On Juneteenth 2019
What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say?
-Audre Lorde, Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
I’ve witnessed ways words can carve direction, ways skilled speaking can conjure the conjuror within. I’ve learned that proper spelling is less about rule when meaning and intent come from the core. Time tells all and two years after What I Mean By Mercy (our first production), I have a fuller sense of what I was reaching for in those poems, and in the collaborative effort to make them into short films. Today is a relaunching of Mother Mercy online, a space that aims to reflect the birthwork of this community as we move toward our vision.
The words I don’t have yet, to nod to Audre Lorde above, are hovering around logistical updates... reaching, reaching with might, for the blood & guts of all the processes that have begun, and are fueling this birthwork. With calling Mother Mercy an incubator, I want people to understand that we are in the business of growing creativity, in growing the capacity of artists to create meaningfully. This year we are piloting the Call To Create, an effort to engage a cohort around a singular call/question, to ignite a meaningful process of art making with their chosen medium.
As a participant in the call myself (not just the organizer) I’m interrogating the power of language; excavating what’s in a definition, translating the need for sound and punctuation, as to get clearer and keener on how to manifest. Spell-ing if you will. And what’s it all for? To be just a little more free—closer to a personal liberty, a living knowing of life beyond this particular space and time.