We look at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial justice movement on artists and performers in communities of color. We talk with writer and author Reagan Jackson, Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna plus singer and “The Voice” alum Stephanie Anne Johnson. Each bring a unique perspective on how this year of pandemic and social change have affected them personally and professionally.
0:00 - Episode Introduction
0:50 - Hosts Checking In
6:07 - Conversation with Reagan Jackson
26:56 - Conversation with Claudia Castro Luna
39:23 - Conversation with Stephanie Anne Johnson
53:19 - Host Recap
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Reagan Jackson is a writer, artist, activist, international educator and award winning journalist. She's been a regular contributor to the Seattle Globalist since 2013. Her self published works include two children's books (Coco LaSwish: A Fish from a Different Rainbow and Coco LaSwish: When Rainbows Go Blue) and three collections of poetry (God, Hair, Love, and America, Love and Guatemala, and Summoning Unicorns). To find out more check her out at www.rejjarts.com.
Claudia Castro Luna is Washington State Poet Laureate (2018-2021). She served as Seattle’s Civic Poet, from 2015-2017 and is the author of the Pushcart nominated and Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) also shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry and This City, (Floating Bridge Press). She is also the creator of the acclaimed Seattle Poetic Grid. Castro Luna is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, the recipient of individual artist grants from King County 4Culture and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, a Hedgebrook and VONA alumna, and a 2014 Jack Straw fellow. Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981.
She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate and an MFA in poetry. Her poems have been featured in PBS Newshour, KQED San Francisco, KUOW Seattle and have appeared in Poetry Northwest, La Bloga, Dialogo and Psychological Perspectives among others. Her non-fiction work can be read in several anthologies, among them This Is The Place: Women Writing About Home, (Seal Press) Claudia is currently working on a memoir, Like Water to Drink, about her experience escaping the civil war in El Salvador. Living in English and Spanish, she writes and teaches in Seattle where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.
Stephanie Anne Johnson is proudly Tacoma-born and bred, and there's something about her songs and voice that reflect that, in the best possible way. Johnson is a vocalist, songwriter, and teaching artist with a passion and a hunger for social justice, environmental stewardship, and cookies.
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Produced In Partnership With :
Town Hall Seattle (https://townhallseattle.org/)
The South Seattle Emerald (https://southseattleemerald.com/)
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Executive Producer + Host // Marcus Harrison Green
Executive Producer + Host // Enrique Cerna
Executive Producer + Host // Jini Palmer
Additional Production Support Provided By // Hans Anderson & JEFFSCOTTSHAW
Music Provided By // Draze "The Hood Ain't The Same" // http://www.thedrazeexperience.com/about-draze/
- In this year of turbulence.
- There's been moments where I felt just so completely overwhelmed.
- Three artists of color.
- It's liberated me from this idea that we have to do anything conventionally or that we have to do things the way that they've been done. We can't anymore.
- Share how the COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd's death and racial justice protests have affected them personally and professionally.
- Art isn't secondary. It's what's special about us, goddamnit.
- This is Life on the Margins. ♪ I was born in the Central District ♪ ♪ Raised in a south den ♪ ♪ I'm a homegrown kid ♪ ♪ Yup, 206 living ♪ ♪ Used to play Flyers up when I lived up on Union ♪ ♪ Pushed it out to orcas ♪ ♪ And eventually the king, didn't ♪
- Welcome to Life on the Margins, I'm Enrique Cerna.
- I'm Jini Palmer.
- And I'm Marcus Harrison Green.
- Well, welcome everybody, good to have you here. And we're at about two months of doing this podcast, and the one thing we can say for sure is that we have gone through a lot of change, and every day seems there is something new. I have to admit it, sometimes it's a little exhausting.
- Yeah, that might be a bit of an understatement, Enrique. I remember when we first started this show, we started around the pandemic, and wanting to very much amplify the voices of communities of color, and then literally with a month into it, we were either rolling protests across the country, we're dealing now with two pandemics, one of racism that has existed since time immemorial, and another with this COVID crisis. And neither one seems to be abating anytime soon, unfortunately.
- I think it's actually a historic time that we're fortunate to be doing this podcast, because we're going through, well, the pandemic isn't that much fun, let's face it, but we're seeing huge shift in this country, I think generationally, in how we're trying to deal with racism and the pandemic of racism, police accountability. Of course, it's an election year. But this is a historic time I think, and there's a big shift in the country that people are trying to take on an issue of racism, particularly. And COVID, actually I think has helped to push us along, because it unveiled many disparities that we're facing in this country. And now, we have an opportunity to make a big shift and a big change that hopefully will be for the best. So, we have great opportunity. It's a matter of taking advantage of that. And as we're going to hear from our guests today who are writers, and performers, artists, their world obviously has changed as well, not only in trying to make a living, but just what they do, and the work they do, and the fact that the messages that they send through their performances and their writings have shifted, and many of them are dealing with trying to figure out how to communicate all of that. And I think in many ways, the opportunity to be heard, like never before. So, that I think is a great opportunity for them as well.
