working my rainbows

working my rainbows (another performance studies essay)


I am still entering this field, the following meditation is another essay that represents my introduction to performance studies.

peace,

e



Fire Breath: asha bandale's

the subtle art of breathing

As a "performative" Healing Text


for Dr. Betty A. Sims & her daughter


one day

one day

i'm gonna be more than a survivor

i'm gonna be a celebrant inside myself


a party girl in my own soul

i'll take myself out to fancy restaurants

bring me roses


and afterwards

i'll make love to myself


and in the heat of passion

call out my own name

asha asha


-from asha bandale's

the subtle art of breathing




asha bandele's poem, the subtle art of breathing, examines the intersecting performances of violence and healing as experienced by Africana women. The poem unfolds around a single, archetypal, persona who questions her healing journey in the face of sexual assault, domestic violence, and substance abuse. Written as free verse, asha bandale utilizes a healing poetics Audre Lorde conjures in Need: a Chorale for Black Women's Voices, to offer a stereoscopic exploration of breath and poetry as "performative" healing for Africana women.

~~~

Sunday mornings find me prostrate, on my back, with a lavender-scented pillow blanketing my eyes. As remnants of myrrh incense tickle my nose, my yoga instructor urges me to lengthen the space between inhales and exhales. She invites me to consider what healing manifests through deep, conscious breathing. I hear her, almost distant, as if under water saying, "imagine your Kundalini life-force warming your whole body, now breathe."

~~~

Readers enter asha's poem as the speaker indulges in daily soap operas, which she heavily criticizes because of her "politically conscious" appearance. Nevertheless, the speaker's soap opera addiction symbolizes the exploration of the characters "staged" experience with violence and the space and time needed to deconstruct such experiences. The character's relationship with soap operas represents her attempt, not unlike the women in my family, to find respite while solving the problems of "…the fictionalized chaos/ of somebody else's life…" asha writes,

"but this is not a poem about soap operas

it's just that i cannot find another way to begin--"


To begin what, the troubleshooting process of solving the really real chaos this character experiences? The process of turning the gaze inward to mine, with mindfulness, tools like breath, as creative and personal ways to jump-start the spirit and move the body towards healing? It is possible the character cannot find a way to envision her life without the physiological effects of contemporary and historical violence(s). What is more, the character might not realize, in the face of consistent trauma, the metaphysical and physical rewards of actualized healing through breath; the subtle art addresses a myriad of possibilities.

~~~

Where does breath hide in the face of violence? My yoga instructor teaches that we choose to hold in our muscles, tissues, and joints stories of our individual and collective trauma. She instructs us to use breath and asana to release traumatic and violent episodes from our connective tissues. She does not encourage us to ignore these body narratives but instead to recognize their significance in our past and their relevance to our futures.

~~~

As such, the persona asha evokes in the subtle art assesses how instances with, "the various sundry crises/ in [her] life" enliven and enrich subsequent experiences with pain and healing. asha explores this struggle in the following lines,

"there are people who have

accused me of refusing joy


and blanketing the sun

but then there are people who

know as i know

even as we laugh

we cannot ignore


the wincing in our eyes…"

The aforementioned lines illumine the difficult journey the speaker, along with Africana women, travels in pursuit of healing from historical and contemporary violence. The speaker asserts notion that violence/trauma and joy cannot live in the same venue. This excerpt also addresses a broader audience who may believe the speaker is behaving in a manner that supports "victimhood" and she is solely responsible for correcting her "wincing" experiences.

~~~

One Sunday I practiced Kemetic breath in addition to my regular yoga asana. Kemetic breath insists the body create new patterns of storing and releasing air. I covered one nostril at a time, inhaled and exhaled, taking care to alternate nostrils. At first, the practice caused dizziness, and disorientation, but soon I welcomed this new and creative approach to "down-loading" energy from the universe. In the poem, asha presences her bond, all be it through instances of violence and healing, with the speaker.

