It’s been a while since I’ve taken you on a photowalk. With the nights getting lighter, and being away in Kiwi, I felt the urge to watch the sun go down over Loch Morlich.
When Kiwi and I were coming back from Glencoe in the New Year, we planned to stop off at Loch Morlich on route but it had snowed and more forecast. I’d never been to the loch before so I erred on the side of caution promising myself that we would return some other time.
That’s a practice of mine. To not run around like a blue arsed fly trying to fit everything in/ see/do everything but to leave something to come back for. A reason to return.
We were due to return to Loch Morlich in January but after my fall, I postponed it till this week.
So here we are parked up at Glenmore Campsite nestled in Glenmore Forest and kissing Loch Morlich.
Of course I’ve already been in the loch and it was fucking cold. I was tingling with renewed life afterwards though.
Enough energy therefore to take you on a photowalk as the evening draws in.
For years, I used to travel into Scotland, maybe with work in Dunbar or Edinburgh, and stop off on route at this beach, Thorntonloch Beach.
It’s nothing spectacular, apart from stretching out at the feet of Torness Power Station, but it would be a good place to stop and stretch my legs and calm my spirit.
I remember stopping there on my first trip to Iceland and being all giddy as I watched the waves roll in. That was May 2016.
I say all this because for the last few years and the last few trips across the border, I haven’t stopped and walked this beach.
I do not know why. Maybe I didn’t want to step back into a former Sheree. Maybe I didn’t want the hassle of sand in my toes. Or maybe I just didn’t register why I really used to stop at this beach.
I used to stop at this beach, to just be. To breathe. To be present.
Torness Power Station, Dunbar
And this time as I skip across the border, I pull over, park up and just be with the beach and sea.
This short piece is a mash up of a certain clip from Joaquina de Angola: Memory of a Liberation by Aida Bueno Sarduy and music from Insight Timer, called You.
Seen recently in Barcelona at CCCB, Joaquina de Angola: Memory of a Liberation by Aida Bueno Sarduy is an audiovisual installation that recovers the story of Joaquina, a young woman enslaved on a plantation in Brazil, and her escape.
“A work about archived, forgotten, and silenced voices in the history of slavery and colonialism. This audiovisual installation brings to life the act of “unarchiving” an event recorded in colonial history as an escape. A 15-year-old enslaved girl fled the plantation where she lived, and her owner, after an unsuccessful search, placed an ad in the newspaper offering a reward to whoever found her. The archive reveals nothing more about this incident: it merely collects it as a piece of data. This piece challenges the oblivion, archiving, and silencing of this character. To unarchive, in this context, becomes an artistic and political act that brings Joaquina de Angola out of the shadows of the document, removing her gag and chains so that she can tell her own story. This act not only questions the record but also raises questions and delves into its details. It is an inquiry that brings Joaquina back to life and acknowledges her as a cimarrona, calling upon ancestral memory as well as imagination, intuition, and spirituality. Since the beginning of colonization in Brazil, alliances and exchanges of extraordinary significance have taken place between Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans, but these have also been silenced. The presence of entities known as caboclos (Indigenous spirits) in all Afro-Brazilian religions is perhaps the most consistent and profound evidence of this. Amazonian peoples, Indigenous peoples from across Brazil, and quilombola communities—formed by Afro-descendant peoples—have shared ancestral struggles for the defense of their territories and against colonization and exploitation. The installation speculates on these possible Afro-Indigenous alliances in Joaquina de Angola’s journey toward freedom.”
This extracted masheup with music created above by myself, hence a found poetry film, is my take at a beginning of exploring fugitivity. I’ve been living, breathing, talking, practicing fugitivity for a few years now. I’ve mentioned it before, and it was Dal Kular who first introduced the term of me via her then newsletter, Field Notes. Dal said at the beginning of Jan 2023,
“Whatever the out-there-in-the-world fuckery is going on in 2023, I declare myself a CREATIVE FUGITIVE. A way of living in this world but not of it.”
Her take on creative fugitivity has stuck with me. I’ve gone on to read more around fugitivity. I’m even writing a chapter, at the moment, around black mothering and fugitivity. Fugitivity is taking over my life. And again I’m creating a project here in my portfolio to collect my wanderings and wonderings around this concept and way of being.
For me in a nutshell, fugitivity is the act of flight. It is the withdrawing of my labour and consent in the current system of white supremacy culture, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism. Fugivitiy is refusal and resistance. Divesting from the current way things are playing out as the few hoard the wealth of the world at the expense of the many.
