Episode 5: Creativity and Intuition with Sofía Córdova
In this episode, I talk with artist Sofía Córdova about creativity and intuition, astrology, home, land, class, parenting, and more.
Born in 1985 in Carolina, Puerto Rico and currently based in Oakland, California, Sofía Córdova makes work that considers sci-fi as alternative history, dance music's liberatory dimensions, colonial contamination, climate change and migration, and most recently, revolution - historical and imagined - within the matrix of class, gender, race, late capitalism and its technologies. She works in performance, video, sound, music, installation, photography, and sometimes taxidermy.
She is one half of the music duo and experimental sound outfit XUXA SANTAMARIA; in addition to discrete projects, they collectively score all of Córdova’s video and performance work. Córdova is recipient of a Creative Work Fund grant, and her work is in the permanent collections of Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, and KADIST.
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Episodes come out on Mondays while in season.
This transcript is unedited. Fully edited version coming soon.
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[0:00] Music.
[0:05] Welcome to the existing together podcast I'm your host Sarah Fontaine and I'm a writer astrologer and facilitator.
[0:14] This podcast exists to build a culture of belonging to help us feel less isolated while living on planet Earth we're asking questions together about the complexities and confusions of being a person.
[0:27] We cover spirituality politics parenting astrology whiteness and especially the spaces where these.
[0:35] Music.
[0:44] I'm very excited to have this conversation with you and I think about these at like the season as a form and so I'm asking different people or did in different worlds and different modalities and different like professions about this one question about intuition.
Hmm
which is something that I think about a lot especially cuz I do astrology reading so it feels like it's in the realm of intuition but I also don't even know what it is or if I believe in it or not that is Something to Believe In but anyway for some reason that just felt like a big Life theme of the question around that
so I thought it would be like an interesting thing to explore with people and I've had such a fun like.
Dive into your work more than I have before because I was like meeting with you which was so wonderful I'm just like I can't get over how prolific you are
I'm like you have a kid also like I don't know I mean you're a Virgo so big sense but a lot of like self-driving Virgo energy which of course when it's like
and its power is good but I also fully admit there have been moments of like Shadow Virgo work energy which is.
[1:47] Something I'm working on totally as you do working on it yeah when are we not working on something,
totally and then I think in specifically in relationship to you and your work I'm thinking about it
because it seems like imagination is such an important part of what you're doing and so I'm interested in that also like how you think about intuition and Imagination in the relationship between them
that's just some of the things I'm thinking about and then I also am really interested in the relationship between intuition and the creative process in general and I'm curious about your thoughts about that so let's just start with if you could try to describe your work
and then I was like impossible.
It is but you know at this point I have something yeah yeah I think about it I mean it always feels incomplete and I think it's intriguing part of the reason I'm interested in our conversation today is that I think the more.
[2:39] I feel like I have any certainty whether it's about how I describe my work or the work itself or even my parenting like the moment.
That happens as the moment that it's time for a complete reconfiguration.
How I think work do everything so in a way it's hard to well it's hard to describe my work but makes me feel like I'm on the right path of I can't describe it it's so beautiful I'm just very frustrating for I'm sure the people who want to.
[3:06] Do stuff with me and have great you know very practical concerns but
my name is Sophia Cordova I am an interdisciplinary artist that's another bit self award that mutates all the time and I do work primarily with performance that performance can either be live or recorded in video
and it usually carries a very strong music or Sound component that's another big part of my practice and then these things,
typically live with an installation settings that have sculptural interventions that in the past I've range from Ceramics to Taxidermy to found kind of flotsam
and that is kind of done in the service of creating.
A physical container for work that because of its kind of digital media Origins to me tends to feel a little bit distant,
from the body of the viewer and since its work that is born of the body that's kind of a way I bring it back in even if it doesn't feel immediately related to like human shape or scale.
[4:10] I mean that you're so good at that good job.
[4:15] As much as that maybe feels hard but yeah I mean I I knew your music I knew your video work I like a little bit but I didn't know that you had made I didn't know how much sculptural work you had like I just
I had such a fun time exploring and I'm just like how'd you do every it seems like every medium or like it seems like the medium it like.
[4:34] It is almost like follows that idea or I'm curious about that like
is that how it works like when you learn a new medium to like oh my God like I was thinking it's just which again is part of the kind of
people always talk about how Virgos are very neat and tidy and organized and actually I think that were one of the most chaotic right alignment but
I think what we do is learn kind of
one more when we're in our stride right we learned systems typically from natural processes or whatever and then apply them to the chaos.
[5:06] Because otherwise it doesn't make sense and I think that that's been really real for my work I do at this point.
Cringe Ali call myself a conceptual artist I mean that has a very loaded history just as it took me like maybe a decade to even say I'm partly a performance artist because of
like what that conjures up in people's minds similarly of course it's like no I'm not you know in the tradition of like
here's a completely empty Gallery you figure it out but I am an artist that leads with question and investigation first and I think that kind of came as like an almost like violin
responds to
how I kind of was indoctrinated into the art world as a photographer so I study photography and was you know very a very technically skilled photographer and I produce these like large format beautiful images that were like well done
there's nothing in them and I was not interested I realized over time I wasn't interested in making them for myself I was clearly interested in making it to impress the people who had taught me to make these kinds of pictures or the artist that they liked you know and so kind of once I had that.
