 Oh gosh, how does this work? We comprehend that land acknowledgments are a small but very important step towards ensuring a culture of respect, truth, and accountability in our community. It is imperative that these words develop into action as a sign of demonstrating our respect. We are residing on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Massachusetts people, whose name was appropriated by this Commonwealth. We pay respect to the Massachusetts elders past and present. We acknowledge the truth of violence perpetrated in the name of this country and make a commitment to uncovering that truth. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Eliano Yoha, and I am the president of the Emerson College Skin Tones. On behalf of Emerson College's Office of Intercultural Student Affairs, the Social Justice Centers, flawless brown artist collective for self-identifying women of color and arts Emerson, I would like to welcome you to the live taping of Adrienne Marie Brown and Autumn Browns, How to Survive the End of the World podcast featuring special guest Toshi Regan. We are excited to be joined today by three special guests. Adrienne Marie Brown is the author of Pleasure Activism, The Politics of Feeling Good, an emergent strategy shaping changing worlds. Yeah. She is a writer, a social justice facilitator, pleasure activist, healer, and doula living in Detroit. Autumn Brown is a mother organizer, theologian, artist, and facilitator. Autumn brings over 10 years of experience facilitating organizational and strategic development with community-based and movement organizations and training organizers in consensus process facilitation and racial justice. And last but not least, we have the incomparable singer, songwriter, and musician Toshi Regan, who has been a mainstay in the entertainment and music industry for more than 30 years. Toshi is considered a one-woman celebration of all that's dynamic, progressive, and uplifting in American music. Regan's musical adaptation with her mother, Bernice Johnson Regan, of the sci-fi, Afrofuturist masterpiece, Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, brings together over 30 original musical anthems and requeriums drawn from 200 years of black music. Immediately following the podcast, there will be a reception with Adrienne, Autumn, and Toshi that is open to all in the Lion's Den where we hope you'll join us. The Lion's Den is located around the corner from here at 25 Boylston Place. And before we get the podcast underway, I'd like to invite David Dower, Artistic Director for Arts Emerson to the stage to share some information for you. Good evening. So first of all, I just want to welcome Ileana and thank you, Ileana, for jumping in. Right before the house opened, the MC fell ill and Ileana agreed to take it over. So thank you for... She's just seeing us all for the first time. So thank you so much for that. So I am David Dower and I'm the Artistic Director of Arts Emerson and Vice President for Office of the Arts. And on behalf of the President's Council and Leigh Pelton, our president, and also Arts Emerson and all of our friends and family and in that community, it's just a delight to be able to welcome you and to be able to welcome these incredible guests tonight. And also we have HowlRound streaming the event live. So if afterwards, yes, hello, HowlRound. If afterwards you feel that you want to point someone toward it, you can point them to HowlRound.com and they'll be able to watch it on their own. There are a couple of things I'd like to point out before we begin. First of all, the exits. Take a look at the exit signs and in the event of an emergency, move through the closest exit and away from the building. Thank you. And ideally you would put your phones on silent. The event is being streamed and then it's also being recorded. So we don't want to hear your phones in that if you would oblige us. Thank you. And so a couple other pieces of business. Toshi is with us at ArtsEmerson in the Office of the Arts. Now, thanks to the Doris Duke Foundation, which was just announced, is with us through December of 2021 as a resident artist at Emerson College. Yes. Yes she is. She'll be in and out of Boston over the next 18 plus months. Part of how that residency is gonna kick off is that we're doing a return visit of her incredible opera, Parable of the Sower, which will return in March to this very theater and we are gonna sell this theater out. We have five shows. So after this everybody get busy. We're gonna sell out all five shows. We sold out the Paramount last time so we moved it over here, promised her we'd sell this one out too. As part of the return of Parable of the Sower, we're gonna be doing a city-wide read of Octavia E. Butler's novel. And for those of you who would like to join that read, this is the advanced warning. This will be, there will be resources available through our website. There will be book clubs gathering in libraries and neighborhoods all over the city. And you can also read the book on your own and join in in that manner. And then the, so the read will officially launch on January 19th. And if you'd like to find a club to join, you'll be able to find that on our website. If you actually, the easiest thing to do is parableread.com. Parableread.com will take you to the Arts Emerson page four, the read resources, including where to sign up and other kinds of study guides. Parableread.com, it'll kick off on January 19th officially. You could get started now. And then it culminates in the March 13th event at the JFK library where Toshi Regan will be the guest of the library in conversation on January 13th. That's sure to sell out, so you might wanna make your plans early for that. Everyone who reads the book and is part of that book club is welcome to join us then at the library there. So that's it for tonight. Thank you for coming out in the snow and I will get out of the way and turn it back over to the incredibly brave and undaunted Eliana. Great, thank you, David. Next, we're gonna have a selection by my homies, the Skintones, who are an acapella group comprised of Emerson students of color that seeks to elevate their voices by singing on the music of only people of color. Come on in. Out today. Oh, oh, this one, okay. Thank you so much for coming out today. It's a scorcher out there. Woo, we're gonna start off just by doing something that I think makes this acapella group really special, which is what we call a sound garden, apropos of nothing. One of us will start singing a riff or a note or creating a beat and then the rest of us will join on in this wonderful, lovely garden of sound. That we have a concert next Thursday, 8 p.m. and 172 Treymont Street. All right, thank you, Skintones. At it we're brown, quiet down. Fans of the podcast, How to Survive the End of the World, already know that creators Autumn Brown and Adrienne Marie Brown are both writers, activists, and facilitators who provide a guide on how to navigate and survive the world with grace, rigor, and curiosity. Please join me in welcoming Autumn Brown and Adrienne Marie Brown to the stage. Let's just keep screaming for an hour. Let's do it. It's just screaming, hi. There's people here. I know. That's always exciting. This is our friend Toshi. A little bit of fame. Oh my God, her parents are here. Where are they? Do you see them? They're right there. Parents. Mm-hmm. And my beloved is here. They're right there. Oh my God. You're beloved, not to get confused. Yeah. I love you too. That's all love. I'm Autumn Brown, a queer science fiction writer, a theologian, a mother of dragons. Wow. Yes, and a healing justice facilitator for social movements living in Minneapolis. Okay. Which is colder than Boston. Is that necessary? Mm-hmm. I'm Adrienne Marie Brown, author of books. Plural books. And a fiancee, Virgo. With a Scorpio moon. Was that necessary? Absolutely. So necessary. And someone just gave me a t-shirt that I wanted to wear tonight so everyone could see. It says every student. Every child. Every child deserves a black teacher. I thought since we were in a college learning environment, that that would be relevant. Because y'all chill. Mm-hmm. And this... Anything else about my bi... Oh, and I live in Detroit, Michigan. Mm-hmm. Also very cold. Mm-hmm. And this is our podcast, How to Survive the End of the World. About surviving apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity. And we're so happy to be here. OMG. And we're happy because we have one of our very favorite guests of all time, Toshi Reagan. Back on the show with us tonight as our special guest. Very special. Toshi's gonna be doing the Parable of the Sower Opera right here in this glorious theater. Majestic theater. Oh, it's majestic. It is majestic. It's majestic. I would definitely say the majesty. So we're gonna have some talks tonight. Hi, Toshi. Anything you wanna say to welcome yourself to the peoples? Hello, everyone. So, the other things to know about Toshi is, Toshi, on the podcast interview that we did with her, broke down for everyone, the only correct approach to the electoral process. So if you missed it, go back and listen. If you have any friends who are confused about like, how do I engage? What do I do? They should just listen to it and that's the right way. So as I said, I'm a Virgo, so rightness is my thing and that's important to know. So yeah, do you wanna ask a question? We have, basically what we're gonna do is ask some questions and have some conversations up here and then at some point we'll have you all talk to each other a little bit and then we'll do it all together. Sound good? Yeah. Okay, exciting. Yeah, be ready for participation. Yeah, but not like too much, just like gentle. Yeah, and we'll give guidance also on how to participate. Yeah, the year's almost over. You won't have to make it up. Yeah. Cool. So I think the question that we wanted to start with is, so