Disrupting Discipline And The Play and Punishment Binary
Landing On Devotion and the Sturdiness Of Our Faith Instead
“They express either an effort of the will or a freedom of the will. It's all about choosing. Though granted there's an enormous amount of stuff one cannot choose. But if you own yourself, you can make some types of choices, take certain kinds of risks. There's a wildness that they have, a nice wildness. It has bad effects in society such as the one in which we live. It's pre-Christ in the best sense. It's Eve. When I see this wildness gone in a person, it's sad. This special lack of restraint, […] but when you take away the vocabulary of denigration, what you have is somebody who is fearless and who is comfortable with that fearlessness. It's not about meanness. It's a kind of self-flagellant resistance to certain kinds of control, which is fascinating. Opposed to accepted notions of progress, the lock-step life, they live in the world unreconstructed and that's it.”
— Toni Morrison in Black Women Writers At Work edited by Claudia Tate, p. 125-126.
dis·ci·pline
1. the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.
2. a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education.
Origin: Middle English (in the sense ‘mortification by scourging oneself’)
Today I thanked a dove named Rain who decided to build a nest on my window sill for the summer. I remember there is mercy everywhere as I watch the self doubt collapse all around me letting the light in. Letting the water in, the feathers, the birdsong, the screeching, the screaming, the chorus of creation making a sound with a logic all its own. This is wildness, this is abundance and the quickest way to block abundance is to move in fear. So I move out the way and trust the words to take flight and land in a place they know by heart.
Anti-disciplinary practice produces a space of rehearsal for our wildness, our permission, our ungovernable desire. I’ve heard people prefer “interdisciplinary” or “co-disciplinary”, but I could tell they weren’t abolitionists so I paid them no mind. But I did mind the ones who insisted on punishment as an essential part of the practice, I kept my eye on them. I kept my eye on myself. How old were we when we first learned the word “discipline”? What was the context? Was it the scent of love or fear that was riding the air? The musk of trauma is a lingering little thing.
My mom would always say “leave well enough alone”. But I couldn’t leave Wellenough by herself in this landscape of the status quo, this sea of sameness, this desert of death — longing for contrast, something like a jagged edge to straddle. Something like difference to stroke. Disciplinary practice said, “not too much, not too soon, tighten up and show some restraint” or else a towering hand raises up creating a shadow blocking the sun. Anti-disciplinary practice demands you play in your excess1 and says, “let it all out, your fat and your fire, your feathers and your fluids”. The wildness that you tuck into the tightest places during the day and sometimes at night.
If moving in fear is the quickest way to block abundance, imagine what moving in love does. Beyond “inter” and “co”, “anti” is an opening. Refusal creates space. Permission produces breath. Anti-disciplinary practice reveals a shape of productivity we don’t resent because inside this clearing2 rigor equals ease and focus means presence. Discipline can’t help but attach itself to an outcome, anti-disciplinary practice releases the result and finds faith in the process.
And tell me, tell me, tell me, have you ever known a force more powerful than your faith? Your faith is the mountain colonialism, capitalism and the patriarchy rests on and we can choose to move mountains at any time. When we remove the floor and refuse to hold systems of domination up with our faith they have no choice but to fall. Gravity be like that. Faith becomes a sturdy force for collaboration when we allow discipline to soften into devotion. When we destabilize the play and punishment binary we shift the landscape in our favor.
Withholding play as punishment is a choreography many of us learned far too early. Are you ready to stop being bad? Be good so you can play. Behave and only then can you join the cacophony of belonging outside. Far too many of us were raised with the belief that play is something we must earn. When we move the mountain of faith upholding this belief we watch perfectionism, self doubt and unworthiness collapse all around us, letting the light in. Letting the water in, the feathers, the birdsong, the screeching, the screaming, the chorus of creation making a sound with a logic all its own.
A logic we learn to trust with our faith and our freedom. Perhaps this is our only job for now. Moving the mountain of our belief to create worlds that can hold our wildness without punishment. Watching discipline crumble into devotion. Releasing any and every outcome we’re banking on to finally grant us permission to play. Once I get this promotion then I can…once I get this degree then I have permission to…once I move to that new city then I will…once I get the right equipment then I can create… Anti-disciplinary practice gives us permission to weave play into the process, right where we are, using the resources we already have.
Anti-disciplinary practice doesn’t demand we push through, power through, earn our ease, earn our play after being on our best behavior inside systems of domination. Perhaps what we’re really after inside our clinging to discipline is a cultivated sense of confidence and self trust. And perhaps underneath that desire for confidence and self trust is a longing for safety. But Mariame Kaba reminds us safety isn’t a thing we can earn or own, it’s a relation inviting us to join the cacophony of belonging outside. Flying through the opening of anti-disciplinary practice we remember, there is no redemption in discipline without play. We will not postpone our ecstasy until the end. We will not be punished for actualizing our desire inside this very moment. We reclaim our faith, move mountains and watch our feet land in a place we know by heart.
Let’s Work Together 1:1
Let’s work together 1:1 on seeding, deepening or returning to your public anti-disciplinary practice. Over the course of 8 weeks we will use the medium of the personal essay to unearth truths the body might not be ready to say, but is ready to write, ready to release. You will give yourself permission to play in the intimacy of this container by releasing perfectionism, allowing discipline to soften into devotion and cultivating a felt sense of safety in your practice — trusting it’s divine logic.
There are 3 spots left before we close the books for July. Enroll today or book a call to locate your Zone of Desire and learn how this Permission to Pivot coaching container can support you with expanding time and space inside this sacred site.
“Play in your excess” is language pulled from Seeda School Alum Logan Shanks and her embodied scholarship and project titled “Playing in Excess”. Learn more about playing in excess here and read her article on Burnaway where she visits the studio of Anya M. Wallace to talk about the aesthetic lexicon of Black femme sexuality in the American South.
“And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart…“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it… No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it - you!” — Toni Morrison, Beloved. September 1987
May my discipline soften to devotion