Marcel Stewart is joined by Lisa Karen Cox, Tianna Edwards and Shayna Jones as they share their thoughts on life, cultural erasure, creating art, what blackness can look like in rural and urban spaces, black maternal thinking, micro rituals in the body, alignment, and MORE!
*What you won’t get to experience as the listener is the amount of teeth being shown during this conversation. There was a lot of off mic laughter, smiling and love in the Zoom room.
Marcel Stewart
Coming up: my conversation with Lisa Karen Cox, Shayna Jones and Tianna Edwards. We talk about things like alignment, creating art, what Blackness can look like in urban and rural spaces, micro rituals in the body, and more! Next.
Tianna Edwards
There we go. Okay okay, lovely. I’m already unmuted. I’m happy to start us out if you’d like. I don’t know how long you’re hoping this little intro will be, but I want to give as much context to the conversation as possible. So, nice to meet you all. I’m Tianna Edwards, my pronouns are she/her. How do I start this? I was born and raised in Kingston. My parents are from Kingston, Jamaica, came here through Scarborough. They met in Scarborough, even though they both moved from Jamaica when they were like eight or something, they were quite young. So you know, my like ancestry, my roots are Jamaican. You know what that looks like. It looks like I have a lot of ancestry. I’ve got like, Irish, Scottish, Indian, you know, Jamaicans are just like one of everything. So my parents met in Scarborough and and then my dad’s job moved him out here to Kingston about 40 years ago. So I ended up being born here, and what I found out in one of my episodes is actually my parents came here through an EDI initiative to get folks that worked in the government in the GTA out to Kingston. I don’t think they knew that. So, as I grew up in Kingston, I was like, “I can’t stay here forever.” So as soon as it was time to go university, I moved to Toronto. I studied journalism at Guelph-Humber University. I did my undergrad there, and Guelph-Humber is like on Humber’s art campus. I stayed there for a bit, started my career in journalism, worked for Zoomer magazine, worked for Suzanne Boyd. She was like the first Black Editor in Chief in Canada. She was my first boss. My first boss in my professional life was a Black woman, which I think is really crucial. And she was amazing. And then I moved to Germany for a bit, did my internship there. My brother’s a hockey player, that’s a whole other conversation, he plays professional hockey so I worked for his hockey team, as a journalist. Wrote stories for the hockey team, that kind of thing, and then moved back to Toronto where I started my career for Zoomer magazine for Suzanne. And then, got married in 2016 and decided I would come back to the place where I said I would never go again which was Kingston. We bought a house, moved in with my parents for a year, bought a house in 2016 and then I was like, “I’m very grounded here.” So I work in Kingston, I started the blog called Keep Up With Kingston to make myself want to live here, convinced myself it was a good place to be like, “Kingston’s great.” Then BLM hit and I basically Kingston was like, “Oh, look at America.” And I was like, “No, look at Kingston.” So I wrote a blog called Black In Kingston, which is the link that was shared earlier this week, and that was just me ranting. It was like a 10 minute rant. I wrote it really quickly, and I left the house, and then realize all the people were sharing it. I was getting all these apologies from like people I haven’t talked to in like 20 years, it was very weird. And then at the same time, I was doing my masters. So my master’s is the podcast Kingston, the Black Experience. So that’s kind of how we’re here. I started to turn that whole narrative of myself into the Black-owned business list, which is still something that I contribute to the community. I curate a list of black owned businesses so folks in Kingston know where to find good food and braiders and stuff. And then the podcast was to do my masters. I defended my masters two weeks ago so my masters is done, but the podcast lives on. Yes, thank you! Thank you! For those who can’t see us, they’re like snapping their fingers and give me applause. So that’s how we’re here. I’m also an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion Coordinator at Yellow House Student Centre for Inclusion at Queen’s University so I actually support Black students, specifically. This year, my role is for the Scarborough Charter, which is an initiative to prioritize Black inclusion in post-secondary institutions. So that’s what my job is this year, like I’ve just had a Black Welcome on campus. I like to quote Issae Rae, “I’m rooting for everybody Black.” I’m rooting for everybody Black all the time in my personal life, in my job, in my blog. That was a long intro ,but I wanted to give you all the context, because it’s very, like nuanced and layered and now as we continue our conversation, you’ll pick up on kind of where I’m coming from. It’s lovely to meet you all! I’m excited to hear your stories. I’ve checked out your websites, and so I’m just really pumped. Really amazing work.
Shayna Jones
Thank you, Tianna. That was perfect. That was not too long. By no means. That was exactly what we need. So, thank you. Lisa? Shayna? Either of you like to introduce yourselves? Lisa?
Lisa Karen Cox
I will! I will respond to the gesture! I feel like I’m always a bit… flummoxed? Would that be the word? When I’m on a panel with a journalist! In part, because part of my research is working with the new part of journalism: live journalism. So I’m always there as the performance person interacting with journalists and I realized that sometimes our methodologies are polar opposites from each other. And sometimes they’re not! Live journalism tends to blur the spaces, but I’m like, “oh, right, probably has done real research on each of us. Amazing!” I haven’t said my name. I am Lisa Karen Cox, I use she/they pronouns. It’s lovely to be in space with all of you. I am a parent and educator, Ontario certified, and also an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Acting program. My origins, artistically, are through a dance lens. A variety of different forms. And from there, there’s a fun story where out of university, I went to drop off my headshot and resume to Canadian Stage, and I ran into Roy Lewis, who happened to be one of my teachers at Concordia, and I was like, “I’m dropping it off for the musical because I just want to sing a dance!” And Roy was like, “that’s cool! Can I get a copy of that and take it to Stratford because they are looking to change who is on their stages.” And so of course, I gave him a copy and Stratford called and literally had to tell me what ‘the canon’ was, and to like pull it off the shelf and tell me “read from this line to this line.” And I ended up having two seasons at Stratford and then became an actor. So my career is now based in the theatrical traditions and a lot of my research is Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and up-ending the eurocentric theatre pedagogies that do exist and just reminding everyone to like, just dig a little deeper, because it’s all global majority, actually. And that’s kind of me in a nutshell.