- Sure, the shift, like you're talking about with COVID, and this racial pandemic, it's so much of it is a perceptual shift within our community and kind of recognizing what the ills of our society and what we've been enduring, and also the discontent economically speaking, all of that. But for me, what art does, is it helps, it really helps perpetuate that shift of perception, whether it be through the murals that artists are painting, what they're writing, the music that they're creating. I think that that all really collectively helps drive change. And I'm looking forward to talking to the artists that we have lined up for today's show.
- Right, 'cause I think this is a time period where so many people are seeking a new world, or a better world, or at least a vision of a better world. And who better than artists who spend their days sort of conjuring up new things that we can imagine, who better than them to help us down this path of discovering a new world, or at least in an ideal world, or a more ideal world, I should say, than the one that we're currently living?
- We also want to tell folks that we have something special coming up on Thursday evening, July 2nd, 7:00 p.m., and it's going to be online, a live episode of Life on the Margins from Town Hall, Seattle.
- That's right. We'll talk about the alarming surge in COVID-19 cases in our state and across the nation with Dr Julian Perez, who heads up the COVID response for Sea Mar Community Health Clinic. We'll look at how communities of color have been impacted by the pandemic and the efforts to reach out to them to curb the virus. We're also gonna talk with bestselling author, Ijeoma Oluo, who we featured on our first episode, about our pandemic of racism and whether America is ready for change. Please join us Thursday evening beginning at 7:00 p.m., live from Town Hall. For more information about how to join us online, click on the link in the episode description below.
- I gotta say that I'm super excited to see you talk to Ijeoma Oluo. We had her on the very first episode of Life on the Margins, and now we're kinda coming full circle. She actually just hit number one with the bullet again on the New York Times Bestseller List for her book "So You Want to Talk About Race", so it should be fairly interesting to see what she has to say now that this two months has passed, Enrique.
- That's right, I would think that she has a lot to say about what's been happening, and as someone who has written so extensively about the issues of race in our country, it's gonna be a good opportunity to hear what she has to say. All right, let's move on.
- Reagan Jackson holds many titles, writer, author, award winning journalist, educator and artist. But right now, we give her one more title, guest.
- Reagan, you're an artist, poet, journalist and activist who works for a living empowering young marginalized women at Young Women Empowered. You also co hosts The Deep End Friends, a podcast where you explore liberation, healing, hope, and ask what it means to be free. We're actually going to be touching on that theme, the idea and meaning of freedom in our next live episode. And I'd to circle back on that idea, but first, I wanna ask you about your involvement in CHOP, and your experiences as an activist during this time. During the Capitol Hill organized protest, you and Mary Williams organized a Juneteenth BLACKOUT at CHOP, a series of events centered around black healing and community. You conducted a grief ritual, there was meditation, healing and dancing. Can you tell me about that? What was your experience there?
- Gosh, I feel I could actually write a book on just that 12 hours at the CHOP, because my experience, I feel it varied from hour to hour, from minute to minute. There were moments where it was just this beautiful cathartic experience where people were releasing, expressing their grief, crying, praying to their ancestors, flirting, dancing, making flower crowns, laughing at silly jokes, eating good food, being attacked verbally, being called nigger. It just was the full spectrum. But backing up, all of this came together very quickly. This was not actually something that I had planned to do. But Mary Williams on the Monday before Juneteenth wrote an open letter to the CHOP on Facebook, and then tagged me in it, and just talked about her experience of going there and feeling something that it started as this really beautiful and powerful protest had kind of devolved into this quasi-political street fair, and wanting to just take a moment to refocus the intention and the spirit of the CHOP, and to really galvanize that energy that supposedly is for support of Black Lives Matter, and make it into something that actually was for black people.
- Did you have any concern that the fact that CHOP at times turned into it was the Capitol Hill Block party that it was being co opted a bit for what people had initially gathered for?
- Yeah, and maybe that's an autonomous zone, by definition, is just it's very emergent, and there's lots of people, and they all have their own agendas and things that are important to them, and they all moving in different ways, and I'm not surprised by the results. And yeah, we just wanted to push the envelope a little bit, because you walk into the CHOP, and somebody, anybody could just scream Black Lives Matter, whose lives matter? And everybody's like, "Black Lives Matter!" But then, when you're actually putting that into practice, does my life matter, if I'm not a hashtag, do you care about me, if I'm still alive to live and breathe, is my life important? We really ask a question I think to our city. And we had a really interesting answer.