it's December, 2019. It's almost 2020, which is hard to believe. A whole new decade. Literally, we're living in the future. Yes. And we wanted to begin with a question, first for you Toshi, about what is your good news here at the end of the decade? So much good news. Doing a parable opera, people come up to me all the time and say, we're in the time of parable, kind of all is lost, we're in the time, oh my God, it's happening. And then I'm like, did you just get in a car with a stranger that you called to your door through an app? Did someone, you don't know, like deliver dinner because you were hungry through an app? Did you walk outside and go to the corner and do something, did you, I just did some like all these things. Are you on a date? Are you on a date? Because of the app. I mean, there is parable conditions all over, the worst of parable or the sewer conditions all over the planet. But if you are not in those conditions, it is excellent, not just good news. And actually, you are not to bend energetically into the idea that it is going to happen to you. You have to bend in the other direction and it is your job to rescue and save everybody else on the earth. Not so much applause about that, but it is the only way that you will exist and your children will exist and flowers will exist and trees will exist and water will exist. You have one job, been out of the idea. Yes. And use everything you have. And I'm happy to say I know so many people who are with gusto taking on that as a way to live their lives into the next decade. And that is good news. That is very good news. That's such good news. Ain't that good news? Ain't that good news? What about you, Autumn, what's your good news at the end of this decade? Mm, what is my good news? I think my good news that I'm here to share is that liberation is possible. I feel like this year gave me kind of a new sympathy for climate change deniers because it is very easy to be in denial about the actual conditions of your life. Yes, it is. Because it can be very overwhelming to actually have to acknowledge the actual conditions of your life. And I feel like in many ways, over the last few years, I was like a climate change denier about the conditions of my own life. There's like a forest burning all around me and I'm like, no, there's no forest burning around me and also I live here, so I'm not leaving. And when I turned and confronted the actual conditions of my life, it became very clear to me what the path was towards health and wellness and freedom. And it's interesting because going through what I've gone through over the last year, a lot of people in my life have reflected back to me how brave I am. And one of the things that felt really clear to me as I was making choices, like moving myself towards liberation, changing my life was that like, bravery is the thing that we do when no other choice even appears obvious to us. That the thing that we're doing is the only thing that appears to be the obvious right choice or the obvious next move. And that for me felt like the liberatory path was making the only right choice. And I feel like a completely different person going into the next decade and it's been very beautiful for me. So I just wanted to share that with all of you and share that with y'all that it actually is possible inside our lives and inside the world that we live in. I love that. What's your good news at the end of this decade? Well, I wanted to say it's been so good to live inside the arcs of both of your good news is. I can't believe that like at the beginning of this decade, for me there was no opera, right? There was just like the books and the prayer of a film. You know, like I hadn't imagined beyond that and to now get to live in a world where like this thing that I love and worship and keep returning to this text that feels so important that everyone knows is now coming into the world in a new way. I'm like, oof, I'm so grateful to live in that world, that reality and the time of the parable opera. The time of the parable of the opera. The parable of the opera. Yeah, parable of the opera, sure. Let's do it. That was the third book. That wasn't it. And then I feel like watching you go through your liberation process has been a great gift to me as well. You know, I feel like when you're related to someone who is going through liberation, it means that everything must change, right? And so I feel like it dusts off everything, you know? Like everything gets shaken up. So thank y'all for living into the good news that has been coming to you. I feel like my good news is, like satisfaction is medicinal, something like that. I've been in this period of immense satisfaction in my life and I'm 41. This year I turned 41. Look at all that 41. Look at all this 41, honey. I work hard for this 41, you know? Yeah, you do. I worked hard for each of these years. I can feel that in me, but I know, I also am like, oh, and there's more to come, but I feel so much satisfaction at this moment. And I think the way that I've been socialized a lot of times is you don't focus on your satisfaction. You focus on what you don't have yet, how hard everything is, how tired you are, how dusty you are, how bad the day was. Dusty. You know, it's just sort of like, oh, someday I'm gonna get somewhere else, right? Like I feel like so many people are oriented towards some other time when things will be good. And for me, it has felt very important to be like, I'm a black, fat, queer woman who is happy now today. And it's so beautiful to, you know, I interact with kids that way like, hey, I love you and I'm happy and I love me. And that's very important. It feels like all of the things in my post-apocalyptic vision are based in children getting to see happy, fat, black women. So now it's all connected. Yes, it is all connected. It's all connected. That is the life force to which everything comes. I think so. But you know, I feel like professionally, personally, you know, I feel like I'm well-loved. I feel like I have written things and I'm like, I feel good about it. You know, it's not, like there's also that part where the satisfaction, because it's hard, it's hard to complete something, you know, enough that you're like, good enough, right? And I feel like I've done work that I'm like, good enough. I'm satisfied. So now I'm about to head on sabbatical, December 12th. And it's exciting to me to also be like, okay, what is the next thing that wants to arise? But I feel like often dreams or longings arise from dissatisfaction. And I'm really curious about the idea of having a longing arise in me from a place of satisfaction. Like, okay, as a satisfied person, what do I long to now bring forth or what do I wanna let come through? So I don't know what it's gonna be, but I'm curious and interested. So I brought this tarot deck. This is a new tarot deck. It's called Modern Witch Tarot. So cute. For the modern witches out there. For the modern witches out there. No dusty witches. Okay. I don't know why Dusty is just like available to me right now. This theme is gonna go into the title of the show. So we thought it would be nice to pull a card now for 2019 and this decade behind us, right? A past card. What are we leaving behind? Was that baited? We are leaving behind the Six of Swords. Can you hold that up? Ooh. I'll read this. That is a very... What does it mean? All right, so this is what's behind us. You're going to need to make a difficult choice. One that may, might feel painful and almost impossible. However, you know deep down that this is the best path forward. It's definitely going to be rough waters for a while and your emotions may fight you. But logic tells you this is what you need to do. Be well as you walk forward into the unknown. What? Wow, that's good. Does that resonate? I know, I'm like, we got a key. I was like, we're still in the unknown now y'all. But that's what was behind us and we got to the unknown. We made the hard choice. We made the hard choice. Did y'all make a hard choice this past decade? All right, so we're hearing a lot of like sucking of teeth, so I think yes. Later, maybe we'll pull a card for what's coming. We'll see if we're ready for all that. All right, beautiful. Thank you, Adrienne. Yeah, thank you. Also, your child just texted me. That's a good sign. What did she say? They said, hi. Oh, that child? Mm-hmm, okay. I'll say hi back. See, I got my children phones a couple of months ago and they have now just started. They will only text other people. They won't text or call me. But they love you so much. They do love me. I know that they love me. They often text me like, are you with my mom? So it's like, you could just text me. Anyway, so Toshi, we wanted to engage you a little bit around the opera. And particularly thinking about your time here at Emerson, you're in residency here for the next year and a half and I really experience you as one of the great teachers of our time that you teach through song, you teach through writing, you teach through presence, the way that you hold space while you're performing. And also just the way you hold space in any room. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you are interpreting Octavia Butler's work as a teaching tool for our time. What do you hope to awaken in people as a part of the process of engaging with her work in this way? Thank you. I think one of the first times we did the opera, it was the U.S. debut, it was at University of North Carolina by Carolina Performing Arts. And before we did that, they gave me a fellowship and the fellowship was called the Still Fellowship and it was, I was supposed to meet a faculty person and the faculty person would then think about from their work how they would like to engage the community that they were in and then, and then through the vehicle of art, maybe we could do some communication. And one of the things was you have a school and faculty and they were like, we know so many things and then we don't necessarily know how to get it from this academic world into the general stream and so that's where the artists came in and I had a dinner and they said, they invited all of these faculty members in and they said, which one do you wanna work with? And I was like, they're all awesome, I'll work with everybody who wants to work with me. And, Turn it around. Yeah, they were amazing. I wanted to work with all of them and I went home and I drew a picture because I just didn't really know what it would look like but I drew a circle and I put these lines and I put issues that are in the book and then I kind of surfaced them through the faculty of what might be issues through in that community and then it took, and then I'm still going back and then I decided that the show would not be the point of its existence but a path would be the point and the show would be a belly button. It would be a place for us to gather. A belly button. Yeah, but all of these things could happen walking into it and it could continue walking out of it and Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents surfaced so many issues that in this country in particular but on the planet that literally you can do anything. You can gather around any issue and also I didn't have to be a center voice. Like I make it accessible but I don't know these communities better than people who live in them. I don't understand them better so I would be like what do y'all want to do? That's right. And how do you want to do it? And I tried to be a good listener and so now everywhere that we have done the opera this process happens. I come into the community and I come back over and over again before the show happens and then I come back after the show happens and then here we have this great residency that's funded. Art Simerson has done an incredible job of helping to create a circle, a giant circle of people who will be engaging throughout the next year and a half and beyond. I don't really see an end in collaboration with each other but the cool thing is I will bring people from the other cities here to engage and so the idea is to break the borders, to break this idea that I'm here and something happening over there is not affecting me here. And to get everybody who has these skills for example like food justice warriors. They're everywhere so bring them together and then we all go out and do what we gotta do. So that's, it's bananas. It's beautiful. It's not simple, it's bananas but it's awesome. I love it. I love it. That's how we're doing it. That's how we're doing it. I love it. I love it. I feel like you are, I think of it dandelion style. Dandelions contain an entire community structure inside of each little piece of them. So when a dandelion blows and it seeds somewhere it's like a whole community is popping up here. It's not just me, one dandelion. And I feel like I'm looking at the communities you've been landing in now and seeing that and it's beautiful to come behind you. So we did an emergent strategy, immersion and Durham and it was like you had created so much fertile ground of people who were thinking about apocalypse and as a place of possibility. And thinking about, sorry y'all I'm recovering from an illness. But is it though? I hope I'm recovering. Anyway, so the thing I was saying, we came into this space and all these folks had a sense of not just possibility but also culture is not something outside of or sprinkled on top of how we do movement work but it's actually like oh a core function is what are the songs we're singing to each other? What is the harmonization? Like what do we sound like? How do we feel together? So I just wanna, I'm grateful for how you're moving it. And we wanna talk, one of the things we teased y'all with was talking about climate apocalypse. And teaser, it's always fun. So and one of the things I keep thinking about is how do we reframe our concept? Because I hear people say we need to save the planet. Like how do we protect the planet? The planet's gonna die, the planet's all this stuff. And I'm just like I have a different frame on it which I think is, I think is useful right now to think about how do we actually get ourselves in right relationship with this planet which is very resilient and very strong and going to be fine after we go extinct if that's what we choose to do. And right now that's what we're choosing to do, right? To just be like, oh, we are not being victims of this. It's like we're making choices every single day that propel us in that direction. And so as we think about like 2020 and the next decade to come and what we're creating in that time, I would love to hear what do you think is the first move or sort of the first domino that we need to do in order to get ourselves back into right relationship or start moving back into right relationship with this planet and not go extinct? Yeah. I mean, we kind of in Octavia's universe, we blow it. Yeah, big time. And we cease to exist on the earth. And I think part of our situation is that we are very much webbed in to practices based on all these things that are harmful to live your life by. So just the whole, the isms, class, all of the fear of difference and then the economy, no matter where you are on the spectrum. And we're not good at making fast, hard decisions. We make fast, hard decisions when the danger is right in front of us. But from our wealth and privilege, it takes us much longer because we probably wanna enjoy our wealth and privilege. So we're not buying anything for the holidays this year in my family. We're putting all our money towards frontline activists and artists and institutions and we're not buying anything. We don't need anything. We have everything. Everybody's voting in my family. We don't care if we love the person. We're all voting. We're voting as a strategy and we're protecting young people who might choose not to vote. And we're making sure the worst people aren't in power and that they can't do what they need to do. So I think we each have to figure out what's our hard turn from the norm we can make and then do it. Beautiful. Yeah. I love that. What about you, Adam? I love the framing of what is the hard turn or the hard choice that we have to make that we usually only make when we're under a direct threat. We've talked about this before on the show that one of the effects of living under sustained, chronically violent conditions is entering a state of dissociation. And the way I think of it is like, well, we live in a police state and regardless of whether you are directly targeted by the police, you still are living in the police state and there's some part of you that's conscious of the fact that that is where you live. And that part of us tends to get shut down. And so we're moving through, we live in a very, very violent society, a society that's very comfortable with violence. And I think we all collectively navigate that with a lot of dissociation. And that, I think, is part of why it's hard for us to make those hard turns because we're not accustomed to noticing when our threat response is awake. And activated in our systems and that threat response, all of the responses that our nervous systems have are, it's a very elegant design, it's very intelligent, it's there to serve us. And so to me, one of the things that I think about is recovering cultural practices and healing practices that help us get in touch with the information that's coursing through our bodies at all times so that we can recover a sense of agency, so that we can make decisions that are actually in alignment with our highest good and our deepest values so that we can even assess what our values are, right, that are helping us make decisions, because right now I think, you know, particularly in social justice and movement spaces, lacking a way of being actually embodied with our values, we tend to default to, well, you know, what's their ideology, what's their politic, what's their principles, and you know, are they actually authentic or not, you know? And we lose sight of the fact that like, from an embodied place, we do know that we are only gonna go if we all go together. There's no one who deserves to be left behind, and there's no one who deserves to go more, right? It's actually all of us, but I think we can only get there when we're here, we can't get there through like an intellectual process. Mm, I like that. Thank you. That's a good idea. Yeah, can I just say one more thing? Yeah, I could say like 20 more things if you want to. It's really hard, it's really hard work to do though. I should say like, once I really started thinking, Toshi, your turn, I was like outside in my neighborhood and I realized how many people I didn't know. I was like, I am my closest friends are blocks away from me, and I was like, oh wow, I don't really know nobody right near me. Mm-hmm. There's been a lot of change in my neighborhood, so a lot of people have left, and I think it's very hard to, you know, it's like go meet your neighbors and like start a dialogue, and it's like, you go meet your neighbors. I'm kind of like, yeah, you know, white people who put a $2 million house on my block, I don't want to know you. Uh-huh. You know, so it is hard work, you know. It challenges a lot of your own, can I say that word? Shit. Yeah, it challenges your own shit, you know. Quite. Quite a lot. Yeah, I feel like it's been interesting to think about like, oh what are the moves we have to make, and what are the moves I have to make? And I always think about this, Gracely Boggs was one of my mentors and she said that you had to transform ourselves to transform the world, and people love to say that. And put it in their email. They put it in their tagline, name, t-shirt, GIF. Yeah, I know what you mean. You know what I'm talking about. I know what you mean, that thing in the wild. I'm like, who does emails