I tend to notice due to the demands placed on me by my own body that even getting included is a form of violence. Even becoming a citizen - if I were a refugee, like my sisters and brothers are, knocking on the doors of America, or knocking on the doors of Europe - even with all of this, even to get accepted is a form of violence. There is a Procrustean bed dynamic that cuts away the flesh of the refugees and the immigrants, and makes them adapt to a way of being that is not theirs.
So I wonder if there are not fugitive justices, fugitive hopes, fugitive spaces - unspeakable apophatic realities that are outside of this performance of power that we can notice, that can be scandalous to the modern ear. Like saying for instance that Esú traveled with the slaves, condoned all that suffering - and yet was using that as a way of ritualizing other bodies into being.
And so this is my question, this is the question that animates my work with the Emergence Network: what if the way we respond to crisis is part of the crisis? What if there are other spaces of power? And what if we can touch these spaces of power, and be touched in return? What happens?
credits
from Kenny's Room,
track released September 4, 2020