Shayna Jones
Hello. Oh, yeah. Being recorded. Okay. So, I’m Shayna Jones. And I mean, I don’t care if I’m recorded or not, these things always make me shy and always make me feel like “oh my goodness, who am I to be in the room talking about things and with people that I just want to know more and more and more about.” But since I’m here, I’ll tell you about myself. I had no idea how to give all of my life in a nutshell, but things that are relevant to this is my work and my life is steeped in Afrocentric folk tradition, folklore, folklore study and then oral storytelling, the spoken word arts, theatre and live performing and live stage acting is a heavy part of my background and a part of my current life. But the real deep soul work of mine is living my way of life is very central to everything. Everything feeds each other. So I live very, very deep, ruraly. I’m very remote. I live in a little hamlet, called Argenta in the Kootenay mountains of BC. I’m on a little homestead in little cabin as the base of my life. It’s from there that I do my artistic work and travel and things like that. I live as I do, because living close to land is my access point to the blood that runs in me. Living close to land is my access point to what’s deep within the wellspring of folklore tradition and West African-derived stories and the way they have shapedshifted on North American soil and the passageway of story through plantation era, which is how my own lineage came here through slave trading. A lot of what draws me is that intersection of the first generations of Black men and women, African men and women, who found themselves on Turtle Island soil, and the practices, the traditions, the ways of knowing and understanding and working the universe. And how that had to meet life on this land, and the systems and yes, structures of slavery itself, but also the ways that maintaining and holding that those African derived practices were subversive to the overt culture of, of plantation, colonial… all that shit. A bit of a digression, but that is woven into why I live as I do. Living as I do, in a tiny little neck of the woods, BLM happened here, too. And even though I was doing this kind of work before that I was in the middle of applying for a grant to have conversations with Black folks who live rurally like I do all over Canada, just wanting to know that they exist, just wanting to sniff them out and hear their stories. Just knowing, as somebody who already lives outside of the expected, culturally portrayed persona of what Blackness is, as someone who lives outside of that popular culture, portrayal of what Blackness is, I was hungry for others who might be living the same, knowing that they must exist if I exist. Anyhow, so that led to this beautiful work that has grown and grown and grown that started just as an inquiry that I called Black and Rural. As I was writing that grant, George Floyd was murdered. So like, for better or for worse, of course, they were going to fund me. Like they would have looked bad for the BC Arts Council and Canada Arts Council not to fund me. So one rendition of the work of Black and Rural is deriving the themes from 40 of the conversations and taking those themes, and sound clips from the, I’m not a journalist, but I call them folkloric. Folklore collection, contemporary folklore collection, hearing people’s stories. And I’m good at weaving those stories into a narrative of my own experience of being on land in my rural setting, and then weaving their reflections into this piece. I spent two years listening, almost two years writing, and had been on tour. This piece premiered in Vancouver this spring, and then it’s up for another round of touring through the province, and actually into Ontario and stops in between this coming spring and into next fall. Black and Rural, this meditation, this question, lives on in many different ways, but right now the oral production, which is just a one woman show. It’s me, embodying and bringing these stories to life and touring it around. But anyhow, many things I could say about background, but my setting, where I live, how I live, my creative, artistic work, and what I’m working on currently are all kind of married together. And then I’m also mother. I got three kids. Have mixed race kids, and that’s everything too. I’ll leave it at that for now, but that’s a little soundbite into my existence.
I’d like to start by just asking what you’re thinking about right now? What’s been on your mind? Whether it’s today, the past week, this minute, this past hour. It can be about the topic we’re talking about, but it could be about something completely different. What are you thinking about? And in your own time, please answer.
I’m gonna go since I was just going, if you don’t mind. You know how when we share introductions about ourselves, they probably change depending on what we’re in and how we’re feeling and what’s on our mind. So the introduction I shared with you today has a lot to do with how taken I am by what I described earlier about this intersection of the raw West African peoples coming onto this land, and the ways in which the wisdom and the knowledge and the spirituality and traditions of African peoples shapeshifted while having to encounter the soil, the first peoples, and the over culture of white colonial North American work. And the ways in which that lineage of spirit, but then also just like earth knowledge that the West African peoples would uphold, how that has shapedshifted, but been preserved through Black culture even to this day. I’m really drawn to that time. So, for me, what this is looking like in folkloric study, so studying traditional tales and then trying to dig through the work of Zora Neale Hurston one of the first Black folklorists, I find myself right now just voraciously respecting and wanting to find ways to embody what many would just call like Negro superstition. So things like, many of the slaves would have walked around barefoot on plantations, and there being dirt roads and dirt pathways and there was this recognition that our spirits are held in large measure within the soles of our hands and within the palms of our feet. So there was a practice where mama would say, your grandmama would say, or the wise woman in the quarters would say like, “well, you know, there’s trouble go, there’s trouble afoot. Make sure you gather up your tracks when you come in for the night.” Meaning, make sure that you literally pick up the soil that your feet touched, leading up your footprints, leading up to your home, gather up that dirt, because that dirt is sacred. And if the wrong person gets that dirt, they could cause you all kinds of trouble. And this is this goes into the world of conjure and Hoodoo, not Voodoo, Hoodoo, like route work and route doctrine, which is all West African derived practice shapeshifted on to North American soil. But what that points to in terms of like the wisdom and the knowledge that those kinds of superstitious practices contain, and yet are written off as just superstition because they don’t fit the rational, Western imperial way of codifying and understanding our world. They’re dismissed as superstition. That’s old negro talk. And I’m enamored right now with old negro talk. I’m enamored right now with back water rural knowledge of those generations that we want to rise out of. That we are too educated to respect. Like, “yeah, yeah, we don’t want to talk about slavery days.” And the way that that knowledge, and the retention of that knowledge, was directly subversive and used to protect the community, the Black folks, the Africans, from the over culture of the masters and the culture of an industry that had the African peoples enslaved. So superstition as subversive action is what’s drawing me right now and where a lot of my artistic and creative energy is bubbling. Anyhow, I took many minutes to tell you that but that is what is on my mind right now.