[6:10] Crisis because it really was in grad school as one does yeah I think there we might in a writing class you recently found out we met at a party but we had we were in a writing class together because I was like
I'm going to try everything yeah because out of coming out of that place of this is a
work that is styled particularly at the time after like a very European tradition of these sort of like almost quote-unquote objective Works they didn't want to be about the person that was sort of a.
Something to hide and I felt very strongly that I had so much that I didn't want to hide anymore especially someone who just like.
Come to this country to study and all the rest I feel like I've been hiding for so long as it was but that also kind of showed me that when I threw myself a new work music was sort of a,
after photography music was the thing that I was like okay I don't know anything about this but I know that this is right that taught me that that entering into.
A space of full unknown is kind of the best place to make work from for me anyway you know.
[7:18] God that's so inspiring do you feel like you you're ever like I'm not gonna.
Take this thing on because it's a new learning and new.
Medium completely like it's too much or is it like that's that's more of like the energizing place like oh my God I'm going to learn it now I will say this
it sounds very cool in heroic the way I just described it the reality is as you probably also know and also because we have little children.
The elasticity of our brains is not the same as there so learning something new is actually usually really hard and.
There are sort of long periods of like a kind of blunt battle with myself where I'm like
please take in this new information and everything is also hyper digital now so I'm also in a place where like yeah learning new software is not attractive to me you know what I mean it's not yeah so I will say that there's.
A huge learning curve is really steep but no usually not because I know not only do I know their rewards are usually what I'm after.
You like I like making mistakes a lot you could probably Trace all of my Works back to a mistake mmm but.
[8:27] I am also really stubborn so the idea that I would sell composure restriction is like,
don't know that that's a rapid consciously I'm sure yeah I'll just lie I've restricted myself any number of ways but in terms of like what I know I want to do and learn
I will be pretty grueling with myself to try to learn something new I have learned though in recent years kind of the pleasure of not being fully autodidact and having shared knowledge and and and.
Learning through Collective groups or lets you know as simple as like let's all look at the same text and have a discussion about it or.
[9:04] Taxidermy for example I work a lot of Taxidermy and.
You know learning that for my book would probably be pretty problematic but instead I worked with a taxidermist who sort of taught me like how to treat these animals with honor and how to do this
also technically correct and that was really fun that was like oh this is the fun of learning,
and it can only really be activated if you're with someone that's like excited and like into it I mean not only but it's much harder when you go it alone and that's when you kind of.
[9:35] Hit that frustration while really quick yeah,
I have so many different directions and things I want to ask about and go it's like a little overwhelming and very exciting that's fine I'm doing but officer I'm going to I do like three topics that one's life yeah,
okay well let's just actually go back to intuition and I'm curious about your thoughts about what that even means to you what that word means to you what comes up when I say that word
I mean it's funny when you say it it's kind of immediately makes me think of like what my history is with that word like how it has existed in my life and I think.
Like pre verbally like as a child that didn't you know I had very kind of like,
what kind of spiritual mom less spiritual dad that like even in that context of didn't.
Come up as much so I think that I had a really nice kind of pre verbal relationship with it where I had it and I trusted it but I didn't know what it was you know what I mean like I could easily say that like that's.
When I look at my kid when I like okay you're running in that direction like.
[10:37] I would say that that impulse is part of that same intuitive process like they are something guiding your physical form to something.
[10:46] Then I feel like as I became a teenager and maybe this word still wasn't fully describe to me but I think like.
Between gendering and sort of my own understanding as being like racialized and all the other things that kind of build the Box around me that like Empire does I think I really stopped trusting that
and I think that
really if I'm honest it's only now that I'm having kind of a process of looking back at that person and seeing how many times she wanted to trust herself and didn't because of like
outside mitigating forces and so now I'm in a place where I know I need to trust myself more and I also.
[11:30] Because it's such an unprovable unstable presence it's hard to know when that is.
It's like the true and like correct path I don't know it's hard it's really hard for me to not kind of
mistrust that it's not my brain telling me this is what you want to hear so late that's your intuition you know while at the same time I find that especially with the work I feel like with the work.
[11:56] Intuition kind of.
Ray Supreme that's that's the driving force but I think in my life it's a little harder to apply it there's like there's still these sort of systemic issues of just external forces that constantly make you question yourself as we all kind of experience in day-to-day life and.
Society as we know it but I find that even in those contexts when I do trust myself enough things do have a way of working out not to sound like so like soft brain about it but in short it's something that.
I think is really valuable and I wish I could listen to more but I also find that.
It's still really tangled up with both the kind of negative things that made me stop trusting it in the first place and then I have to really be careful with like how am I.
It might be my own voice trying to make me do something that maybe isn't what I need to be doing you know what I mean I was talking earlier about kind of like overworking myself or something like.
[12:52] Yeah I feel like I could tell myself like it's your intuition telling you that what the time is now for what you to put your head down and work and it's like or is it like.
Kind of unwatched energy that is that needs to go somewhere and maybe it's better spent resting you know right right so it's actually in a funny metal way the real conversation for me is finding like.
