Ritual VII

To Breathe is Triumph

Grounding

when a brother’s breath fails, we pick it up, 

when a sister’s breath fails, we pick it up,

take that breath into our own body,

keep breathing anyway

any way we can.

Visual Artist Enrico Riley offers today’s grounding.

Mantras

I am breathing, feeling, living, and resting as an act of resistance.

Together, we will breathe forever.

Questions

Let us breathe. How does it feel?
How will we continue to do so?
These questions are offered by the Black Liberation Collective. View their Liberation Vocabulary, crafted to accompany the project.

Self-led Activation

You can use text. You can use drawing. You can use music. You can use one, two or all three. Here are prompts to participate in this ritual.

Text Making: We Pick It Up 

Take a few moments to reflect on yesterday’s offering and on any conversations or thoughts you may have had since then

Write out your commitment for how you will further the movement for Black lives.

Image Making: Take That Breath Into Our Own Body

We are going to make automatic drawings now. 

Go to or place in front of you the surface you will be drawing on. 

Get your drawing device.

For three minutes, read and repeat your commitment  

Draw and continue to draw for three minutes. 

Music Making: Keep Breathing Anyway

Composer, Jonathan Berger describes his process in this way: 

We are going to write our own melody for our commitments. 

  • Get your recording device and place it near you. 

  • Gather a sounding tool. This could be your body or voice, a musical instrument or an object nearby

  • Take a few moments to meditate on the meaning of your commitment

  • Now, get your sounding tool, and disregarding the meaning of the words, take a few moments. 

  • Slowly read or sing the words and as you do so, make sounds with your sounding tool

  • You are now going to make a recording of your music. Press record on your device.

  • Sing or play your sounds to your commitment

“For me, transmuting words into music involves two parallel processes. First is finding meaning in the text. Second is entirely disregarding meaning and instead deeply listening to the sound of the words. Ingesting and savoring the phonemes, feeling the plosives and fricatives, the sounds of the words, devoid of intent causes the melody to emerge.”