“When the ideas or forms we need are banished, we seek their residues wherever we can trace them.”

“The continuing spiritual power of an image lives in the interplay between what it reminds us of—what it brings to mind—and our own continuing actions in the present.” ~Adrienne Rich¹

For most of life, I have described myself simply as a person who loves jazz, who delights in dissonance and unexpected silences. I have lived amongst alders that bend and snap in the wind, beneath redwood canopies, in cities that tremble with life. These landscapes have changed me and I them.

As a child, I moved from the wetlands of the Pacific Northwest to a small strip mining town situated between the Yellowstone, Tongue, and Big Horn Rivers in Eastern Montana. The coal dust and power plant emissions painted spectacular sunsets on the horizon as backdrop to profound social and environmental degradation. My five, six, and seven year old mind tried and failed to make sense of the violence spilled out upon Apsáalooke and Cheyenne lands. I witnessed both violence and the propensity of life to resist erasure.

I have lived and labored as a visitor on Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Ohlone lands for the past 15 years. I would not be who I am today without the generosity of redbud and oak, without the feminist, black, and indigenous poets/scholars/activists that stretch my thinking, touching depths in me I couldn’t reach on my own.

Abolition as Amends to Mother ~ Claudia Peña

Arts of the Possible¹ ~ Adrienne Rich

The Combahee River Collective Statement

The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study ~ Stefano Harney & Fred Moten