Of all the voices and all the days which one is the intuition because I do find that when I trust it.
Great things happen yeah yeah we're totally does things to talk about linearly anyway I know well it's hard to even like.
Bring it to language for me sometimes and and just I mean what you said it makes the whole questions or to feel clearer to me even which is like there's no such thing as being outside of the systems that you're describing and so.
[13:42] I think that's part of why I feel so confusing but it's like.
Maybe there's a fantasy of a time or a situation where we could be outside of racial capitalism or like.
You know that that like then the intuition would be clear or like that our health will be Optimizer all these different kind of fantasies that we go toward that like then our intuition will be clear but it's always in.
[14:05] It's always in the midst of all of this well I mean and I think this kind of goes back to something else you talked about which is this idea of imagination I think that the space of imagination the space of intuition our spaces in ourselves that have been systematically quieted,
you know from like our initials indoctrinations and school or the way that we think about knowledge and the way about the way that we think that someone's knowledge is more valuable than someone else's knowledge and so it's already
pretty locked up within ourselves by external forces so it's really pretty hard to access and I think that that's because like I said earlier these are sort of
unstable forces in a way right like they're not be look at how hard Mew where two people who are interested in this and we're having a hard time pinning it down you know what I mean yeah so they're hard to pin down by definition.
But I think that that,
slipperiness is what makes them potentially volatile or or a threat to the systems that endanger all of us and so there is like a practical reason why these things have been.
Hushed and all of us that's really and particularly with the work of imagination I feel like that something that's so important for me.
[15:17] To recuperate because I think that forget the work politically it's important politically it's like maybe the only sharp tool we have.
You know because everything else again has been so systematized and so.
You know yeah yeah profoundly like like our most Valiant activist efforts become an ad within 24 hours there's no way like our activism Tsar completely consumed by capitalism the moment they're uttered and so.
It requires from all Stripes like.
[15:50] Conceiving of things that haven't been conceived out yet and so that's the work of intuition and Imagination right but.
Recuperating that collectively is the first step and boy that's hard yeah I mean it just feels like your work is so so involved in that.
I wonder if you learn like you said like it feels easier in your art to kind of be in that space of intuition,
and I wonder if you learn anything about that for your life or you take anything from that process.
[16:20] For your life or I think like this is kind of a boring way to answer that but it'll make sense worrying is very important to me I think well it's still work right so we're times as repetitive and therefore could be boring but I think that.
In the struggle to gain trust in myself and this can even be considered outside of intuition right I think in very practical ways we are socialized to.
Not necessarily trust ourselves and so or trust and trusting ourselves I don't want to speak about that in an individualistic capacity but in our community right right right our neighbors our families whatever.
I find that in my work as I've been kind of.
It's been a very large kind of universal sense been trying to get to a place where I can trust myself that has happened first in my work and I will say to that that's happened.
Most recently I would say because of how the work is positioning itself in myself in opposition to the same systemic forces and how they exist in the art world so it's very actually clear to me in that world
but I feel like I'm at least for today on the right path and so for me,
and I was as long struggle okay like it's still you help me on a good day you know right like if I just gone forward directions I may not feel this way but it happens there and that's.
Partly I think to do with this idea of like.
[17:43] What I was saying earlier this kind of urgency to like re illuminate the spaces of imagination and so.
I think that learning that in the work has shown me that it's a really incredibly important value in my life.
But I think that that also maybe happened more organically like it wasn't like one day the switch flip because I think that something that I've learned about myself is that.
[18:11] Particularly from that kind of point of origin as an artist,
the longer I do the work that I feel excited about and I care about and wants to exist in the world in a way that feels good to me,
the less there's a line between my life in the work that's so beautiful and so.
[18:29] Because of that then the lessons from each kind of bleed,
and to one another you know because I also want to say like this this makes it sound like there's actually there's a very strong binary between the two and yeah work has like a very kind of important position but if anything being a parent has taught me.
To not take it so seriously even though it's very serious you know right and so these are the things that there's a porousness that's very nice to live with and so it a funny way especially because I think as like a.
A Virgo who's trying to be on a path of like self-improvement sometimes I can take that stuff on as a assignment and that's not very helpful.
And so the ways in which things kind of move from these two extremes of my of my life I'm also trying to let that happen more on its own just sort of trust that these processes are happening anyway but the work is being done by my like,
body that isn't necessarily like consciously here right now and.
I think that in that way in very again very subtle ways I think that intuition has kind of.
[19:32] Re blossomed as a force in my life that I feel like I can follow like I do the funny thing sometimes it's funny to say this out loud so I think I've ever said this a lot 21-foot since starting these conversations about self-trust and all these things to sort of self conversation I kind of do.
Like a gut check from time to time whenever I'm lost on something I find that if I actually like.
Sit down and push the world away for like even a split second and ask myself the question but ask myself the question.
Like truly right because there's a way to ask yourself a question all day long and never sit yourself down to answer it yeah if I sit myself down and just say how do you feel about this.
It actually comes out pretty quickly the answer wow yeah you know but it's.
[20:17] It's kind of the hard part isn't getting the answer the hard part is making the conditions.
