Mica Rose: Trust deserves to develop. Trust deserves a very long time and a whole lot of area and a whole lot of other ways to develop that we will meet one another by means of many faces and study by means of that. It can develop into accountability, these bonds and remembrances that we’ve to 1 one other. I’ve been actually studying that they can’t be left on autopilot; they require this intention.
Chorus: [sings “Remember”]
Yura Sapi: Welcome to season three. Welcome to our liberation. Welcome to the Building Our Own Tables podcast. The Building Our Own Tables podcast is produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. This is Yura Sapi, right here to help you in your journey of creation in direction of our collective liberation. How thrilling is it to remodel our future and be the long run ancestors we have dreamed for? May you obtain that witch helps you in your journey and launch that witch doesn’t. The universe expands as we do. Nature evolves as we do. We bear in mind. We bear in mind. We bear in mind.
Chorus: [sings “Remember”]
Yura Sapi: Let us name upon the 4 parts that help us: The hearth that burns inside igniting our creativeness, our potential to see into the long run. The water that holds us and holds inside our reminiscence. The air that lifts us up and carries our tales throughout to satisfy one another. The earth, which supplies us sustenance, restore. To help us on this journey, allow us to welcome in all of our ancestors.
We’re studying from visionaries who’ve constructed their very own tables, receiving gems of knowledge to help us alongside our journey. In right now’s episode, I interviewed the visionary Mica Rose. They share lovely choices and examples of how you can stay in proper relation in day by day observe. They share about shifting from morning routine to waking ritual, tales about organizing within the Boston theatre scene, and a grounding meditation for us to reconnect with the unbelievable power of the earth. Get prepared for this evolutionary episode.
Mica: My identify is Mica Rose. I’m a honey-eyed Gemini youngster of surprise. I suppose I begin with the place that I really feel I take advantage of sense to myself, which is within the area of asking and never for solutions however for the enjoyment of being in surprise collectively—like fantastic, in order that we discover what’s miracle. The root phrase of miracle means surprise, and so I take into consideration the form of consideration that I hope to develop in myself and assist nurture in communions, the communities round us, in order that we might expertise miracle. I’m a niece, a nibbling, a cousin. In Tagalog we are saying pamangkin for niece and it is a shortening of a phrase really, which implies like near mine, and I additionally simply love that the phrase kin is in there. Kin.
I at present observe storytelling and poetry, studying and instructing collectively, creating workshops, areas, or different little temples for us to play collectively, determine what the pronouns we and us can imply and do, making goals come materials. I arrange with organizations right here and overseas. I’m in so-called Roslindale ancestral lands of the Massachusetts, Patuxet, Wampanoag, many, many extra peoples, and these waterways that have been stuffed in to create the land listed here are stuffed with lengthy lineages of queer and trans, Black, Indigenous, and different peoples of coloration, different solidarity-unified peoples who’ve come to construct worlds amidst large violence. Some of these names that I take part lineage with now are The Theater Offensive; Chinatown Pao Arts Center; Liyang Network, a neighborhood to world organizing in Philippine diaspora empowering Sabokahan, the Unity of Lumad Women again house within the Philippines, Ma-Yi, Las Islas, Lusong.
With my faculty bestie, Sarah Shin, we co-founded Asian American Theater Artists of Boston (AATAB) and since then, largely by means of her unbelievable management, Sarah and AATAB as a neighborhood has grown to be a producer of labor, a convener for troublesome conversations, a spot for folks to articulate again to the individuals who management what tales get to the stage in Boston. And that has been a joint construct with peoples together with and never restricted to CHUANG Stage, HowlRound Theatre Commons, Pao Arts Center, and Asian American Resource Workshop. We had a vigil for the Asian ladies and peoples who have been slain within the bloodbath in Atlanta in spring of 2021. On that activation by Asian Coalition MA, all youth, Asian, Black, and brown-led organizing with help from a few of these companions, we had a march that convened in Dorchester first, started with grounding, started with breath and poetry. That’s how I used to be known as into this area, and it started with agreements and choices to commit to 1 one other for this time collectively.