Tianna Edwards
I don’t want to lose your thoughts. I have a lot of things that are on my mind as a mom. I have two children, a four year old and an 18 month old. What’s on my mind is the way capitalism shows up into parenting? How do you parent your children and manage your house and then do your job and then fulfill your passions? I don’t know. So that’s a whole other thing. But what really got me Shayna and what you said was the erasure of these practices, how does that translate to our culture today? I recently did that talk with Britta Badour who is a spoken word artist, and she has this really beautiful line in her poem Black Balance, which is in her newest book Wires That Sputter, where she says, “had my ancestors been given today’s future who might I have been?” I kind of put these two things together, right? When I think of the erasure of Black practices, or these practices that you’re talking about, like these very crucial survival tactics, truly, of our ancestors, and how they’ve been washed away because of white supremacy and the patriarchy and all of these oppressive things in our society. How does that translate? Does that make you imagine how it translates to now? To think of some of these things like the folklore and the things you were talking about, from then how would that have translated now? That is what brings me to this quote, like had my ancestors been given today’s future who might I have been? Here we are. If we were able to carry our ancestors practices into this moment right now in 2023, what does that look like? What does our society, what does our culture, what does Blackness look like? What do we look like living in these rural spaces? You just really had me reflecting, and thinking of some of the themes and the patterns that we do even find now, which you’re capturing beautifully through your storytelling which I saw show up a lot in the podcast where it’s like, we’re all experiencing the same things. We’re all, you know, figuring out in our own ways, but there’s some very solid themes there. So just imagine if we had access to these deep histories. If they weren’t erased, what that looks like for us. So that’s what’s on my mind now.
Lisa Karen Cox
I feel like it’s so clear in both of you how black maternal thinking is present, in everything that both of you do, and your approach and your perspective. And that’s also just a thing that I research because I think it’s deeply related to pedagogy, and culturally responsive pedagogy. I think, for me, like right now, as someone who looks at Eurocentric pedagogy, and tries to remind people, including myself, how they’re actually connected to global majorities, and how each of us can connect it to our personal ancestors. It makes me think about it an exercise I do with my students, which is literally them just walking through a clump of other students. And what’s interesting about that, for me, is A) it requires me to, as someone sitting outside of it, to, it feels like I’m looking with ancestors eyes. When I’m looking, when I’m watching the student do that, and words come into my mouth that I don’t know where they came from. I don’t, I feel like I’m not sure if this makes sense. I’m just going to say the thing that’s coming out of my mouth right now. But I, I haven’t had a student say that doesn’t make sense yet. They’re always like, oh, yeah, I actually know exactly what you’re talking about. And I genuinely feel like I just become a conduit. I just have to trust that the spirits are just using my body to speak with that student so that they can find the most rooted version of themselves because that’s the whole point of walking through the clump is like find your most grounded, connected, authentic version of yourself and just walk through extending your kinesphere, energetic bubble, that doesn’t have to be in an aggressive way, but extending the bubble and when the people in the clump feel your bubble, they are to respect the bubble and give way to it. It also asks the students to open. And in a way, they too have to become energetic fields that can actually feel somebody else’s bubble, which, like everyone listening is probably like, Lisa’s a bit cuckoo. And I’m like, I understand that as a response. But I also think that is a response that is based in 2023. And how some of us in 2023 perceive the world or are forced to perceive the world. And what I am asking the students to do is actually connect with their ancestors and the energy present in all of us in a way that we’re just not asked to do anymore. Because to me, that is the most beautiful version of all of us. And that’s what I want to see on stage. So can we train,–train, that’s a hard word. But can we open our students to that experience, so that they can actually do that, because they’re never asked to do it. And then the follow up activity to that is now go through the mall and do that. Just walked through the mall in that open state of receiving an energy ball, but also making yourself as your energy ball as big as possible. And they’re always surprised that people actually do respond to their bubble, even in the mall, and that those people in the mall are not participating in the activity with you. But it just tells you that we are all actually able to and do respond to energetic fields, which I just think is an ancient practice. And we just don’t know that we do it. Number one, and B) Don’t practice doing it consciously, anymore. So I’m thinking a lot about that, how there’s actually a lot of ancient practices that we just don’t practice anymore, but still live in us, still live in our bodies. And an extension of that is also just curiosity about the micro rituals that exist in the body? And why and how do those micro rituals exist? Especially depending on where your ancestors are from in the world? And what your connection to land is? And can you connect to those micro rituals? Because they are part of your authentic, true grounded self? And can you allow them to be seen? That’s movement class.