All right to ask the question God you know and that's the thing yes and I feel like that is something that I like talking to people during readings like that comes up
over and over just the avoidance of that space is like it feels like a universal thing I don't know if it is but it feels like everyone I talked to his like that's the thing it's like it's actually right there,
but there's like the noises like the movement or the,
yeah can I say something about your chart yeah just for like astrology people who are interesting because I just am so as you're talking I'm like loving it I have your turn front of me because I wanted to see it again we were talking yes,
okay one thing that really stands out to me that I think is so beautiful and something that I maybe haven't noticed or wood
say usually about somebody start but that you have you know the sun in Virgo at like the very first
s a Virgo which is s 0 degree or something zero degree one second which is like the
the earliest it could possibly be I was almost the only oh yeah well and then you also have Leo in your chart and that feels important to me too it's like having mercury in Leo you know especially as a Virgo that's like the sub tone or whatever so,
it feels like that is such a like the creative forces so powerful and that the sense of confidence in the creative space I think
comes from that you know and the trusting your own process in that regard or maybe there's a piece of it but feels like you can access that trust when it comes to the creative space but the other thing I was going to say is you also have the moon at zero degrees edit area stew.
[21:47] I was just thinking about that like those and then also Gemini's your Senate those are
I'll mutable so they're just so change oriented and growth and movement oriented you know which again I feel like you can see in your work so much and the fact that you are in different mediums all the time like you know,
but also the those to your son in your Moon being in that moment of change it just feels like.
[22:08] That like you just embody that Spirit of the kind of movement into the next moment or something I don't know if you feel that but I just.
I just felt that when I was listening to you talk I do I like that's a nice way of saying it because there are times when it feels a little bit like.
I'm not in step with everyone else you know because I feel like I am either moving on to the next thing or being like no no there's something still here that we need to.
Live with her a little bit but I you know in the last two years I feel like I've been in kind of and it goes back to what you were saying to like.
[22:45] We so know these things but do we believe that these things are doing believe that they have this specific power over our lives and so in a funny way like I,
like my deep intense research about my work which has been very kind of non-fictional and historical yeah has also coupled with this light.
Deep desire to understand how birth charts were just because I'm really interested in that as a mode of time telling ya so I feel like I didn't really understand so much of how.
It's not just your son it's like just your moon it's like what they're all saying to one another and so those have been kind of interesting areas of understanding because yes it is like very kind of funny that they're all like at both are at zero degrees it's like.
I'm really in both in both worlds okay so another thing that I wanted to ask you out was parenting what you talked about a little bit but I wonder if yeah how do you see the role of intuition
coming up there and also just your relationship like you were saying your parenting helps your take your artless seriously or yeah maybe just what is the relationship between those things like your work and your parenting and
yeah other than the like capitalist regime like trying to work and trying to pair it it is a whole other could be Anna knows that but I know what that's like.
[23:56] That would only make us sad yeah no no I think.
[24:03] God I think of anything I rely on my intuition like as I do in the work I rely on it pretty strongly with.
[24:09] Child-rearing and it's funny to say that again these are things are kind of like coming to the fore as I'm staying I mean I still really struggle with like.
If there's a decision to be made in a group or if I'm being asked something specifically as an artist I tend to actually check in with what like everybody else is feeling
mmm-hmm and then like find my my pace and not as a way of like going with the flow but as a way of feeling like I think I've always had this fear that like.
Following my gutter following my intuition might step on someone else's thing.
You know because it feels so fast it feels like it's like right it's like and again like pre pre thought action it's like so.
I feel like that's maybe part of how I doubted myself whether that's like other people in the art world who like who cares what they think but you know.
We are indoctrinated to think about that in that way or whether it's in like a collective setting I live in a Cooperative everything is community-oriented and for many years it's like oh I don't know and it's again it's like.
Actually when I take the time to ask myself the question I have a very clear idea of how I want to move in the space but in the life of child rearing.
Everything does happen so quickly that it's actually really.
Kind of your only way you know what I mean like right like I think this is probably a cliche for most people.
Who've had kids or we're getting ready to have kids in some way or another like I read a lot of books ahead of time.
[25:38] And then haven't read any books on child-rearing since because the experience is so.
Whole and I don't mean whole like I feel complete and like yeah even everyday because I certainly don't but it's all there all the time.
Feelings needs desires pleasure pain it's all there all the time and so you kind of need to be like.
[26:03] At that energetic place to respond and so I find that with the kid there's an ease of like.
Body and discussion I know when I die immediately know when I've done something I didn't I didn't want to do it that way immediately know in a way that I don't think I do with other parts of my life.
There's less room for analysis and listen were not even three yet so I'm sure that like.
Once the world enters the state a little bit more concretely and once their ideas are more vocal and all of the rested there will be lots of time for analysis and sort of that importance or equal work yeah but right now it's so
on the surface and in the body that it actually allows for like kind of intuition
to kind of run the show really not even as like an intentional breakfast it's just kind of like how it has to be yeah yeah which I think is also.
[26:56] Why it can feel so challenging in the sense that it can bring up so much childhood family of origin stuff
yeah because you're in that reactive State all the time so it's like the intuition might be the best version or so or like for the unconscious just like this is what happened in my childhood so like suddenly I'm in that kind of like.