- You said you asked a question to the city. I know you also sort of dealt with the realities of what's going on as well and trying to find joy in a time period where there isn't a lot of it to go around, and I know you wrote a wonderful essay for the Emerald that was published about your experience, and there's this great line in there, you talk about how black folks showed up to do yoga and had to show up in sneakers in case they had to run away. Can you just talk about sort of that cautiousness that you have to hold that really as a black person that I think was epitomized by what y'all were doing here in CHOP?
- Yeah, basically, and it sounds really dramatic to say it, oh, and I don't mean it to be that, but the truth is, I woke up that morning and was like, "Is this the last time I come home?" I don't know. So, it wasn't, we didn't know, we weren't sure what was gonna happen. But the truth is, we're never fucking sure. We're never sure, we don't know what's gonna happen. The things that are just normal, things that happen in your daily life, go for a walk, go for a run, go for dinner with a friend, and end up being shot to death in your car. That is the reality and the level of intensity that we've all been dealing with this whole time. So, while I was having that moment of am I gonna come home, am I gonna come home, I was also realizing I've been having this moment, it's not new. The only difference is instead of acquiescing to that feeling, to that okay, well, I'm gonna do everything I can to be respectable, I'm gonna dress nicely when I go to the airport, I'm gonna do all the things that a good Negro would do to make sure that I'm safe. We just kind of let that go. Because we realized we're just not safe anyway. So, why not go to the CHOP ? Why not, 'cause at a certain point, you have to think about what is the quality of life that we're actually even fighting for? Am I fighting to just kind of have some minimal existence where I don't get to experience joy, or even grief, or any emotion that white people don't think that I should have? It just, but it was hard, it was really hard to talk to people, to have people inboxing me and asking me, "Do you have armed people with guns protecting you? "Because if you don't, I'm not coming to this event. "I need to know that there's somebody "on our side with a gun."
- Speaking of that, you talked about how there were armed white supremacist folks who were there, and it was mainly women who went up to protect what you all were trying to do. Can you just talk a little bit about that, and kind of what that whole entire thing sort of encapsulates in terms of you're here trying to do a very peaceful, joyous thing, and it gets met with violence? What does that say not just about what happened on that Friday, but just where we're at in this country right now?
- Y'all know what it is . You know what it is, this is where we are. And honestly, part of I think why women especially really responded to the call for support is that my work is steeped in supporting other women. And so, I roll deep with a community of women. So, I wasn't surprised by that. But I think some of them were surprised by the level of intensity that they experience. And our debrief with some of the volunteers, I don't think they've ever really been put in a position to put their bodies on the line in that way. And I think it really clarified some things for them about our feelings of lack of safety. So, in a way, I feel it was helpful to build empathy. That wasn't necessarily the intention behind it. I was literally just thinking, we need support, and I'm willing to work with whoever understands what we're doing and is willing to work with us, but also that's been kind of the end result is people are like, "Wow, that's deep, that's intense." I heard from one woman who was like, "Oh yeah, I really wanted to wear a dress today, "but then I was like, what happens if I have to run? "I don't wanna be all sticking out, and you know, "and I wanna be in my pants and my gym shoes, "'cause I'm trying to survive."
- Did you wear your gym shoes in case you had to run?
- No, actually, I went barefoot for the majority of the day. Mary and I made a commitment. We made the decision that we were gonna hold that space for 12 hours, so I wasn't looking to run. And I also wasn't really looking to fight, but I will do what is necessary.
- I'm curious Reagan, so much has been going on here in recent months, this year has been just, it's chaos. 2020 chaos.
- Yeah.
- From COVIT to...
- Everything.
- Yes, the murder of George Floyd, as well as others. And now this awakening about the move for change with social and racial justice, how has all of this affected you in your work?
- Well, there's been a huge impact. First of all, just logistically trying to figure out how to take our in person programs that are built on community building, and being together, and doing experiencial activities together, and completely reconceptualize how that is done, and make it adaptable and accessible digitally, that too, that was more than a notion, that took plenty of time and space just to figure that out. But then also thinking through how you do community at this time and and how to meet, use needs especially that are maybe don't have the best home situation, and now are suddenly finding themselves stuck at home with people who are unkind or abusive or neglectful. Yeah, we've had to increase our attention to social work, and to emotional, to the emotional welfare of our youth tenfold, and make sure that there are more ways for them to find outlets. And we've also, in addition to the digital things, have been sending care packages, just as that added personal touch in, because if you can't, it's nice to physically receive a thing, as opposed to just being on a screen the whole time. In terms of this year though, with COVID, while it's been extremely inconvenient, and it's definitely made me have to figure out how do I live, where do I live, what's important, and how do I do community, how do I do all these different things, it's also, I think, liberated me from this idea that we have to do anything conventionally, or that we have to do things the way that they've been done. We can't anymore. And I think that's an interesting parallel to put within this huge kind of spiritual awakening that I see our country going through, where we're no longer able to ignore the oppression and the fear, and the intensity of this moment for people of color and for, particularly for black people. But now that we've literally seen our lives change in moments because of COVID, we know that we can change our lives in a moment. So, in a way, it's more frustrating, because I'm like if we could have been changing things, why are things better? But it's also this moment where I'm like, okay, it's now.
