 They move like the wind, I can't tell where I begin, I can't tell what I begin between, you can find me in the seams. Hello and welcome everyone to Downtown Variety X. So LaMama and Culture Hub decided to pass the mic this week, cancelling their usually scheduled programming and read out basically offering this platform and asking if it would be useful for where I am in my process right now and if so I would like to use this space to speak to or connect to what's happening at the moment right now. So I want to say thank you to them for having a way, having an approach, having a response that felt truly loving from an organizational standpoint and based in action and not just kind words. So this has been a difficult period for a lot of people, a difficult week especially for me as a black man, as a black queer man, as a black queer person and thinking about what would make sense to bring to space today. I thought about gay and black queer men in my life that I've collaborated with and the love that is in those collaborations and those connections and I thought it would be a great opportunity to platform that, those conversations. And so I would like to welcome author, facilitator, destination experience designer, I'm sure so many other things into the conversation but who today is Sean Brown. Hey Ebex, how are you doing? Hey I'm good, I'm sweating, it's warm in here but I'm very happy to be here, to be here in conversation with you. How are you? I'm wonderful, you know, I'm wonderful. Of course it's a roller coaster ride that we're all on and it's quite thrilling but you know I'm here and I'm just here and it's just so I just want to say thank you very much for providing this platform and for your generosity in opening it up to to to us to show the work that we've collaborated with you in doing and focusing a little bit on what we're doing along our healing journey here. So I just want to acknowledge you and say thank you so much for continuing the practice of your art and being visible in the world as a practitioner of your own healing art and making a way for all of us. So I want to thank you very much for doing that, yeah. Thank you and so I thought it'd be lovely to have you here in this space because of all the work you do with Bloom and you know it's you have organized trips for people to feel safe from any countries or spaces that sometimes we don't care about that in the news and more recently I've been participating in your training and I guess I just wanted to invite you here to to acknowledge work that's already happening already collective action and the uplifting of African diaspora communities um and wanted to hear share a little bit about that. Could you tell us how Bloom started? What's the emphasis for that and and what you're doing with that work? Wow so thank you for that question. I'm going to engage in a bit of storytelling because it's easy to focus on what the work is now but it is a part of my own personal journey. I came here at 24 years old to New York City 34 you know 36 years ago and I came as a black man Christian the Christian upbringing I was a lawyer at the time and I walked smack dab into the middle of the AIDS epidemic of the of the early 80s and so you know can you imagine bringing everything you know to New York City leaving everything behind because a lot of my relationships in Jamaica at the time were shot and so I was searching out from scratch as many do in this city being young in their 20s coming from Mississippi and Trinidad and Haiti and all over the world we brought our youth here and we ran right into that epidemic and so for me Bloom has been the pathway to finding my own family and community. I remember one day after the West Indian day parade just kind of walking through Eastern Parkway just completely lost emigues you know not having family you know friends passing away and it pretty much mirrors the time that we're in now so it's been a journey to create community and to make a home for myself to find a space for myself to be and in so doing put together a group of people that can make that happen so Bloom really unfolded from that journey and that's essentially what it is and you've been there you know you danced at our first party Bloom took when it initially came out in about 10 years ago when Barack was inaugurated the first party was a collaboration it was a party and it was between art and music and photography and all that kind of great stuff and it was brought together by a collective so we have continued in that vein and over the years we have been a community a philosophy you know a space a party again now a movie that we're going to see later that amplifies the creative and visionary voices of the people of the African Daspora so it's been an unfolding journey and again the through line is what can we do together to work together to create collectively that which we must for our own economic viability to create spaces where we can be safe and all that kind of great stuff so that's the process of the journey and I think it mirrors much of what's needed now amazing and you know I see woven throughout the different aspects of the work in your own producing and the way that you produce and in the way that you coach others fully embody their own truths that there is this elemental framework and I'm curious could just us a little bit of background about that elemental framework and how that shows up in your practice well I'm a curator of information and I've done several personal development courses you know all over the place I've studied with Malodomus Omea as well as on transformational courses being