at your leisure

on archival devotion, soul keeping, and finessing survival

Hello gentle-people,

I am coming to 1000 Subscribers on this here Substack, I have been reflecting on this milestone in a practice I call “archival devotion.”¹ I want to unpack this concept as well as consider what a structuring of this newsletter/blog/social media thing can look like going forward.

To begin, with all seriousness and in my deep fatigue, so much of my energy goes into survival everyday. So when people celebrate the things I do with the energy I have to spare I can’t help but wonder: How much more amazing could I be if I wasn’t constantly fighting (and often losing to) poverty? I wonder how much more present I could be to my friends and family?

I am still showing up, somehow, through my exhaustion. Whatever glow you see from me is literally the grace of G-d.² A grace I find, often, in the people I call community who make this life a little easier. Those who help me continue to make a way out of no way.³

So as I make the moves I need to deepen my life of archival devotion beyond Substack, I want to shape this into a space where you could, if you so choose, devotedly explore what I have cultivated here for you…at your leisure.

Today I begin with a conclusion, working my way backward from this main point: I made a promise in the post below, that I have since realized I cannot keep—I must restore the paywall.

I decided to unlock my old posts, hoping to cultivate a sense of home for those who I imagine when I write A Gentle Landing. But as I keep finding that this little newsletter is resonating with more people than I initially imagined…I have new reflections on what “a place for keeping,” looks like.

from soul searching…

Somebody tell me where to go
Searchin' for my soul
Thought it was stayin' but now I know
Searchin' for my soul
It left an empty space you know
Searchin' for my soul
If you should see it send it home

Amel Larrieux, “Searchin’ for My Soul”

I began this Substack as a soul searching project in many ways. My first post really does make me cringe sometimes. I was recovering from a space of loneliness that Black woman in ministry in predominantly white space understand.. A space that was lacking a “call and response” culture…in a way that left you feeling like a treasured alien in the places meant to be familiar. I was also hosting a podcast called “Dear Soft Black Woman (DSBW),” which despite it’s rather obvious title, attracted all kinds of listeners.

Puzzled by that phenomenon, I wanted to create something that built on the ideas I was developing. So I crafted this newsletter, hoping to find words for the listeners of DSBW, in a way that also included listeners who were, in a sense, “overhearing” a conversation that did not center them:

When I was a kid, there were several times when I stopped talking. Several times when I felt that words didn't matter – my words didn't matter. I thought my words got me in trouble… At least when spoken out loud. I wrote poetry on paper & put them away for me and only me.

As a kid, I remember making paper planes with my brothers. One of my brothers, the second oldest, made the best ones. They always turned out great & flew the farthest. He would say the secret was making sure you apply pressure to the folded area as if to sharpen it. But a paper plane was often only its best the first time it flew. It would get banged up in the front, the zig-zagged paper would fall sooner & sharper.

Paper planes don’t go very far (& they certainly can’t take you anywhere), but with a gentle hand & a gentle landing, the short-lived experience of making something out of nothing can be exhilarating.

So let’s see how far this goes.

—Rose J. Percy, People are listening., February 13, 2022

…to soul keeping.

Reading that post from February 13, 2022, doesn’t that sound like “soul searching” to you? Like someone who doesn’t fully believe in their words yet, somehow still finding a leg to stand on? So how did I get from there to…here?

How do you embrace growth in a project that began with such a low estimation of your own value?

Before I begin, I never want to make this newsletter into a “how to achieve ___ in # steps” kind of newsletter. So I may narrowly escape it here, but to put it plainly, I still write to search, but the searching is more for “soul-keeping” since my soul was never really lost:

“My mission is to heal Lucille, if I can, as much as I can. What I know is that I am not the only one who has felt the things I feel. And so, if what I write helps to heal others, that’s excellent, but my main thing is for me not to fall into despair, which I have done on occasion and could do at any time.”

—Lucille Clifton, “I’d Like Not to Be a Stranger in the World”⁴

Much like Lucille Clifton, I find writing to be like a practice of internal archival devotion,⁵ to this soul that I now know was/is never missing. I feel blessed to be able to say, wholeheartedly, my own writing has often reached up from my archives to save me.

So I endeavor to love this voice a little more each time that happens and somehow…I am here—in this place where I recognize the power of these words and hope my readers do not treat them like discardable paper airplanes. I want these words to be recognized for their ability to cultivate gentle landing over and over.

I didn’t get here without first being inspired by my collaborator at

Locked In

, Marc Typo who planting the seeds for this idea earlier this month:

Moving forward, every other week (ish), I'll be putting up a paywall for paying subscribers who are interested in delving a little deeper with me and Myles. While I want to share this love with the world, I also believe that this has value. While I do not plan on parading my trauma for consumption, I want to create an intimate, safe place as I discuss things I want to set free.

—

Marc Typo

, Raising Myles “Dear Reader, I'm going deeper. Join me.”

---

Sidenote: Marc put together a director of Black writers on Substack called The Cook-Out, and it is a beautiful work of archival devotion so check. it. out.

archival devotion: finessing survival

I found a familiar sense of this “archival devotion” recently in a class on the “Sankofa Poetics of Lucille Clifton” by Honorée Jeffers. Jeffers, who knew Clifton since she was a girl, led us through the archives of Black history to illuminate themes within Cliftons work. As she told stories and dabbed reflective tears from her cheeks, she showed us through-lines that illuminated Clifton’s own archival devotion and hinged the multiplicity found in Black humanity and the beauty within our histories.