- Well, speaking of that, I know that you are sort of the Serena Williams in the Seattle arts community. I'm going with Serena, and not Michael Jordan after that "Last Dance" documentary. But anyhow.
- Okay, but I love that. It was great.
- Fair enough, fair enough. But I know you are a huge fan, obviously, of Toni Morrison, Toni talks about it, she talks about the role of artists, meaning that there's it's no time for despair, there's no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear, we speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. And for her, that was sort of the role in artists in creating change and revolution and transformation. For you, what is the role of artists today, especially as you say, we're dealing with these dual pandemics, one has lasted in time immemorial, and who knows how long it'll last , especially if you have a certain person who's in charge now of the country continues?
- Yeah, I think you kinda hit it on the head. I feel our role as artists is to innovate, and to create, and also to apply our imagination and our creativity to solving these problems that have plagued us. Clearly, thinking with inside the box and with inside the framework is not getting us anywhere, and things tend to continue as they've started. So, it's time to make a new start. The biggest challenge I think to that in this now moment is fatigue, exhaustion. Every artist I know has been creating, has been innovating, has been trying to change and shift for years and years, and they're tired now. That's part of the reason I think too why our work seems to have resonated with so many is that there are just so many people that are so exhausted that they will risk death to come to yoga, to come meditate, to cry in a park, because it's just necessary in order for them to refill their cups to then begin to even think about how to tackle all the things we have to tackle now.
- And where do you stand with that? Do you feel exhausted or...
- Yeah.
- What role has art played for you? Right.
- Yes, yes, I do.
- Absolutely, yeah.
- For me, my visual art is actually is a meditation in and of itself for me, and it's something that I haven't, I don't feel I have had the time to really invest in at this time, but when I have, it's been something that's been restorative for me. So, I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to go to the International District and paint Black Lives Matter murals. And so, you can check out my mural . We were at the, I wanna say, on the corner of Jackson by Theater Off Jackson.
- That's awesome. So, I would love to bring it back to that idea of freedom that I mentioned in the intro. In consideration of your recent Crosscut article about Juneteenth, your experience at CHOP, your exploration of liberation on your podcast, I'm curious to know what freedom means to you. What does that look or what does it not look in your life?
- Oh, I feel my definition changes every day. But what freedom is feeling right now is embracing the concept of radical self love, is liberating myself from the ideas of all the ways in which I've ever been told that I was wrong, or not okay, or not doing things the right way, or I feel I'm liberating myself from convention, and that that freedom is allowing me to move differently than I've moved before, and to act in different ways, and to shape experiences differently, without the need to be respectable, without the need to be acceptable. I feel I've been socialized in a very specific way, and that way has been helpful in getting me places I needed to go and getting me access to resources that I've needed. But now, I feel there's something about that kind of constriction that is no longer serving me. Freedom is having the capacity to move beyond what has been into what I want it to be.
- One of that, you're describing a personal, individual freedom, are you hopeful that we can get towards a more collective societal freedom here in the United States?
- Absolutely, but I think one comes before the other. I think about, and this feels a little cliche, but Harriet Tubman, she talks about I would have freed a whole bunch more people too, if they had known that they were enslaved. Now is our moment where it's like, hey, guess what? We're not free, I'm not free if I can't go to the grocery store and come back alive, I'm not free if at any moment, the police can kick through my door and shoot me in my own house. That's not freedom . So, I think collectively, I don't know that that's even been acknowledged yet about the fact that that is a form of oppression, a form of slavery is just lack of safety, a lack of basic human rights. So, as each of us have our collective awakenings, and our whatever from wherever we are, I feel like all of us, wherever we are positioned, now are in a position to have an experience of critical thinking and an awakening into what is ours to do and how we can act accordingly into our values and our morals and to the ethics that should uphold human rights.
- What do you say to young people, particularly young white people who are really interested in being allies to the black community now and feel a need to reach out and to be there, to be a source of support and strength? What do you want from them? What do you hope they'll do?
- Well, two things, one, at this now moment, unless I'm personally or professionally connected with the young white person, if it's something they're in my program, then we can have those conversations, but outside of that, I've been referring them to my colleagues who are white to do that emotional labor and the framing with them. But in terms of my expectations, I expect them to listen. I expect them to open their hearts and pay deep attention to the ways in which their friends, and in some cases, their family members are treated so unjustly. I want them to develop a strong reaction, an allergic reaction, I want them to become allergic to the ways in which this behavior, and this pattern of being, and this system of being is so toxic to us. I think, and this is I always feel like I come back with such simple answers, but it feels true to me, I think one of the reasons why things have been able to devolve into such a state is that there is a lack of empathy and there is a lack of understanding. And I think that young people are poised to be able to, they're just to be able to have that experience, or to allow themselves to really feel deeply, and allow those feelings to shape how they choose to act in the future and systems that they choose to uphold and support, and which ones they choose to dismantle. There's a lot of work to be done. And we are all responsible for it.
