Transcript: Earthly Reads: Tricia Hersey on We Will Rest! /S1:2
[Musical intro]
Ayana Young Hello For The Wild community, Ayana here. Welcome to the second episode of our new book study series, Earthly Reads, where we'll learn alongside some of our most beloved authors. After listening to this shorter conversation, head over to forthewild.world/bookstudy to learn more and to purchase access to the full course. We'll be offering significantly more content and access to live recorded conversations with the authors on our website. We hope to see you there.
Tricia Hersey I love the idea of attempt. So this is my attempt for people to come with me on this journey, to just attempt some things, you know, just to say "I'm gonna try. I know this isn't right. I know the way my body is being used by this system feels unsustainable. I feel unhealthy. This feels wrong."
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with returning guest, Tricia Hersey.
Oh Tricia, I am so happy to be here with you. You're making my day. So thanks for joining.
Tricia Hersey I woke up this morning, so looking forward to it. I'm gonna get to sleep with my buddy here. We're gonna rant about some things and try to deepen into the softness of things, but I'm very excited. Thank you for having me on, as always.
Ayana Young Mmmmmm. The energy that I feel from you is so enlivening and it's a really lovely day to speak. It is pouring outside. You may hear the rain drops.
Tricia Hersey I do. I'm like it's raining good there. Yeah.
Ayana Young It's sideways rain. It's coming down. It's very cleansing, so we're in good company with the water here.
Tricia Hersey HmmmmMmmmm.
Ayana Young Well, there's so much to talk about, but I really want to focus on your new book, which I deeply loved, which is We Will Rest! And so I'm eager to spend some time slowly savoring the meaning of this book with you today, and it's always hard to know where to start with so many questions on my mind. I want to begin with thinking about how this book has been described as a sacred object, and I'd love if you could open us up with talking about the process of creating it and the intention and ritual involved.
Tricia Hersey That's such a great question because that's literally all I want to talk about. How did you know? Like, I only want to talk about how this book came to be because it literally is the book that I've always wanted to make. Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, my first book, was such a popular book. It's still a popular book and it had a very deep intention around that. I knew what that book was to be before I even began writing. I knew it had to, like, lay the framework that I have been experimenting with all these years. I know it. We needed a framework.
But when it came to this book and when it was time to start, like, dreaming it up, I really was not really clear about what it would be. I just knew I wanted to close my eyes and feel like I had something that I could cuddle. I literally wanted it to feel like an intimate object. I wanted it to lean into the idea of art. And so that was the first thing I knew I wanted it to have art in it. I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna say. You know, I don't know what my text will be. I know what I wanted to feel like, but I know I need art. And so I immediately reached out to an artist that I love, George McCalman. I met him through a friend. I was in a cookbook called the Black Food book by Bryant Terry. It's this beautiful book of recipes and stories and photos of black culture and history. And I wrote a piece in the book about being a young girl and watching people catch the Holy Ghost, and how much I love this performative theater spiritual act as a young girl. And so the book is so beautiful, it won so many awards and how it's designed, the illustration, the typography, the photography, everything in out.
So I found out that the person who designed it was George, and so I started following him on Instagram. And I just love...he draws, he illustrates. Everything is by hand. He does painting. He also is into digital design, photography. He's just this Renaissance art man, and I literally did not know him. I just went into his DM and was literally, I said...Ayana, I said, "Hi, I'm Tricia. I'm very obsessed with you, and I hope that it is mutual. Can we talk?" And the first thing he said was, "I'll do anything for you, of course, and let's spend time getting to know each other. And I want you to start explaining to me what the psychology of this book is." And that's when I was like, I picked the right person.