You know just absorptive state or something I mean I think that's the place where it's important to then,
and this is sort of what I was I'm not saying that I'm doing this important work I just meant what I'm trying to do with myself and to detangle
yeah what intuition has kind of wrapped around itself from family of origin from cultural rearing from geographical rearing all of these things are
kind of tightly wound around this idea of intuition and so sometimes yes I do feel like especially as you say like oh the way that my parent reacted to me in a moment may have been even
on top of like the little engine of intuition but in their case it was late and with all of these other problematic forces and so now it's like a quick reaction that is also mired with all these other things that,
I know I have to carry with me and that's sort of what I was saying earlier to about like.
[28:01] Through through kind of trying to like piece those things off of it I'm also very keen on when I've done something.
In a way that I didn't want to do it for that is mirroring something that happened to me as a child and then there's like a slow or work of kind of walking yourself back and.
[28:18] Figuring out what it was that I did that I didn't want to do apologizing if I need to or explaining if I need to.
[28:25] But it is it's also Daily I mean the stuff is the like yeah they grow so fast so quickly that it just like there's there's very little time for planning.
Yeah which I like it's good for you it's good for me especially yeah yeah what do you what is your favorite like thing about parenting right now or just interacting with your kid
poor in a really funny stage where like languages you know.
Silvio's 2 and 4 months so but we're teaching him both English and Spanish so language is like a wild soup right now.
He's like telling jokes oh and mazing they're so weird and I love them so much and it's usually just like putting two words together and that's funny and so for me it's like
trying to get the vision because I remember when your little everything so like visual in your mind so I have to assume that like.
[29:19] What was it the other day potato chip baby was like morias love it,
so it was like what are you what is the image or the feeling or the the other since the Oriole thing but that goes with this so I think that it's like we laugh a lot
you know we're also fully in this toddler era where there is.
[29:43] Pretty constant struggle for autonomy yeah you know and so.
It's not always laughed or there's always like these very kind of what to you and me seem like a rational moments of like
yes is what I'm digging your heels on like a very straight like
you cut the bread wrong you know these things yeah I cut a banana wrong the other day and it was like a full day Affair no no wild but like to then have that coupled with this funny like reinterpretation of the world is a very nice kind of like it's a nice bomb
to the days when you're like we have argued about everything and it's not really arguing but you know what I mean it is a struggle it's like you want to talk to me
all I want to do is give that to you but you cannot run into the middle of the street like yeah that doesn't work and why doesn't that work and then you know and then I spiral but
it's really funny to have those two things kind of in balance with one another as like.
[30:43] Kind of look further evidence of this person becoming which is kind of my favorite part in general about being a parent that I didn't realize how yes growth is visual you know development has these markers you can follow whatever but.
There's something else you actually see it yeah feel it or hear it you actually like our transformation is happening at like
I feel like big bang levels and you see it's not as invisible as I would have thought before I had a kid you know I thought it was all in the mind and like we don't see it and then one day they like say a sentence and you're surprised and sure there's that but
this is funny looking their face sometimes when they like just got something or are seeing something and it's like not quite right
and then it's like you see the moment of like
your matching this against every other experience you've had of like birds eating your rice cake and now but you know what I mean like it's very physical and very available to me as a parent and that is really cool.
[31:44] I just love that so much that you're pointing that out and one thing I've noticed is my kid like has.
These faces that he makes and then but I'll be like looking at photos of him from when he was six months old or something he's almost 3 and I'm like that's the same face
but I didn't know that that was just the time I - no you did that face like this is your personality but now I do and I just feel like there's so many more things that will,
emerge like that right like as he gets older where it's like oh you were.
That was your Vibe but I didn't fully know it or something but there's something about the specifics of something like that a face that's just his it's no one else's that feels so.
Connect me to the magic or the like mystery of being a person or you know totally sits like seeing it emerge.
[32:33] It's different from seeing it in someone else who's an adult yeah no it's really true my partner has a sort of beautiful way of saying which I'm probably gonna like
mangle but we were talking about photographs and of course like we both think about he studied geography to a long time ago so we have this sort of ingrained kind of perspective from that experience and something that he kind of Marvel's that and this happened really early like when we were just taking little pictures of our little newborn and it's like.
A little watery being but it's like isn't he said something along the lines of like isn't it interesting how like.
From now on right at every stage you're going to look at this face and in that moment it's going to feel like a totally new face.
But as the years Mount and you look back that face has been there all along.
[33:19] And that's so wild and then of course you see it in yourself and you see ya parents and you see it in everyone that has a photographic record but
it is really wild to behold and then look back and see it and see as you say expressions and modes of the modes of being which are.
[33:38] What we call personality and it is really that was a trip for me I think I really thought people kind of came into this world.
[33:46] These are these are the places right we're like my interest in astrology.
Kind of get buckled by my own kind of like other yeah weird beliefs but it's sort of like I just really thought you came to those World pretty blank.
You know pretty like open.
