control

It’s quitting time, quitting time @ Tara

| Sheree

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Sweeping violins. A Southern Belle, pretty and shallow, chatters on as young men flock around her feet, captive. *Fiddle de de.* Relishing in colour, technicolor; rich reds, blues and greens of the gallant Old South. Pan out see mansions surrounding by plantations. Bonnets and ribbons. Dances and horses. Cotton.

Extract from: The Melodrama of Gone With The Wind

Found poem: 

Source: http://www.art21.org/texts/kara-walker/interview-kara-walker-the-melodrama-of-gone-with-the-wind

I first read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell while completing an extra year at college. Gaining extra ‘A’ levels while I waited on my then boyfriend to make the grades.

I identified with Scarlett O’Hara, the bitch of a heroine, not Mammy. I definitely was no mammy. Not here to fetch and clean and be loyal. I definitely was not obese and coarse and ugly, or ‘have a shiny, glossy face of contentment as she be the most happy slave alive.’

Of course as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned where I’m placed in society. It’s okay to fantasise being the white heroine but I’ll never really be her. Better learn my place – to be there for the pleasure and enjoyment and whim of the white folk – and smile.

But what about my own pleasures and pains? Apparently they don’t exist. Apparently I’m incapable of such things, such finer characteristics. My reality states/shows otherwise.

It’s quitting time. I’m retreating into the woods in Aberdeenshire for the next week. I’m taking this opportunity as a reset. A chance to focus on my pleasures and pains. Drink on Mother Nature and give thanks for this life I have which isn’t being subservient/ submissive/ subjection to anybody.

I refuse the Mammy as well as the Scarlett, as they are both constructions and constrictions to control the female body.

I’m much more interested in the overspill, the excess, the unruly body. The blackwoman body that I live with/in daily and how nature supports me on this journey.

As a wind of flames sweeps through Georgia; menacing reds and oranges against a bleak dark sky swirl and crackle in time with fast ascending music. Real danger and Butterfly McQueen (real name not character name that would be Missy) flits around like a blue arsed fly worrying with no sense or plan.

Extract from: The Melodrama of Gone With The Wind

Found poem: 

Source: http://www.art21.org/texts/kara-walker/interview-kara-walker-the-melodrama-of-gone-with-the-wind

I’m no Missy either.

Taking the time to play

| Sheree

I’ve always loved drawing.

At different times of my life, I was either really into drawing or gone off the boil from drawing.

Basically, if I allowed my drawings to come into contact with other people, that’s when my drawing would go off the boil. I wouldn’t do it, I’d let the practice slide because someone or other had said my drawing wasn’t very/any good.

Or they’d looked at what I’d shared and start giving me pointers on how to improve it. How to shade ‘properly’ or how to get things into ‘proportion’. Basically saying that what I was doing, instinctively and true to me, was wrong.

For large stretches of time, I didn’t allow myself to draw, to play because in comparison to others, my work just didn’t match up. Didn’t look like theirs.

And then one time, while feeling less than, while feeling the odd one out, not accepted or appreciated, I picked up a pen and started drawing again. I found solace and safety in the lines I drew.

Faces, I love drawing faces. Usually of black women. Seeing myself reflected.

I completed a 100 days of black women one time, a few years ago now and I loved where this challenge took me. It took me to a place and peace of accepting my drawings. My style, my subjects and themes, my shading and perspectives.

Fuck man, we’re all individuals, unique and no way are we supposed to or should be drawing all alike, to a certain standard or brief.

My drawings are an expression of me, and how I see/ move through this world.

I’m dealing with it. I’m embracing it. And fuck everyone else!

Late night painting

| Sheree

First time working on canvas for about 3 years! It was good to play without pressure or to demand.

It was good to just let go and see what happened. Jumping int the unknown is getting easier with practice.

I found working on 2 canvases at once made them less precious, less important.

I suppose it’s that ‘not putting your eggs all in one basket’ mentality.

It was good to let go of control and the fear. I suppose this is the only time I chose ‘doing’ over {BEING}. When creativity is involved!

Mary Ann Macham

| Sheree

Walking into North Shields the other day, walking towards the Fish Quay where there is now accessible access connecting the centre of town down to the River Tyne, I caught sight of this sculpture of Mary Ann Macham.