involved with metaphysics and all that kind of stuff but I took an interest in five element theory and it's the whole idea that five elements provide a framework for us for anything to be in balance and those are the elements of mineral some people call it ether nature that's the element of air fire water and earth and so it's looking through those lens as a metaphor of course as a legal the legal mind you know you talk about precedence it's almost like you can look through those elements and find a framework it's easy to find a framework and it's easy to curate people's work and see the framework in everything that we're doing whether it is in our projects and the way we have conversations and the way we come together as a community you know when they're there consider the lilies of the field how they grow they toil not neither do they spend so if those elements are in place anything will grow except I want to give this caution there are there's knowledge you know which can easily be gained and everything is spouting knowledge and you can see the frameworks all around us you know but there's another thing called experience and so sometimes the knowledge and the frameworks get out get beyond the experience so life has really been about making sure the knowledge the framework for growth it's clearly there syncs up with the knowledge and the personal experience and I'm no you know I'm not someone who would say that I'm a perfect exemplar of that work but it's something that I'm always aware of that there's knowledge on the one hand and there's experience and I'm continually learning and growing so the piece we're going to see for example is an elemental hero's journey and I think second you would have a conversation about that so it's taking Joseph Campbell let's say the hero's journey for example and really putting it on the body of a black queer man and in this instance and watching the elemental journey through all the five elements of as he changes so that's one way of using the elements and we'll see that in the piece that's going to be shown beautiful thank you and it was that transformative work that I thought would be an appropriate thing to to show to meditate on to me with this particular week and in this particular call and especially also that it was made out of a group collective effort oh yes I'll chat with Seiku after we watch it but I just want to say thank you so much for joining us and where can people find you in your work thank you so much MX for again providing the space and yeah more to come more to come peace and blessings thank you blessing but now we're going to watch bloom the return and it is about 20 minutes and then I will speak with the director right after excited to be joined now by Seiku Luke the Seiku good to be here absolutely um let's get right into it I just wanted to uh a say was an amazing experience to be involved with that film it was such a lush production experience um even though we shot that in a very short amount of time um I guess I'm curious about um how that film came together and and I guess what it was like for you to be operating inside of that collective dynamic all right cool awesome first I just want to say thank you for um for allowing us to show the film and for for reaching out to us to to experiences um I know I'm here interviewing me but I really know I'm representing a larger family a larger collective it was so amazing seeing everyone's faces that that that's seeing the homecoming scene with the tableau the family coming together and just looking at the faces and the eyes of of like my brothers and sisters and remembering the experience of putting that together and that project really was was set in a game it was a a little approaching inside of like to create something for world pride and but we said we imagined and tripped it up we had only three months to to put it together but we decided we wanted to do it differently and work in a collective and collaborative way where we set a frequency and and setting out a call and drawing the artists that vibrate in that space and really it was about telling the bloom story and telling um the story of the mantra that the bloom has I can where the mantra in bloom it says I can hear myself I can feel myself changing I can see myself I am connected to all life I am home and that's the journey and so we wanted to tell that journey and give that journey out as a love letter to the world and it came about where we said that frequency and creatives came together we elaborated we worked differently we worked without the us the same hierarchy they usually get on set we worked in a space that people could come in and share your gifts and stretch and learn and grow and we wanted to tell our own story and fund it so we only spent $2,000 as a budget to make it because what made up for that was the gifts and talents and energy and love that was porting together in the community coming together to create art amazing and I'm you know I'm touched to to hear to to have been in the process and see how it sounded like it was really also affecting your own sense of possibility in in what you can create and what we can create together um and I think I said this in the first part but again I just wanted I thought that film was just such a nice thing to watch in a moment like this because we're seeing so many traumatic images of things being done to black bodies and I was like well what are some images that can give us something else to connect to you know um and that film is kind of the first thing that came to mind um but I know you know you also are involved in other activism things