Yeah and for me it was actually really important like oh I gotta like this person so open I have to like hold that openness as long as I can
and that's true to a degree I don't think in a way it's maybe let's say half and half but what I'm most surprised by is that no no no this brain
came out with a lot of specifics that are not going to probably change yeah you know a lot of again desires and wants it needs but also like
sadly because of pandemic we like the number of kids,
are like that there are their age that we interact with aren't that many so I don't have like a great kind of encyclopedic knowledge of other toddlers but I don't you know just recently we were hanging out with a.
Friend and their kid is a little younger than seeing me but I just thought all kids did this where like we go to the playground or whatever and my kid like books it like
I'm not going to see you for a while and my friends kid was a little shy or in a little bit like yeah more reserved and I'm like.
I don't think there was anything I did ya to make you be so.
[35:03] Don Ho about this way of being in the world you know and so for me it's really interesting to piece it together like how are you program this way already you know what I mean and then also.
Try to leave room for that could change at any minute yeah I love that symbol and I feel like the thing that,
helps me about that idea or just the seeing witnessing the truth that they have their own ways is it depersonalizes some of it
you know so it's not like everything I'm doing is so important I do think it's really important but also it's like there's just some things that they're like.
They came with that are not about me that are bigger than me and they're more about like their own path and so and that weighs up to learn,
be with yes is they're going to have to learn to deal with like oh Mama's cranky about these scenarios or whatever which is a big ask yeah it's like similarly it's like oh that's how you like you don't even like yes
you know like this sort of joking around thing that were that we're getting into I'm like oh this is.
[36:03] I'm going to get I better get thicker skin because I sent some jokes coming my way you know it's interesting it's I like it because it just stabilizes the hierarchy of Life parent kid.
Yes it makes it tremendously relationship like this is a relationship between two people and
when I remember that it feels so much better and it's because of all the conditioning that it can be hard to remember that that there's such a big difference but it's like yeah it's a relationship just like you're saying like yeah that this person is going to have moods and are going to have things you're not into like anyone else and we navigate that as opposed to it being like this is a kid who I'm forming or shaping
yeah in some way that like.
[36:40] Doesn't give them enough dignity or like recognition that there are a whole person from the beginning yeah yeah and that even you know even like.
Ever behavior isn't my favorite how I have to ask myself to interpret it not as a bad behavior and quotes but as a response to something.
And then I have to look at the whole scenario how did we get here you know what I mean and I think that that's.
It asks for me and generosity that I hardly extend to others and definitely not to myself hmm you know so I like that as well it's like it.
[37:13] It creates the setting for a type of patients that I should have for other people and for myself I'm very unkind to myself as we all can be you know and so
that's amazing that's such a beautiful way to describe it okay well there's a some other things I want to ask about and one is being from Puerto Rico.
I'm curious if you Takin Sylvie and like what that process is like and also another question I have around.
Intuition is just the relationship between land and intuition oh my God and which I'm sure is like a huge thing but I'm curious about your thoughts and then also related to your child it's got to be so much oh my God no I think
and this is sort of what I was hinting at earlier when I was talking about like that pre verbal space of knowing and for me when I was sort of conjuring up that image to myself and telling you about it
I immediately thought of the rainforest or going to the beach or like how quickly for me the connection between.
[38:09] Intuition or knowing is linked to space and.
I always struggle with what the correct terms are right like the natural world right I know but the world that isn't this world of Grace cement and wood buildings.
I think that those two are intrinsic and part of the reason I want us all to return to that knowledge is that.
[38:33] That's kind of I think how we were always meant to be and I think that our
foundational crises are born from that separation from from our kind of
millennia-old untethering to those systems because they're still systems and that's why I was sort of saying earlier that I kind of might may relearning of myself as a Virgo has come to.
Understand that it's not systems like capitalism or carceral ISM it's systems like.
[39:01] Tides and Couric ain't those are systems that to me envelop and explain chaos in a way and that
for me that's the knowledge I want to get back to ya it's not structureless right it's not structureless structure and it's responding to,
to its neighbor
whether it's a mountain or the sea or the birds are the same and it's responding it's encased in something already and that's the network that we're also in case than we're just in this like again millennia-old argument with ourselves about how we're not
and so for me then it's like life or death ticket
tell you that they're so we've gone back twice which I think for pandemic is pretty good although it's nothing compared you know usually I try to go twice a year yeah
and so on and so on but we've gone twice and that for me.
It's really maybe even more important than language because there's something ineffable about land and about space that really.
[40:03] Of all the things about being Puerto Rican that quote unquote Define me or have come to Define Me by like external external forces.
The way I feel when I'm in the beach and it's like nighttime and the air is warm and.
The world is sort of quiet except for like the cookies and the Crickets and all that.
[40:25] That's the that's me and that me is so conditional to that space.
And so if I'm honest with myself I've spent a large part of my life not being fully me because I'm here I'm in the United States I'm in you know and overcome them like I've had this really beautiful encounter with land here
and I sort of felt it say hey you've been here long enough you can,
you can have this like wow relationship but in a very kind of pre verbal primordial expanse all the time that's come before me.
Way when I'm on that little island on that little tiny piece of Earth
that's when I Feel Complete even in the middle of like all of the incredible strife and struggle that the island is going through right now even as I see my own family struggle and I'm there with them struggling.
There's something.
