ABOUT US TRANSCRIPT
​
Cheyenne Wyzzard-Jones (00:00): Spiritual is political, is my visual curation with the world. It is a call to push the mainstream, to push culture and for it to come from the ground itself. Fashion and arts must not be isolated from everyday life and existence. Spiritual is political is interested in truth. Truth is fluent in the way that for many of us, what is true is based on how some things move our spirit, how it stays in our memory and reflects itself in our world. Truth reflex what an event, story, memory, folklore felt like and what lessons are learned. It is spiritual when there is ritual, when there is intention, when there is a memory of sacredness. and it's not always beautiful, but it is truth and truth becomes political. It influences our fire within. Spiritual is Political is here to share those stories.
Kayla Watkins (01:09): I think for black people and spiritualities that we really are using it towards our liberation, towards our self-expression towards our like form of community. And, you know, we don't, we don't just speak and we don't communicate just through words. We communicate in all these different dimensions. And I think spirituality is one of those ways that we communicate. And, you know, I think spiritual is political. Like you've really, now that I I'm thinking about it, you really can't even separate spirituality from political because of how things are controlled.
Kaz Mega (01:38): I feel like Spiritual is Political is that glue, that unspoken glue, and we're taking these things like fashion and music and television, and we're just making those connections, identifying the je ne sais quoi (femmes laugh and repeat the phrase in the background. One person says "Exblackness" to emphasize).
Angel Edwards (01:58): I'm recognizing that prayer and that singing and that laying hands and that, in that freedom, like in that practice will get me to my heaven and, or at least support me in getting to that heaven. And I don't even really do all of that yet, but I just know that it works. I just do, you know, and I think black people are so genius for that. Like, even though the fuckery is still so present and just still so ridiculous, it's absurd, but there's like this sort of like equivalent amount of absurdity as like the absurdity of the fact that you like, don't support trans people, you don't support Christianity, but then there's the absurdity of praying all night for hours, like crying for hours. And high knees like, it's just, it's so full. So full.
NASRA (03:36): Like the, the political and the spiritual and the relationship to, um, like family and wanting to know more, I think is what, like, after I was able to move myself from the harm coming back, um, and being like, Oh, putting your head to the ground, putting your forehead to the ground, bending your knees, like five times a day. You feel me like staying limber for God, like limber. And the mosque is not no turn up trap. You know what I'm saying? We didn't have no priase dances (laughes in the background) it was not, it was not that, you know. It was, it was just *audible motion*. Um, and even though like during the Ramadan and Eid, and it's like, we're black, we're turning up. But the prayer itself, the moments of prayer, the discipline of like showing up to your math five times a day, um, and moving with the sun, moving with the moon, all these things, I'm now I'm like, y'all some witches and, and you look at me all types of crazy. Um, there's a new found relationship there. And now that I know that religion is not spirituality, that's not the end of the conversation. I think art and gender and gender fucking, and all those things helped just like now I can live above religion and around religion and in religion. And like you were saying, Kayla, like take what really hits and learn about what was taken from us and like, just make sense of it.