- Reagan Jackson, thank you so much for speaking with us here on Life on the Margins. Appreciate you, appreciate all the work you're doing, and would love to try to move that needle, get those allergic reactions going, get more consciousness, and hopefully, all of your experiences, you can walk outta your door and feel safe.
- And if people wanna follow you, they can listen to The Deep Ends, and that podcast is available wherever podcasts are available, is that correct?
- That is correct.
- All right.
- We just put up a, Mary just put up a website for our BLACKOUT events, even though we've decided, at this point, the CHOP is entirely too unstable for us to do the work we need to do. But the work is still necessary. So, we'll be hosting BLACKOUTS throughout the city. Our next one will be July 12th at Jimi Hendrix Park from 10 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. And you can find out more about that at www.blackouthealing.love.
- Claudia Castro Luna became Washington State Poet Laureate in 2018. Prior to being named to the post, she was Seattle's first civic poet. Born in El Salvador, Luna fled the country with her family in 1981 during the time of civil conflict in that war torn country. Today, as we confront pandemic, racism and police brutality, the State Poet Laureate finds herself feeling a mix of emotions. She leans on her family, her work as a teacher, writer and poetry to help her cope.
- I have fluctuated from feeling very hopeful at seeing the protests and just seeing the tremendous action and the outrage on the part of so many people of all backgrounds, that's been really hopeful. I've been inspired by young people who are organizing, and coalescing, and discussing, and getting us out into the streets, I think that's really powerful and important, and I'm hopeful for that. At the same time, there's been moments where I've felt just so completely overwhelmed. The demonstrations of racism in the country and the violence against people of color, and black bodies, completely unable to really do much, just sitting down, I've been doing a lot of sitting down and just staring. Writing has been difficult I think because of that. So, in the spring, I teach at Seattle U, and that's been really wonderful. Once again, I had a very great experience with the young people. It really energizes me to teach at that level with young, very young college students. So, that kept me busy for a while, but as the class, and as we were winding down, all of the protests were kind of rising up, and that just was very hard to process.
- Did your students wanna talk about?
- Oh yeah, we did. It so happened that my class that I teach is a class called Responses to Peace and Justice. And so, the way I have organized the class is looking at historical moments in U.S. history. People came together, where art played an integral role in popular movements that resulted in huge change in fundamental change in laws being changed in the country. We looked at civil rights in songs, for instance, gospel songs that were so central to that movement, and the poetry of the Women's Liberation Movement, and Audrey Lorde, Adrienne Rich. And so, we were embedded in looking at art expressions for peace and justice, and suddenly it was, we were during COVID, and in the middle of the term that George Floyd murdered happened, and the protests exploded, and suddenly we were living what we were reading about. And so, it was really good in that we had created a framework to think about moments, historical moments and how people dealt with that. So, it was useful, we had very useful discussions. I think it was very helpful for me to have that framework to talk about it with the students, and to get them writing about it, and thinking about themselves in the larger historical context. And it was very good. We were lucky to have been in that class.
- And you're doing it virtually too.
- Which was a huge undertaking. I've never done a Zoom conversation, I don't think, until that happened, and in person is so much better.
- Were you able to find something inside you to right now?
- Yeah, I think I've written little snippets that will become something. I had been, before George Floyd, I had been thinking a lot about the 100th year anniversary of women's suffrage, so I had written some things into that, also about the pandemic, isolation, and the not knowing. The writing is very different. My thinking is very different in the sense of now this aperture with this racial reckoning has been opened. People of color have been writing about this. We have been writing poems about this. We have been telling stories about this. Great essays have been written about this. Great journalism has, we have been saying this things. Nothing, it wasn't heard.
- I don't know about you, but my frustration as a person of color is why did this take so long?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- You wrote a piece, as you mentioned, and I wonder if you would share that with me, a piece of poetry?
- Yeah, this piece is the last poem I've written, and I was thinking about women's suffrage, about immigration reform, about the children at the border. I think I was finishing the poem the weekend that George Floyd was murdered. So, it has all these threads in it. So "Her Way", "It matters how we walk the world. "To see with heart matters. "To acknowledge grief, "to see in others the same sparkle so familiar "in our own mother's eye, "to learn the old names, to say them with dignity. "That is important. "Courage is not a crown. "More like chattering of teeth, the knot in the stomach "at choosing the long, hard way. "Owning what is not known, that takes courage, "and knowing that hunger can be for bread as for justice. "Having a glimpse of home is part of it. "Not homes had, but the ones to build, "where there will be room for everyone at the table. "And for those who only want a cold glass of lemonade, "there will be a porch on the sunny side of the street, "under the knowing eye of a wise nearby tree."