Originally the fugitive was the runaway, the escapee. Hence why the audio-visual installation and consequent fugitive poetry film was created. I’m starting from the origins of the escaping enslaved. Running, fleeing captivity towards freedom. Freedom being the end point, the destination but in the process of escaping, there is the in-between space between what they were fleeing from and fleeing to. And here in this liminal space is where fugitivity is ripe.
There/ here is the lingering in the midst of flight, where I choose to SLOW down and be. To linger with nature. To seek my joy and pleasure in the world around me on my own terms. Fred Moten in conversation with Saidiya Hartman, both of whom we will be exploring further, said,
“I often use – and I always think of it in relation to Fannie Lou Hamer, because it’s just me giving a theoretical spin on a formulation she made in practice: to refuse that which has been refused to you. And that’s what I’m interested in.”
That is fugitivity as a method, kin-making and place-making, as a practice that I intend to explore within this project archive.
Okay where to begin.. That has been the issue – worried about where to begin has stopped me beginning. But now I’ve got to begin as I need to get it out of me onto the page, in order to create some kind of sense of it all. So maybe I’ll begin with the Combahee River Collective (CRC).
I’m diving into the realms of Black Feminism- thought and theory and practices.
I’ve already been in the thick of it for years, with me first coming to Black Feminism through my degree and then masters and then this forming the foundation really of my PhD when I traced the tradition of Black British Women’s Poetry. But retaining knowledge and theory is difficult when I keep putting new things in my brain.
I don’t want to be an expert on Black Feminism but I do want to revisit it and consider it’s premise again in light of recent readings and experiences.
So I begin with the Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977. And I’m not saying that this is the beginning of Black Feminism. But I’m using it as a marker along the way. I figure if I keep this statement in clear view, using it like a signpost then I can’t stray too far off the path.
This exploration of Black Feminist thought is going to be a new folder within this website’s portfolio as this is area of research is something I plan to keep returning back to and adding to as I continue to re-familiarise as well as extend my thinking and practices around Black Feminism.
So what is the Combahee River Collective Statement all about. Well first you can was the full statement here.
It has been argued that this statement issue by a collective of Black women in Boston in 1977 who came together after witnessing an recognising the racism within the women’s movement and the sexism within the race/ civil rights movement, was based on the reality that Black women’s experiences cannot be reduced to either race or gender but have to be understood on their own terms.
Combahee River Collective Statement introduced to the world terms such as “interlocking oppression” and “identity politics.” Formed in 1974, The Combahee River Collective (CRC) was a radical Black feminist organisation which took it’s name from Harriet Tubman’s 1853 raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed 750 enslaved people.
It might have been The Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 who coined the phrase “intersectionality” but it was CRC who articulated the analysis that underpins the meaning of intersectionality. The idea that multiple oppressions reinforce each other to create new categories of suffering, these interlocking oppressions, happening simultaneously, renders the Black woman’s position in society unique and most direr.
As the statement begins:
“The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”
It goes on to state:
“Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g., mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive, indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western Hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work”.
CRC comes to the conclusion that:
“We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression”.
And this would come to pass through the practice of the revolutionary politics of Black Feminism.
A few days in the Emerald Isle, staying in Dublin. Walking my little legs off and soaking up the culture and Guinness ( with a dash of blackcurrant).
Here is St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Probably the first building to get my heart a pumping. And I’m thinking gothic. I’m going back to my GCSE studies and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. And it just really thrilled me. It touched my romantic horror capabilities. The terrible beauty of this world.
It’s a striking Cathedral, made from limestone and is constructed in a gothic style. I recognised its mystery and gloom and yet a feeling of light too. An 800 year old building probably constructed in an ancient well used by St. Patrick himself.
It’s such a beautiful construction as well as having a moody kind of vibe of pointy arches and buttresses and heavy weathered stone. I was just as in my element as I walked the streets of Dublin. And just as the limestone, is greying and dark, but still a hint of lightness, so was the city itself: full of heart with an underbelly of poverty and suffering. A terrible beauty.
I hope you’re keeping safe and warm as the weather and climate at the moment is freaky. Those times of being secure in the seasons and what would happen weather and temperature wise are gone. Gone. And there’s still people out here denying climate crisis. Please.
I’ve been easing into February after my time away in Barcelona. I sure did enjoy my time away. And let’s get one thing straight. Me going away is not me trying to escape my day to day life. Or to bury my head in the sand and ignore stuff. Nah man! Me taking myself away, spending money on experiences rather than material things, is me giving myself the time and space to dive deeper into myself. To strengthen the person I am becoming on the daily.
