Becoming Un-namable
How God and Bayo Akomolafe are teaching me to weave life in the cracks
Hello Beloveds,
On Saturday I danced with Cristi Miles. What an honor to invite my teacher, my friend!, into this project which is also my heart.
We danced to Bad Bunny, discarded sound files from old projects, and this crackling delight which R.L. Routh cooked up in 2023 when we were in ICP together. Give it a listen when you feel like being cracked.
Composition by R.L. Routh, music by Moses Sumney. Words by Bayo Akomolafe and Taiye Selasi.
Here we are with our primordial-moss, weeds we salvaged that morning from a communal gardening day at 2259.
After the gardening, and before joining Cristi to make our duet, I met with the Third Rail mentorship company for our first day of orientation. Each year I help guide the cohort of mentees through their year-long training in creative collaboration. By way of introducing myself this year, I read these words from Bayo Akomolafe, which also show up in R.L’s sound:
The idea of an unknowable God really appeals to me
It’s the idea that God is still figuring itself, herself, himself, themselves out.
God is still being worked out.
God is not just an essence. God is a becoming.
God is a dying.
God is a living.
God is the anamisy of a Mushroom world.
God is the weather. God is Geology.
And this is not just to say in a glib way that God is Everything.
Because there is no such thing as Everything.
That’s just a convenience of language.
And there’s no umbrella term to capture things that are happening in their happenings.
…
So, I like to think about God in this way.
As fugitive.
As the crack in things.
That disciplines our attempts to name with any sense of finality.
- Bayo Akomolafe, interviewed on For the Wild by Ayana Young1
Here’s what I’m wondering, Beloveds. How do I avoid being captured in my happenings, and still invite you in to be in the happening with me? How can I exist in this world, without a clear descriptor, a title, a location? I’m dreaming of a life where passion and labor wend into one fabric. Where there is no such thing as audience, and we co-create, participate, inter-weave and do it all, all together. I want more stumbling upon wonder and less marketing. Fewer paychecks and more gifts. More moving at the pace of trust, more relationships that are harder to describe.
Disciplining my attempt to name - I’m calling this my Bayo bio.
I’m beginning to find some threads. Beginning to weave them. Dancing with Cristi also reminded me, I’m a thread that has been finding and un-finding itself, weaving for thousands of years. That while I am dreaming of possible futures, I am alive inside of a future dreamed before I was born. As the leaves fall, death upon death, pain upon pain, dreams blooming and going to seed, the layers gather up on the forest floor. We are moving over a humus of what came before, of all that is possible.
May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don’t know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive. 2
Upcoming
Duets continue (at least through the end of the year, possibly into the next). Next week, Paul Fredrikson who just lent me his Joanna Macy translation of The Book of Hours.
Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.
Musical Viewpoints - One-off class featuring live music by London Bauman. Pay what you can sliding scale $0-$10. Wednesday, October 22nd 6:30-8pm at the PETE Studio.
Song Channeling - As Sofia said last month, “A way to tend to our grief, and tend to each other, together.” Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is October 26th.
Want to work with me one-on-one? An emergent co-evolution practice offered in the gift. We’ll use movement, song, writing and listen practices to find out what we can set down and what we can hold together. Email me to learn more and schedule a consultation.
I feel inspired and full of love
Love your Bayo bio.