And then we marched, and we flew and hung a banner on a bridge crossing the interstate into Chinatown, figuring out that that very paving of the freeway into Chinatown was a part of the histories of violence in opposition to the communities who’ve constructed migrant house right here. The youth, Jenny, led us on an unbelievable tour of Chinatown, talking of every part of displacement, of how Tufts purchased up the land after which we arrived by means of that individuals’s historical past, figuring out every parcel, figuring out what floor we have been strolling on on the Chinatown gate the place we yelled, the place we created an altar, the place we burned incense, the place we had lion dance, the place we heard gongs and symbols and drums and we heard one another. We heard and felt and grieved and moaned with each other.
That’s one of many superb issues we create after we get actually creative round what the idea of an motion or the intention behind an motion may be; {that a} protest generally is a lunch, a potluck. A protest generally is a prayer circle, generally is a mass public altar. Protests may be this dance, this music, and has been for thus lengthy, and we do not study this out of nowhere. We study from custom in fact and construct on at our personal. That’s a bit of the work that I really feel very happy with.
Yura Sapi: Absolutely. It jogs my memory of those themes which can be arising, residing the liberated future we dream for in day-to-day life. There are methods wherein we do this and we’re in a position. We may be manifesting the futures we want to see by residing them right now and each second may be a possibility to do this, to mirror inside us and our actions and choices, what we want to see for the remainder of the world.
Mica: I consider probably the most intimate, the place the keys and the treasures are towards that manifestation you communicate of, the forest all grows with nature as an OG instructor. We can study a lot of how change and life really strikes, flows when it’s not constructed actually and metaphysically upon; after we do not extract from the land and as a substitute pour into what simply is sensible. And in order that’s why I really like turning to the day by day, the little tings from adornment, all of how I prepare within the mornings, or how I proceed preparing by means of the day. Maybe not even treating any a part of my day as an area to be prepared and set for however that I’m at all times in a cycle of making ready, resting, doing, performing, studying, coming again, going out. There’s at all times this ebb and circulate of journey.
Sophie, their Instagram deal with, it is like “astrology chismis” or one thing, I simply love the best way they tattle on the celebrities and what we will study from them. She says, “Routine is the gentrified type of ritual.” As quickly as she mentioned that, it actually put language to imply to one thing I’ve been experiencing a lot. I beloved treating the act of waking as particular, as sacred and never sacred as like, “Oh, it must be this big large factor,” or that it must be completed the identical each single means. I believe that is one thing I’ve needed to unlearn from how non secular was put onto me and the way I carry that on, that the normal, the sacred should not repetition, simply doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, will not be inherently the best way to be in relation to the divine. When I wake within the morning, I’m waking to music that, to me, is a prayer, music that calls out one thing to the universe.
I lay my arms on my physique and from Ifá teachings that remind us that we’re born with a deity in inside us and that deity homes in our crown chakra, our orí, our head, that we will pray to ourselves and identify and return to ourselves every time we wake, every time we return from the dream world, from sleep portal, again to this waking actuality. I identify: I’m Mica Rose. I’m comfortable. I’m fierce. I’m studying. As Bell Hooks says, “I’m breaking with outdated patterns and shifting ahead with my life.” As my buddy, Nic Masangkay says, “My energy, even when appears futile, transforms.” And as Gwendolyn Brooks says, “We are one another’s enterprise. We are one another’s harvest. We are one another’s magnitude and bond.” Think with loving minds and ideas, intentions. Love with a willingness to sacrifice the ego self with out abandoning me. You are me.
Yura Sapi: Time will not be linear. You should not alone. You have been by no means alone. We’ve been by means of the cycle earlier than. We’re working from the ability of our previous fighters from earlier than and time is not linear. Connections occur for a cause. There’s a cause I’m right here the place I’m. So bask, indulge, refuge within the happenings of now, the happenings of previous which is able to information to the long run, which can also be actually the previous.