Spending time, in new and old places, travelling and meeting new people, is an opportunity to gain clarity on the person I am and becoming. It’s a concentrated time to explore my values and morals, my dreams and plans. It fills my pot with images and words and feelings at the same time as bringing out into the world insight, thoughts and actions.
So January was good in terms of feeding my pot and keeping me in rest mode and February will continue this quest of rest and dreaming.
A highlight of January, and Barcelona is in there of course, was finding a Black Madonna and child just by chance, just as I was leaving Barcelona to take to the sea of Sitges. This sighting and time spent with her was a gift. A gift I carry with me and which is fuelling how I move through the next month.
February the month of love and grace for me. As I’m not looking for love anywhere else expect from myself. And how am I showing myself love this month? Resting when it’s needed. Not rushing to do things I don’t want to do. Not being a doormat for other people. Distancing myself from toxic people and situations. Not playing the games that belittle me. Not voicing my power and choice as a way to keep the peace or to be looked upon fondly. Being honest even when it hurts including myself because life’s too short to be wrapped up in charades. Caring for my needs and wants. Prioritising my needs and wants first because then when I turn up for others there is no resentment just an open heart.
Of course February will see some more traveling as I continue to fill my pot with experiences that make my heart sing and smile shine. #onwards.
My mind and body are hurting with the constant stream of information and images of this and that atrocity, and there is very little space to breathe, rest and take stock. I’ll be honest, I’ve been checking out. Checking out into Netflix boxsets, mindlessly watching episode after episode, numbing the pain and feelings of being inadequate , or not doing enough, being enough. Enough.
I don’t know about you, but it’s an overload at times of these times, which feel cruel and oppressive, evil and violent and unbelievable and yet we accept. There are no quick fix solutions but my heart and soul wants to feel that all will be well.
Society and culture ( the whole world) at the moment feels toxic and dangerous and I’m all for just slowing down and connecting in more deeper, honest and nourishing ways. I’m still leaning into my joys. Still bending towards the light as I don’t want to lose myself in this crippling spiral.
I’m slowing down alone and I’m slowing down in groups that I’m supporting and who are supporting me. I’m not by-passing the pain, the harsh realities, the genocides ( as there are multiple happening at the same time just now or have always been going on), but I’m also acknowledging how much I can endure and not beating myself up if I choose silence instead of performance. I know this is a privilege which I recognise, voice and keep checking.
Below I share the images from my Paris trip of Our Lady of Good Deliverance, often referred to as the Black Madonna of Paris. Over a 6 miles walk to see her, I covered more miles within my mind with my thoughts and feelings wondering and wandering, which were silenced or put to one side when I met this Black Madonna. I had the small chapel , in the suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, all to myself when I visited. I walked around, I sat and looked and I lit a candle and remembered my ancestors and give thanks for this deliverance.
Deliverance: being rescued or being set free. How apt she comes back to me today. How I must have unconsciously known I needed her guidance today, needed her love and reassurances that liberty, salvation, change is possible. I’m not religious or spouting anything remotely religious or pious. I’m not preaching or looking to convert.
I’m spiritual and believe in love. I believe in the good in people and try to connect there on that common ground rather than separation and hatred.
What I do know is this isn’t a neat, tie-it-all-up-ending, with ‘this is what I want to say and you to take away’ as that would be another construct and false prophet.
I just know starting to look/ believe that ‘God is a Black Woman’, that the Black Madonnas are here to support and love us through difficult times ( as well as good times, our pleasures and joys) feels like a blessing to me that I will continue to lean into during these slowing down, turning away from exploitative and extractive society and culture times and continue to nurture others ways of {BEING} in this world.
Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.
A week ago today, I took the journey back to Montserrat. I first visited this multi-peaked mountain range, home of a Benedictine monk monastery, back in 2007 maybe. Then, I was staying in El Bruc, a small village at the base of the mountains, at the artists retreat, Can Serrat, for a month. A bunch of us from the retreat decided one day to climb the mountain range to reach the top, the monastery. To see the Black Madonna we had heard of.
It was hard going. Taking hours, at times using my hands, feet, knees, elbows to reach the top, climbing sheer rock face and rambling through the forests of the National Park.
I was always behind, at the back of the group. Moving slowly, holding everyone up. They kept stopping to wait for me. I told them not to but they said they had to. That they couldn’t leave me alone on the woods. Not knowing where to go, which path to take.