I see you showing up to document actions and this kind of thing and then also that you use your work to uplift other people's voices um so um I think uh Maddie's in the chat putting links in the chat but uh could you tell us a little bit about the work you're doing now and the creative genius report cool yeah and let me jump in I want to talk about that but I want to touch on something that you just mentioned about um this moment because I think I really want to speak to how we see this film especially from the collective from the I've been speaking to some of the different members and and how we see this film in context of what's happened today and definitely as as as being able to see different ways we see black bodies I'm seeing it seeing them powerful seeing them love each other seeing them celebrate seeing them joyful and that is so vitally important another the the piece that was so exciting especially about putting this project together as well it was a sense of us saying we're gonna create for ourselves we are gonna build with what we have we're not going to wait for somebody to give us a permission to sign off but we're going to be our fully sufficient in creating and telling our stories and creating and telling the narratives and that's especially what we think about this time what are we creating in this space and that as we answer those questions what are we creating and come and coming up with that and we start answering there are ways that we want to create there are ways we want to to tell stories about ourselves and make us and show um our our history you know in that sense so it's it's been that and and so with me it's been collaborating also with other other groups I have to creative genius report that's another platform that's operating very communally as well as CJ south who heads up so that's his big platform as well that he had set up um he works in the collect collective collaborative way so i'm working with that project as well and telling stories that that usually don't get told and get seen so with creative genius we're highlighting the creatives behind the major moments you'll see in pop culture and fashion and music but we're we're telling about the the creative who's at work the creative geniuses at work behind the scenes who are putting that together and sharing their stories so we have a piece right now um my drawer we just released it was a Jamaican born um hairstylist who was a key here for Paris fashion week and we followed him and shared his narrative so yeah that's what that's what really um I I really recognize I want to be creating in this space our stories that that change how we see ourselves and change how the world experiences us amen to that shea amen to that amen to that yes brilliant well thank you so much for joining us thank you for letting us screen the film um awesome thank you always a pleasure every interaction um so until the next time more soon thank you thank you so much mx all right wonderful thank you so next up is a brand new piece um I've been collaborating with uh Xavier Ryan who has a project called triggered music uh for a few years now and uh about a week ago he reminded me that we made a song called burn it down and was like can we release that because and I said okay great let's figure out what that is and what that means so we um he reworked some of the audio and then just in the last two days I put together the video that we're about to watch um and I think um you know again a part of the the kind of impulse behind this conversation and this event tonight is about how we can use the creative arts to transform trauma to reframe our trauma and make it something that can be usable energy um and it also I think is a way to document affect and to create opportunities for that transformed trauma to to be palatable and communicable uh through the medium so this is a brand new hot out the presses and we'll speak to Xavier right after that this is the way that I talk the way that I walk the way that I talk the way that I walk the way that I move between wet and drenched with void welcome back everyone and we're joined by Xavier Ryan hello Xavier and welcome how's it going good good um so this was a fun challenge and journey to to try to whip this song and video and to shape this week um but uh I'm curious um I guess I'm curious about what was your first impulse to to revisit that I mean there's some obvious reasons but um we haven't actually really talked about it we just kind of like did the work um you know because yeah you're giving like Gemini twin energy and I feel like you present in one way but then as people get to know you they they realize their sides that are less obvious that don't meet the eyes so I'm just curious about your response to this moment and and that track and you know anything that came up for you around uh getting it together yeah so the track I think we we were in the studio one day we just we were messing around and you came up with these lyrics burn it down was completely I was dope because during that time especially I was exploring this um more into politics and uh analyzing like leftist theory and political activism and what violence is and now this is happening and we're experiencing like this burning and people are are uh finally um I would say acting on so much oppression and it's building up and it's what's happening and I think uh those lyrics deeply reflect the actions of what's going on something I haven't mentioned on the call is that viewers may have noticed this is an intergenerational conversation and I see that with all the respect in the world um and and we're