Shayna Jones
How can I sign up? Can I add onto you, Lisa, or just just just, that’s okay, myself, not really a response, but mostly just mostly an affirmation like, exactly what you’re saying is why–you’re, you’re putting words to why I in particular, am drawn to living where the natural, where the earth is far more overwhelming than the physic– than the man made structures or human made structures. And I’ve never, I’ve never heard the language of microrituals of the body in that connection to our ancestry. But like, I think I might have said at the beginning that I live where I do, because it’s the way that I connect to my living, my kind of rural, like in the, in the woods and all this, is how I connect to my African ancestry on this beautiful sacred land, you know, and, and I feel like, I feel like there’s power in connecting those two things like exactly what you’re talking about, for the students in a university, and the potency of yes, that coming through in the mall, but also coming through in a forest or in a prairie field. And how, like, not many black folks, especially in urban settings, are even given an example of somebody of color, of blackness. Living into that, and so then are blocked from experiencing that level of freedom, that level of connection to our roots while on this land. And I feel like what you’re saying what you’re doing with your students, is a part of the access point. Is a language of that access point. So I just wanted to affirm and let me know how to sign up so
Tianna Edwards
Yeah, I think what I heard was your interview Lisa. Sorry. I’m just gonna jump in as well is mindfulness like so I think I think like what I’m hearing is mindfulness, right. And so I think that like we are more and more like detaching ourselves from ourselves like we’re just distracted, we’re all distracted, right? So we’re distracted and we’re numb. So a lot of us haven’t tapped into like what we’re actually craving. Like Shayna, you’ve done that. Like you’ve tapped into, by being mindful and paying attention to like, truly what makes you feel grounded, you’ve tapped into that. And so I think a lot of us who, like, have been distracted, like me, too, understandably, like I, you know, through trauma things too, I just like detach, detach, numb as a way to just push forward because like, sometimes it’s, it’s, it’s much easier, but then at the end, the result you’re not tapped in. And so that makes me think too of like, folks not getting the benefit, becuase they are living in like more busy Metro environments. And they’re living in those environments detached from what they might actually need. And also because there isn’t Representation of Black folks in like rural spaces, like you’re helping to fill that Shayna specifically with the work that you’re doing, which is incredible. But because like when I think of, you know, the folks that I spoke to through the podcast, it’s like, yeah, you don’t want to be the only black person out in the woods. You don’t want to do that you’re like, What the hell does that actually look like? So then, so then you’re not even imagining yourself in that. And so maybe you’re living in like a city like downtown Toronto, trying to figure out why you feel unsettled. Like trying to figure out like, what is like, what, why do I feel this way? Not realizing, like, what you actually need is peace and quiet, to actually tap into who you really are, which is like your roots. Like, it’s like, it lives in us, right? And it was in one episode where somebody said, like, home, where we decided in the episode, as this person was talking about living in Kingston, how it made them feel, and then moving into Vancouver and how they build more boundaries, blah, blah, blah. And so what we realize is like home is like, we are home to ourselves, right? And you’re carrying that with you. But if you’re not tapped into yourself, then like, how do you know what you need? And sometimes being in these busier environments, it feels natural, because you can see that representation of yourself. But then maybe you’re not tapping into what you need. So anyways, it just like, what the through what you’re both saying is like, I mean, at the core of it, it just feels like mindfulness is the core of it, which can be so unsettling for people, especially now.
Lisa Karen Cox
And I just wanted to add, it’s not mine from for me, it’s not mindfulness in the commercial way that it’s often talked about and discussed. I mean, I can talk to you about your nervous system and regulation, because yes, this is true with the polyvagal. And why do people use the Ojai breath, you know, if you’re going to use that, that body source of knowledge, it’s just that humming, that stimulates a certain part of the body and the nervous system, I can talk to you about interceptive awareness, so I can bring that like, quote, unquote, scientific way worldview and perspective to it, and it is not inaccurate, it’s accurate, but there’s something rigis use as an entryway to allow my students in because I do recognize I’m going to PWI. I’m in a university–which is a predominantly white institution,–and like universities just are, that’s the whole structure around academia is white and whiteness. And so I mean, the admissions process the whole thing, like, right, so with that kind of acknowledgement, I, I also I use it as a gateway, this like kind of sciency language as a gateway in so they have a field of what I’m talking about. And then it’s like, okay, great, you have a, I consider that a basic understanding. Now let’s go far deeper than that. Now, let’s actually get into I would call it a translucent space, where we don’t actually necessarily have words, especially in this language, that we’re speaking English to articulate it, because language and culture are so deeply connected, and I don’t speak the language. I don’t even know who my original peoples are. So like, I don’t know what actually the words would be to communicate what the sensation in the body is. But can we just be curious and open to that investigation of sensation in the body and rootedness to the land in a way that goes beyond introspective awareness and regulation of the nervous system. They’re very technical and very clinical things and check marks for students to try to achieve. I’m like, that’s not what we’re talking about. And reminding them of that, is quite frankly, a pleasure. To encourage them to just be open to that central sensation and experience of that. And the agency of defining it for themselves. Because the reality is also, we are not all of the same racial and ethnic origin in my, my classroom and in my spaces. So you need to respect your path and your way of connecting of what’s happening in your body with your micro rituals, which is, I gotta be honest, it’s just a term I made up because I couldn’t find the right term for myself. And all the academic language, it’s like, no, I’m just gonna say micro rituals, because that feels right. But all the micro rituals, which are reflective of your ancestors, your history and your lineages are personal to you. No one can dictate what that is, and see what that is, and that curiosity and investigation has to be led by you. So it’s the return also, like just the return of power for all of all of the students of any ethnic and racial origin. Yeah. End of thought.