I didn’t ask for their help. They it took upon themselves to be responsible for me. And they resented me for it. Once we reached the top, and entered the Basilica, they all climbed up further steps to go see and touch the Black Madonna. I didn’t go up. I saw her from afar. I denied myself the opportunity to be with her because I was tired. I was also ashamed for moving so slow. For not being as fit as the others in the group. I was upset because my body let me down but also that these strangers had made me feel like shit for being me. For being a fat Black body who wasn’t good enough. I allowed them to take away my joy and self-worth all because I was unfit and slowed them down. But I didn’t ask them to wait on me or look out for me. I wasn’t a child but they seemed to think it was okay to treat me as such. And I allowed them to.
Fast forward to last week, the end of January 2025 and I return to Montserrat. This time I get up early, to catch the special train to Montserrat from the centre of Barcelona. It’s an hour ride on a commuter train heading north out of Barcelona. The train is packed and I’ve overheating with my two coats on, thinking it would be cold in Barcelona in January. I was wrong. The temperatures were glorious. Winter sun has a way of easing the bones, warming the flesh and making everything fluid and relaxed.
The further we moved out of the city centre, the more the train emptied. Until we were moving within the shadow of mountains and trees. The train can let you off at two stops for Montserrat. The first stop is for the airlift up the mountain which takes 4 minutes. The second stop is to catch the slower train up the mountain. 15 minutes of a steep, slow winding climb. I took the second stop as I was in no rush.
Even on the return to Montserrat, I chose once again to make slow progress. Taking my time to reach the final destination. Yes my body is older this time. I’m probably even fatter but I knew I wasn’t going to allow anyone else to dictate my process or to take away my joy.
Once I reached the top of Montserrat, well not really the top, the main station/ base where the shops and cafes are, I popped into the information centre there in the hope of getting a funicular further up the mountain. It wasn’t working this day but I could walk up an easy path to the top if I wanted.
I enquired about purchasing a ticket to get into the Basilica and to visit the Black Madonna this time also. If I could wait till 1.15pm I could see her as well as listen to the choir sing at 1pm for a little extra cost. Of course I wanted to experience it all. So with ticket bought and time to kill, I took my body further up the mountain.
A steep mountain track hugging the rock face took me further and further into the more or less cloudless sky. And I was just breathing in the tranquility and gratitude to be able to make this journey and relive a piece of my past but on my own terms.
There were other people here but it didn’t bother me as I was in my own little bubble of joy, soaking up the sun, the smells of cypress trees and elders and then there were the bells.
Once back down, I grabbed a coffee and just sat outside and watched people go by. My excitement was building, as after years of waiting, I was finally going to see the Black Madonna of Montserrat up close.
The Black Madonna is sometimes referred to by other names, including ‘The Virgin of Montserrat’ and ‘La Moreneta’, sits behind a sheet of glass high above overlooking the alter. One hand holding a sphere is not behind the glass. Her hand sticks though the glass and is available to touch or kiss if you so wish.
Along a corridor and up some steps and then some more to finally come to the chamber where the Black Madonna sits. You proceed in a line past her. Each of us has an opportunity to stop in front of her. To touch her. To pray. I gave thanks to her. And immediately teared up to be with her. To be this close to her. To be able to touch her. I didn’t ask for anything as she is known for granted miracles. I was just happy and grateful to be in her presence.
I journeyed back down to take my seat within the Basilica to then heat the choir song. All the time I can see the Virgin high above the altar looking down on us.
The Choir @ Montserrat
The choir sang for about 15 minutes and gave the congregation a blessing. I’m not religious. I’m spiritual. But I could appreciate the feelings that arose to be within such a remarkable place and to hear such angelic voices rising within the space and vibrating back into my body. Again another emotional moment.
Once the choir retreated. I got myself back into the queue to visit the Black Madonna once again. I was all about getting my money’s worth! No not really, I wanted to say goodbye and just see her up close once again. And as I say, I’m not religious. And I’m not praying or idolising over false idols.
What I see in the Black Madonna is a Black woman. I see myself. I connect with her as she can relate to my suffering. To my body and soul. And I just want to give thanks to her for being there for me at all times. She takes my woes and my joys. She just reflects back to me that we, as Black women, are enough just as we are. No one else needs to bestow any value on us. We see ourselves and we love ourselves. Just the way we are.
After touching her one more time. I walked back into the sun and climbed a steep path up the other side of the mountain, not ready to leave this peaceful sanctuary. A tremendous amount of peace had descended on me during my time within Montserrat and I wanted to carry it with me as I left. Moving became effortless. My heart was light and full of gratitude.
Living Wild Studios 