A Little for the World

Interdisciplinary World-building (w/ Quaba Ernest)

After seeing a staging of his work-in-progress "Huis Clos," a dance performance with elements of spoken word, role playing, and storytelling, I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Quaba Venza Ernest about his interdisciplinary world-building, and the many facets that make up these worlds. Emotionally impacted by the piece, I was happy to get to know some of the early building blocks of the dance, and the plays that influenced it.  With insight into the origin of Venza Dance, an interdisciplinary arts company centered in dance, his choreographing methods, and intent of staying far away from boxes as an artist, Quaba and I were able to dive a little deeper into the working hand of the subconscious through the artist and how our relatives, ancestors, and the artists we've grown up on inspire the art making and even infuse themselves into our stories, with or without our awareness. While music, or rhythm, is the one body that weaves different practices together (dance, poetry, instrumentation, singing), Quaba gives insight into his and his family's history with music and how the thread has led to Ernest Records, a recording studio and production company in Brooklyn, NY, which holds space for musicians and poets to share from the depths of their souls, with open reception and caring attention.

Glitch Feminism (w/ Prince De León)

Carving through wood, painting, and carefully placing grain into place to depict whole worlds of Black and African people, Prince De León is an artist who spends her time making art as a labor of love and a conversation with self. Together, the two of us revisit some of the most fruitful places in Philadelphia, a city that lives so fully in both of our hearts, and I got to learn about her art making process as a Liberian artist whose evolution, as a human, is solely connected to her art.  We sit with a very important early work of hers--a piece called "African Booty Scratcher"--inspired by the book "Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto" by Legacy Russel, and influenced by Basquiat's style of self-portrait. As artists who speak from a place of truth and memory, it felt good to be in conversation with someone whose art making process is a dance with identity and memory; someone who can understand the inner workings imbedded into such a way of making.

Life Through the Lens of Dance (w/ Jhelan Gordon-Salaam)

What would I do if I couldn't fail? This is the question I've come to ponder and dwell after this conversation.  Jhelan Gordon-Salaam is a choreographer, movement artist, teacher, fellow deep feeler, and fellow reader who I've gotten the chance to meet during my time spent in Philadelphia. The two of us go beneath the surface and comb through the ways in which Dance has infused itself into our personal worlds and even return to the earlier tender places where it all began.  With our very different experiences and timelines, we both come together to provide each other with perspective and support in reclaiming what our journeys mean, and sift through the different lenses that the art form provides.

Author, Point to Home (w/ Mark Oshiro)

Explicitly candid about healing the inner child through writing, Mark and I comb through these processes and revisit their journeys of how their many novels have been shaped by experience.  Mark Oshiro is a #1 NY Times Bestselling Author of The Sun and the Star: A Nico Di Angelo Adventure, and award winning novelist of YA and middle grade books Such as: Anger is a Gift, Into the Light, Each of us a Desert, and many more.  Specifically, we recall the process and life experiences that infused these two novels in particular: Into the Light, and Anger is a Gift.  Having spent time talking to students in Oakland about their experiences in the school system, Mark wrote Anger is a Gift as a way of doing justice to telling their stories authentically, whilst infusing some of their own personal connection to the world through certain characters in the story.  Into the Light became a much more fiction/biographical story, once Mark became ready to truly share the depths of their own life experiences as a person who grew up in the foster care system, and had experience with strictly religious people who swore against queerness.  All of this has led to many of these stories being written, and now, Mark and I get to comb through it all. Reading Mark’s work in summer of 2023, I knew that one day I would want to talk to this person about their art, especially as a queer writer myself who makes it a point to face my experiences through my writing.  I hope there’s something in here for you.

'Amor Fati' (w/ Ashley Beerdat)

Painting, pathways, and "honoring your fate." This week, Ashley Beerdat and I meditate on the guiding or gravitational pulls within her life as a painter, and how following the colors' natural dialogue impacts her relationship to the world, and helps build self-confidence. Ashley is a Canada-based painter who exhibits her work internationally. The two of us met from doing a group exhibition together, and have somehow found this correlation between poetry and visual art.  Sit with us as we move through our artistic journeys as emerging artists, and how creating intuitively is leading her to all the right places. The episode is titled "Amor Fati" after the Latin term, which means "Love of fate." This is something Ashley shares with me in our conversation, and  since the episode is heavy of this theme of trusting our unique paths, I knew this was the right name for our time spent together.