Tianna Edwards
Now I want to hand it back over to Marcel, but you’re both like sparking so many things in my brain, because everything you just said, it’s like, the privilege of knowing your ancestry, right? Like, you know, because for folks who can, can trace back–like I once heard a black woman say I’m on stolen woman on stolen land in her land acknowledgement. Like what actually means like settler, non settler, like what that actually means. And so when you find yourself here, so it’s like the labor of black folks to figure out. Like, it’s like, you’re figuring out through your gut feelings, most of the time, you’re not figuring it out through a family tree, right? Because it’s like most of us, many of us don’t have that privilege of like, actually linking ourselves to the origin of who are a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down. So anyways, that’s also just like a whole other thing to unpack.
Marcel Stewart
Let’s unpack it, you’re making me think so many things, you’re all so brilliant. My sister who lives in the UK right now, she was born in Canada, went to University of Waterloo, and then ended up in Bristol, England. We send each other videos all the time, as we’re just trying to figure out and understand what blackness means to us, from where we’ve come from, and a lot of the things that you’ve been talking about. And oftentimes, it’s like funny videos. And she shared this TikTok with me the other day. That was like it was titled, white people hiking. And it was a bunch of black people walking in the woods. Like, essentially, it was a commentary on how, you know, white people would engage with you if you’re walking. And I had just happened to go hiking in Vancouver recently. And like, a lot of the comments that these, these black people were saying in the video, the people were saying to me as I was walking along. It’s a really, it’s a really funny, I find it really funny commentary on a type of hiker. But more than that, it was really beautiful to just see a bunch of black people in the woods. I don’t know. I don’t get to I don’t get to see that often. So whether that was a part of the Genesis or the idea behind making the video. It was like double special for me because it was funny in terms of like, what it was trying to say. But also it was empowering. Just seeing so many different melanated folks in the woods, smiling and laughing and walking along. Like yeah, that should be our space to that length. Why not? Anyway, when you’re talking sorry, Tanya, you don’t want to be the only black person in the woods. It made me think about that video, as my mother is constantly telling me not to go to certain places. Just out of you know being a mom.,
Shayna Jones
Yeah, that is an intense edge of the reality of at once, wanting to just yes just to like quietly living my own thing, but then given the kind of spaces in the kind of work I find myself doing, stepping into being, I guess, again feel so clinical. Like being one who is living in, you know, close to close, like in the woods living remotely as a black woman like I do. And the extreme, just like the depth and the power of, of holding that. Yes, for myself and then for others who may encounter me. Do you know what I mean? And that is a beautiful thing. And so this comes up in my, in my, in my work black and rural and specifically in the way that the storytelling pieces come together is to stories that have come to me is the double edged sword of A) like this image of black bodies hanging from trees, the lynching reality, and how trees, this beautiful sacred entities on the earth have been so correlated with the the punishment and the torture of black bodies. How for the same, the same generation of folks that I’m saying I’m enamored with, so the the early–the first blacks upon this land, the first Africans upon this land–the woods, being in the woods. Like if you are off of your plantation, if you are in the woods, you are being tracked, as someone as a slave trying to escape. There are hounds coming after you. There are, there are there are men on foot and on horseback with guns trying to round you back to make you an example. And so to be in the woods, for so many who come through this particular lineage, there is so much true and deep and gritty reality of being in the woods is someplace you don’t want to be found. You better make sure you are hidden, you make better make sure you only move by night. And even if we are–and then the migration of black folks out of rural settings, off of plantation, into city, being a sign of our liberation. Being a sign of our progress. So to be out of the woods, is to show that we are making it now in the world in this culture. So there are just and that’s that’s just a few points that are layered into the invisible barriers between where we were many of our black brothers, sisters, and everybody in between will find themselves in urban settings, and why they may not venture into the woods,. Because of the reality of that and then yes, and then the actual fucking forgive my cussing on recorded podcasts, but the reality of actually being in the woods, and then not everybody you meeting is so friendly. Yes, they may have your common micro aggressions that are common to many folks that we might meet of the majority in the woods. But then also the reality of, of what you can face alone as a woman, or anything and black, in the woods, from folks who don’t know what to do with your presence out there. I mean, that’s real. I’ve lived. I experience it. And even still, to not not claim place, but to like you were saying, like you were saying, Lisa to allow the birth and the presence and the sacredness of my energetic reality, as you may say, you know, to be–even in the face of the layers and layers of history and reality that want me to shrink. And as we have a symbol get back onto the plantation field. Do you know what I mean? And so I don’t even know why I said all that but it’s in response to what we’re talking about.
Lisa Karen Cox
Yes. Yessssss! Yes, I feel like what like when I go camping, or even I have to say I do live in Toronto. I live in a major city. Even when I go to Kingston–I directed a show in Kingston–I was like, I feel like it’s an act of rebellion. Just existing here with my big bubble. Like me feeling liberated in this space, me not shrinking. Me. Ah, yeah. Me. I mean, to be tactical is like Having an open sternum, may not shrinking and shame, is an act of rebellion and liberation in those spaces. Because it is–there is an element of inherent risk of being in those geographic locations that we just have to acknowledge. And then do we ask ourselves to remain in fear and only venture into major centers, which I have to be honest, also still have elements of risk if we’re honest with ourselves? Or can we say, I also deserve peace of mind, I also deserve and am worthy of connection to land. And therefore, I will appear in these spaces with my big bubble. open heartedly, generously and in connection. It’s an act of rebellion. Yes.