In Clifton’s words I have always found deep affirmations for myself. With Jeffers’ guidance, I now see how her archival devotion, to her own Blackness and becoming, led her to her often carefully chosen simple words. Just…wow….

I was continually out of breath.

Sankofa, Jeffers told us, is often over simplified and extracted from the Adinkra system and the Akan philosophical history that it comes from. We often only know this simple translation: “go back and get it.” Archival devotion gets us to the nuances of its meanings and even opens up a world where we, the Black diaspora, can add our own meanings to the discourse.⁶

I read Lucille Clifton’s words with archival devotion. I return to them over and over. I find new meanings every day. And I know there is so much more to learn from sitting with her body of work.

Through this class with Jeffers, and her stories, I was able to see more context for why Lucille Clifton wrote one of her most famous poems, “won’t you celebrate with me.”… She was writing her credentials, rooted in her journey of finessing survival. She was offering, in the face of those who would invalidate her humanity, the receipts for why she ought to be and is:⁷

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

—Lucille Clifton

I hear it, now, Lucille…in this poem. How you carried yourself through the nothingness that sought to take you whole. You returned as something and someone…still open for an answer.

I will take that hand.

at your leisure: an invitation

One of the things I am learning as a writer is…not everyone will come to my work with archival devotion and that is okay.⁸ Just as there are listeners of hip hop who just “like the beat,” and then there are those who go “digging in the crates,”⁹ or following the sample rabbit holes and downloading the stems to analyze production.¹⁰

What I am trying to say is…I have been writing this post for [redacted #] hours and days, at my desk. At my leisure, I come to this work combining a love of the work with a desire to be unhurried. I love to let ideas percolate for weeks. I have a history of linguistic commitments that I have honed over years. Even in my revisions, I must sit with the hauntings of what I cannot share yet. There is weight here I want to sit with—but not alone.

What I am trying to say is…even now, with posts archived after two weeks, I know some of you are still here and still reading because you want to “go deeper with me,” to borrow words from Marc again. So let’s pace ourselves a little more. This is the invitation: to find your leisurely pace and meet in the things we are amazed by when we study how we are being here.

As someone who navigates survival every day, each moment I am still here, finessing (read: “making it up”), I collect more evidence that I should be here—dressed in the splendor of new bones.¹¹ I have to overcome many harrowing realities to embrace my whole self, continually.

Yet I believe in my stories, my overcoming, my reflections, my hope, my wonderings, my critiques—I believe in all that unfolds from this being who is credentialed most exquisitely in her insistence on still being here.

I believe in these archives that I can search alongside this life I am forming for myself. This is my work and I am proud of it. I look at my archive and I love what I have built. I love the voice that I write in and I love how much more I believe in it today.

So with “my one hand holding tight/my other hand;”—

“come celebrate with me.”

Landing Tracks

Today’s landing tracks highlight some ways we can practice archival devotion together through a vocation of softness—where work & rest find us in the study of being here.

🐦‍⬛ For a limited time, I am offering 20% off for one year for those who wish to enjoy A Gentle Landing At Your Leisure:

This offer expires June, 27, 2024. You can explore the details of what will be available for different kinds of subscribers on the “About” page.

🐦‍⬛ new tab: AGL Bookshop

I won’t say much about this here, except to say it is its own work of archival devotion. I want to popularize the idea that intellectual work can be spiritual. Scholarly work can be (and often is) done with care and affection.

Bookshop

🐦‍⬛ Locked In | A Substack Writing Community

Locked In

is a writing group for Black, Indigenous, and Writers of Color/the global majority on Substack. We currently write together on Fridays at 9am EST. There is so much more to come…

1. As far as I know, this phrase, “archival devotion,” isn’t used much outside of academia…so journey with me here to unpack in some ways it can be redefined as a practice of care: I have been learning a lot about Black feminist archival practices and especially lately from Alexis Pauline Gumbs whose practices have shaped a deep love for the work of Audre Lorde, in a new biography that is coming soon! This is a book I want to bring into my work as soon as it becomes available (hint: here is my wishlist).

2. I have been toying with the idea of using G-d and J-s-s and I have questions on what this means for identity formation and belonging…because on some level doing this prevents a particular kind of searchability. I also see a sense of reverence at work here…Thoughts?

3. A shoutout to Monica Coleman’s book of this title on a womanist process theology.

4. Taken from the beginning of an article from LaKisha Michelle Simmons called “Memory, Loss, and Healing in Lucille Clifton’s Generations.”

5. I recently listened to a conversation where Dr. El Ambrose talked about their new book, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive. I may oversimplify it here, but I loved hearing about how archival devotion to Blackqueer histories led spiritually expansive modes of building community in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. I would love to integrate insights from here into my work and expand on the ideas here (hint: here is my wishlist).

6. You can read more from Jeffers on Sankofa in this post from the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/154884/go-back-and-fetch-it.

7. Because I want to honor that Professor Jeffers is writing an autobiography on Clifton, I will leave this vague. It may be a story that is out there already but I don’t want to risk any kind of plagiarizing. So this is just my takeaway from the story I heard from Prof. Jeffers.

8. I embrace learning this the way an introvert (like me) learns small talk.

9. A nod to one of my favorite places to study hip hop, the Youtube Channel, “Diggin’ the Greats.”

10. As I read Dilla Time by Dan Charnas, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have been a hip hop head in the early days of Okayplayer.

11. A nod to another Lucille Clifton poem, “new bones.”