Underneath that all that feels a piece let's say that I don't feel another places though for me more than explaining verbally to co what these things are putting him in that place is like.
So important yeah,
and so you know we were there last summer and through September and that was really lovely and again like important and.
[41:40] Talk about intuitive the way this kit so we had spent and listen this might seem very biased because it is but we spent a little time in the North Atlantic which to me is so cold even in the summer I don't go in I like.
Okay I'll go in but it's like for me that shit's like polar bear even if it's like summer and like you know and he you know it's like a it's a more kind of like aggressive see for lack of a better word it's always roiling the waves are
sort of Steely and so Sylvia like what kind of get in but like.
Another one and then we get to Puerto Rico like within the day he's like running into the surf and like not try you know again self-preservation
questionable just like running directly in and it just was like again yes of course there's like it was warmer it wasn't as Rowdy you know all these other things where there but it was just like the ease of which.
That body was meeting this body of water that's the ease that I want to create in,
the relationship to that place but also in their relationships kind of any place because right this kids being brought up in two places and has parents from two different places so it's complicated but.
It is very very important and I think for me like the big kind of this is a this is sort of a big way in which now as I was saying earlier life and work are.
[42:58] One I think life parenting and work are one in the sense to that like I feel like my great,
urgency like the thing that like I long for the most right now is to go home and I don't know that I would live there all the time because I also have my communities here that I die.
[43:14] That have made me be such a much more expensive interesting person in a way that I couldn't have if I'd stayed in particular my whole life.
But I just want to be there and I want the work to be there mmm even if it's like in sort of satellite chunks and I go back and forth I don't know I'm more and more like yes that sounds like untenable but I'm also like so what.
What is tenable about what we're doing totally totally so let's be weird with it yeah.
I feel like this is come up in many places that as we've talked already are you talking about identity especially but I'm thinking about whiteness and the delusion of whiteness and how much that feels like a contributor to that disconnect from land or like I mean it feels like
thing in a way but yes I'm wondering about that in the relationship to intuition are how you see the whiteness this delusion of white supremacy like you know relating to or informing or interfering with intuition,
I feel like you've already spoken to that a lot but yeah I mean I have in the in a sort of circuitous way which is fine because that's how I like to talk about things I think the think the times I named the thing is
Things become less interesting but yeah but it's true we can go as far back as,
kind of like taxonomical practices as being the colonial desire to name the world and thus owned it so it starts from.
The very Foundation of how knowledge is created around yeah these systems so it's so profoundly ingrained and.
[44:40] Of course there is and it's funny cuz the new work the work of developing now kind of confronts this idea this sort of like racialized Colonial idea that.
[44:51] Savagery and Wilderness and Blackness and indigeneity are linked and I'm sort of addressing that as like an incredibly violent.
[45:02] Proposition also kind of creating a confrontation where we talked about like but what if these natural places are collaborators rather than things to be separated from right because the the idea with saying.
Black and Indigenous bodies are Savage as is the jungle is saying that these are two things that are there to be civilized
and what I'm proposing is actually there is like an incredibly elegant system or network of systems that exist all around us that we spring from.
And what does a return to that look like in as as it serves Revolution or as it serves.
Shift because obviously these Colonial settler structures that we exist within our.
Hurting us and moreover this is the one thing I never understood about white supremacy white supremacy is bad for white people yeah.
It's just like I never it doesn't actually
serve whiteness other than than the kind of fleeting accumulation of capital and of course I say that in that sounds sort of like very fluffy of course capital and power is important because it's the currency by which we exist but,
it's created a delusion around the amassing of these things which is not going to serve anybody at all,
yeah I mean I feel like we're seeing that so much it's just like the invention of whiteness itself feels like such a fundamental separation.
[46:26] And I think to I mean I can't let the moment go without saying to the that invention could be argued comes after The Invention.
Of class and we can and we can extrapolate from that right like.
[46:42] That can that can go as far as slave and slave owners and that creation of class and then
the racialization of this stratification because I do think to write like
as the globalizing world continues on its march to quote unquote progress it's no longer just white people that are amassing power in a way,
that rate harmful so it's important for me to always kind of bring class into it because I do think that we are in this
because it complicates things more yeah and that and I think that that's harder to deal with but we have to deal with it
right because the like upper middle classes of certain areas of the political sphere and say the Caribbean are helping
colonizers right man and take huge tax credits and take huge lots of land and this happens everywhere and so it's important to to start thinking too about these two structures
as being related and always in the service of amassing money because that's when the classes always the thing that I think in this country in particular we never talked about
right and I do think Shannon left weirdly I know and I do think that we're entering this funny place where like
there is this kind of media fide perception of oh we're actually having open and honest dialogue about race and gender and all these other things and it's like but if we don't have those conversations Under the Umbrella of class we're not helping anybody
yeah and in fact we're just making anti-racism anneal liberalized.
[48:09] Tiny little thing to protect us a few times a year when something harrowing happens and then we move on with our lives where where.
Benefiting from the precarious and that.
[48:20] We in this country particularly I've learned this from a really brilliant scholar Tina camped she says something that you need to always kind of addresses.
[48:29] Whose whose life is precarious so that you can live the way you're living.