- Very beautiful, you also created during this time, Poetry To Lean On. Basically, it was opportunity for people from wherever, to submit poetry, maybe that's something that they read, but eventually, that they started writing.
- The first few entries in that blog are other people's poems that people took solace in, and they're very beautiful. But as the pandemic wore on, and I kept on posting poetry, people were sending poems of their own. And that I just thought was wonderful, because the poems range from all sorts of interests, and you could almost, if you go back as I started it, in March, so if you read back, you could almost see the different waves that we all have been experiencing, as some of them, the solace and the not knowing, and then the kind of telling of routines that then began to show up in people's households, cutting each other's hair, things like this, or gardening, lots of gardening. And it's just funny poems to some teachers wrote. Yeah, people frustrated with people not wearing masks. This are the things that we are all concerned with. And people turn them into into poems, it's beautiful. I'm so glad I did it, I hope it stays up as a record of this time in Washington State. Not just here, but everywhere.
- Can you share one of those poems with me?
- So this is Francine Walls, who writes, "I've attached a poem for your online community. "Poetry is good for everyone, and we need the arts "more than ever right now." And this is called "Emergency Poem". "This is the poem for emergencies, "like the spare batteries and extra gas you pack "when you drive into the wilderness. "When you discover you are lost, "you can press any word in this poem, "and walk beside calm waters. "This poem does not have water, food, "shelter or energy bars, "yet courage is hidden in every line. "Before you crumble up this poem, "feeling danger south, north, west, east, "remember love's gift to you, "your next breath," Francine Walls.
- Nice job, Francine. You have dealt with much adversity in your life, war in El Salvador, your native country where you were born, fleeing the country, coming here as an immigrant, learning English, pursuing your work as a poet. Has that adversity helped you in dealing with what we're dealing with now?
- That's an amazing question. You're the first person to ask me that. The war in El Salvador, the time before the war, the time that we lived, my family, was so bleak and so scary. It was fear and terror are the two I think central words to the experience of being, and overwhelming terror that, and this was of course state violence. So, this is not a virus or, but a very real, brutal, repressive state violence, where police and soldiers could kill you. And they did, they gunned down people. And they disappeared people, which was also a code word for murdered, disappeared, murdered and abandoned somewhere, right? Where you wouldn't find them. Or jailed, it was profound deep state terror. This is why seeing those images of those armed police in the, I think this is the part that has been difficult for me during this time, personally, watching those armed policemen that don't look police, they look the soldiers of a war. I think that that triggers all of this images from having lived in El Salvador, and the violence, the result of that violence was far more extreme than the one we're seeing now, as horrible as the one we're seeing now is. So, I think that's part of my difficulty with this time that makes me sit, and just stare, and just stare. I can't, it's hard to deal with both things, 'cause both things are happening internally. The past and what I'm watching and seeing now. And that's hard to sort out out, hard to hold. The immigrant experience is a difficult one, especially when they come, when it is one where you're fleeing from war, where you don't have anything, where you're poor, and struggling, and yet, we came out on the other side. My family did, my sister and myself. And so, I hold on to that hope. I hold on to hope that we as a nation will come on the other side.
- Speaking of hope, you wrote a piece called "Morning Star", which is about hope.
- "Morning Star", "Along the way, "you do things you don't want to do, "things you know you should not do, "things you don't know how to stop doing. "No one can see beyond the waves' crest. "Then, you find yourself sitting there wherever you are, "blemished and imperfect. "That is life. "This carrying on of our dented selves, "alongside the spoonful of sugar we also carry within. "A sweet grain for each good, right thing we too have done "along the way."
- Our thanks to to Claudia Castro Luna for the conversation and poetry. You can find out more about Poetry To Lean On, Claudia's books and poems by checking out her website, castroluna.com.
- Back in March, the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent measures to contain the virus, closed music venues across the country. For many musicians, this cut off their primary source of income and means of building an audience. Back in April, before the murder of George Floyd and country wide protests against racial injustice, I caught up with Stephanie Anne Johnson, a musician from Tacoma, and finalists on "The Voice", to talk about what life was for a performer when there aren't many places to perform. I started by asking her about how COVID-19 has affected her personally.
- I am a musician and a facilitator, and also, a teacher as well. So, all three of those jobs involve me being in touch with a lot of people. So, I don't really have work the way I understand work. Lucky for me though, one of my bandmates is super into audio visual production. So, he is helping me with a weekly stream that I'm doing, Monday evenings at 7:00. Also, every day of the week, I put up a brand new video, Monday through Saturday it's at 9:30 a.m. And then, Sunday it's at 10:30. I started doing it because it keeps me sane. It's an activity that I can do that feels like joy, and it feels like, devotion and I need those things.
