Musings — Mother Mercy

Death Before Dishonor: Drowning Inward to Elevate

When preparing to be a vendor at the 2019 debut of the C2C Open Studio, I was challenged (it felt like a challenge, let’s be clear I was mortified more than ANYTHING) with the question of: What’s not working? Who the fuck wants to WILLINGLY think about that? Answering that question, as it pertained to the life, I was literally breathing in at that moment was unnerving! My nervous system had taken a stray bullet. My ego, Anna, was not happy the night I received the text message containing that question. However, considering how much I loved the person it came from and knowing their love for me, which is: maternal, nurturing and thought provoking, I put Anna in timeout and I asked myself “are you not happy with the question or are not happy with what’s not working?” I answered that night and multiple things about, in and of me have died since. An internal, eternal slaughter of survival and self-betrayal. As a 2020 cohort MEMBER, (yup, I’m geeked and grateful AF! our inner child is twerking and the track she’s dancing to is Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up”) when asked this year: what are you willing to do? Immediately, the answer was death. I, Perpetual Anastasia Adjowa Baiswa Hayfron, am willing to D.I.E (Drowning Inward to Elevate).

C2C Process NotesPerpetual Anastasia HayfronMay 5, 2020#CallToCreate2020, #mothermercyComment

From Far Out to Close In: On Vulnerability and Destiny

This is what I want to explore in my answer to this question: shaping fate by making meaning. And I am not alone. An entire tradition of makers and shapers have come before me in the form of Afro-futurist giants like Alice Coltrane, Sun-Ra, and Octavia Butler. They too were weird. To the mainstream, they seemed to veer off toward impossibilities, galactic abstraction, dissonance, but they were actually Afrofuturist superheroes, drawing new connections and creating new narratives. Their method? Diverging from convention and design to explore marginal relationships and unlikely (or all too likely) sequences. Coltrane and Sun-Ra, for example, diverged from expectation by using bebop era improvisation techniques. Their goal was to go as close to the edge of reason and sound as their own humanity would allow, producing for us feeling which could not be described in words. Octavia Butler was a pioneer in her own right, exploring possibility free of know-how and to-do, meaning free of lore and its progressions. She was always looking to the future and its sustainability.

C2C Process NotesTaylor Lena McTootleApril 28, 2020#CallToCreate2020, #processistheprojectComment

Glamouring As a Way [Not] To Live

I’m trying to tell you that the question “What are you willing to do?” was terrifying to me, because I used to believe that the answer to that question meant whatever it took, even if at the expense of my wholeness. I’m trying to tell you that beyond growing accustomed to operating from a place of deprivation and scarcity, I sincerely believed that I was underserving of anything enjoyable, that if I would do something as self-indulgent (or so I thought) as trying to be a writer or daring to live a life of my own design, I would have to bear every difficult consequence on my own. I’m trying to tell you that I can’t even name what my favorite meal is today, because I have disciplined my self into an unbending strictness where I only buy what is cheapest and will last longest, only what is essential and on the grocery list. I’m trying to tell you that I wasn’t just trying to live some sort of romanticized life of a struggling artist; I’m trying to tell you that what I was doing felt like dying. I’m repeating my self because this is a ritual that I cannot afford to see fail.

C2C Process NotesZoë GadegbekuApril 22, 2020#mothermercy, #CallToCreate2020, #processistheprojectComment

Exploring New Landscapes: New Orleans Is Heaven

I was reading Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman and he was talking about how the life of an oppressed child can limit their own self-definition. Their youthful hopes and experiences of exploring new landscapes are limited by their surroundings and the lessons they must learn in order to survive. I took this opportunity within Mother Mercy to explore new landscapes within me. I find the culture of thought and reflection within the group as being a useful method for exploring inner landscapes with a youthful exuberance. Having a creative outlet helps me deal with the traumatic experiences associated with active participation in ongoing genocide against yourself and your own people. The creative outlet helps me think about abandonment, grief, lost time, and wasted potential. I have written here some of my journal entries that guided my vision of the characters and settings in my story.

C2C Process NotesSteven Waddy September 18, 2019#calltocreate2019, #reflectionsinthewaterComment