Tianna Edwards
Yes, it’s resistance. And it’s resistance against, its resistance against the historical norm, right? It’s resistance, and the assumptions that are layered on so it’s not just our reaction. It’s also the assumptions like that, like the assumption of transients. The assumption of like, oh, you’re just moving in or moving out, like it being university town, specifically, and things? Yeah. Oh, where did you come from? How long have you been here? How long have you been here? When are you leaving? Right? Like, that is the assumption that you are coming in, and you are going out, and you are not grounded here. And like, as somebody who was born and raised here, people don’t know what the hell to do with me. You know, and it’s like, we literally have been downtown during Emancipation Day weekend when there was a lot of black folks in Kingston. We literally had a Black Block Party that weekend, and I’m gonna say it was it was lit. But um, it’s funny, because, you know, my husband is white. And there was like, a group of us black folks around this, like, old white dude comes up to us, he says to my husband, if they’re looking for somewhere to eat, you know, like, they can talk to me, like, they’re trying to figure out where to go this weekend. And my husband goes, I don’t know if you know, but my wife is KeepUpWithKingston,. [laughter] He’s like, you could check her blog, all she doesn’t talk about Kingston, and she knows exactly where to eat. And, you know, you just put him in his place, because he’s like, here’s this old white dude, coming over here making the assumption, we are not grounded here. We do not live here, we do not know where to go to eat here, we do not know what to do in this space. That’s the assumption. So like, on top of like, you know, our own, like history is with the rural areas and being out in Kingston just like you just said, like, their resistance even to our own personal selves of being like, I’m going to be out here and I’m going to be the only one. That’s a choice I’ve made to do for myself. layered with the assumptions of everybody else. And what they think, like what they’re thinking, seeing me out here, hello! Or when they say like, Do you want one bill or two? When I go out for dinner? With my husband’s like, we’re literally–Is this together separate? You know, the way people just like make assumptions? Based on historical stuff? It’s like, how how long do we have to be out here culture to shift? Like, how long do we have to do this for for people to know that black people like, want to live in the woods and black people want to live in Kingston and black people are here? And to take that that layer off? I don’t know. But yeah, yes, yes. Yes. To like everything you’re both saying. And so much of what you both said, resonates with me. And also Shana, you really like identified for me some of the like, things I didn’t have words for in terms of like, yeah, not wanting to be in the woods, because historically isn’t safe out there, obviously. Like, yeah. So could they–I think I you know, I think it’s like a part of it is denial too. You think you’ve come so far. But like we’re saying, like we are, it’s in us, it’s in our bodies, right? This like historical stuff is like lives inside of us. And so that’s stuff that we have to dismantle and work on ourselves. And sometimes that means just showing up and navigating it.
Shayna Jones
I’m curious, how much your your current environment or the environment that you grew up in, have influenced the work that you do? And in what ways?
Tianna Edwards
I think I am my entire environment. I, you know, it’s like, I think I said alignment when you were talking Shayna. Because what I heard for you was alignment, and I think that comes from you tapping into your environment. And so it’s like everything you’re doing. And so for me, absolutely. It’s like I find that I am live literally just trying to serve who I was, right. I’m trying to serve who I was when I was like 13 driving to Toronto with my mom to get my hair done, driving to Toronto to you know, visit my aunties and like, go to Scarborough get proper, like patties and oxtail and jerk chicken, like as like I am trying to serve as that person. And so for me, it’s like, the work I’m doing for myself is because of a product of my environment, of being the only black kid. And I feel that responsibility for my girls too, who are mixed race, but of course, are going to be racialized, like the way that folks in our community are going to view them. It influences everything I do. It’s literally like my work, walk all of it, I am my environment, and I can’t detach it. And I think that’s when you kind of find this alignment, where it’s like, everything is related. And I think that comes out of like, being aware of how you show up in the spaces that you’re in. I hear it a lot for you, too.
Lisa Karen Cox
Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for that. I was at MOBA, which was a conference for archivists, organized by Dr. Cheryl Thompson. Archivists and artists together, black archivists and black artists. I know, I know. And so, you know, I was there speaking about the body as an archive. And, I mean, the body is an archive. So when you ask the question, How have the environments you are currently in and have been in, influenced you, I just go, I just want to echo what you said. It’s everything. It influences us all. So deeply, just how we physically walk through a space tells you the history of a person. Tells you the space that they are imagining in their mind. Tells you their relationship with those imagined and real spaces. And that’s all just archival work, the memory is an archive, your imagination is an archive that you’re constantly pulling from learning from unpacking, flipping it around changing, shifting. And, and that’s the reality. So I mean, I’ve spoken to the fact that I teach and it’s in a multiracial room. Today, I was a bit provocative, and I was pulling out Masks, we’re doing masks works. And I was like, we’re gonna do mask work. And the racialized folks are going to go first. Okay, everybody? And everyone’s like, What? And we went, and it was great, and was beautiful. And then a student came up to me afterwards, and said, so you said the racialized students are going to go first? Because they won’t. What does that mean? And my response was, Oh, I’m going to actually answer for the whole to the whole class. I stopped everyone was like getting their stuff on. I was like, I just want to address something. I said, because they won’t, I was like, because we often don’t, we don’t go first. We aren’t given the space and the time to go first, particularly in Eurocentric theatrical practice, we want the white folk to go up first, so that we learn quote, unquote, learn how to do it, quote, unquote, right. And this was my way of up ending power in this classroom, the racialized folks will go first, as a reminder to the racialized folks that you have so much to give and so much to offer. And you don’t need to learn nothing from nobody about how to do this. Your people are mask people, you just need to trust the body. Your body’s got this lesson number one, lesson number two, hey, white folks, you got lots to learn. You can learn from us get ready, because we got some things to say. Cool, have a good weekend, everyone. Bye. This was the only class. But but the body is the archive and is a product of the environment, as is the memory. So it’s everything. And I think we have to feel like in 2023 We’re not quite in a place where we acknowledge that. We’d like to pretend that something else is going on. And I’m like, no, no, we are a product of the archive. We are a process of the archive actually and of the environments in the spaces. Because we’re in I switched from product to process because we are still evolving and changing and shifting. We are a process of the environments and of the archive that we are currently living.
