
Well, we were scared. We wondered, “where is Black me after everything is laid to rest?” If they lay down their guns, if they lay down their chapels and governments, who do I become when they use my body as the scaffolding for their violence. But then I surrendered, asked “will I become you again sweet soil? Ocean, will I be like you, full and everywhere.” We keep our breath flowing so our joy can come home. We undammed our chests, our joy, like water, like salmon, got perfect memory. It is always on its way. We always on our way. We always been the way.
My people are free (My people are free). My people are free (My people are free). My people are free (My people are free). My people are free (My people are free).
brontë velez We must cultivate a culture of discernment and counsel around us. I feel like if you're someone who's encountering that you have more access, more resources, do not go on that journey alone. The reason power has become toxic is because people did not have any accountability, or counsel, or community, or rites of passage that held them to that and told them like “hey, now's the time for you to sit back, or step down, or shift,” you know? So I think being in that listening of like, you know what, right now I'm a little off, and I need to gain some perspective. I need to go fast. I need to go rest. I need to allow someone who knows maybe more than me. Sometimes we’re off the mark a little bit. And so how to be willing to be in that emergence, adaptability, flexibility so that we're able to listen to when we need to relinquish, shift, ecologize our access.
Ayana Young Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild Podcast, I'm Ayana young. You just heard an excerpt from ‘The Well Prophecy’ written by brontë velez and recited by brontë velez, Ra Malika Imhotep, co-founder of The Church of Black Feminist Thought, and jazmín calderón torres and Liz Kennedy from Lead to Life. The music you heard today was from the Lead to Life Oakland Ceremony, and the incredible Esperanza Spalding. I'd like to thank our incredible team, Aidan McCrae, Andrew Storrs, Carter Lou McElroy, Erica Ekrem, Aaron Wise, Francesca Glaspell, Hannah Wilton, Melanie Younger, and Suzanne Dhaliwal. Also, if you haven't rated us on iTunes, please do so. It really helps spread our message to a wider audience, and that's what we're here for to continue to uplift these incredible voices of resistance.