From Far Out to Close In: On Vulnerability and Destiny

 2020 C2C PROCESS NOTES 

I tend toward silence, shyness, privacy, even secrecy at times. Octavia Butler said of shyness, “it’s torment and it’s shit.” You get to a certain place and realize this is a fact. You know all that you have, and you know all you have you cannot bear alone. It must be shared. But then you get to a place, having overcome enough of your hang-ups to extend a hand, only to find that there is no one there to receive it. 

In my case, the irony of this was exaggerated. I finally felt that readiness to engage the deepest parts of myself with others and Boom! We’re called into social distancing. Social Distancing. It’s not necessarily a new practice, nor is it an uncomfortable state of being for me. Fear of the outside world I am used to. The only strange part of this is that everyone else is doing it too. It once felt like, by way of aloofness and social media lurking, I could observe others like they were ants on an anthill, but in the wake of this pandemic, we have all been forced up into the clouds, looking down on our abandoned cities. Consequently, the process of learning to share myself is going to look a little different. In this age of distancing, social media platforms are mechanisms for building and nurturing real relationships. Still, access to other people’s lives, the thrill of being entertained, it can all be a little distracting, tempting me back into that “ants on an anthill” mentality. But that’s why I’m thankful for Call to Create. It provides a network, a support system, an intimate space, cyber or otherwise, in which clarity, community, and authenticity are possible. Finding Mother Mercy’s Incubator was an auspicious sign that guidance would be provided as I made myself vulnerable, that there were spaces and structures for all the things most important to me. And within our cohort, this vulnerability has been encouraged by sisterhood, by moments of togetherness, and by the central question, we are all pondering and creating around: What are you willing to do? 

I don’t remember exactly how I decided on my answer. But I know and recall that I have always had a strong desire to make sense of it all, to make sense of myself, my impulses, my family and community dynamics, my obligations and duties. The why of the matter is always necessary for me to move forward. So, when the answer finally came to me, it just made so much sense! What am I willing to do? I am willing to make meaning. 

My answer is many things. It is authentic to me and my experiences; It is salvation from fear; And most importantly, it is empowerment. I’ve often been called weird. And it’s bothered me at times, assuming it implied a lack of relatability, and saddled me with the lone wolf status I’ve been trying to shake. The word has its roots in old English wyrd and Proto-germanic wurthiz meaning having the ability to control one’s fate. So perhaps, I am weird! Making meaning is empowering precisely because it is weird in this way. 

This is what I want to explore in my answer to this question: shaping fate by making meaning. And I am not alone. An entire tradition of makers and shapers have come before me in the form of Afro-futurist giants like Alice Coltrane, Sun-Ra, and Octavia Butler. They too were weird. To the mainstream, they seemed to veer off toward impossibilities, galactic abstraction, dissonance, but they were actually Afrofuturist superheroes, drawing new connections and creating new narratives. Their method? Diverging from convention and design to explore marginal relationships and unlikely (or all too likely) sequences. Coltrane and Sun-Ra, for example, diverged from expectation by using bebop era improvisation techniques. Their goal was to go as close to the edge of reason and sound as their own humanity would allow, producing for us feeling which could not be described in words. Octavia Butler was a pioneer in her own right, exploring possibility free of know-how and to-do, meaning free of lore and its progressions. She was always looking to the future and its sustainability.

I write poetry and compose movement with reference to this Afro-futurist tradition, all the while making meaning and shaping destiny--my own to start! Although my mediums of choice are effectively much different than the music and prose of these three afro-futurist superheroes, I shamelessly draw inspiration from their courage and far-outness. And there is much work to be done. There are mental roadblocks I must overcome to even come close to a rough interpretation of afro-futurism. For example, at times, I am pre-occupied to the point of paralysis with making sense of things, with making things acceptable. Perhaps this is because of my discomfort with dissonance or because I haven’t committed the intention as much as I think I have. But moving through roadblocks like these are part of the process.  In the spirit of forging new connections, I hope to share more of this process with you as I go. Even in these first few weeks, I’ve come so far in building my threshold for vulnerability. I know that by displaying all that makes me weird, I can ignite a little weirdness, a little far-out destiny shaping in someone else too, even if for now, it's from afar.