Shayna Jones
Wow, Lisa. I just so resonate with how you speak up the body. I feel what you’re saying deeply And so in answer to your question, and Marcel, I think, again, through Lisa speaking from her body of knowledge and wisdom, has actually given me a lot of language for way for how my environment in my work, like, like I’ve referenced already there, they’re also one so like, like Tiana said, It is everything. You know, and because of the particular wiring and, you know, ancestral workings out in my being, I am particularly sensitive to the way I, it might I exist in my body as well. And, and, particularly, and I do feel particularly sensitive, as I believe everybody is we’re just aware, aware of it to differing degrees, but, you know, sensitive to, and I’ve grown more sensitive over the years to where, to how my ability to assess, and my ability to be an archivist of my own body, my ability to, through my body know, the bodies that came before me and the blood that came before me and the spirit that came before me. I, I know, I’ve come to know that I lose access to that or not, like you can become you can become a beaut, like, you know, just like beautiful, beautiful little flowers can pierce their way through cement slabs in a city like you like it’s being in an urban setting, there are beauty, it’s a fire that forms great beauty also. So I’m affirming and not trying to tear down urban living No, no, no, I just am speaking from the place of one who has been given a deep path of living close to Earth, that’s all. And I know that from my body, and then my body as an instrument for whatever I’m supposed to be doing on this earth. And right now that’s spoken with art, that’s, that’s storytelling, that’s proper study that’s honoring Afrocentric way. Being in a place like I’ve already said that is predominantly, where the majority of what I see is the natural world and where our human created reality pales in comparison to the voice of the natural world and the presence of the energy body of the natural world. That, I have come to recognize, is just essential for me to be able to continue to even exist in myself with any level of sanity and for me to be able to access the reality of the strength of those who went before me living in my body the strength of you know as I understand the world you know, like creator like the universe, whatever you want to call it for that which is greater than ourselves being present, right with us. I access it, that knowledge through, my body and then can I load in some mindfulness but my body has to be it’s to the resonance of spiritual body and for me, that resonance that instrument that tuning is kept most clear when I am living and vibrating with with the river that runs through my house and in the pines and cedars and with Douglas firs that are living in and working out their lives all around me that’s and then from that, do I find my voice and then from that resonance do I find my poetry or do I find, do I trust the folktales that come to me and then speak them as they are to be spoken through my voice. And through that I trust them like meeting new Marcel and then being led to Tianna and Lisa vibrating off the, like you know just like vibrating out of my seat, and that’s coming through the fact that I have trusted to live as I do in the face of everything we were saying before that all that would keep us out of the woods having that resonance be strong enough to forge away you know for myself and then maybe others you know. But so again just like Tianna said, place so deeply informs me and I believe being then informs the actually touches and can shape shift place. So that’s my path
Tianna Edwards
That was so beautiful Shayna how you did that? Yes, it’s one. I love, I loved, I loved what you just said.
Shayna Jones
Thank you
Lisa Karen Cox
Can I ask, before you talk, Marcel, I’m so sorry, no, we’re not getting any questions in. [laughter] And I just, I’m so sorry, I just have a thing. I think it’s really beautiful and generous to acknowledge those of us who live in urban spaces. I also feel like there’s a grief associated to living in an urban space. A grief that we don’t have the space to mourn, and therefore heal. To allow that cycle to continue. I feel super privileged because I’m on the edge of Toronto. So I look down my street, literally where I’m looking right now. And there’s the water. I have a beautiful–for Toronto, for Toronto–generous sized property. So I can garden, I have plants that are of this area, bees are humming, there’s a squirrel right there, y’all just saw my cat walk through here. I feel like I have a very joyous and privilege connection to land than more–much greater than the average Torontonian has. And I feel like it’s important to note that for myself, because I do feel like that connection, the curiosity, the nutrients of being with the land, and with the nature and with the environment, deeply fills my soul and spirit and allows for a cycle of healing, a very specific and rooted cycle of healing. But if you don’t have access to land, how do you begin to process your connection to land, your connection to the ancestors. And I do think some of that is deeply required for the healing process to take place, which, again, just my personal opinion, all of us need. Beings black is traumatic. It’s just a traumatic experience. So you just need spaces to be healing, to be in community, to be relational. And when I say community and relational, I don’t only mean to other humans, I also mean to the land. So that the depth of that healing is far deeper, and is far more personal, and is far more connected to ancestors and spirits. And therefore last longer too. Because it’s rooted in something beyond the prefrontal cortex. Right? Rooted in the Spirit. And I think you have to actively chase that, if you’re in a in an urban environment, you actively have to see the echinacea coming through the sidewalk crack nature and allow your spirit to be filled by it can’t take those things for granted. End of thought.