anymore, you know? But I know Toshi and I try to be content with each other. It's so funny, because you're like, can we do a phone call? Can we do a text? You're like a voice message. Like, okay. But I think about this piece, like how do we relieve ourselves from this idea that we are better than? Which almost all Americans have baked in a little bit. Like we are better than someone else. And so the fact that we were born in this country means we have the right to some existence that other people don't have a right to. And that when we travel, you know, everything should be organized around how we are. And that all the resources of the universe should be organized around how we are. And our predictable needs. And we're actually just talking with our father. He's reading this book, How to Hide an Empire. And it was really moving to me. I had to repost it. I was like, I want everyone to know about this. Cause I'm like, you don't realize that you are imperial. And so part of what I feel like, oh, one of my big hard turns is to really seek out inside myself what are the ways that I think I am better than anyone else. And more special than more deserving than anyone else. And how easily that comes, right? That comes in. And for the past couple of years with the books coming out and everything, I get treated in a very special way. Like you are special, you know? And you know, I know I'm like awesome. But it's not that kind of thing of like, no, you're not awesome girl. It's like, it's not that. Cause the idea is not, I have to shrink any part of myself. It's more, I have to recognize the equal humanity and specialness and beauty of each person. And I don't do that right now. I move through the world and there's certain people who catch my eye. They're sparkly. They seem to be on the same ideological bent. And I'm like, we, you and I, we're better than. You know? And so one of the ways I'm making that move is really trying to decentralize myself from the work that I've done in some ways, right? So it's very quickly become like, oh, emergent strategy, Adrian, boom, like that. And I'm like, no, like emergent strategy, like tons of people notice this, tons of people observe and see this, tons of people are already practicing this. I gave a language to something that tons of people are doing. And so how do I move myself out of the center of the narrative of how this gets done? Because the American way is to centralize myself, to brand myself into that narrative, to make it so you have to come to and through me to get it. And exactly, right? And there's been so much people telling me that's to what to do. And now pleasure actors and same thing, like, oh girl, how are you gonna grab it up, wrap it up, don't let anyone else have some, unless they can pay you for it, right? Or whatever. And so trying to be like, no, I wanna decentralize these ideas. Like I want a future in which as many people as possible have access to the idea of themselves as nature to the idea of right relationship to change, to the idea of pleasure. Like I want that to be something as many people have as possible. So part of my scholarship over this next period is about that. Is like not just thinking about like, well, how could I do that? But like, what are the steps I need to take to actually make that kind of thing happen? And then one of the hard skills I wanna keep growing up alongside of my philosophical theoretical skills. Because I'm like, I can think really good. Like I'm really into my thinking process. But I can imagine, you know, I think about that. I'm like, but do I know how to connect with my neighbors? Right? And I know how to connect again, like with two neighbors, right? And one of them is three years old. I'm like, we are good. Like I really understand you. You only wanna do five minute visits. That's perfect for me. On T for the apocalypse. I'm not on T for the apocalypse, I am. But I don't know how to explain that to a stranger. Like we just made on the road and I'm trying to, you know, they're trying to decide if like I'm worth adding to the caravan of survivors, right? I'm like, I'm really good with theoretical conversations. I can facilitate this meeting. You know, I'm like, no, bitch. Like can you help me deliver a baby? Can you like sit for a wound, you know, stuff like that. So I feel like I'm really landing in. And I think everyone, I really feel like that's one thing that Octavia offered us. I was like, what are the hard skills that go alongside of any other skills that you have? And do you know that now is the time. Now is the time to have those. And I'll say in the last two weeks of my life, I've had multiple experiences where suddenly something happened very quickly. And I was like, do I know the skill set I need to know? If I have to save this person's life. Do I know the skill set I need to know if I need to intervene right now, the police are coming. And some of this, some of the stuff is like, yeah, I really do, I have some skills. And some of the stuff I was like, I do not, but I could. And I offer that to each of you to really think about that for yourself, not just yourself in the scale of like, as a student or a part of something, but like as a human being, if the apocalypse happened on your walk home tonight, and suddenly there were people that needed help. What can you do to help them? And I think we need to get very tangible about that. Because you know, this electoral process, I don't know, you know, I really, I prepare for the post-apocalyptic, like I'm like, I don't know if this electoral process is gonna last too much longer. Like I think if we have another Trump victory, I think the whole thing might, we just might go Puerto Rico on these people, you know, just be like, no, right? Bombay riots in the street, we're done with this. So, and I'm excited about that. So, I do wanna pull a card now for the coming decade. All right, so this will tell us kind of how to prepare for what to be alert for. It's not a future, you know, it's not a, I always say don't try to use the tarot to predict things just for yourself, yeah. Use Octavia for that. All right. You wanna pick the card, Toshi? Sure. Use your left hand. Beautiful. All right, so before we got the six of swords, now we got the ace of swords. Wow, that's amazing. So, the ace of swords, the essence. I literally just pulled this card like three nights ago. You're literally the future. Ah! All right. A rush of clarity and inspiration comes with the beginning of this journey. You may feel, as though your thoughts are racing constantly, the wheels are turning, and you've reached a revelation. This is just the beginning of a difficult path, though. And you'll need all your wits and reason about you to see it through. Basically what you were just talking about. Basically what you were just talking about. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, and actually knowing. I wanted to say too, in relationship to what you were just talking about, and this card feels like a good one for that, that I think it's one of the other things that we're going to need in the time ahead of us is to stop thinking of organizing as something that certain people do. Yes, that's right. Because that is a hard skill. We think of it, right now, I think we tend to think of it as a soft skill because there's a whole professional sector that's built up around people who get paid to organize. And I'm grateful every day that people can be paid to do that work. Yeah, we need to do that. And when I look at Octavia Butler's work, one of the things that, one of the patterns that you can see in all of her works is that is the protagonist coming into an awareness of their innate capacity to organize other people. And to see skills and experiences and stories and other people that can be called forth and organized into an elegant set that helps people actually move along in a process. And that, to me, feels like one of the skills that, it's a skill that any of us can actually cultivate the ability, and part of it is really just cultivating the ability to see other people, to witness other people and their gifts, and then invite those gifts. Well, and that word invitation feels so crucial to me. I feel like one of the most insidious ways that capitalism has infected our movement spaces is that it drives us to constantly be trying to exclude, to identify like, here's how you are not me. Here's how you are outside. Here's how your analysis is not far enough. Your feminism is not sharp enough. Like, here's how you're not me. And we need to shift that whole mentality to invitation. Like, we don't have enough people. How do we see every single person as, how can you potentially be part of this liberation struggle? And I think even, I keep widening to, it's not just organized, we need movement workers. We need lots and lots and lots of people who, from whatever position they are in the universe, see themselves as shapers of the future. And I think that Octavius, that was her thing is, I always think about that in parable, the talents after Acorn was destroyed. And where she's like, okay, I'm not giving up my vision, now I'm going door to door. And anyone who accepts my message, we will stay in the conversation and we will roll together. And I notice, I'm like, oh, I'm not capable of that right now. Right now, I definitely move through the world and I'm like, you need to be black with your hair shaved on the sides and like a certain aesthetic. And then I'm like, okay, I can see the justice of you. You know. Right? And I'm trying to like, oh, how do I widen my, I can see the justice in you. Widen my peripheral vision again, you know? That I'm like, oh, there's so many people actually who care, right? How many of y'all would say like, I want to shape the future? Right? So, there's not enough, I'm like, I don't know why I came out here tonight. Okay, but hopefully we open and invite more of you to feel that. It's