Hmm and nobody asks that here really yeah and if we do then we kind of like Silo it into these sort of like spaces of identity and I actually think we are better served by breaking those barriers down
and having the much Messier conversation of who are the people exploiting all of us.
[48:54] Yeah and of course that's a frigging big ask and many smarter people than I have spoken about this but
far sharper word but it's something that I'm trying to think about a lot just because I think too in a funny way the way that I make my
art has made me very susceptible to being categorized around identity by the institution and often I think that that serves the institution far more than it serves me or the aims of my work
and so it's something that I really am like adamant about bringing up because those people are serving upper classes and that's why I'm Waging War on.
Right right I just I mean what you said was so smart and beautiful and true and also it feels,
kind of what you're weaving feels a representative of your work in that you hold the complexity of those things so
well and I feel like the kind of the non-linearity I don't know if that's a word you even identify with but maybe there's a better more expensive where the circularity or the sort of like
just reflects the kind of incoherence of it but then also the incoherence of these systems were talking about and the circular as a possibility
escalator way 100% again like.
[50:06] These are the places that because they're so messy and fraud call to us to then exercise radical imagination I mean.
Capitalism is an incredibly elegant exercise in imagination yeah.
Like it is seductive and holds power over all of us because the people who dreamt it up thought of everything yeah you know so how can you not meet that with,
equally far out improbable thinking because it's sort of what it demands and so I.
[50:42] And I listen I may be sort of speaking to it and what feels like concise terms I spent a good amount of every day like a fretful state of it's too much.
Mhm
the the way that it's all one thing the way that I two cents in myself the desire to like no let's narrow it down and make it only about race don't let's narrow it down and make it only about gender on all its narrowed done and me only about class or collinear Empire
but when I do that I'm leaving so many people out and that I think is the real problem and I think that capitalism like I was saying earlier.
Wants us to do that because it makes its job easier yes rather than being a confusing amorphous mass of weird thinking there's yeah how do you pin that you can.
That's just it just strikes me as so generous and I feel like that's a word that comes to mind with your work that yeah it feels so generous because it resists identity being neat.
And so then it allows space for so much more exactly my experience of identity is fluctuating from day to day and then on top of it like I was saying yes I have these identities that are foisted upon me right now and and then I have to sometimes be those things right like I have to perform those things for other people
it's like.
[51:59] Kind of adorably naive to think that identity could be one stable thing all the time and that the delusion of whiteness right white people think that
whiteness is and identity and it is one monolith and that's how we've gotten here because yeah it's pulled along so many disenfranchised poor white people in this net of we're all going to get ours one day and if you know
yeah it is red I mean I'm going to mangle it too but I was reading on me as srinivasan
the right to sex and then she's talking about Angela Davis being in prison and then James Baldwin writing her a beautiful letter and in it he saying.
The place that you are now.
[52:39] Is so horrible and violent and that the machinations of the state have put you here is so horrible and terrible and what's even more horrible and terrible that the people who put you there don't know that it's coming for them next.
Damn you know and it's like that's it that's exactly it.
[52:54] This day he'll squeezes all out till it till there's no one left except the people at the top you know right but it's hard as a hard
yeah said than done yeah so beautiful I mean I feel like your work is inviting us to imagine new ways and that is like one of the most important things we can do so thank you for that
I hope so even if it's weird ways you know why your baby potato chip and you're laughing about something and I mean it all the ways are the way
the weird waves is very important and the boring ways are too
okay I want to keep talking you forever but I just wanted to make a space just for you to say if there's a place that people can learn more and see your work when the easiest are the place that you prefer for people to access it
oh well I being a Virgo after all have a pretty
up today website it's amazing I was going to say that but I wanted to let you know it's not like a cool website no but it's a very website
it's a very legit Virgo website where you can actually see the work and it's all really look like explore it and it feels really good I like Lou sleepover like.
[54:00] Do we prioritize chronology or relationships so all of that's there for you to see I feel good about it today so maybe you know,
don't wait too long and I'm kidding and then I got rid of my smartphone so I'm not like yes programming as hard as I used to but I still am on there I just do it from my computer so I am at jaggu more jazz
why a GRU Mo under / yal and because I always
I feel like I have to explain this this speaking English speaking audience has drug little Moe is a tree that produces these really beautiful giant leaves that people use to kind of use like a I don't actually think they would work in this context but people kind of
use them as like protection from rain like an umbrella and then Jai in the parlance of reggaeton is like your girlfriend so,
it's so warm while I love it it is a perfect will pass in the show notes to thank you so much for talking to me it's such a delight I feel like I learned from you every time I talk to you so thank you thank you I feel like I have a lot of.
Thanks for listening to existing together you can find resources and links in the show notes at existing together.com podcast or wherever you are listening to this.
[55:22] If you did experience any sense of belonging or connection to yourself or others while listening to this podcast I invite you to subscribe rate and review it.
In apple podcasts are Spotify those verbs are they actions that help me share this conversation and I thank you in advance for doing them.
[55:40] If you're interested in exploring the themes of this podcast more deeply with me you can learn about the astrology readings and group circles I offer at existing together.com.
[55:50] Thanks for existing here together on the planet with me.
