Category Archives: quote of the day

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Quote of the day: PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE

A few minutes before I was scheduled to record an online interview with the renowned body-centered therapist Resmaa Menakem, I sat in my office, excited and nervous. I had thorough notes and a detailed agenda, meant to guide us through a rich discussion of somatic abolitionism, his groundbreaking work on unearthing and confronting the racism we carry in our bodies. As a Black therapist from Trinidad and Tobago, I had found this work to be seminal, both personally and professionally. But just as we were about to go live, a voice from deep within me said, “There will be no performance today. You will not perform.”

Any sense of confidence or stability I’d been feeling evaporated. In its place was confusion. I asked myself, “What does this confusion mean? What impact will it have on my conversation with Resmaa?” As he appeared on the screen dressed all in black, with images of famous Black entertainers and icons adorning the wall behind him, his smile was welcoming.

“Right before you came on,” I blurted, “I heard a voice tell me that there will be no performance today.”

As I got the words out, my chest opened, and I understood things more clearly. “Sometimes when we discuss issues like what we’re about to talk about today,” I explained, “if we’re not careful, it can feel like we’re performing. And I don’t want to perform today.”

Without missing a beat, Resmaa said, “Even if you are careful, you’ll perform. Performance is a protective mechanism for the Black body. It’s the way that the Black body survives white-body supremacy. It cuts off part of itself in order to—even if it can’t really do it—perform comfort for white bodies. So what came to you as the phrase, We’re not going to perform is the ancestor saying, ‘Just be here with your brother. Don’t worry about the white gaze right now.’”

–Akilah Riley-Richardson, “Reclaiming Black Imagination,” Psychotherapy Networker

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Quote of the day: FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness requires the wrongdoer to apologize, ask for forgiveness and provide restitution if possible. Only at that point should the wronged person forgive the one who wronged them. This process may even lead to a deeper relationship, since the past wrongs will be removed from the relationship. In the absence of such an apology, the one who has been wronged may be able to understand that their anger and hurt harms them and they will want to let go of the wrong. The ability to put the wrongdoer’s behavior into a larger context may help, but this is letting go and not forgiveness.

–Rabbi Adam D. Fisher

illustration by Andrea Desco

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: on freedom

FREEDOM

A long time ago, when you were a wee thing, you learned something, some way to cope, something that, if you did it, would help you survive. It wasn’t the healthiest thing, it wasn’t gonna get you free, but it was gonna keep you alive. You learned it, at five or six, and it worked, it *did* help you survive. You carried it with you all your life, used it whenever you needed it. It got you out — out of your assbackwards town, away from an abuser, out of range of your mother’s un-love. Or whatever. It worked for you. You’re still here now partly because of this thing that you learned. The thing is, though, at some point you stopped needing it. At some point, you got far enough away, surrounded yourself with people who love you. You survived. And because you survived, you now had a shot at more than just staying alive. You had a shot now at getting free. But that thing that you learned when you were five was not then and is not now designed to help you be free. It is designed only to help you survive. And, in fact, it keeps you from being free. You need to figure out what this thing is and work your ass off to un-learn it. Because the things we learn to do to survive at all costs are not the things that will help us get FREE. Getting free is a whole different journey altogether.

—Mia McKenzie, creator of Black Girl Dangerous, author of The Summer We Got Free

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Quote of the day: LIFE

LIFE

The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore, let us be kind, generous, affectionate, and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

–Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Alexander

Fanny och Alexander IB, EJ

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Sasha Shulgin on psychedelics

PSYCHEDELICS

Keep in mind that psychedelic drugs are not the only keys to our unconscious minds; they cannot be used for learning and growth by everyone. There is no single drug or dosage level that will benefit all explorers equally. And it cannot be said too often that what is being experienced in the use of a psychedelic drug or visionary plant does not come from the ingested chemical components, but from the mind and psyche of the person using the compound. Every such drug opens a door within the user, and different drugs open different doors, which means that an explorer must learn how to most safely and successfully make his way through each new inner landscape. This takes time and should be done with the guidance of a veteran explorer, as if the case, ideally, with all deep emotional and spiritual explorations.

All of the above cautions aside, these tools – the psychedelic drugs and plants – offer a much faster method than most of the classic alternatives for the accomplishment of the goals we seek: conscious awareness of our interior workings and greater clarity as to our responsibilities towards our own species and all others with whom we share this planet.

–Alexander T. Shulgin

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Grief

GRIEF

The playwright asked for the floor… But when McCraney talked, he didn’t talk about the play [Choir Boy] or the dialogue. Instead, he talked about grief. Casually, as though it were something that just came to his mind. He explained what it felt like to lose his mother at 22. He did not talk about how she died, and he hinted only a little at the complexity of their relationship; this address was not autobiographical. It was to do with emotions. McCraney described how grief lives in a person’s body, how it settles there. He explained its half-life, the unreliable nature of its decay. He talked about the phenomenon, when grieving a loved one, in which you begin to have memories of times after their death that you think they must have been present for. Remember when I won an Academy Award for my movie, and you were so proud? And then he talked about how things like that make you grieve their absence all over again, and how that grief catches you unawares, taking over your body when you least expect it. It sits in a small reservoir beneath your heart. It whispers to you at odd hours and yells at you in quiet ones.

–Carvell Wallace writing about Tarell Alvin McCraney in the New York Times