not that you choose to, you are definitely shaping the future. It's just, are you shaping it towards the same old familiar or are you shaping it towards something new? I think that's the thing. And I think we need to be inviting more and more people to be like, we, through our practices, we'll shape something new. Let's do that intentionally. Yes. Yeah. Okay, let me see if we have another thing here. Our agenda is on my phone. We do. Well, and actually it feels like, Oh, and it's your turn. I mean, it could be. It's my turn, girl, that was great. Thank you. There's like, there is a musical being performed in the next theater over. That's what's happening. So I could just go over there. It's just we're feeling all of that. Exactly. And there's a musical between us. Well, I think in relationship to everything we've been talking about, there is this question of, well, what are the actual barriers to us being able to see our capacity to vision and shape the future with intention? Yeah. And Toshi, one of the other questions we were interested in asking you is your perspective on like, what are the barriers that you see people still having around acknowledging and being like in the reality of climate apocalypse? Like what do you feel like are people's barriers to acting? I mean, I know my barriers are, you know, I know what I know and I want what I want. And I have to be taught like new things and I have to want to learn new things. And I have to be aggressive because I have to pay attention that now people are ringing a bell really loud. And so now I'm like, oh, wow, I actually hear it. And I just think a lot of us are inside of that process. You know, trying to figure out like, am I gonna hear this bell? Am I gonna pretend like it's not ringing? And I think that's it. We're also like, yo, they got us. They got us. Yeah. And we're gonna have to, you know, divest from these systems because they are sending us, I mean, I love, you know, gadgets. Me too. But they're being used so poorly and so violently that we have to each make decisions. Like, why are we just accepting everything that they give us? But why are you tying your bank account to like 20 different apps? Like, why are you doing that? Why are you getting rid of cash? Why are you trusting these business people? I mean, we need cash to run away. That's right. Why are you going to businesses that don't accept cash? You know, like, all of that has to change. So... Why are you paying taxes? Yeah. You know, they got us on the taxes. It's not strategic at this point, but it will be, yeah, it will be. Yes. So I just, yeah, I think that's, that's what's happening, you know. I also think there's something about scale, right? Like the, what we're up against is a system that's able to roll things out on a large scale. And so it feels kind of ubiquitous. It's like, oh, it's just everyone's doing this now. Like, I remember having this month where I had been very staunchly like, I will not use the facial recognition thing on my phone. And I will never have Alexa in my house. And I went to all these like, I was going to visit different hardcore organizers, whatever, and they all had like Alexa in the house and all this stuff that I was like, what are we doing this now? I mean, like we don't mind, we don't care. And it was powerful to be to be like, oh, all of us are letting this slip in. And, but it's because the scale is so large. I think that's part of it. And then I think hopelessness. I think hopelessness is maybe the largest thing we're actually up against at this point. Because I think a lot of people now are like, I get it, I understand, I understand like that we're up against the end times. I understand that like white supremacy is there and patriarchy is there and like some of the stuff is coming down and whatever. I get that. But I also think that there's this deep hopelessness people feel like there's nothing to be done. There's no way we can do it in time. We're too small, they're too big, all this stuff. And I feel like when I go to speak to college campuses like this, a lot of what I feel coming from young people is like a, you know, let's just live it out kind of energy. And I keep thinking about the never ending story and how it has shaped my whole politics. But that, you know, if you haven't seen it, you must see this film. And it can't be spoiled. I don't think it can be spoiled. But it's just this film how the nothingness, right? This nothingness, which is how, like when I think of capitalism, like the essence of capitalism, to me it's like a nothingness that is, that just spreads everywhere. Where you're like purchasing and purchasing and never satisfied. There's nothing that's actually touching you in your heart where it matters and that you can spend your hours consuming nothingness, like consuming meaninglessness, consuming things that don't move you, like truly move you and change you and challenge you. And that we've structured our whole society the sameness, you know, that you can travel and be in Virginia or Georgia or Texas or all these different places. And it looks the same more and more, like there's a landscape sameness that is spreading. Everywhere is a big box store and a strip mall. And, you know, like to go to New Orleans or someplace that's still holding on tight to its identity is like, that's a revelation, you know? It's like a culture, that makes my heart beat. That makes me feel alive, you know? And so I'm like, I think part of our job, whether we think of ourselves as organizers, movement workers, whatever, is to combat that hopelessness, that sameness, that nothingness to remind people what it feels like to actually be alive and have intention and be able to move something from your agency, like move something from your mind, create something and that we have it. We all start with that. You know, this is why I love kicking it with my three-year-old friends because I'm like, they're just like, I make the whole world. You are gonna get me a pancake. Like, I know this for sure. I'm in charge. And it's like, oh right, that is so invigorating. And to go to places, I would just got to be in Puerto Rico last week and to be in a space where everyone has told Puerto Rico y'all don't matter, you don't matter to us. You have a hurricane and we'll leave you for months with no power. You don't matter. And to be amongst the people who are like, we do. And we are going to assert ourselves and we are going to uprise. And it's still, I mean, it was invigorating. I get chills every time I remember like what it felt like to be in that aliveness and being like, oh, how do we bring that back out to everyone and remind people? Like, we are not gone. Chile, Puerto Rico, Lebanon, we are not done. We are still rising up. It's happening here now every day. And I think there's no time to waste. You know, it's like, oh, bring it up at the dinner table. You know, aliveness, like fight with people if you need to disrupt the nothingness. Like how do you get into people's awareness? Like we're not done yet. Don't give up, you know? Mm, beautiful. Anyway, feeling a lot. Are y'all feeling a lot? Do you want to talk to each other? Part of feeling alive is feeling connected to the other human beings around you. Intriguing. Do you want to set us up for a little song-song? We're going to make it super sweet and easy. So we're just going to have you do- Don't worry, you don't have to touch each other. No touching. Unless you want to. Yeah. And you both consent to it. So... So what we wanted to do is have y'all just time travel just a glimpse, right? Just a little bit ahead. So let's just go to like 2024, right? Which is the parables are set, 2024. So we start to introduce ourselves to our characters. And we wanted to ask you, like you're interacting with some future version of yourself four years along from now-ish, four or five years. And so really add that number to your age currently. That's a way to help fully time travel. Be like, oh, I'll be that age. And ask yourself, something has happened and humans have started to shift and head. This hard turn is happening, right? Humans, and it can happen so quickly, right? Think about how quickly our country shifted after 9-11. Think about major shifts that happened, right? So something has happened and this hard turn has begun. And I want you to ask your future self, how did we do this? How did we make this turn? What was the one thing that I did that helped? Yeah, so have that conversation with each other. Both of you, you can ask the other person, how did you do it? You're both in 2024 now, okay? How did you do it? And both of you take a turn answering. Yeah, so you can see each other's faces. Oh, you're so cute. Oh my goodness, look at how many of y'all there are. Hi. All right, so turn to the person next to you. No threesomes for now, unless you absolutely must. Unless you have to, yeah. Go ahead. And ask for some tea, yeah? Oh good, I was wondering about that, I was like... If you haven't switched, make sure you switch sides. Okay, now that we've completed our photo shoot. The real reason. So wrap up that sentence, let the words fall away. Finding a graceful end to the sentence coming out of your mouth. Take a deep breath in, let it out. Turn and just observe anyone who might still be talking. Inception, that movie taught me a lot about letting people know they're wrong. Um... Scary movie. It's a terrifying movie, but I loved it. As a facilitation teaching tool. Did you each have a response? Did you each have an answer? Something come to you? Yeah? I would love like maybe a couple of brave people who can just call out really loud what your hard turn was. Wholeness. Nice. Experimentation. Listening. Acceptance. What was that? Community. Survival. Forgiveness. Oh I'm cheesy. Sorry, what was that? Cooperation. Cooperation. I believe in that. Speaking from the heart. Okay. That's specific, that's right. What? It's all magic. I