VIII.

Seeds

The rosemary seeds I nestled one by one in coconut-husk pucks for the public portion of my dissertation defense, a ceremony for gratitude and grief, are tiny and perfectly clasped in their shells. They teach me how a posture of defense can be quiet, loving, patient, waiting for water. How "closure" can be a strategy for continuation.

When I thought of archives I thought of holding, of preservation past death. But that point of view irons a circle into a line.

Here are some words that seep back into my concept of "archive" and let it curve:

[11] On the physical level, see Carney, Judith Carney, "Seeds of Memory: Botanical Legacies of the African Diaspora," in African Ethnobotany in the Americas (August 2013), 13-33. 10.1007/978-1-4614-0836-9_2.

On the metaphorical level, see Claire Chase's Density 2036 project, which includes gorgeous "Seeds" in the form of "miniature, youth-friendly versions" of the project's core commissioned works (https://www.densityarts.org/seeds, accessed June 1, 2024),

and Helga Davis, SEEDS, curated event at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, April 7, 2022, with Tariq Al-Sabir and friends.

I also use the metaphor of seeds differently at the opening of the dissertation (see Meditation). Apologies; they're just too rich and miraculous . . .

Our gardens archive that love. I'm in love with Gay's sentence, and the ways that it understands a seed as a container for something that exceeds what can be held. The seed becomes a way of extending the contours of love's motion beyond the boundaries of the experience in which that motion was known to you. [9]

A holding-and-letting-go.

Both the physical and metaphorical dimensions of Gay's sentence are beautiful to me. Maybe they can't be disentangled. In her book on intersectionality as a practice, theory, and metaphorical tool, Patricia Hill Collins writes about how ideas can be shaped by metaphors: "[W]hen a concept is structured by a metaphor, it is only partially structured and can be extended in some ways but not in others" [10]. I gather together metaphors for orienting in motion: a flowing box; my violin and bow in Harumi's words; Petra Kuppers's momentary balance; Matana Roberts's collective energy; compos(t)ing with Donna Haraway and friends. Each has its own patterns of movement, and each opens into relationship with what it doesn't hold.

The metaphor of seeds (as containers for love passed on), like the metaphor of flowers (as a container for gratitude), is beautifully unoriginal, entangled with the ways that others have used and cultivated seeds to shape and to support their own lives and movements. [11] In the context of this closing section of my dissertation, and alongside the living archive of the seeds offered back to me from my ceremony, I share an archive of metaphorical seeds that takes the form of "recommended reading list" (inspired by Sara Ahmed's The Feminist Killjoy Handbook) [12]. These are some of the people whose works undergird my work at so many points that a single citation would be inaccurate. With their names, I share a recording or book or other source that I hope will be a portal into their transformative work should you wish to learn more.

This is a personal list, shaped by what made me feel held and inspired in particular moments and contexts, as a woman and as an artist and as a multi-hyphenate seeker of connection. May the gesture initiated with this limited gathering continue in the form of my boundless gratitude, and may you find among it seeds to carry forward into your own practices.

. . .

brontë velez (they/them). The presence, the life, the depth that brontë velez brings to their work as a "a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker" [13] blows wide open doors to collectively embodied liberation. I recommend all of the podcast interviews they did with host Ayana Young, including:

On the Necessity of Beauty. Interview on podcast For

the Wild, hosted by Ayana Young, February 2022, accessed May 21, 2024, https://forthewild.world/listen/bronte-velez-on-the-necessity-of-beauty-part-2-encore-274

Esperanza Spalding (she/her). Listen to the ease and dancing power with which Esperanza Spalding weaves sound into spells for healing and movement: this is a masterclass in intention finding its impact through the discipline of liberatory practice. I recommend getting to know her through Helga Davis's incisive interview-conversation, released a year earlier (May 2020) following her 2019 album "12 Little Spells" (and then listening to everything else she's ever recorded, because yes wow.)