- Right, how tough has it been not being able to perform? Is that your main source of income, or does that affect your livelihood in regards to sustaining yourself for being a musician?
- Because I decided to be a musician, and not a million other things, I didn't buy a house. I don't own any property. I am not renting any space in. I have not bought any expensive gear. I have no college loan debt, which is great. So, I kind of set myself up for this life, and now I am surviving off of the kindness of strangers. And when I need to, I will dip into my savings, and I will continue to ride this thing out, man. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. So, I have have looked at it like that, and it keeps me cheerful .
- Yeah, absolutely. And it keeps you motivated and going. So, how are you staying motivated?
- I get up and I sing classically, and it really having that as an anchor, both as a craftsperson and emotionally, because it regulates my breath. So, really it's reconnecting to, I'm a lover, I love so many things, and it's now I have the time to pull out those things I love. So, musical theater, classical music, gospel music. So, really as we get older, we forget things, right? So, you go into a room and you ask yourself why did I come in here, what did I need? But now, we also all have the time to ask ourselves, well, what do I like?
- Right.
- Well, do I that? Well, I should get more of it.
- Yeah, absolutely. And it brings us, you have to have this, all of us during this lockdown, either you're with, perhaps a select amount of people, but there's so much time to get into your own mind and your body, and really be with yourself more, and I hope for most of us, that's a beautiful opportunity to figure that kind of stuff out, what brings you joy.
- Yeah, well, I think the thing is a lot of us have been working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and with that kind of stress, no one has time for hobbies. There's no time for stuff you love, because you have to go do that work. That was me, commuting to Seattle three, four days a week, working, musically doing something Tuesday through Sunday every week, voice tired all the time, because I'm always singing, two, three gigs a day with a rehearsal on a Sunday. That's too much. So, having the time to play guitar because it feels good to do, to sing because it feels good to do, I love to do workout, fitness videos with the YouTube. Come on, that's so fun.
- Yes . For sure, oh man, so much dancing in my life, I love it.
- Yes, yes .
- Yeah . And it's a great way to work out too, you know?
- Mm-hmm.
- Mm-hmm. And actually, on that note of kind of thinking about how things were before the lockdown, and our pace of life, and all of that, what do you hope to see change post lockdown? Or what do you kinda hope sticks?
- Listen, I am a full on radical. I have well, I have large hopes for the world, but let's save those. And make it even smaller. Charity starts at home, right? So, what do I hope sticks for me. I hope that I'm able to continue to create and value the time that I devote to resting. I had felt called to business because, hell, it's easy these days, but rest is necessary, and we must do the necessary things. And then, I also hope that the predilection toward joy, I feel like I have a high capacity for joy. I think that's evident in my stage performance. But I think that in my more private life, I'm hoping to keep more of that, that taste that I have developed for joy, joyful things.
- Yeah, right, and actually, I am gonna have ask you to come back around, so touching on the greater world, so not just yourself, but what are the changes that you hope to see in the outside world?
- The C word is so important. You just have to get to it, care. People need care. And we can pass the buck, or we can do the work. My mother is a big proponent of not saving things for good. Her grandmother was this way, like, oh, we have these nice things, but we'll use them at a different time. We'll save this for good. And I just think that the people that are already here, that we have, I think we should spend the money on 'em. And I'm talking about poor folks, and I'm talking about our kids who are vulnerable, we gotta get them education. And I want kid led education. I want education based on what kids wanna know, because when it's something you wanna know about, you'll investigate, and I think we are not encouraged to study things and think long and hard about things, and I want us to have the time to do that, as a society. So, I want infrastructure things. The giant thing that I really, really want as a society is I want people to understand I'm a crafts person, right? I'm a crafts person. I am a person that builds things. I am blue collar. And I need this world to be kinder to blue collar people, because we are the backbone of this, we build it, we set it up, we take it apart when it's done. And we do it with love, a lot of us do. And I think that there's something to be said for apprenticeship. I was mentored by many older and wiser musicians who put me on some beautiful paths. And I just wanna pay that forward, which is why I teach. So, I really hope that those of us that are blue color in this world that are still working with our hands and are still making tables and chairs, and your favorite songs, right? I hope that we get a little bit of recognition. And I hope that we get our unions sorted out with our leadership. And I hope that we go forward with this idea that art, art isn't secondary. It's what's special about us, goddamnit.
- Absolutely, and it's actually necessary. In my world, music has, especially during this time of kind of I'm a pretty social creature, so in this isolation, it's something that genuinely brings me joy, and that I look forward to putting the music on and just moving my body and listening. And to me, it's necessary. Art, and the creation of it, and sharing our lives and our voices, that is so important, it's so beautiful. And what would life be without it?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. So, what do you see as the role of artists in this time?