heard vivid in practice. Oh yeah, I know I was just saying it's magical that you keep talking at the same time. That's great, thank y'all. Intergenerational spaces. Beautiful. Just being really kind. It's true. It's like it's not rocket science, it's not actually that hard. It's like so much easier than rocket science. I tried rocket science the other day and I was like. This is harder than I thought. Was that during Nintendo? It was a game. But I was like, I wanna know what rocket science actually feels like trying it. It turns out you have to know a lot of other sciences. And math. So, thanks y'all. That's a little game you can play with as many people as you want. Like bring this to the dinner table, start engaging people in this conversation. Like if it was going to turn, what would you have to do? Because as soon as someone identifies what they know, like we know what we would have to do. Once you say it out loud, it makes it harder to deny that you need to do it. And it makes it faster, right? It's like, oh I could start doing it. Could start being kind today. Yeah. Like you could be kind right now as you leave this place. And be kind to yourself right now as you're sitting here. Like why haven't I done it already? Just be kind, just so you haven't. Here you are, accept that. Cooperate with yourself, do it. And it will be done. So a couple of things we're gonna do. One, Toshi, I wanted us to tell them about the thing we're gonna do because I think it's gonna be cool. Do you wanna tell them? Do you want me to tell them? All right. So Toshi and I are about to start recording something that we're gonna be releasing over the next few months, next year, and it's going to be a podcast that goes basically chapter by chapter through the parables and pulls out like the relevant, like what are the lessons of political framework, like what is everything we need to understand about it in this moment. And we really wanted to release it. It's like a wind down for the parables. Yes, it's exactly. It's like, you just need to get as deep as I've. And for us, both of us in different ways, our lives are completely wrapped around this text now. Both emergent strategy and pleasure activism and Octavia's brew, all the things that I worked on are all rooted in it. Obviously the parables opera is rooted in it, but also the way that you're moving the work is deeply rooted in how earth seed was spreading, right? It's like, oh, you actually go and you build a relationship and you build until there's a sense of an understanding so that if you leave, the understanding does not leave. So we're gonna talk about it. Yay. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. And so on December 10th, you can send a lot of vibes in our general direction, because that's gonna be one of our first big days of recording. Are you down? Yay. So should we do some Q and some A? Y'all wanna do some, do you wanna ask us questions? Okay. So. Okay, can we make sure we don't end up with like one of those bad Q and A? So we wanted to give a little, we wanted to give a little guidance around this, so I would like everyone to repeat after me. I am smart. I am smart. I have good ideas. I have good ideas. My thoughts are mine. My thoughts are mine. Great. So that's out of the way. So now when you come to the microphone, you're gonna ask a question. And it doesn't have to be like the most brilliant question, right? It could just be like, Autumn, what is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? You know, like, we're totally open to most kinds of questions. But please do make sure. What was that? Did you get that jumpsuit? Yes. That could be a question that they ask. They have to ask it. That could be a question that you ask. I'm not gonna give it away. She gotta work. You gotta at least walk to the microphone to ask that question. At the end of the show, I just tear it off. Anyway, so yeah, so come, there's mics on either side here. You can just come as you feel called to ask a question. Yes. You're like, I sat in front, honey. You're like, you're so well-frozen and all that. Is the idea of serving our mediated case and seeing that in opposition to building a future that is just and totally brand new. And if you see those two things in opposition and how we can both young people now and also continue to build that future and how we can both. See, that was smart. I see you. I'll go for it. I got it at Express along with several other excellent outfits. And thank you. So the question is, how do we navigate the apparent tension between meeting our immediate needs and creating a future, a sustainable future. And I would say, you're probably not gonna be surprised to hear my response to this, that that in and of itself is a very false binary. And I think one of the ways that the capitalist economy particularly acts on us is by presenting us with false binaries that appear real. And false solutions. And false solutions. And false solutions. And a lot of the political work that I do, when I'm doing political strategy work with movement organizations, a lot of that work is focused on narrative and helping us to figure out what are the false solutions that are taking up a lot of space in the narrative we have around the problem and how do we push those false solutions out of the narrative frame and push into the frame, the actual visionary alternative that will meet people's needs, right? Because a lot of the ways that we're meeting people's immediate needs aren't actually meeting people's needs, right? That's right. And so yeah, so I think about, I think that anytime we're presented with a binary, we have to begin just by questioning the binary and breaking it down. And then looking at how we've done a lot of work in relationship to this concept that any issue that we are confronted with, someone is already creating solutions, right? Usually those people are on the margins of society and they're already creating the solutions because they've been having to for a minute, right? And so we wanna look to the people who are most impacted by the issue to figure out what solutions are they already generating. Many of the solutions that we need right now are very old, right? Many of them are just rooted in cooperation, right? Taking the resources that we see as, the resources that we think are gonna meet our immediate needs, we see them right now through streams that are very highly individuated. The way that we actually meet people's needs is by collecting those resources and distributing them in a collectivized way, right? So I'm a part of a worker co-op. Yeah. Co-ops are sexy. It's called aorta. Yeah, it's called aorta. And it's brave work to throw in your financial future with 12 other people, right? Or with even one other person. Well, yeah, I mean, truly. But it's actually smarter to throw in with 12 other people than one other person. Turns out, turns out it's a better arrangement. That's great. It's good to know. Awesome. LOL. Do you wanna take that on, Toshi? No, that was- I'll stop there. That was it for me. Yeah, I think that was great. I think the only thing I would add to that is my little trick that I've been working with is when I have an individual need that needs to get met, I try to ask myself how in my ideal world would this need get met? And then act accordingly. And often, the answer is, ask for help. Which is not what I ever wanna do. Yeah. Word. So maybe, yeah, let's go over here. We'll just toggle back and forth. Toggle. Toggle. Toggle. Hi everyone. Hey. The question I wanted to ask is, as people from various across groups, the question of survival, the strength of survival is constantly hurting for your families, your communities, et cetera, et cetera. Why not? And so how are we working together to shift from thinking constantly about survival and scarcity to abundance, after some of the abundance of your community and your family, even in the correct way of life or the way of life? Yeah. I guess I'd like to ask you on a lesser virtue of that, how do you shift to black, yeah, abundance? Mm. Yeah. Okay. I wanna hear you answer that question. I have to say, I'm pretty petrified. You know, these black women been disappearing all over the country and not being looked for and I'm worried and I don't know how to solve that. You know, I'm like, we can see everything but somehow we can't see women when they're being abducted right off the streets. Yes. And that scares me. I don't feel abundant when I think about it. I feel really scared. I got a lot of, I got a lot of people. And so I think that, I know doing the work in raising my voice but I think that it's like one thing I wanna say is that it is really a hard time. Yes. And no amount of abundance in one part of your life can cure what is super difficult and violent in other parts of your life. That's right. I don't know, I just keep trying but I think it's also a real thing to actually see where you actually are and really hold that and try to do some of these other things about cooperation. We really gotta take care of each other. Yes. Like we really have to see each other. We really have to have eyes and we really have to work hard not to get numb to catastrophe. We have to see catastrophe and call out catastrophe and we have to do extreme things against it. Like don't take your child back to school when there's been a shooting. Like just don't go back. Like, you know, don't keep the system running cause that's not regular. And I know that's not like the, somebody also do the other part of it but I will just tell the truth. Like, you know, I'm really scared about that in particular. All of those things remind me of, I know it's for slavery. Yes. I know it's for probably sexual slavery. Yes. And I know it's for violence. It hurts my heart. And I call my daughter five times a day and I'm in a very abundant place right now. But I, if anything happened to her I would be brought down. I wouldn't