The Ewe say ” … you must cry into the song.” A man in the taxi said “… you are beautiful when you cry.” … But these things are not easy. To cry into the song when you are still so sad … To let your beauty shine thru when you feel as though there is nothing to hold you up.
Today “Ampey!” took it’s first breath. It’s a girl and a boy. A mommy and a daddy … very scary to have something depending on you for survival. Gooie and new. Truth reflected back in ways you could not have expected. So beautiful … when you cry. Incredible magic … This living, breathing thing that does not go away when we have to work, when we have to mourn. A conversation between now and then. Time, voice and motion. Amara says, “surrender”, but I didn’t now how much I was holding on. The first breath and last are not so far away from one another. The longing eats us from the inside out. Crying into the song takes some learning. So does letting go. “You must cry.”
Photo: Tahir Hemphill
Dear Ghana,
Today, I learned that … I know how to cry and I know how to sing. I even know how to both at the same time. But, “… crying into the song” is one thing that happens at one time. Crying and singing is two. Different … but also very connected. Just like us. Different, but connected. No matter how much I want us to be the same … we are not. We are connected. We are family … but we are not the same.
To cry into the song when you are still so sad, listen, accept and surrender to the tears so you can let them fall into the song is not easy … but now I understand what it means “to be beautiful when you cry.” There is so much to learn. Thank you.
Love. Adia
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Unsettled/Soiled Group is a group of East, Southeast, and South Asian diasporic movers, makers, and settlers on Ramaytush and Chochenyo Ohlone land. Unsettled/Soiled Group is led by June Yuen Ting, one of CounterPulse's 2022 ARC Performing Diaspora artists and will debut Dwelling for Unsettling alongside VERA!'s Try, Hye!, Thursday through Saturday, December 8-10 & 15-17, 2022
Try, Hye! by Vera Hannush/VERA! & Dwelling for Unsettling by Unsettled/Soiled Group December 8-10 & 15-17, 2022 // 8PM PT // 80 Turk St, SF
VERA! (they/them) is a queer Armenian American drag king, dancer, and community activist. They are one of CounterPulse's 2022 ARC Performing Diaspora artists and will debut Try, Hye! alongside Unsettled/Soiled Group's Dwelling for Unsettling, Thursday through Saturday, December 8-10 & 15-17, 2022
Adia,
How very beautiful and immediate this is.
With Love,
Prum
thank you for sharing this – I can’t tell you the number of times I have experienced this connection – something so beautiful yet painful… that experience of bittersweet… I see beauty in this already..
“Tears on the writer. Tears on the reader.” I read this somewhere but can’t remember the source now. Cry and we all will cry too. I long to see your beautiful emotional work.
Amara is right.
Surrender. She knows….
I can’t wait!
Adia,
thanks for letting us in to y/our fragility and power. the courage to let go into the unknown. which is scary enough when you’re just opening up to your own mind, memory, imagination. but opening up to your country, your blood, your unknown ancestry…
i too can so relate.
i barely knew my own grandparents & now they’re gone & buried somewhere. one day, i want to take a pilgrimage to my family’s graves, probably scattered around Japan in various buddhist temple grounds. my parents just never talked about them.
a really powerful movement “exercise” from a butoh workshop (Tamano’s? Ohno’s?) i took. basically to walk “slowly” across the room. but with this imagery — to feel the gravitational pull (back) of all those who came before you, your ancestors and mentors — so strong you can barely progress at all, holding on not to be sucked backward. but to also feel the pull of your destiny, which is just a hair more powerful toward the space in front of you.
roko