And so, we spend months and months and months just talking with each other about what's the psychology of the book. And I never had anyone come to me when I thought about bookmaking like that, but as an artist, it felt right. And so we created a mood board with visual images. I began to really lean into history. I was reading a lot about Henry Box Brown, his escape artist life, and I knew I wanted to lean into some history, and I wanted to feel vintage. I was heavily influenced by, you know, abolitionist pamphlets. I was reading about the history of what abolitionist pamphlets were, this idea of writing a document that is so powerful that people don't want to read it, that it's like shedding light on something that's happening. It becomes its own art piece.
And then I also was deeply influenced, as a person who grew up in the Black church by vintage hymnals, prayer books, my grandmother's devotionals — her books that she would have in her purse, and she would pull out at any moment if there was something happening to family. My grandmother had this devotional in her bag, this small, little book she put out and just do a devotional prayer with you.
And these illuminated manuscripts, all these, like, really beautiful religious texts. I really felt like this is what I wanted it to feel like. I wanted it to feel like a document that someone would find on the side of the road, while they were, like, trying to escape on the Underground Railroad. I just felt very deep into the idea of freedom and history. And I wanted it to feel like an art object and something that someone would really open and it would feel like a portal. And so that's how it began. It began with me wanting to know it had to have art in it, and knowing that it would definitely feel like something historic, and it will feel like something intimate. It will have a lot of history in it. So that's how I began.
Ayana Young I really resonate with that feeling of holding a book as a sacred object, as an art object where you feel it in your hands, and it's something special. And I think in this culture of this moment, we really lost so much of what it feels like to have sacredness in our hands and something to reach to, to hold, to cuddle with, to be with. I feel you there and you just mentioned this escape artist. I want to understand more about the structure of the book. You structure it through the lessons of how to be an escape artist. And why were you drawn to this as a primary guide for the book?
Tricia Hersey Well, you know, in the first book, in Rest is Resistance, I actually named myself as an escape artist. I say I am an escape artist like my ancestors before me. What made me start thinking about that was when I started my studies with Harriet Tubman, thinking about her life and her trickster energy in the Underground Railroad and the Maroons. I talk a lot about the Maroons in the first book, and so I feel like the first book had, like, these little lights of things that I was speaking about. But in this book, I wanted to just lean in and, like, dig in deeper with a shovel on one of those. And the main thing is I really wanted to lean into the idea of marronage and escape artist, Harriet Tubman, my grandmother, and all the ways that we're going to have to be subversive.
I talk about the idea of subversion so much in the book, and I think that's what makes the Rest is Resistance framework unique. What people really clung to is that it isn't this, step by step, self help, self care, fix-it type thing. It's literally pushing people to peep the scam as it's happening, and it's really pushing people to disrupt the systems that are already happening. My work hopes to just be a disruption. I couldn't think of a better disruptor than a person who is a literal escape artist. And so I really began to think, I want to talk about what I've done because I claim myself as an escape artist. When people say, "What have you done?" Like you've literally this black woman who came from poverty, a legacy of it. You were in school, studying. You had no idea that this idea will work, but you literally just started experimenting with your body. This work came out of my performance art theater-ritualist background, and so I really began to experiment on my own body like this. Work was never just theories online or IG pages or memes.
It was literally me as a Black woman trying to save my own life, and I talk about that in the first book — what it felt like for me to begin to lay on couches and find places all over campus to sleep and what it felt like to steal time and to bend time and to daydream and to find these ways to, like, begin to reclaim my own body. What I was actually doing was actually escaping the clutches of grind culture, like I say in the book. You know, "Grind culture can't have me." Like, I refuse to donate my body to the system. And so my experimentation, which is an ongoing durational experimentation — I'm still experimenting with that now — is me being a woman of my background, a woman who comes from the legacy of enslavement, great grandparents with sharecroppers, and comes from this legacy of deep you know, Jim Crow terrorism. My grandmother escaped that. The current state now to say to myself, You know what? I see everything that is happening. I understand what you've done, and you really, literally can't have me. I refuse to be the mule. I refuse to be the Black woman who's overworked. I'm going to gain reparations for my ancestors in this time, and I'm going to do that by laying myself down, by stopping.
