Black motherhood, and the freedom of remembering my body.

I can’t sleep. Carnal energy is real and valid. I think about whether I’d make a happy mom. Not a good one but a happy one: would I be happy mothering? The answer is yes, with parameters and a tribe.

“I like how you woman,” he said. Being in this house reminds me of all the things I’ve been policed out of remembering my body could do. (Memory being revolutionary; that’s real.) Like make sex. And babies. My body can dance. Look ma! My body can move. I’m not dead. I am very much alive in all ways. While I haven’t a whole lot of interest in being prey to his apex predator, I’ll play a role for a short while if we both know we’re playing, and if he knows I’m just as much a wolf as he is.

Would I be alright waddling around campus? Or would I care about all the things I was taught good black girls shouldn’t do, like anything that suggests they have power?

Still, if I think taking and teaching classes, working with a team of organizers, and visioning and producing music and film generates administrative work, what of being a parent?

I think I like love, in all its forms. I like the power in making. But the things I create I get to give away…what do other artists who are mothers do? how did they deal?

…and could I stand giving a child away to the world every day and still be responsible for them when they come back to me? Child rearing is the ultimate conduction. The ultimate facilitation. The ultimate heart practice. Maybe. At the least, I think it’s the most rigorous and demanding of one’s full embodiment.

I can hardly keep up. I’m having fun theoretically, but right now in my body I can feel that I’m frustrated: it seems I’ve forgotten how to play. Like Peter Pan back in Neverland after he’d already grown up.

I came to school to relearn how to play. That’s something.

Even now I have 5 hours minimum of work ahead of me, due Tuesday, and I haven’t slept. What of my 500 words? What of my guitar, voice and songwriting practice? What of my daily runs and core exercise? What of my 15 minutes of breathing? What of all these habits that apparently make me more fit when I am surrounded by creatives that I may never have the chance to play with again in this way and in this space?

Improvisation is a spiritual practice of setting the intention and then letting it go, engaging with what comes, and at the end, saying “look what we made.”

He talks about the difference between “we” and “us” sometimes. I believe him.

The full moon intention has been set. It’s been one day and already it’s morphed: before it was finish the ep; now it’s finish the short film that features one of the songs. Something magical happens when you de-center a thing. It’s not about the songs anymore but the stories they tell, and the stories they become a part of. That’s an awful lot less pressure. It makes me feel like my work and I are part of the we, the us, all the above. I agree: “us” sounds more connected and enclosed, like a hug.