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Mica: And then, I stretch or I dance. I let my physique kind of inform me, “Yo, what’s up? Do we have to go see the solar? Do we’d like meals proper now? Some tea?” Tea is a part of my each waking, the smelling of it, the preparation of it, pouring herbs right into a vessel to carry the tea, obtain the water. And then after I adorn myself, I like listening to what I wore and the place I received it. I really like sporting hand me downs. As somebody nonetheless rising of their expressions of gender and the way I prefer to play with presentation, hand me downs have been such a present to me, particularly from the femmes in my life who’ve given me stuff that I placed on my physique and might say like, “Oh wow, I had no thought. I couldn’t have imagined how superb I really feel on this, not even within the mirror, however the best way that I contact my physique on this garments on an on a regular basis degree.”
Think consciously about like, oh yeah, the place is the meals I’m inviting to my physique? The garments I’m inviting to my pores and skin? Are we shopping for from native craftspeople? From native vogue? Are we shopping for from locations specializing in recycling, turning over garments? Where are we making these very important investments that say to this alleged free market, this market-driven shopper based mostly financial system, “Yo, that is the place we’re sending our consideration and intention.”
Yura Sapi: What a fantastic clear technique to share how decolonization is that reconnection with who we’re, the place, our ancestors, the land that basically is a lifestyle, with the ability to observe ritual, the making of one thing sacred. For instance, the garments we put on, leads us to have the ability to have a transparent and deep relationship of what we select to put on and what we select to trade, our work, our sweat, our contribution to neighborhood. And then saying, “That’s why we’re passionate.” Really on the core, it is really a reference to nature and ourselves in a means that’s not about anger and isn’t about main from this place of unresolved grief however somewhat a profound pleasure and gratitude, want to be and to attach, simply brings it from a distinct place that I believe is the place we will assist others perceive why that is so essential, why it is so essential to be in proper relation with earth, with everybody else, it is not about that unresolved grief that turns into expression of anger. It’s really about our love.
Mica: Yes, the armor, what we put on, solid as protections for ourselves really grow to be entryways to the tales, the teachings you are talking of. This remembering turns into embedded and woven into these earrings. When somebody says like, “Oh, I like your earrings,” or, “Those are so cool,” I can say, “Oh my gosh, thanks. My buddy Elizabeth made them.” Elizabeth James Perry crafts these in a Wampanoag custom of wampum and deer antler and you may test her out, this is her web site. I’ve been pondering a whole lot of prayer and the way prayer has been taught to me within the kind of Roman Catholic descended custom that my mother picked up upon migrating. We’re from the Philippine Independent Church that was based to separate from the Spanish colonizers’ implementation and enforcement of Catholicism.
And so as a substitute of letting that God be a god of capital, I consider commercials. Those are little prayers being flashed at us on a regular basis. Commercials saying, “Put your consideration. Take your cash. Go right here. Go right here with it.” I would like us so dearly to return to praying as is within the teachings too. Pray to 1 one other, as us all being divine or spirits or souls, nonetheless we wish to identify it, that there’s something so sacred and wondrous and divine in every of us—within the orí, to the best way my buddy Juju describes non-binary folks as every having our personal goddess that all of us form of pray and worship and tackle these shapes and types and shifting by means of them as a result of we’re honoring and getting nearer and nearer to that deity, that goddess, that non-binary biddie baddie that’s us within the kind of spirit-made flesh translation of thought to phrase to actuality.
Even in saying grace, what if we really thank the labor and the power that it took to carry a plate earlier than us? This “blate,” this bowl-plate of dragonfruit earlier than me, I say thanks to the employees on the grocery store on the nook of Adams Street. Thank you to the shippers who delivered this dragonfruit from the place it was born. Thank you to the laborers and farm employees. Thank you. Thank you in your arms, your sweat, and your organizing in opposition to the extraction you face. May us in consuming and connecting distantly by means of this meals be a means that we return to the ability of we, to the ability of we. May we return to 1 one other. Salamat dragonfruit. Salamat earth for making her doable. Salamat physique for figuring out how you can take these vitamins and switch them into my subsequent actions. May my subsequent actions bear in mind to all have expressed the gratitude and honoring and humility right here, of and in. Siyá nawâ.
