It Comes in Waves
The ceremony is feeding the black interior
It comes in waves Time slowed Thank god time slowed And you can see it now The black water rising up above the horizon The more you look The ripple in time grows larger Future tripping Larger And soon it’s towering Quicker than safety The only thing that Slows it down is picking Up a pen Meditating gun runner Lorde knows How much would I give up for safety? I think everything Someone said you can’t take Your freedom with you when you’re dead But that’s a fucking lie Because I’m looking at them Write now And they look free They feel free And there Look there! There’s me *points to the little girl who made a living in a tree* The black water crashes But it’s fine now because 700 years has passed And in that time You learned how to breathe underwater I’m looking at them Write now And they look free They feel free Swimming over They said come dance with me At first there was one But that hurt too much So we became three Now we ki A wild ambient Swimming swarm It comes in waves
What are our collective ceremonies?
I decided I didn’t want to disrespect the question by providing an answer.
When searching for the “official language”1 to address the question, the only thing that came out was a poem. A poem about how poetry has saved my life and carried me through death. How it preserves life and provides oxygen when suffering is the ground and time is a trickster. Maybe the poem is the collective ceremony? The reading, the gathering, the singing, the sound, the performance of the poem. Maybe the poem is the only ceremony we need?
Official language falls to the floor.
3 second rule, whatever you can gather
Is what we shall eat.
The collective ceremony is feeding the black interior2.
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“Art is where and how we speak to each other in tongues audible when “official” language fails. It is not where we escape the world’s ills but rather one place where we go to make sense of them.” — The Black Interior (2004) by Elizabeth Alexander, pg. ix
“The black interior is a metaphysical space beyond the black public everyday toward power and wild imagination that black people ourselves know we possess but need to be reminded of…Tapping into this black imaginary helps us envision what we are not meant to envision: complex black selves, real and enactable black power, rampant and unfetishized black beauty.” — The Black Interior (2004) by Elizabeth Alexander, pg. x