I first learned about Mary Ann in 2007, when I was researching the North-East’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade to mark the bicentenary of its abolition.

I was writer in residence within the Literary and Philosophical society, researching their tracts and unearthing the names and lives of the once enslaved people who passed through and/or settled here.

I wrote a poem about Mary Ann, her escape and travel up to the North, and with the help of the Quakers, made a life for herself through working in service and getting married and living in North Shields. This was back in 1831 when she arrived here and lived for a further 60+ years as a free woman.

An aside here is how the Quakers at the forefront of the abolition movement here in the North- East, were against the slave trade and worked for the abolition but still held the racist beliefs of the day that white people were still superior to black people.

Mary Ann Macham told her story to a member of the Spence family, who she was in service to. There’s a lot that can be argued about the practice of black people, telling their stories to white people who wrote them down and how accurate these are as a true representation of their stories. But this is all we have now as ‘evidence’.

African Lives in Northern England completed research on Mary Ann Macham before this public statue and the local groups ‘found’ her.

I should be grateful and overjoyed that finally Mary Ann Macham is being remembered. That there is a public statue dedicated to her and that she is being reclaimed as part of the local community.

But something just doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe I’m being far too critical. Or maybe I’m just coming at it from a black woman’s point of view living within white supremacy culture?

The press releases for this unveiling of the statue in November 2025, proceed to paint the impression that Mary Ann Macham has just been discovered. That this was hidden history that the locals have just uncovered and became fascinated with and had to find out more about. But unknown to whom?

If they had done their research they would have seen and also acknowledged the work completed in the past to shine a light on Mary Ann. But the story goes that they have just discovered her story. Or decided to just focused on only part of her story/life? Mary Ann Macham ( later Blyth through marriage lived until she was 92 years old).

The local Sculptor Keith Barratt who created the piece has said to the local media that he wanted this sculpture to show that “she came from a place of great pain, but it’s also a story of human liberation, of breaking the chains and I feel that this is something universal that many people will understand”.

I suppose I have issue with how Mary Ann is framed within the story of her own life, which she doesn’t have control over maybe a bit then but definitely not now with how she is remembered.

I Love North Shields has more details about her life and attempts to create a bigger picture of her life before enslavement and after as a free woman living her life here in the north east. But frequently it has to be argued, the majority of time, Mary Ann is trapped within the ‘slave’ narrative perpetuated by white people. Although seeing her as ‘brave’ for plotting her escape, they still frame Mary Ann, tell her story within the role of once enslaved, and needing the help and support of kind Quakers. Sounds a lot like white saviorism. Then and now.

It’s almost like Mary Ann is stuck, encased in bronze, and barefoot to symbolise the condition of slavery. Enslavement she escaped from physically during her life, but trapped forever within this role in memorial because the white imagination cannot see/ grant Mary Ann her full humanity . The fullness of her life.

Time and time again, the mainstream constructs the stories they want to shed a light on and tell about people of the global majority which suits the narratives they’ve been running for centuries. The narratives where we don’t have agency or self-definition but are the objects, less than and victims. This is a means of control and domination.

This is why it’s important that we take every opportunity to tell our own stories. To control our own narratives. To leave these as archives for the people that come after we so they can be in no doubt that we lived big, beautiful, full lives on our own terms.

And is it me, or does the statue of Mary Ann Macham make her look like she’s white?

The Sinners Series – 005

| Sheree

With it being awards season and all, I felt called to watch Sinners again. This might have been my fifth or sixth time. I’m sorry, I’ve lost count. It still hasn’t lost its magic. The film just keeps on giving for me. To me.

This time, I’m struck by how many times freedom is mentioned. How to get free? How to be free? How to protect that freedom?

I think Sinners explores the price of freedom. The price of being free. There’s always a cost for attempting to live life on your own terms.

From the beginning, we might be introduced to sharecroppers, working for the white men, still on plantations. But this will be a self-sustaining community. More than bodies for working on the farms, the land they do not own. But they have each other. Each character is developed at the beginning of the film. The viewer is allowed to get to know them and see them in their element. They be vibrant and they be fixing to be free. Free from the restrictions of white supremacy culture, capitalism, patriarchy the whole shebang. And this isn’t without pain but also joy and laugher and love.