And so, I think that trickster energy in me that began just saying, "I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm not going to go with this unsustainable pace anymore. I can't." And so I started resting and laying down, and I was starting to become obsessed. I've always been obsessed with Henry Box Brown. And so the escape artist idea started with my research with Henry Box Brown. So for a year, I was reading anything I could find about Henry. I was studying what he did and just really leaning into the idea of this person using their own body to be free. You know, like pushing and deciding that I don't know what this is going to look like, but I'm going to mail myself in a box to freedom. And then I learned he came out of the box singing, you know, “Songs of Psalms.” He was, like, really into religious texts. And so he arrived at an abolitionist office in Philadelphia.
I became obsessed with him, literally. I wanted to know everything I could about it. I couldn't understand if a person hadn't heard of him. If they heard of Henry, they would be like, Wow, I want to do that in this time. And so I just began to deepen into the idea of letting people know that your point of trying to heal from this — everyone always wants to know, "Tricia, you're the Nap Bishop, teach me how to do this. I don't rest. I need to rest. I'm exhausted."
We're all so sleep deprived and I just thought that this could be some medicine. I don't know if capitalism will fall in our lifetime, but in the meantime, we can find ways to escape. So why don't I give you this trickster manifesto manual on like ways to do it? Why don't I give you the inspiration of Henry Box Brown, my grandmother, of Harriet Tubman, of myself, of all the things that I did and what I used, and bring it to you in a way that feels spiritual, so that you can begin to try it for yourself. You know, taste and see for yourself, experiment for yourself. That's really what I want people ultimately to do is to begin to just peep what is happening.
I say that in the book I am the trickster. I peeped the scam. I saw what was happening. I cocked my head to the side, it was like, Hmmm, so this is what's going on. This is what these systems are trying to do to us. And I just simply refuse. And even that refusal feels like enough. And I think people don't think that. They think that they have to have it all figured out. But I love the idea of a try, of an attempt. So this is my attempt for people to come with me on this journey, to just attempt some things you know, just to say, I'm gonna try. I know this isn't right. I know the way my body is being used by this system feels unsustainable. I feel unhealthy. This feels wrong. We don't take enough time to sit in that field and we always want to move to, Okay. How do I solve it? But I think the real healing and the power is in the mystery of the attempt of just saying, Hmm, wait a minute. And so that's what I hope this book to be by breaking it down into these ten steps of how to be an escape artist. And I name that it's an incomplete list. That these…Knowing that we can never do it all in ten steps, that steps aren't going to be the way. But this is an incomplete list because there are infinite ways to freedom because our body allows us to be able to tap into the things that we haven't even known are possible. So I love the idea of attempt. So this is my attempt, for people to come with me on this journey, to just attempt some things you know, just to say, I'm gonna try. I know this isn't right. I know the way my body is being used by the system feels unsustainable. I feel unhealthy. This feels wrong.
Ayana Young As you spoke to the attempt, my body relaxed because I was like, Okay, I don't have to have it all figured out—
Tricia Hersey No.
Ayana Young —at the beginning. And the try itself is the medicine it's...And that really just helped me feel like I could do that. I can attempt. I think that day by day or step by step allowance is something that can help us open up to the possibility because it does feel huge. It's like, how are we gonna change capitalism? How are we gonna change our neighborhood? How are we gonna change ourselves? It feels so overwhelming that it's like sometimes we can't even take a bite of that.
Tricia Hersey Yep.
Ayana Young And I think something you bring up in the book a lot, too, which feels like a foundational belief system is the idea that we're all sacred. And I feel like you have so many reminders in this book for the readers to remember that. And there's a quote I'd like to read, which is quote, "Develop clear boundaries that feel like fresh clay — flexible, strong and soothing to your body. Develop the ability to ignore anyone and anything that stands in the way of your goal of liberation. Every system in the culture doesn't see your divinity. They were not created to connect. They were not created to have vision. They were created for you to internalize the lies about labor and a capitalist culture. Stay clear, stay connected," end quote. And I'm wondering, how do you reckon within a world that does not recognize your divinity, and how are the boundaries we need to set deeply material and temporal?
