The dream is in the body
Freedom as muscle memory.
This month’s photo essay is coming to you on Sunday, instead of Thursday. I sincerely appreciate your patience. We created these image in Austin, TX in 2017 on the traditional homelands of the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Comanche peoples.
In this black and white image, the contrast is layered from top to bottom in a meditative procession alternating between light and dark tones. There is movement here as well. When my cousin and I made this photo, I asked him to shake out his mid-length loc’d hair. As he moved his head from one side to the other I followed with my camera, left to right and back again.
This image reminds me of freedom. At the time this photo was made my cousin was just graduating high school. The feeling this day was one of rejoicing. He had crossed a major milestone, and was approaching a new phase in life. There was a buoyancy to his spirit, and this image really holds that essence well. I believe that photography can help retrieve memories that have been lost, forgotten, or even stolen. There is a physical sensation that happens when we see an image, brining immediacy and presence. As an acupuncturist and artist I think a lot about the body in relationship to place, and how this intersection shapes creativity. I was recently reminded that Sojourner Truth was one of the first Black ecofeminist scholars to address this subject. Her escape from slavery was held in the body, not by running, but by walking away. She knew she was free, and when it came time for her to make a move toward her freedom it was muscle memory, stored in the marrow of her bones.
Dreaming of freedom is a discipline. In order to become, it must be practiced and nurtured. As praxis, it is also a way to conjure memory—with the sun or moon, during the day or night. We are afforded time at the threshold with access to the past, present, and future. We can reach back to the soil(s) that we come from. I’ve heard this referred to in both Aboriginal culture and South African cultures as the Dreamtime. Respectively these teachings are creation stories that help to map survival, while also triangulating the lives of our ancestors with our own. These intergenerational intersections are made possible through the body, especially the breath. In many parts of the wold, the word breath can be traced back to the word for spirit, soul, or wind. In this way the body is a vessel for the breath, and it is also a vessel for the dream.
Two additional photos
Last month — The rhythm, flow, and tone of Wholly Earth
Through this endeavor, I have the privilege of joining the lexicon of BIPOC voices rising from the ground, roots holding steady through a matrix of soil and stars. These voices include the living and the dead. The breaths of all of our relations. I seek to do this work through community, always. To interlock with others who believe that creativity is a practice of embodied relationship with the wholly earth.
Read more: On embodiment as creative grist
Go further: View print shop — I am moving my print shop to a new platform, so a 50% off sale is in order. Enjoy!