Musician Esperanza Spalding on Community and Satisfaction. Interview on podcast Helga hosted by Helga Davis, May 8, 2020, accessed May 21, 2024, https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/helga/episodes/esperanza-spalding-helga

Helga Davis (she/her). I met Helga Davis at two stunning events she put on at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, City of Women and Seeds, both of which carved astonishing layers into a space I'd imagined to be too brittle for change. The medium (operatic singing, curatorial composition, podcast) feels less central to her artistry than her open-handed integrity. Listen to her podcast Helga, look out for anything she performs or curates. And for another expression of her incisive voice, see the early recording of her singing as a part of the band Women in Love (led by Greg Tate):

"Blood Is Thinner Than Dust," on The Sound of Falling Bodies at Rest (Madrina Records, 1994), uploaded to YouTube by @blackrocknut as "WOMEN IN LOVE featuring HELGA DAVIS, circa 1994," accessed May 21, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIC_NMoJYcs

Meredith Monk (she/her). Meredith Monk's fearless magic as a singing moving experimenting artist in the 1960s carries through into her present-day work, and into the way she embraces relationships as fundamental to musical creativity. The way she shaped the rehearsals that I participated in for her most recent opera, Indra's Net (2019-2021), beginning each rehearsal with full-body movement and vocalizations that emphasized the well-being of all of her collaborators, transformed how I strive to shape both musical and non-musical gatherings. I recommend catching her live if you can, listening to her published recordings, and also getting to know her work through the intimate documentary produced and directed by Babeth VanLoo:

Meredith Monk: Inner Voice. Video. First Run Features, 2008. https://firstrunfeatures.com/meredithmonkdvd.html

Haruna Lee (they/them). When I first read the name of the course Haruna led in 2020, Multi-Hyphenate: Liberating our Artistic Selves, I immediately felt a space open and flutter. The experience of this course was a revelation: without any sense of hurry, compulsion, or external pressure, the community they shaped drew me into my deepest self and made creative rigor feel loving and generous. Haruna was the one who introduced me to the idea of community cultivation as a creative practice, as well as to the work of adrienne maree brown and Yumi Sakugawa, both of whom have become deep guides in my liberatory practices. They are a soul-deep performer and writer of theater, a sensitive and deep-seated community cultivator, and a brilliant creative theorist and teacher. If you ever have a chance to meet them or witness any of their work, I cannot recommend it enough. Their current shows and goings-on can be viewed on their website:

https://www.harunalee.com/shows

Pamela Z (she/her). I first experienced Pamela Z's work in a performance at the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab in 2017, and it completely transformed the way I imagined human relation to technology: here was electronically mediated sound that acted like an extension of her physical expressive body, that opened up space for wonder and magic through a hidden succession of numerical codes. As an example of her gesture-controlled vocal work, I recommend:

"Breathing," a movement from Carbon Song Cycle (2013), performed on March 2014 at Royce Gallery in San Francisco. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7AZsQoD630

Yumi Sakugawa (she/her). Yumi Sakugawa's drawings exude a childlike wonder that makes space for having "tea and cake with your demons" and embracing the whole messy beautiful process of creative becoming. She also offers transformative webinars that can be accessed through her website (https://www.yumisakugawa.com/courses). I love and recommend especially:

Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With the Universe (Stoughton, MA: Adams Media, 2014) https://www.yumisakugawa.com/books/illustratedguide

DJ Lynnée Denise (they/them). DJ Lynnée Denise created the term "DJ Scholarship" to describe the way that DJing engages critically and generatively with surrounding communities and histories. Their work expanded my understanding of creative research into the work of emcees and DJs as cultivators of community and critical engagement. I've most recently been loving their mix "The Black Atlantic/Black Fantastic," which focuses on South African house music, but each of their mixes offers a carefully researched narrative in sound:

DJ Lynnée Denise, "The Black Atlantic/Black Fantastic," accessed May 21, 2024, https://soundcloud.com/dj-lynnee-denise/the-black-atlanticblack-fantastic

Mazz Swift (they/them). Mazz is the embodiment of what radically liberatory practice for a classically trained violinist can do and be. They also introduced me to the ways that music can facilitate equitable and shifting power relationships, and vice versa, through their use of Conduction, a form of conducted improvisation first developed by creative musician Butch Morris. Their spectacular album, The 10000 Things, blows open the gates of what I imagined might be possible with violin, bow, vocals, and spirit. Go listen if you haven't, and also check out this article introducing them and their work:

A. Cori Hill, "The Debut Album from Mazz Swift is a Full Circle Moment, Creatively and Personally," May 21, 2024.

https://icareifyoulisten.com/2024/05/debut-album-mazz-swift-full-circle/

Rhiannon Giddens (she/her). Rhiannon Giddens uses her voice, fiddle, banjo, and ethnographic research to detangle the ways that capitalism and white supremacy have appropriated Afro-diasporic musical traditions. She's also just amazing. Here's one track to get you started if you don't already know her work:

"Louisiana Man," on Austin City Limits, uploaded to YouTube by @AustinCityLimitsTV, October 6, 2019, accessed May 21, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moLtT5SI84g

Tania El Khoury (she/her). The way that Tania El Khoury shapes intimacy in her installations and artwork (composed under the name of Live Art) moves me deeply even though I've never experienced them live. I particularly love her work "As Far As My Fingertips Take Me" (2016), an encounter between a gallery visitor and an unseen refugee who draws on their arm:

https://taniaelkhoury.com/portfolio/as-far-as-my-fingertips-take-me/

Donna Haraway (she/her). As an introduction to Donna Haraway's tentacular, wild, precise ecofeminism, I recommend:

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University

Press, 2016. https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble

Ambika Kamath (she/her). I've already mentioned Ambika in the context of my exhibition Reservoirs, but I wanted to share a book that she co-authored and which has guided me in various forms even before it existed as a draft. It's about animal behavior, but it shifted the way I think about human and and artistic relationships. The book, Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior, is forthcoming from MIT Press (2025), and you can read a bit about it in this article in Science News:

Daren Incorvaia, "These researchers are reimagining animal behavior through a feminist lens," July 5, 2023, accessed May 21, 2024, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/reimagining-animal-behavior-feminist-lens-kamath-packer

Elisa Hamilton (she/her). Socially engaged multimedia artist Elisa Hamilton is a community cultivator extraordinaire. I adore her project Jukebox, installed in the Cambridge Foundry as "a center point for gathering, listening, and sharing our stories."

2019-2023, accessed May 21, 2024.

https://www.foundryjukebox.org/

bell hooks (she/her). If I had to choose one scholar whose words have guided me since I started at Stanford, it would probably be bell hooks. Her works on teaching and on "choosing the margin" have been life-changing, and I can't recommend highly enough her book

All About Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow, 2001).

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/all-about-love-bell-hooks?variant=41228396986402

Audre Lorde (she/her). Or then again, maybe it would be Audre Lorde, whose essays in Sister Outsider are a syllabus in themselves and are among my most constant and brilliant guides to liberatory practice:

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007),

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/

Susana Canales Barrón (she/her). Susana's work as a filmmaker, installation artist, pedagogue, and thinker takes spaces that threaten collapse and holds them with care and unblinking wonder. I recommend everything she's made. You can see windows into her work in the trailers on her website:

https://www.susanabarron.com/film

Anna Tsing (she/her). Whether or not you like or have any interest in mushrooms, I recommend this book as a portal into a different way of moving, grounded in earthy aromas and patchy relationships, in the midst of a precarious world:

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

This Bridge Called My Back. (I'm breaking my start-with-a-person rule here, but this collection, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, has been a companion throughout my writing, and I want to share it here):

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Fourth Edition (New York: SUNY Press, 2015.

George Lewis (he/him). Composer, musicologist, performer, teacher, remaker of categories: what George Lewis offers the world is boundless. His thick tome on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is a crucial guide to the power of collective musicking:

A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and

American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2008),

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5504497.html

Petra Kuppers (she/her). I've already written about some of the ways Petra Kuppers has impacted me, so I'll limit myself to saying that her book Eco Soma is both a material guide to the ways I want my writing to move and a theoretical mapping of spaces upheld by intersections of disability culture, artistic critique, and ecological and somatic connection:

Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021)

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/eco-soma

Pauline Oliveros (she/her). Pauline Oliveros's work as a humanitarian, musician, and community creator has seeped so deeply into the experimental music culture that I was exposed to in the California Bay Area that it sometimes became indistinguishable from the ground and the sky. I recommend her Anthology of Text Scores as a series of patterns for moving musically, together or alone, whether or not you've ever made a sound in your life:

