Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark is a book I can’t get out of my head since I finished reading it.
A dark gothic southern historical fantasy novella set in 1920s Macon, Alabama, just after the 1915 film The Birth of the Nation which is being used to grow the KKK but to another level of Ku Kluxes. Monsters upon monsters.
And who is there to fight them and save the day if not three black women armed with blade, bullets and bomb. Helped with special powers and kinship with Gullah women and the supernatural.
Published on October 13, ( my birthday) 2020, this book blurred all the genres, redefines narratives and timelines and had me hooked from start to finish. It messed with my expectations and just left me wanting more.
I hope there’s going to be a sequel as these characters are too powerful and inspiring to be left in one novella.
These last few weeks of November have found me out of sorts if I’m being honest.
Things that I’ve committed to, or poured my energy into haven’t gone my way or come to fruition.
The disappointment has been at times crippling as well as left me questioning.
Am I good enough? Am I putting my eggs in the wrong basket? Am I really going to bring about change in a system not looking to change?
The sheer effort to keep pushing that boulder up the hill is taking its toll. There’s a voice that’s getting louder saying, why bother?
What the fuck am I doing anyway?
It doesn’t help having these thoughts and being ill too. It doesn’t help that I feel I’m making progress and then turn the next corner to just get knocked back.
While I sit and lick my wounds, doing all the things I said I would never do again, I have to ask myself what am I doing? Where am I going? And would it be just better for me if I stopped caring so much, stopped fighting the ways things are and just give up/ in and accept the crumbs I’m given and be grateful.
I don’t know if I expressed it openly but I’ve been trying to post every day here in honour of a practice from years ago of being creative every day.
This last week, home alone and probably depressed, I’ve been beating myself up for not doing more. More out in society as well as within my own practice. I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions and I’ve not been kind towards myself.
Coming out the other end though I can see that I’ve been doing what I’ve needed. Rest yes but also quiet, small magic.
I’ve been collecting brown paper from packages. I thought I’d use them within the creative retreats I facilitated this year but it didn’t happen. So I have a very large pile and what I love about the brown paper apart from the sound and texture is the un/uniformativity of it.
These papers are teared to fuck. Fragile and worn and rough. And I love feeling them. So this week, I might not have been posting here but my sitting room became a factory conveyer belt as brown paper got the credit card treatment of smeared paints. Acrylic paints that I’m using up that I love the mixtures of, that gets under my nails and onto the carpet. And I love it. One side wait to dry and then the next and then let’s fold and put these single sheets together to make a whole
This practice has made me whole again this week. I’ve been writing within this new journal this past couple of days and I feel so good to be doing so. Better.
I’m grateful to wake up each morning and {BE}. I’m grateful that I’m no longer chasing recognition and the big bucks. I’m grateful that I don’t give a fuck about being perfect and always having to smile.
I’m grateful for the community I have around me. Cultivated over years. They care for me and I care for them.
I’m grateful to myself for never giving up on me and for always having my back even when it feels I’m falling apart. Falling apart but big hands to put me back together again, but better.
I really appreciate it when you’ve bought a book and are ready to dive into it, but you’re just not feeling it. You can’t get into it. So onto the book shelf it goes, collecting dust. Maybe even taunting you.
And then, over time, into a different time, you pick up said book again and you dive into this time, deeply. It’s singing it’s message through you mind, body and soul.
This practice happened for me with Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and here it’s happened again with What is antiracism? by Arun Kundnani.
It’s that time of year again where I’m due to go back into Sunderland University and lecture within the Social Work Department around anti-racism. This started in 2020, in the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprisings around the world. Up until this point there had been no addressing of race and racism within social work training. And you could still say this is the case as one session, 2-3 hours long, is hardly making a dent into racism and its consequences. But I digress.
Anyway each year, my thinking and practices have changed as I’ve read more and developed more as an anti-racist, anti-capitalist agitator, organiser and activist.
I share my learnings and findings as I want to bring about change for everyone. And this transformation can’t be just limited to working on a personal level as the usual anti-racism training/ education would have us believe.
The problem is not just on an individual level, our unconscious biases etc, the problems are structural and are engrained into the bedrock of our societies, countries and communities.
Anyhow, this book What is antiracism? is not only giving me the historical evidence of racism, the term and practices, but is also sharpening my argument around how racism and classism go hand in hand and that you cannot have a revolution without black workers leading the way. As black workers have always fought for freedom and the dismantling of capitalism for everyone, not just for (white) workers as the revolutions within Europe have done.
We have the French Revolution in the 1700s, lead by the urban masses. We have the Russian Revolution lead by the vanguard party for the proletariat. But we have the Saint-Domingue Revolution in the 1700s lead by the enslaved for abolition of all enslavement in the colonies and Europe, in tandem with the French Revolution happening in Paris. The first time that black and white workers were fighting a common cause together on this scale.
Which revolution succeeded?
The revolution lead by the enslaved, black forced labour, which created the sovereign state of Haiti, a black revolution which had at its heart radical action to transform all societies.
This week saw me on my travels again as I visited Liverpool. I was there to see Of Monsters and Men, and the release of their new album, All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade at Jacaranda Baltic. Which was awesome. Intimate and heartfelt.
Before I met up for lunch with my son, I took a walk around Albert Dock and came across the sea barriers full of love locks. Apparently for years, people have come for miles to attach their own lock as a message of unbreakable love. There are some people that think this is an eyesore and that they are damaging the barriers. I say, WTF.
What does it really matter if people want to add to the tradition? What really is the problem? They’re metal barriers there for people’s safety why not add some locks to them as a symbol of love? They don’t weaken the barrier. Probably make them stronger.
Isn’t love supposed to make us stronger? Yes there’s pain and suffering, but a whole heap of joy that comes with it. I’m learning about love at the moment as I read All About Love, by bell hooks, in collaboration with a friend. We read and talk about it. And I’m finding this most useful in developing a new understanding of love. And I suppose I come from the perspiration that I talk about love as the foundation of all that I do/ {BE}. But how can I say this if I don’t really know what love is? Talk is cheap but true understanding and embodiment of love is another story.
Living Wild Studios 