Tricia Hersey That's so good. So many people have told me about my work, it just feels like something new that they have never heard before. When I first started the work, people would tell me they was like, "Wow, at these collective rest events that I came to and I'm laying down and you open them up by saying, ‘You are enough, thank you for living.’” So many people, I mean, hundreds, have told me, "No one's ever told me. Thank you for living now. No one's ever said you are enough to me." And I just thought that's something that as a person who's creating this framework, who's experimenting as an artist, I pay attention to things when I see patterns, and that's nothing I was not expecting. You know, all of my training as a liberationist, as the community activist since I've been a young girl, trained as a theologian in seminary, you know, you can get into the books, you can get into the theory, but to really look someone in the eyes and then they're in tears, and they're saying to me, "No one's ever said to me, my entire life — I'm 35 years old — that thank you for living. No one's thanked me for being alive. No one's told me that I'm ever enough. I've always thought I have never been enough since I've been a young child. I've always had to do more."
And so this grounding idea of this humanity in us, this sacredness of this idea of being divine, I don't think people understand that. And I think the culture would never want us to believe that. I think people can go their whole lives not understanding how divine they are, not understanding what the idea of being a sacred human being really means. And I think that's...I mean, you can ask that of people who are, you know, religious leaders, or people who are looking at spirituality. I mean, this is something that has been studied for thousands of years — idea of what it means to be divine, to be human, and what that connection means to God or to a higher power, whatever you name that creator.
And I'm always going back to the idea of being a miracle, of the idea of being alive because I love health and science and study the idea of just what it means to be born. I'm really in awe of the birthing process, of us being here, of you being chosen, of you coming through the womb, you know, of the sperm and egg meeting and creating you this unique person who...No one, has your same DNA. You made it through. You're here, you're breathing. You have lungs. To me, I can never get off of the fact of how special that is. I don't want to ever stop understanding that. And I think that's part of what my entire life as an artist has been is trying to examine it and to study that and to experiment with it and to sit with that and to try to find out what that means.
And maybe that's why I went to seminary. You know, I was not a person who was really in church or any type of, lik,e religious faith at the time. I grew up and was raised in the Black church, but by the time I went back to seminary, almost 40 years old, I have been unchurched for years. I hadn't stepped foot in the church, but...Something about the idea of wanting to study the divine and study spirituality and I was longing for something richer and deeper, to understand my place in the world against what the world of creation means. And so I think that the work, in a way, helps people to start to ask these questions, to have these inquiries.
I love the idea of an inquiry — something that will never actually probably be answered. I've been sitting with some questions to things about what is the soul and what does it take to feed the soul. For 7-8-9-10 years, I've been reading the same theology book about womanist ethics for probably ten years, and I just love this idea. Maybe that's my place. People think that's me as an artist. Maybe that's my art practice. I love the idea of mystery, an idea of not having it figured out. It really is what has kept me alive. You know, I love to not know things. I love to sit in the understanding of maybe I don't know this and maybe that's okay in the mystery of not knowing, of I don't know what's happening, or where I'm going. I just know I have breath, I have lungs that are collaborating with me. I'm breathing. I'm here. I came through the birth canal, and I'm here. I'm new to the world. I'm trying to figure it all out, but then I understand I don't have to figure it out.
And so I think this book is going to allow people to start to take a deep breath and to just understand the idea of not knowing it. In this culture, which is, as me and you talk about all the time, this toxic, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, this ableist culture does not teach you the idea of experimentation. It does not teach you the idea of failure. It does not teach you the idea of not knowing. You have to come out, ready to go, knowing everything, what you want to do, what you want to be, how to get it done — all this idea of problem solving this individualistic society, of figuring it out and doing what you got to do and pushing. And so, no one has really been given the space. That's why I love artists. And I love people who are looking at the idea of, You know what? Who knows if I can pull this off? Who knew if Harriet Tubman, when she took that step was, “I'm just walking to freedom?” What did she know if it would ever work? If she would get caught? If it would, if it would pan out?