Yura Sapi: Yupaychani. Thank you a lot.
Chorus: [sings “Star Seeds”]
Yura Sapi: You shared a whole lot of practices there that people can probably apply on this means of constructing our personal tables. Is there anything that involves thoughts that you simply wish to share with somebody seeking to construct their very own desk?
Mica: Get excited by scale. In wintertime, I’m actually pondering of how this season invitations us to modes of hibernation, so I’m paying particular consideration to the small, to the little glass spider on my moisturizer this morning within the bathe, simply pawing its little legs into its mouth, dribbling in some water; paying actually deep consideration to the intimate, from the meals and the adornment to meditation and practices that assist us within the presence. And I believe that that may develop in magnitude. Everything I’m saying right here is scalable. When we’re doing the work, organizing regionally to globally, that we discover and know who we’re listening to, the place the power, in addition to the cash flows and in order that we may be witness to the exhausting realities of making an attempt to come back collectively, making an attempt to determine what an area is.
I’m a part of this experiment known as the Cultural Equity Incubator. It’s an area that unifies worth aligned from small to mid-sized arts and tradition orgs dedicated to inventive justice to all folks’s residing inventive and expressive lives on their very own phrases, intersectional racial justice and decolonization. The first dedication we made was to share area. Some of the learnings I’m taking from that experiment is how belief deserves to develop. Trust deserves a very long time and a whole lot of area and a whole lot of other ways to develop that we will meet one another by means of many faces and study by means of that. You can develop into accountability, these bonds and remembrances that we’ve to 1 one other. I’ve been actually studying that they can’t be left on autopilot. They require this intention, actually deep fullness of us in order that we will be part of into the work and determine what are the methods that take us there?
For instance, the Popular Education Spiral is a seed I wish to go away and share as what has been my greatest information to start with folks’s experiences after which discover patterns. What’s occurring right here? What are we making an attempt to vary? In Liyang Network organizing, we begin with the experiences of the Lumad non, the indigenous peoples of Mindanao; Sabokahan, the Unity of Lumad Women who’ve been the entrance traces of environmental protection in opposition to mining and bureaucrat capitalism and militarism, the echoes of colonization and imperialism within the Philippines. We begin there. Then we seen the patterns. We say, “Oh, that is what’s occurring right here and that is the way it’s akin to our siblings in Palestine, within the Congo.” Then we add and bear in mind concepts and knowledge—that is the subsequent step of the spiral. So we usher in teachings from all of our cultures and from the entire cultures that these cultures have met alongside our journeys. Then we observe expertise, we strategize. Liyang hosts teach-ins. We throw concert events to promote rallies. We maintain panels and different conversations, on Facebook to in-person.
I generally go to queer useful resource facilities at schools. I educate elements of my observe and the entire cash we cost up large as a result of the establishments, they received it. These locations with endowment, they received it. And we take all of that cash and we discover the methods to get it again to the communities going through the direct violence and oppression of the state. And I see this occurring all throughout the neighborhoods of Boston from Violence Inc. Boston to Unbound Bodies Collective, tracing the histories of queer, trans BIPOC sacred area in so-called Boston to Boston Ujima Project, engaged on solidarity financial system. It’s all been fashioned by means of the technique. And then studying in motion, the ultimate step, studying in motion of the spiral.