care about any of this. Yeah. And I need to feel that way about every single person that's been taken. Yeah. And the system that allows for it to happen more and more. And on social media, it's more and more pictures coming up. And I'm like, you can have abundance and you can have hope and you can have even some freedoms and you can still see and be honest about what is happening that is out of your reach to solve. Yeah. I think that humility has been, for me, the pivot, the place that I can work inside of from scarcity and abundance is humility. Like, there are things that are beyond what I can touch. And that I have had to call in a massive spiritual practice in a different way than I ever understood that I was gonna need. Like, we were raised in a Christian household. I drifted away from those practices. And then for most of my 20s, I didn't have something that I was turning to regularly. And I have found with the disappearances but also with the police killings, with certain, with Gaza. There's just certain things that I'm like, I want that to be different and I can't change it. And I've had to surrender some of what I think of as like, oh, my personal power or whatever. I've had to be willing to get on my knees and cry and pray and ask the universe, you know, like, you are up to something that I cannot understand. I have to surrender to that. And if I didn't have that humility, I don't think I could walk out the door each day because for a long time I really thought I alone have to change it all. I have to figure out how to change it all. I also think that there's something about finding the things that do touch you and allowing them to touch you. If it's the names that touch you, if it's the stories that touch you, but allow yourself to be touched and to grieve for people that you've never met, to grieve for people that you have met. I've spent this past year in a lot of grief processes. Some of them were my home and some of them were other people's. And I let the grief use me as it needed to use me. And I think that there's something, you know, someone said wholeness, but I think there's something to me about wholeness is where abundance comes from, not from denying the grief and loss and the hardships and the pain, but from actually making yourself wide enough to hold that all of that is happening. All of that is happening. And not all of it is gonna happen to you in your lifetime, but all of it is happening. And there's nothing that has ever happened in human history that is not happening now. Now is a civil war, now is slavery, now is an apocalypse, now is a genocide, now is also a love story, now is very romantic, now is a community coming together, now is indigenous sovereignty. All of that is coexisting. And that, for me, is where my abundance is able to, oh, it's all happening right now. Yeah, the only thing I'll add is like, yeah, it's all happening, man. Okay. I apologize. Hi. I need to take a took with me. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, take it further. Yeah, we needed an opportunity. Ooh. Practices, what do you practice with? Freedom, if you call my name. Could you call again? Call again and I'll answer. I don't think we met folks talking about you like you were the monster star. Thank you. Wow. Thank you, Toshi. It was the answer. It was the answer. Yes, it was. She was like, I don't even need to ask my question. Yes. Yes. I see. I see. I think love is how you divest from capitalism. I fell in love this year at a point in my life where I really thought I was not capable of loving. And one of the things that I've noticed in my relationship with my beloved is how disinclined we are towards Netflix. Sorry. Like, yes. And like, all the things that capitalism like sort of encourages us to consume, to fill our time. Yes. And oftentimes we'll do that, like we'll be filling our time with capitalism things alongside other humans. And then we're like, we're doing this together. But actually, you know, it's like, you know, we're, it's a Game of Thrones watching party, but like we're all having our own individual experience as TV. And I mean, I love Game of Thrones. I did not mean to- Don't cast dispersions in the wrong direction. The point that I'm trying to make, the point I'm trying to make is that our inclination is to really just be in relationship to give each other like the most quality best attention that we can give each other. And it's been really amazing to spend the last few months of my life just like under that attention and giving that attention. And it's helped me notice how like not inclined I am towards so many of the other activities of consumption. That's great. I also fell in love this year and I feel like one of the ways I've been divesting is I'm not sharing it very much. I'm not performing it for anyone else. It's not something I want to present or put on a show about. It's just mine. It's just ours. And it's very nourishing. I also am divesting for capitalism by giving away most of what I earn in my life. And I think it's really important to be in a practice. I think this is what has kept me sane through the process of organizing and movement work has been not being in a practice of like what is everyone else making that is like near my level? And like I need to be getting that. But what do I need? And that's what I need. And then how do I move the rest of the resources into some collective space? And this past two years of experimentation for emergent strategy has been from that, the money that was like I didn't need but I was able to receive, if that makes sense. Like people are like, we want to pay you this for this because that's what people pay for this. And like, well, I only need this. Okay, well, we're still gonna pay you this. It's amazing what happens in our movement space. So all of a sudden it's like, oh, I need 80,000, 100,000, 120,000. It just keeps going up because someone's making that much. And then we suddenly find ourselves spending that much because we have that much and suddenly you're caught up in this level that you don't think of as wealth but anywhere else you might travel to, people will be like. So I think about that like, take what you need but the rest should all be going to movement, to justice, to liberation work, to things you believe in, to children who need it. How do you redistribute personally? I think a lot of people are not thinking about redistribution personally because you think you have to be wealthy to redistribute personally. And I think that's the opposite. It's more like, oh, the more I can redistribute. And I'll say last year was such a humbling year because the IRS came for my neck and suddenly I didn't have anything and I'd been used to having and redistributing. And suddenly when I didn't have, it was amazing to be able to call on people and there were so many people that I had given to who were able to give me something and support me and wanted to be able to support me. And there are so many people that I am in a flow of love and relationship with. And it was like, oh, this doesn't have to be capitalism. This doesn't have to be transactional. I can receive this as like a love offering. And now I'm trying to continue giving in that same way. Like when someone asks or someone needs something, how do I not think of what they're asking for as mine? Cause it's not mine. You know, like nothing is ours except our bodies. I really believe that too. Everything else is temporarily in our holding. Even that is temporarily in our holding. Yes, but you know, I'm like, that's for, I hope I'll hold that the whole time I'm here, you know? Yeah. Everything else can come and go, right? And that shift has really helped me be like, oh, when I have something I can give. I also want to say on a collective or movement level, I think that we need to be in this conversation so much more often is like just being really aware, like having to be a transparent conversation, like learning how to talk about money. Like what do you have? Here's what I have. What are you doing to divest it? Here's what I'm doing to divest it. What are you doing? Cause I think the conversations I often hear, what are you doing to invest and accumulate more and more and more and save and retire and all this. And like with my friends, we're trying to have talks about like, we want to do this together. Like we want to grow old together and be together. Like how do we do that in a collective way? How do we not think about just our singular retirement, but like what do we all need to do together, to have land together, to dream that land, you know, not as an obligation to the people that we love, but as a gift that we will be able to offer someday. There will already be some fruit trees or some, you know, hot tub and a sauna on that land. But like thinking of it collectively, right? And some of us, some of my friends are making a lot right now and some are making very little, but I want us all to equally be able to access what we generate in this life, you know? So, cause even though work is all valued at different levels, like our lives are not. So, yeah. Steal away from people who stole themselves. Yes. All of you to pretend like you come from those same people. We need to steal our shit back from our fucking rip off, violent ass government. We done already paid for everything we actually need to live collectively, but our government keeps stealing it from us. Yes. We already put in the pot. Yes. We got really bad systems. And too many of us, you know, give up on this communal health care cause you don't like to step forward. But there are too many banks running the country through social services. And it all comes to a halt because too many of us are not fighting for all of the things that we actually need. So we need to steal. And regularly, as a daily practice, take your shit back and don't give it up again. That's right. And watch out for each other cause some of us can steal through these systems really with ease. And then they keep it for themselves. That's right. And you need to steal and then give it to this, the, what she just said. And also if you are an elder and you have an abundance, give that shit away. That's right. You know, you've lived your life. Yeah. You got some kids. You got like multiple houses. Do your kids need all those houses? You got art, Aggie guns, sold one painting. 