Hearing Box Brown mailing himself in a box and being in a box almost 27 hours. How did he know what would happen when the box opened? But this idea of leaping without a net, this faith building walk, is really what I want people to begin to massage into themselves. You know, I want them to just feel that. And I think by resting, daydreaming, by imagining, by reading stories of other people who have done it can inspire people. And so I think that's why this work...I want it to feel like an intimate object. I want it to feel sacred. I want people to be able to read just one page and that one page could do something to them, that they can just go through the book in one sitting and just go through the entire thing and read it and just feel something that felt a little light. So I really want this book to feel like light. And so the tagline of the book has been like, Follow the light. I dedicate the book to my son, Saheem the Dream, and then Harriet Tubman and other dreamers, you know. Follow the light and whatever that light is, that little spark.
Ayana Young Oh gosh, there's so much you shared that was sparking light for me. I was really sitting with the idea of the mystery and not knowing and connecting that with that feeling of just jumping off the cliff and not knowing where you're going to land, but that desire just to go, and the confidence to take that leap. And there were times where I really had the confidence to leap and there were times where I felt the confidence to sit in the mystery and the not knowingness. But then when trauma arrives, I think that really can hinder and this isn't something I've shared before. I gave birth over a year ago, and I went in having the confidence in the mystery and having the confidence in taking that leap, and it was a really traumatic event, and I came out of that with questions, but not the questions, I think that you're speaking to, but those questions of, "Can I even continue to attempt?" Or maybe it's like the trauma created a fear—
Tricia Hersey Totally.
Ayana Young —that really stopped me from being able to give myself to that mystery, to the attempt, to the leap. I think all of us listening. There have been things in our life that have created that block, the fear block.
Tricia Hersey Yeah.
Ayana Young I don't know if people come to you and they're like, "But what if I feel like I just can't get there?" Or even like, "I don't know, but I'm scared that I don't know," and then all of the anxiety that one can go into, the spirals, in the not knowing. Rather than seeing the mystery as this beautiful surrender. It can also be like an obsessive, scary, you know, spiral. So there's a lot that I just put out there. But if we could talk to, kind of, when you're in the grime, and how do you find that again?
Tricia Hersey That's such a good question. I think that's the ultimate understanding of the human spirit, and what we're trying to do is just being alive. It's not easy. It's very difficult. For me, I understand what you mean about you feel that confidence, and then the trauma happens, and then you're like, "I don't know about that." And so how scary that could be. And how do you put one foot in front of the other? You know? How do you even begin? And I don't know. I've really been deepening into the idea over the last year or so, dealing with my own traumas have been happening in my life. This idea of one second at a time, people like, Just take it one day at a time, and a day at a time is too much for me. Like, a day is 24 hours, like, I don't even know what's happening right now. And so I've been really leaning a lot into, like, meditation and just doing breathing every morning. I've been doing intentional deep breathing every morning. Every single morning, I'm bawling. Like it's just like, I'll sit and I'll start to meditate, and I ask my meditation teacher, "Should I be crying like this every morning? Do you supposed to cry when you meditate because when I see people meditate they're just so calm." And she was like, "No, just let it come. Let it be."
What has helped is like just really listening and trying to find ways to be in collaboration and conversation with my body. And I think that leans itself right into my work. You know, the idea that we are so disconnected from our bodies. The culture wants us that way. It's easier when we're disconnected from our bodies. We're disembodied. We don't even know what it means if we feel a little something in our body. Okay, I'll just ignore that and keep going. We've been trained so violently to just ignore any cue from our body, any thing that our body wants to share with us. We just ignore it and act like it hasn't said that. So what I've been leaning into is just like, really trying to find small little ways to just hear what my body is saying, even if that's just a breath. If I can just get up enough in the morning to take a shower, and while I'm in the shower, I'm just like, let me focus on breathing in four times in a row. Let me focus on the breath.
