Wxtch Craft lecture by adrienne maree brown:
On vulnerability, playfulness and keeping yourself honest*

*hosted by melanie bonajo

pre-read(&audio) material

Listen to this playlist: Muted (Beyond R Kelly)

we are no longer surprised

we are no longer surprised
not for years
not for generations

you have tried every which way
to strip us of the miraculous
to slice it from us, the future
to leave us without the womb
into which a next world can be born

you want to cover the sky
deny us the sun
we see you casting smoke against our visions
still we feel our way
you slick shit waste oil into our veins
we drag it all the way down and turn it into algae
eaten by, eaten by, eaten by the
market rate fish you overpaid for
back, back all the way into your throat
and you think it’s delicious

you have no idea
what it takes to protect magic
yours was damaged centuries ago
you think it is gone
we know it is not
you are just settling for the smallest
shortest version of delight
the bloody meal in your hands
while we set a decadent table
for our children

Bio - adrienne maree brown
adrienne is the author of the NY Times Bestseller Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, the radical self/planet help book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015. She has helped to cultivate work and thinking about Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy, gathering a loose knit global network of people interested in reading Octavia’s work from a political and strategic framework.

Interview on the creative independent
adrienne maree brown in conversation with Anupa Mistry

“The church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The body says: I am fiesta.“
- Eduardo Galeano

“I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.”
- adrienne maree brown

"All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in femmes insatiable."
- the Malleus Maleficarum (1486)

“Some of these men are uncomfortable, they’re not even comfortable being sensual. Maybe you’re conservative, but everybody got a little freak inside them, you know? Every single person. Everybody gets horny, everybody gets a little tingle down there, you know what I’m saying. Just embrace it. Don’t be scared about it.”
“I’m livin’ my best life.”
- Cardi B.

"People who have been prostitutes are ten times more willing to be Johns than the average person. So, if you have been paid for sex you understand the value of that experience on some level.”
- Annie Sprinkle

"Do remember: your sexiness is about how you feel, not how you look".
- Dossie Easton

“The solution to the problem of identity is, get lost”
- Jill Johnston

“ Most children are born into a world that disregards their sexuality and admonishes or exploits its expression. Adults typically have their sexual experiences rationed to occasional and unsatisfying exchanges. It is well past time we recognize that this neglect in itself is traumatizing. By working and playing to transform our personal neurobiology, we also look to understand and transform the social context.”
- Caffyn Jesse

“...insofar as an American thinks that the sex he or she is having is an intimate, private thing constructed within a space governed by personal consent, she or he is having straight sex, straight sex authorized by national culture; she or he is practicing national heterosexuality...”
- Lauren Berlin

“The binaries that restrict people’s gender experiences also restrict our experiences of love and what kind of ways would open up if we thought and act in a less binary way in our relationship with others and ourselves.”
- Meg-John Barker

"Everyone is the other and no one is themselves.”
- Martin Heidegger

“When we rely on written records we need to continually ask ourselves what might be missing, what might have been recorded in order to manipulate events and in what direction, and in what ways we are allowing ourselves to assume that objectivity is in any way connected with literacy.”
- Aurora Levins Morales

"The human nervous system physically and energetically connects the pelvis to the jaw. This connection, restriction or numbness in the pelvis can restrict the voice and one’s ability to speak out. It is no wonder that many victims of sexual violence remain silent."
- from Healers on the Edge (The body and the patriarchy).

"There’s really no such thing as the”voiceless”. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
- Arundhati Roy

"Melanie Bonajo, Slitter Splatter & Friends - Boundary Boss - YouTube
Boundary Boss is a song with a videoclip by Melanie Bonajo & Friends with set and costumes by Splitter Splatter. The project addresses having ownership over your personal boundaries, so that you ...www.youtube.com"
- BOUNDARY BOSS melanie bonajo, splitter splatter and friends

“The functions of taboo are not always clearly discernible because they become blurred as the taboo is passed on from generation to generation. Since taboos are intricately woven into the collective psyche, their original purpose often fades into obscurity.”
- Jack Morin

“Trauma is a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat. We tend to think of healing as something binary: either we’re broken or we’re healed from that brokenness. But that’s not how healing operates, and it’s almost never how human growth works. More often, healing and growth take place on a continuum, with innumerable points between utter brokenness and total health.”
- Resmaa Menakem

"I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me."
- Erykah Badu

“Coming from white trash has advantages people with money don't seem to understand. For years, I've watched friends whose parents are doctors and bankers live in FEAR (even while rebelling) that they don’t achieve enough, aren’t good enough, clean enough, and especially NOT thin enough … Now, if you don’t mind I have a date with a delicious smartass with a trick jaw who’s on his way over to my place with freshly made chocolate pudding and a can of whipped cream!”
- C.A. Conrad

"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me."
- Freud

"No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"… No woman has ever written enough.“
- bell hooks

"In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn"
- Octavia Butler