165 fucking million dollars. And then she funded, she seeded like a plan with the Ford Foundation to end our horrible practices around incarceration. And she said, this is something I can do before I die. And then she pointed out it like some of her other friends who have some pieces and was like, what you gonna do? Like, you know, and even if you don't have like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff, you're getting ready to leave the earth. And if you've lived a long time, you're getting ready to leave. Yes, prepare. Just start giving it away, pay some young activists rent, like do anything. I get yelled at a lot when I say this, but it's true. You can't take it with you. Make sure it's gone by the time you go. Yes, that's right. That's what I'm gonna do. If I have anything, I'm gonna be giving it away. I started because I've passed the 50 mark. So I started giving things away. I had like 14 guitars. I really play three. The rest of them are going, you know, whatever you have, you should, generations. Yes. Like generations, you should have annoying people at each generation. So if you're 20, you need a 10 year old that's bugging you, trying to take everything you have. And then, you know, when you're 30, you should have 20 and 10 and 40, 30, 20. And they should annoy you and try to change what you're doing. And you should be like, why are these people here? Yes. And why are they taking all my things? And then they don't give you no credit. They just take it and go on about their business and that's the way it should be. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it's supposed to be. They're stealing from you. It's like changing the direction of the river, right? It's like right now we think the river should all be flowing into our bank accounts, into our accumulation, like into having it all. It's like changing the direction, right? Like everything we gather, it's like, how do we have it flow out? If we all do it, if we all do it, there's so much. There's plenty. There's so much. Anyway, so yeah. There's absolutely plenty. All right, patiently waiting. Good job just like taking care of your need to sit. That was great. I know. There were so many chairs, that was sweet. Yeah? Yeah, talk about it. What is that? Well, I want you to talk about your novel. I don't know if that's appropriate. The novel. I can say one thing about this. Yeah. Which is, I think for the past decade, have thought about writing as something that's like a personal practice. Like I need to be in a daily practice of creation. And almost like a rigorous, rigorous, rigorous. Like I need to hone my craft. And I enjoy honing my craft. So it's like a joyful rigor. My dad is here, so I'll stop there. But I think that part of what is shifting for me, and I'm actually in conversation with a lot of people who have done like different kinds of movement leadership, and they're all engaging in now creative practices. Writing fiction, writing poetry, creative memoirs, creative nonfiction. And I think what's shifting is a lot of us are like, we have to be the storytellers. And in a way, we have to, it's not that we get less rigorous, but we have to be a more open channel. Because there are new stories that need to come into the world right now. And so we have to get the part of our ego out of the way that's like, this isn't good enough, I can't release it. The part of us is worried so much about being critiqued that we never let the art come. Or come through or come out. And so I think for me, I've been doing that. I'm sitting on like two novels that I've written that I'm like, they're not Tony Morris. And you know, it's like, no, they're not gonna be Tony Morris novels, but they still have impossibly important things that other people need to have access to. And this is how spirit chose to channel them through me. So I need to stop grasping them so tightly with my individualistic perfectionist vibe and like release them. And even I'm thinking about different ways of community practice of writing and creating together. You know, we've been doing these visionary fiction workshops through Octavia's Brute. And it's just incredible to see what happens when people ideate collectively, right? We're like, oh, let me think of fiction together. Let's think of the new stories together. So that to me feels like, you know, I'm like, oh, I would love to be in more practices where people are not just in study groups and reading groups, but also creation groups. Where they're like, we need to be creating the next story for our neighborhood, for our community, for our group. Like it becomes a thing that you do when you get together with people and you're like, we wanna do something together. Let's write the story. What is the story of how we're gonna be? What are the successes of this story? What are the love stories in this story? We are stories, like humans are stories, walking stories. We are the stories we're telling about our past and the stories we're telling about our future. And we just get stuck in such small, narrow loops of stories that are acceptable. And then that's what our lives become. And that's what our collective lives become. And I'm really excited to be a channeler of future collective stories. Hmm, hmm, that's awesome. I can't catch no man hanging out at the Disco Tech. I believe in the boogie but the boogie don't believe in me. Well, I got my way of moving just sitting down here in my seat. I get soul satisfaction without jumping up and moving my feet and thinking, you know this song? I don't, but I'm learning it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this. I'm writing a Disco show. Oh. Ah! With my friend and musical collaborator, Juliet Jones. Oh my God. And Disco has a congregational movement that is inclusive of so many things and had to be, I literally blown up at a baseball field because it was so powerful. Yes. And white people got scared of it even as white people participated in it. Right. So I was like. That's so white. I can't. And if you do, if you like, you know, I just started researching and I was like, this is a global phenomenon. Yes. That got people to listen to all kinds of music in all kinds of languages, go to places together and dance, learn dances. Also got people like to house huge spaces. Yes. Where people could come together. Yes. And then change the entire music industry where, you know, Kiss had to make a Disco song, Rolling Stones had to make a Disco song, you know, Rod Stewart had to make a Disco song. Once it hits Rod Stewart, it's like. You know, it's bananas and it broke, it broke the lie of who is powerful, a powerful voice in music. And then they destroyed it and then they built back up the castle until sound scan happened, which actually made you scan the actual sale of records as opposed to what record companies were shifting and that that week, like that week that it changed, the top 100 completely changed. And it was like all of these rappers and all of these stuff. And Rod Stewart and them was like down in the 50s where they have always been. Maybe their first iconic era is in the 60s and early, you know. The iconic phase. Yeah, but they lied about everything and lying about who is a dominant voices in art is violence against the people. That's right. And it leads to political unrest and disco transform and shook that up for a period of time. And it literally, disco records got blown up at a double header at a baseball game in Chicago. And there's like, you asked now Rodgers and he was like the next day, people stopped booking his band. That's right. So I'm doing a disco show because I'm like, you know, I'm gonna have an orchestra and I'm gonna have like dancers. I see it. I'm gonna have a silent disco in the lobby before the show starts. Yes. And then you're gonna learn a dance out there that you will do at some point right here. Oh my God. That's so amazing. And I'm gonna have like DJs. I'm gonna have all kinds of things. Yes. You know. I love you so much. Maybe we'll workshop in here, David. Very David. Adam is dressed for the role. She's already. A disco dancer or anything like that. Yeah. You're gonna have a lot of fun and dance and move together and tell the truth. Yes. About who we are and how we exist on this planet. And again, do some stealing. Mm-hmm. So. Reclaim it. That's what I'm writing. I love that. Yeah. We should do a workshop. I'm already here. I'm like girl, we are doing the workshop already. Right. Yes. So. I just wanna know. How deep is your love? Is your love? How deep is your love? I'm auditioning for your show. That was such a beautiful moment. Drive home, hold up the audition, please. We've reached time. I wanna say, you're the best ever. You are the best. I'm a devotee. And we are devotees. Mm-hmm. And the question part of the Q&A, like y'all came through with these questions. Excellent questions. Thank you so much to Emerson, to Mia. Thank you for insisting upon having us here. Thank you, David. Thank you, everyone. For showing up in the snow. We are so grateful. We can't believe that this continues to be something we get to do and people invite us to do because we're having a blast and it's so great. Thank you, skin tones. Skin tones. Yeah. See you soon. Good night. Night. That is how you're gonna know what we need for the hell of getting there. But just out of the building, just right, go right in the corner and into the city place. Stay in your position. If you'd like to join us, there's some room you can steal.