And you then return that means of begin with folks’s expertise, discover the patterns, add and bear in mind concepts, observe the talents of strategize, and study in motion. And return and return and return to that cycle and course of in order that hopefully there’s extra iterations of locations just like the Cultural Equity Incubator, there’s extra iterations of Liyang Network. That all of those initiatives and collaborations do this imaginative and prescient work you spoke of earlier, manifesting seven generations into the long run that we will even have the land, develop the land, be in reference to the land, and the individuals who have initially stewarded it come into stewarding it. How can all of us get into that proper relationship by means of the pacing and timing that’s proper? Don’t received to hurry this. There is urgencies; that is one thing to note, adapt, and reply to versus simply take because the singular reality. There’s none of that. There’s no singular reality or timeline.
I really like circles and I really like random zigzags. I really like portals. I really like leaping by means of and being like, “Oh my gosh, this is a dancing elephant and that is what I wish to care about on this very second.” My buddy tells me the key of chaos magicians, which is nothing is actual so all the things is permitted. And I do not learn about all of that, however the essence in there of how notion is commonly phantasm, that not nothing is actual, however all the things is. Everything, all the things is actual. All the various tales that we would see or expertise in our one time has infinite extra tales inside that, that I used to be not the glass spider on my moisturizer bottle within the bathe tells you there’s at the very least eight extra arachnid lenses on that very same story. And so might that infinity of many tales assist us get to stronger choices of reality that meet our materials wants in order that we will do the deeper, deeper work of the religious.
Into the bottom, the earth beneath us, from the smallest little nook and cranny of gravity’s weight tethering us to this planet that we belong divinely and sacredly on. I simply breathe and really feel into that breath and channeling these parts of fireplace and air and water and earth. I imply, all of the iron and different vitamins coursing by means of our veins from anyplace that feels core to us, perhaps our lungs and our coronary heart, our ribs, our photo voltaic plexus, a magma of our physique, a warmth pool, power pool, letting the breath carry as messengers and as boats to all elements of us. That inside energy into any locations which can be feeling any kind of sensation; pleasure, pressure, ache, long-standing ache and new ache, and even the feeling of peace, our consciousness to greet the peace inside us.
And then we additionally invite the presence to increase, ripple out into the area. We carve by means of the air, perhaps starting to ship motion, gestures into the area, remembering our half and the stability and the stability of air, presence, that air can also be presence. Invite us to honor the above; the heavens, the solar, the moon, that which is celestial, excessive, excessive up. To really feel into the place it is round us. The water is of our current actuality, what’s materials and flesh skilled by our senses.
And then lastly extending that consciousness and presence into the gravity that soaks us into our planet supply, that we might ask to circulate up by means of us, that we might ask to catch us after we fall, that we ask to humbly floor within the thriller and that candy, candy little thriller of: Wow, right here we’re on a rock floating by means of an infinite and increasing universe. And as feels proper for the place you and all of you’re, I invite you to return to the area of relationship—not that we ever left. But that this can be a observe of remembering and assembly, re-meeting.
Yura Sapi: Wonderful. Like you began: stuffed with surprise.
Mica: Yes, wonder-filled. Thanks for occurring a journey with me. Oh my gosh.
Yura Sapi: In so some ways. Everything is actual. Everything is feasible and so yeah, actually grateful for you for becoming a member of me right now, for the platform that we’ve, the alternatives that we’ve, the long run connection that we’ve, the previous that we’ve, and the current second that we’ve.
Mica: Siyá nawâ, Salamat, Salamat. Thank you, Yura Sapi for making it occur and for inviting me to this. It’s actually superb and I’m so excited to expertise what occurs subsequent after this dialog.
Yura Sapi: I find it irresistible.
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There’s a cause our artwork is of the center. We rework and transcend, share love and share truths. Creation is the remedy for destruction. Storytelling is liberation. Communing is energy. Evil wins after we learn to dehumanize. Instead, we should decolonize upon us as an undoing of nice feats. So let folks in, be stronger collectively, as a result of there’s a weak point in solitude. This is Yura Sapi. You can discover out extra about me at yurasapi.com or observe me on Instagram or LinkedIn @yurasapi. Thanks for becoming a member of us.