getting younger as as guests go along and so I've always found it really um interesting and inspiring to have conversations with you around these kinds of things because you're younger uh Dave you're just at a 25 uh birthday right so um and and I'm 36 so there's you know just some difference in perspective there um and that's always useful for me but um I've always uh surprised by the things that you talk about when we start talking about triggered music and where that idea came from and the the party that's related to that um so I'm curious if you could just uh speak to us a little bit about what was the inspiration for triggered music the name and what you're trying to do with that party so trigger came about with the kind of discourse in media where people use that meme uh triggered to describe people who get easily offended by situations and act out of anger and I kind of wanted to use that mimetic language to kind of reclaim it in a way where like I'm triggered I'm trying to yes uh be okay with that um feeling or anger or happiness or sadness every feeling and being okay with that and addressing it so not just you know covering it up or suppressing those feelings being able to address whether it's trauma whether it's happiness whether it's sadness whether it's like all those all the spectrum of emotion yeah just being able to be there yeah to be present and I found it interesting because you know you talked about having parties with a theme of violence for example which is not something we usually think of when we're thinking about a theme for a party right um but but there is um yeah just an urgency to be present with what's actually going on right now that I find in your work yeah it's kind of like uh especially that that could be kind of uh off-putting violence but um it's not necessarily what people should think about when they think of violence because they're it's a very simple thing like you experience violence when uh you have to walk across the street to make somebody else feel comfortable simply because of your race that's like violence or when you I don't know when you just any any type of oppression that you feel during the during the day based off of often uh a phenotypical information like gender sex uh race you know so that's pretty much what I want want people to focus on with uh addressing what violence is and how we could address and and feel and be present with that concept amazing well you know I do I do feel that in in the work that you make is always very kind of complex and somehow dimensional in the in the sonic landscapes that you're that you're kind of identifying and building um and so thank you for helping us find ways to be more present with these uh very difficult difficult things to sit with um so um I'm going to move to the next section so I just want to say thank you for your heroic remixing of that track this week um for encouraging us to put it out into the world uh and for joining us tonight and sharing your thoughts as always thank you thank you so much take care you too okay so um next um the our kind of final section of the evening tonight um I'm going to play some quartz crystal singing bowls and also metal bowls and um in thinking about what to share tonight the first thing that came to mind was some relief because uh it's almost yeah just being bombarded with so much content right now that's uh deeply troubling um and necessary to see in some way uh it's also important to take moments to refill and refuel so um I thought I would play the bowls for everyone who's out there doing the the good work fighting the good fight this week and needs to receive some energy um I'll also mention um that I recently released a series of guided meditation albums called crystal consciousness theory and practice and that evolved out of a series of live workshops that I did um and you can go to healing sound meditation and download the first one for free um and uh that one is just about how to energetically connect with a crystal and then the the last track on there is just a sound bath so you can go to healingsoundmeditation.com and when you click on the first album when you add it to cart it's just uh free or zero or you can put some money in there if you so desire um but that is there for you and as we go into this next section I'm going to play for about 20 minutes uh you may want to plug in your good speakers or put on headphones so you can get the best possible sound we're doing our best here with microphones and and things but if you can get good output on your end that'll help um and yeah just make sure you're in a really comfortable position you can have your eyes open or closed there will be visuals um but that choice is obviously up to you so I'm just going to take one moment and get myself sorted out here and get this get this going okay well thank you for joining us tonight I hope that was useful for your practice today and that you can download that sound bath at healing sound meditation and maybe help you go to sleep at night and I just want to say thank you again to Lulama and Culture Hub for extending this platform for this conversation for making this space it really felt like loving uh and generous and welcome organizational response that really comes from a human response so I'm grateful for that I'm grateful for uh Luba Day, Sekou and Xavier for joining us and sharing their work with us and if you're still in the chat I believe Maddie's going to put some links for uh places that you can donate to support um and you can also find places um more resources on lulamama.org so with that I will say thank you and good night