It’s Monday afternoon and after a LONG weekend I find myself sitting in the dining room of a quaint home in the southern part of Austin, Texas. No, I haven’t been kidnapped. I actually came here out of free will, which shouldn’t be that much of a surprise considering the rave reviews I’ve gotten about city for years now.
But it wasn’t the excellent Tex-Mex that’s brought me here (though it might be what keeps me). Fire & Ink, an organization committed to Black GLBT writers, had its 3rd Cotillion this past weekend, fitted with a variety of amazing workshops and panels on everything from memoir and lyrics writing to how to facilitate a writing community. Some of my very favorite individuals in the whole entire world presented and performed there as well, including Lenelle Moise, Djola Branner, Sharon Bridgforth, and both Aurin Squire and Andre Lancaster of Freedom Train Productions, which I’ve been working with all summer as part of their playwrights’ open workshops.
It’s been years since I’ve been to the Mason-Stith-Massenburg Family Reunion as dictated by my biology. But this gathering made up for all the ones I have ever missed and could ever attend in the future. Never have I been an environment so self-reflective and affirming of all of my parts.
In addition to being seriously inspired to work on develop some new pieces and work with new genres, I was also thoroughly entertained and uplifted by the staged readings of Sharon Bridgforth’s delta dandi, E. Patrick Harris’ Pouring Tea, and a concert by the effervescent JOMAMA JONES and her Sweet Peaches.
The conference ended on Sunday morning after a panel discussed the very necessary work of making art to save your own life. The Fire & Ink Board of Directors was acknowledged and opened up the floor for constructive critique of the conference, reminding us that the previously decided every-4th-year would be changed to every 2 for the conferences hereafter. It was then that the emotional timbre of the conference really manifested with three of the youngest participants (myself included) brought to the center of the room and four of the elder artists asked to lay their hands on us. Everyone else made a circle around the room and began granting us their wisdom in a cacophony of positive energy. The break down was fast and deep.
It was an astonishing moment for me – having black hands and voices invoking queerness and artistry into me rather than exorcising it out. It was an empowering moment, having all of my internal wisdom breathed onto my body by living beings. It was the moment that I’d dreamed of – having my tribe acknowledge and affirm me. I didn’t know it would be so hard.
Qwo-Li Driskill’s essay “Stolen From Our Bodies” discusses the ways in which colonization has forced brown queer people to eroticize themselves only within the context of the white gaze. But that holy Sunday morning moment forced me to consider other ways I’ve been forced to divorce my true self from my body. The relentless policing of my mannerisms by older men in my family from as far back as I can remember. Having to endure the harsh environment of juvenile sports teams while those who placed me in the position knew I would only receive ridicule and embarassment. Tough love.
But the most poignant moment that surfaced from the depths of my subconscious was being repeatedly shamed out of my ecstatic spirit dance as a child in church. He didn’t attend regularly so he had no idea how connected I was to our extended family’s spiritual tribe. How embedded its values were in my root chakra. How badly I wanted to receive the Holy Ghost and get saved so I could go to Heaven. How cathartic getting caught up in the music, spirit, and emotion was for me. And how much I wanted him to see that I was doing a good thing.
“Why were moving your hands like that?”, he asked me that night. I couldn’t answer him. How could I? But he made me promise to never do it again. But I did. Initiation into eternal life via ecstatic movement sanctioned by my tribe was bigger, yes, much bigger, than my father. If he hit me, I’ve blocked it out. I honestly can’t remember. But I do know that I never “got saved” in that tradition and I’ve felt tribe-less ever since. That self-consciousness about my physicality became fully embedded, like a WWII bullet, in my 6-year old soul.
It didn’t help that the last time hands were laid on my head in that fashion, I was being exorcised of disobedience and homosexuality by a pastor at my parents’ church during my teenage years. It was a moment that was all too hard to trust or to give in to as badly as I wanted it to permeate my soul expel the lies that were residing in it. I fought back the tears lest anyone mistake me for “that ecstatically emotionally religious faggot” once more. But in these memories, it did it’s work. And now I will do mine.
“I remember I born I remember I born I remember I born…”- delta dandi, by Sharon Bridgforth