- For me, my role, in life, I kind of see as I'm one of these people, where I'm called to lead by example. So, if I want folks to be joyful around me, I gotta be joyful and show them how, right? So, I put up the songs, and they're all songs that I love, and I giggle into the camera, and I smile, and I enjoy myself so much, and I tell people to have a good day. And they do, because they believe what I say. Because word sounds have power. So, I'm just trying to be really more intentional about the things I say out loud, more intentional about what I say on camera, what I say to myself, making sure that my song choice is personal, and that it's okay to be a little nostalgic, not a lot nostalgic, just a little nostalgic.
- And what can the community do to help support artists like yourself?
- Really just two things, one, for where I am, I've only got about 5,000 followers on the Facebook. So, that's not a lot, but that's not nothing, and bless it, I'm grateful. But for artists that are at my level, and a little bit above or whatever, reach out personally, send them a message and say, "I love what you're doing. "Thank you very much,." Pair that with what you are able financially to give, go ahead and buy a record, buy some vinyl. I believe that it's Bandcamp, they are doing, the 1st of May, that day, you can buy music from your favorite indie artists, with no added percentage taken by the company, which is exciting. So, all of my music is up there on Bandcamp if you wanna look for it there. So, just know that there are so many ways to get your music, but the two things are, one, let them know personally, and two, give them some money. Oh, and I guess, and the third thing, the third thing, share it, share out, share out, if you don't have money to give, give the gift of your attention and share it out, share it with your friends, be that person. I need those people.
- Absolutely, that's a huge part of it is growing that audience, getting people to support you, not just financially, but through your words and through your time, and 'cause so much of what you create is also moments of time that people get to experience with you or just listening on their own. And that's beautiful.
- Yes.
- Okay, so actually, is there anything else that you wanna say that I didn't ask?
- Well, I just wanna say that during these trying times, we've got folks like Mr. Rogers who remind us that in tragedy, if you if you're feeling depressed, open your eyes and look for the helpers, look for the people that are out there helping. And if you can't find those people, might not be a bad idea to try and be those people. There's somebody in your life, I'm sure, who needs help, or could need something as simple as checking in on 'em, sending them a Facebook message or a text to say hello, how are you? Let's all feel invited and empowered to dig into the parts of ourselves that are still very pure and compassionate, and let's try our level best to meet the needs of those closest to us.
- That's a wonderful sentiment, and I appreciate that. And that actually kind of reminds me of something that you touched on earlier about how you're coping, and just being more generous with yourself and your time, and I think it's really important to try to figure out the things that bring you joy, and create them, and you are creating positivity in the world around you, not just through showing your passion and sharing your music, but also your opinions and your voice, in regards to how to come together and be there for one another, and actually all of it together can... These are the sorts of things grassroots wise that we know that the neighbor next to us, you're the artist, you also made the comment that we have good hearts, and that we believe in not just ourselves, but the greater community, and what we can do together, and for each other.
- Yes, absolutely.
- I've been speaking with Stephanie Anne Johnson. To hear her music, check out Stephanie Anne Johnson and the High Dogs. Before we go, a reminder to join us Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. online for a live episode of Life on the Margins, from Town Hall, Seattle.
- We'll talk about the alarming surge in COVID-19 cases in our state and across the nation with Dr. Julian Perez, who heads up the COVID response for Sea Mar Community Health Clinic.
- We'll also talk with best selling author, Ijeoma Oluo, about our pandemic of racism and whether America is ready for change. Please join us Thursday evening beginning at 7:00 p.m., live from Town Hall, Seattle. For more information about how to join us online, just go to our show description.
- Life on the Margins is a co production of the South Seattle Emerald and Town Hall Settle. I'm Jini Palmer.
- I'm Marcus Harrison Green. Our music is courtesy of Seattle artist Draze, and our producers are Jeff Shaw and Hans Anderson.
- And I'm Enrique Cerna. If you have a topic that you want us to cover, or you wanna give us a feedback, call, then leave a message for us at 206-606-0222. Stay safe, be well, we'll talk more later. ♪ I was born in the Central District, raised in a south den ♪ ♪ I'm a homegrown kid ♪ ♪ Yup, 206 living ♪ ♪ We used to play Flyers up ♪ ♪ When I lived up on Union ♪ ♪ Pushed it out to orcas ♪ ♪ And eventually the king ♪ ♪ Who didn't have much ♪ ♪ But thankful for all we was given ♪ ♪ It was our hood, until wind and sea crept in ♪ ♪ And the black were naked and gentrification came in ♪ ♪ Gone from Franklin ♪ ♪ Robberies ain't even the same ♪ ♪ Mark my words, it gone ♪