And I just have been so inspired by that, like listening a lot to like improvisational jazz and studying a little bit of what's happening right now in Palestine. And just I saw this teacher there who was still teaching classes. Like all the schools are bombed out, the children...She's has this one room classroom that she's teaching. She's getting up every morning and putting on her clothes and and she's like, "I'm doing this because it's all I know how to do. I have to attempt something." And so that goes back to the attempt. The attempt doesn't have to be this miraculous, full-on produced thing. I think to me, the attempt is your eyes are open. I would ask my grandmother that when she would wake up in the morning, "How you doing, Granny?" She was like, "I'm here. Everything else is gonna be cake. You know, everything else is gonna come and that's on top of that, but I'm alive. My eyes are open. My lungs are collaborating with me. Thank you, lungs. I'm breathing. I'm here in whatever state that I'm showing up in, and whatever grotesque, painful, toxic state that I'm in, I'm here. You know, my eyes are open."
I've really been leaning into that, Ayana, over the next...last year. It's just all I have right now is that my eyes are open and I'm upright, you know? And I'm breathing and I'm just focusing on the breath. Like the breath is happening even without me even trying. So the aliveness in that and just the simpleness of that. Like I've been wanting people to get down to the simplest, barest form, you know, the root, the radical, like pulling something up from the root. That the radical nature of it all is, we are here. We are alive. And no, we need to celebrate more of that. We need to celebrate the idea of our lungs are working. We're breathing. Our body is here. We're still in this form. We're here on Earth. What else is there that we can try to tap into? But just staying there.
And I don't think people don't stay there, enough for me at all. They rush through everything. Urgency is at a high pitched frenzy, the chaos of that, and we always happen to get to the next thing. But what if we could just even spend ten minutes a day just saying, "Thank you for breathing." I say that so much. "Thank you for living. Thank you for breathing. Thank you for attempting."
I have a poem that I read over people every time I do a collective rest event where I say that. I've done thousands and I always lay people down on the mats and we start with the music and someone starts with some…either a sound bowl or some other music. And it's just, "Thank you for living. Thank you for existing. Thank you for trying. Thank you for resisting. Thank you for resting, you know. Thank you for trying." I think we need to celebrate the tries more, the attempts, the moves that make us feel like I'm here and I'm ready to just be in the attempt place.
And so that's really how all my…this work really started for me. I was at a very low point in my life. I was really mentally not well, health wise, I wasn't well. And I was just like, all I can really do right now is lay on this couch. And from that, things started to happen. I started to have dreams. I started to have, you know, connections. And I'm like, I'm just gonna lay. I'm gonna see what my brain has to offer for me today. I'm just gonna lay here in between my three other jobs. Going to school. Can I get five minutes to just breathe and listen and hear? So I think we have to simple it down to the most, lowest on the ground. When I say on the ground, I mean my eyes are open today. And I think that's where people are in a lot of places right now with so much happening in the world, is that the attempt doesn't have to look like a self produced all together, in a bowl, wrapped up, organized, clean. It's gonna look messy. It's gonna look like what it is, and I think we have to just begin to accept that more.
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Jackson Kroopf Thank you for listening to the second episode of For The Wild slow study series Earthly Reads with Tricia Hersey.
To hear the full episode, join our Book Study, where we gather with authors like Tricia, adrienne maree brown, Prentis Hemphill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Céline Semaan and Marcia Bjornerud for an even deeper dive into their recent writings. To learn more, please visit forthewild.world/bookstudy or join us on Patreon.
The music for this series is from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires. The musicians featured in this episode are Nailah Hunter, Aisha Mars, and V.C.R.
For The Wild is made by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson and Jackson Kroopf. Thanks for listening.
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