Sinners is what happens when a community, when people are living their own lives and are infiltrated by others, who want what they have. Outside threats come to ruin the day. Vampires come and covet what this community has. Sammie. Sammie has a gift, the gift of music that connects him with all ages. Griot.

Delta Slim’s says, “With this here ritual, we heal our people. And we be free.” This is the power of music and how a community can tell their stories through music. And outside forces, in this case vampires, who hear, see, realise this power, are threatened by it as well as want it. Want to control it take it away from this black community who are gain strength and sustainance through it all. And be free.

Sammie’s gift, the music, the very culture needs to be/ has to be protected from these outside threats at all costs. As culture, its very existence is threatened from being sucked dry by the devils coming tonight.

So as a people, as black people, we do whatever we can do to tell our own stories, protect and preserve our music, our culture as through this we heal. And we be free.

My morning pages read …

| Sheree

Good morning. I like being alone. I’m not lonely either. All the signs in society are saying I should be with someone. A man as that would make me complete but that just isn’t the case. It’s a trap. It’s patriarchy and it slowly kills us. Black women faster than white women. And I see it now. It’s an institution of control and power . And it’s passed off as the natural state of affairs. But really in nature it’s multiples, it’s community, it’s ecosystems.

That is what I’m taking away from BWCR ( Black women’s creative retreat) establishing my community, my ecosystem.

Black woman is always the original, the origins. And it’s about time we get/ no take our due as when we take we give. We share, we multiple, we make a path.

when the world is burning, what can we do?

| Sheree

when the world is burning, what can we do? we can make fucking art. that’s what we can do!

“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”

― Nina Simone

sometimes i feel so small and insignificant. and what can i do that would make a difference? the world is burning. people are being exterminated. genocide over and over around the world, not just Gaza. Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo. genocide is history repeating itself. just in the last few days, a landmark Aboriginal-led inquiry has found that british colonists committed genocide against australia’s Indigenous population in victoria in the 1830s. why has it taken so long for this to be vindicated when the people themselves know when they have been dehumanised and persecuted? nations/ governments commit genocide because they think they can get away with it. no one seems to hold them to account.

what can I do when, as an artist, when the world has gone to shit? make art. that’s what i can do and that’s what were supposed to do.

it’s out duty to reflect the times. but the world is making it really hard for us not to do this. the world is working really hard to silence us. to suppress us. to keep us operating on fear and to box us in. all these social media platforms are owned by oligarchs who own and control us. we are discouraged from telling the truth. and when we tell the truth is is filtered, distorted and manipulated.

and yet. i remember. we need art. people need art. art helps use process our feelings and emotions. through art we can learn, heal and feel. art helps us to be in touch with ourselves and each other. art connects. art helps us reflect.

art gives me the words or the language for the things i didn’t know i needed to express to process to reflect to share. here in my little space on tin-ternet, i’m not bought or controlled. i’m not silenced or afraid. i embrace my duty as an artist to make art by any means necessary.

i hope you will join me in creating and reflecting the times. let’s not sit in our fears but connect in our strengths.

Giving Myself the Right to Refuse – Day 24

| Sheree

I give myself

the right to refuse.

The right to refuse

what has already

been refused to me.

These rules, standards,

boundaries and barriers, I refuse.

I’m taking myself

outside.

I refuse to be labelled

and placed in one

of your boxes. I refuse.

And when I think about it, from being a child,

asking questions

and taking the beats for them questions,

I’ve always occupied

this refusal, but I never

had the words for it,

the language to hold

it up to the light

and investigate.

To amberfy it.

Until now.

Thank you Fred.

Thank you Saidiya.

Thank you Dal.

I refuse to take up

the subservient position

of ‘black’, to play

the good slave,

to kiss your boots

that continue

to kick me in the face.

Nah man! I refuse.

I refuse the choices

you offer me

and I carve out my own. I refuse

your parameters

and (re)imagine

other possibilities.

I’m tapping into

my own desires

which you could

never claim

or tame. I refuse what was refused me – rights,

responsibilities, respectabilities,

and stepping into

the rapid rivers

flowing fugitivity.

I’m ceasing up my body and running,

outside,

escaping

your oppressions.