Shayna Jones
May I piggyback off your thought, which is that so again, me just speaking from my own world. So the beauty of what some of the stuff that I’ve been diving into in studying is them is–So you know how I was speaking about West African practice shape shifting onto North American soil and things like this. But in the studying I’ve been doing, just like the reality of like, I don’t even know what to name but like, You know, on this land, we don’t have this particular kind of root. We don’t have, here North America, we don’t have this particular kind of tree, we don’t have this material. So we’re just going to work with what we have, and with what we have is going to be exactly what we need in order to achieve what we are looking for. Do you know what I mean? And so what I see in that, is that your being, that just coming to the place of paying attention, like you said, Lisa, to the echinacea coming through the cement, it’s exactly what you need. It’s enough. It’s enough. It’s just, it’s and so even, like even for the black folks, or folks have any color, whose lives require–who’s just even their own temperament just wants to be in an urban setting–there is still an access point through land , through like coming to cherish even the little cement box tree down the main street, you know those rows of trees that are in cement,. Even just paying, even just opening up in honor of the ancestors. In honor of that wisdom and knowledge, just opening up a little bit, a little nod little tip of the cap, just to that cement box tree is within the urban setting as I see it, an act of resistance. So that even if you can, if life does not allow, or whatever you to physically get out of the urban setting for your living, do not fret. Like there’s connection, there is a way, there is connection. We will find we will find your way, just open up, open up to the cracks between the cement. It can be enough it can be a start. And I so I just respect what you’re saying. Yes. And just affirmation affirmation.
Marcel Stewart
I want to open the floor up, like I’d love for the three of you to end this, not me. And any final thoughts or ruminations or questions that have come up from what you’ve all shared? I just leave the floor to you all. And anything, anything you’d like to, to add?
Tianna Edwards
You go ahead, Lisa, you have I don’t I I’m like overwhelmed by you, but like I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed by this conversation. And how you both like, just articulated so many like little like bursts of thoughts I’ve had, you know, like incomplete thoughts like how you both have been able to complete things that I feel like I thought or felt you both just like you’ve just picked it up. It’s like so interesting to not actually like know somebody, but then to have somebody so deeply know you without knowing you. Right? That’s what I feel like this conversation has been. And I think for anybody who’s listening to this conversation, like my my biggest takeaways are like to really just pay attention. Pay attention to who like really deeply are inside. Because I think like what this conversation has done is like has dug up some of the stuff that I’ve known is in there, but I haven’t been able to like I just said like, complete those thoughts. And so in terms of like, alignments, and really like showing up for yourself. For folks listening, I think like the biggest takeaway from this conversation has just been Yeah, pay attention, pay attention to you. And by paying attention to you. That means like you just said, Shayna, the trees growing in the cement, you know, the nature in these urban environments. Pay attention, because it’s distracting out there. In 2023 [laughter] Hot damn, it’s so distracting. It’s so distracting. You get so distracted from yourself. And, and I just think the like my biggest thing has just been Yeah, how validating and affirming and beautiful. It’s been to hear you both speak and yeah, just like, know me. It’s been really amazing. So thank you both for your work and thank you Marcel for reaching out to me. I’m like really bad at email. So thanks for also DM me because I just straight up ignored like ever all the emails. Like what? [laughter] The like, oh, yeah, right? Yeah, thanks for the follow ups. Because this has been a blessing. It’s really been a blessing to hear from, to hear from you all. So thank you, Marcel for bringing us together because it’s it’s been really incredible and affirming.
Shayna Jones
Speak. Yeah, I am so deeply grateful to have had this chance to meet you both. And the reality is, I don’t get a lot of opportunity to speak in this particular kind of way with other folks who are black who want to speak specifically about this topic. Like when Marcel, when I first met myself virtually responding to this as an invitation. It was like, I can’t believe that there’s somebody else who cares about the intersection of blackness and rural space. I thought I wasn’t enough in terms of like and wanting to actually engage other people. I thought I was one of the only ones and so that was–I already was buzzing with anticipation knowing that this conversation was going to happen and it is a life giving for me because of the kinds of spaces I choose to put myself in. To even bear witness to you on a screen, and hear your voices and talk these things out, and I think the thing that I am left with is how, at least to my ears, I am hearing an–like, like you said Tianna, and hearing an affirmation of whoever’s listening and for ourselves, an affirmation of our being, and our right. And not even right, like just our inherent dignity, to, to come to know our beings deeply. And then to be deeply in the spaces that–and in ways that–that allows us to keep on, you know, whether you’re in an urban setting, or in a rural setting. Through coming deeply to or being where we come to know our blackness, or we come to know, our, you know, we come to be able to weather the weight of history. And, so, Lisa, thank you for all of the language about the body, and I’m going to be coining you and they will reference you specifically about micro rituals and a body, that resonates so deeply. And so again, and like you’ve said, Tianna, this has just been blessing and so may whatever is blessed us bless whoever’s listening. So yeah.
Lisa Karen Cox
Yes, yes. Yes, yes to both of you. I would also put into the space that I really deeply feel like the way forward is backwards. The way forward is backwards in that we remember there’s a, there’s like, again, the like cerebral approach to memory, but there’s also the embodied approach to memory and archival work. But we connect with the memory, the history, the past and its from that place that we look and build the future. Like do, I just always feel the need to highlight that these are three mothers in the space. And I do think that, that is part of our vision. And we’re specifically mothers of mixed race, children, all three of us. And that is also deeply impactful, because I also think that is the future of the world, our little mixed race Bambinos and bundles of deliciousness. I see it already in my classroom. And creating space, for those humans in particular, obviously, is important to me, just by virtue of who has come out of this body, and who I’m supporting in this world and creating space for in this world. But it also expands beyond my two specific children, to the children of the world and the future children of the world, reminding them just go back. Go back, to go forward, go back to know who you are. Go back to remember your way of being your body remembers. We just have to make space for that memory to make itself present and to be impacted by it. And that’s also connected to the things that pop through the earth that is also telling you about what’s back. So just can we listen with our ears, with our eyes, with our spirits with our bodies, so that we can go forward.Thank you both so much. Thank you, Marcel for the invitation. It’s been full thank you