Anthology of Text Scores by Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening Publications, 2013).

https://popandmom.org/products/anthology-of-text-scores

Annea Lockwood (she/her). The range and brilliance of Annea Lockwood's compositions and installations is astounding, and she also happens to be among the most generous and warm souls with whom I've (briefly) corresponded. I was introduced to her through a text score she'd written that was mentioned in a book with no further context, and that utterly captivated me with its care and incisiveness. Hearing Studies, co-written with Ruth Anderson, is a beautiful guide to listening that I've used as a foundation in every course I've had the chance to teach (all two, so far):

Ruth Anderson and Annea Lockwood, Hearing Studies (Red Hook, NY: Open Space Publications, 2021). https://www.annealockwood.com/writings/

Matana Roberts (they/them). Of course. Their website is beautiful and often changing. Their Coin Coin albums are available through Constellation Records

https://cstrecords.com/products/cst170-matana-roberts-coin-coin-chapter-five-in-the-garden

and on Bandcamp:

https://matana-roberts.bandcamp.com/

Cathy Park Hong (she/her). Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning helped me to accept and begin to love parts of myself that I'd denied reality or validity.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605371/minor-feelings-by-cathy-park-hong/

Ross Gay (he/him). In addition to the quotes I've shared, I have to recommend his poetry, which makes me fall wildly in love with the world in its full, awkward, heartrending beauty:

Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)

https://upittpress.org/books/9780822963318/

[9] Thank you, again, bell hooks, for all about love: new visions (New York: William Morrow, 2001).

[10] Patricia Hill Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 33.

[12] Thank you, Denise, for the gift of Sara Ahmed's

The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2023).

And thank you June Jordan, for helping me to understadnd the entanglement of love and citational practices, in your essay "Where is the Love?" in Some of Us Did Not Die (New York: Basic Books, 2002, based on her 1978 address at the National Black Writer’s Conference at Howard University), 268-274.

[13] from their bio in the podcast episode "on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, Part 1," For the Wild, February 2022, accessed June 4, 2024,

https://forthewild.world/listen/bronte-velez-on-the-pleasurable-surrender-of-white-supremacy-encore-part-1-273

. . .

Toward the end of my dissertation defense ceremony, Marie Finch and a group of high school choir students from her classes at Menlo School helped me lead a musical meditation to support people in naming a grief or gratitude that they wished to tend to. A few weeks earlier, I'd spoken with Julie Herndon, our fellow Treebird, hoping that we might be able to use this ceremony as an excuse for a Treebird reunion. Julie wasn't able to come in person, but she made and offered this beautiful track as a "sound cushion" to use or reshape in the ceremony however we wished:

If you like, imagine these sounds drifting from the speakers of seven high school students' cell phones, cradled in their hands as they walk through the space of the open-air courtyard and around you. The sound-cushion enters in staggered layers, one from each student, overlapping like waves in the ocean. Imagine the students humming gentle waves that merge and depart from the Julie's sounds. Imagine Marie's voice and warmth and presence leading us all deeper into compassionate and conjoined presence.

If there is a grief or a gratitude that you would like to tend, let it join with the ones offered back to me by participants in this ceremony:

00:00 / 08:53

I realize as I carefully soak the rosemary seed pucks in water that I'm afraid. I'm humbled by the care, the love of each person who has trusted me with the seeds of their griefs and gratitudes. What they touch is both intimate and crushing. [14] And the seeds I've tucked into each dried fibrous circle are so small, the idea that they might sprout so tenuous.

[14] See Dr. Samer Attar's graphic, vital opinion video for NY Times, May 21, 2024, documenting two weeks as a doctor in Northern Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009467276/gaza-hospital-collapse.html

The coconut-husk pucks take a long time to drink in the water, and I feel a familiar tension in my neck, a desire to somehow expand them, the fear that their gentle acceptance of water will not be enough. But it is; each puck becomes heavy.

Rosemary seeds take up to thirty days to sprout, says the seed packet from which I assembled the little pucks.

I check the next morning; the growing medium is damp. I take a deep breath, then hold my hand under the faucet, turn the faucet off, let the water drip from my fingertips onto the seeds.

Exhale.

Acknowledgements

III. Breath, Friction

VIII.

Seeds