~~~

She continues,

"…I know this space of mourning

is not mine to occupy


but i cannot leave

since your life reads like


the details of my life

which is why i must know


how come you are dead

but i am alive


yet we both were young black female

and fighting histories of drugs

violence separation loss…"


These lines invite the speaker and the audience to consider themselves as more than repositories for violence and trauma. asha reminds her audience that in the wake of trauma and subsequent internalized violence due to the intersection of race, class, gender and the patriarchal structures that support such culture, they are more than a collage of "violent marriages, newports, and suicide attempts." These lines move the persona and the audience to recontextualize instances of violence and encourage the persona, as well as the audience, to re-imagine life as a kaleidoscopic journey that entails boundless and beautiful interactions with the "self" and moreover, support consistent engagement with breath and healing.

the subtle art of breathing's theme centers around diverse approaches to healing. In the first fives pages of text, images and metaphors belabor and resist breath, which signify one aspect of actualizing the healing process, the state of anxiety, confusion or apprehension about how to transition from the place of victim to the place of victor. For example,

"…in anchorage today

a 30 year old black woman

was found in her apartment

dead of an overdose.."


and


"…there is no space to be second best

or needy


in a country trying to swallow up the earth

from the inside out


they incinerate their own children here



i have seen them scraping their own


8 year olds into garbage bags or compactors…"


These excerpts utilize kinesthetic, tactile imagery to invoke the audience's understanding, viscerally and visually, about relationships with "self" in the presence of pain. It is almost impossible to read these lines without some hesitation of breath. However, the poet does not leave her audience or the poem's speaker to sit with these globes of pain and remembered traumas left undigested.

~~~

Fire breath. My teacher occasionally begins our Sunday-morning asana with a series of fire breaths that warm the body before sun and moon salutations. I particularly enjoy fire breath. Filling my lungs with breath and stretching my arms to their fullest extent, then forcefully bringing them down and releasing every bit of stagnant energy from my lungs. It's like a steam bath for every cell of my body. Usually, as I practice fire breaths, I think of any trauma or pain I have chosen to let reside in my body as I pull my elbows along side my ribs and force my lungs clean. I visualize releasing those traumas and watching them evaporate into thin air.

~~~

As the poem concludes, asha's choice of diction and imagery encourages the healing effects of fire breath. The final stanzas offer images of self-love, dance, and passion that fill the space formerly shared with meditations on and interactions with violence. In these lines, asha exercises mantra like repetition that delivers the persona of "falling in love" with herself and the beauty and complexity there in. Asha writes,


"…this a poem that wants to warn

breathing is a difficult and subtle art

this is a poem to say simply i understand

after three attempts i understand, girl, i do

but this is also a poem willing to assert itself and

say i'm glad, even proud, that i'm a survivor…"


These lines erase the speaker's idea that she is alone in her experiences with violence or healing. Now the speaker recognizes as trauma and violence pepper her life experiences so do creative options for healing illuminate her path.

asha bandale's poem is a performative healing text that elucidates the violence, fear, shame, and confusion that make many Africana women impervious to healing accoutrement required to live effulgent lives. The poem delivers intimate monologue, critical and imagistic analysis of personal and community trauma; and of key import, highlights a journeying process that languages, through voice and movement, self-love as a model for healing. The speaker reveals, "then i'm gonna up and marry myself/ does that sound crazy?" The speaker asks this question because she now understands she must be intensely in love with herself and to the outside world this maybe seen as insanity. Possibly the speaker now believes the superficial education American culture indoctrinates its citizens to believe is love is really an institution acted out on the bodies of Africana women as a means of perpetuating historical and contemporary structures of violence and more over, a world in which women cannot voice, move and journey toward healing. This text recontextualizes recognizable traditional symbols of love (i. e. the institution of marriage, "sensual dancing", and passionate lovemaking") as symbols of healing and intimacy that empower, enrich and connote an intensely intimate relationship with "self". Ultimately when asha writes, "…i'll make love to myself/ and in the heat of passion/ call out my own name…" she challenges her readers to invite breath as model for continued healing and renewal in the face violence.