spirits of the wreckage
Our gods are in the land. In the lakes, in the mountains, animating the whispers of grasses and the riverine curves of the waterways. Lately I’ve been wondering about the collective spiritual effects of ecological devastation. The ongoing disasters of oil spills, industrial monoculture, mining, neoliberal shipping economies, and so much more are decimating our everyday landscapes and shaping our spiritual geographies in the process. In so many traditions, the land is the inherited site of tricksters, guides, and guardians who move with the cycles of the soil and the seasons. For those of us with ancestral spirits tied to waterways, caves, forests, the ocean, what happens when those places are destroyed? When the guides that were to be passed down to us become severed from the land? How can we begin to understand the magnitude of what we are losing, and how might we create new rituals to call our spirits home? I’m interested in the mythologies that will emerge from the wreckage of this moment, and how they might serve as technologies for mourning and remembrance.
Things I’ve been reading/listening to:
This academic article by Judith Carney has been helping me think through some of my (countless!) questions about precolonial plant exchanges between Africa and Asia.
Farmworkers lack protection from the deadly heat of the climate crisis
Two podcasts—Object of Sound by Hanif Abdurraqib and Key Notes by Cole Cuchna—have been helping me listen more deeply and curiously to the music I encounter.
Harmony Holiday’s Twitter is full of fascinating archival finds and anecdotes about Black music, and her excellent newsletter is an even more complex and wondrous look into these histories.
If you can, please consider signing up for the paid option of this newsletter to support me bringing interviews, articles, and stories to your inbox every other week.
Cover image: Diedrick Brackens, how to return, 2017.