Constellations of Meaning: An Interview with Jade T. Perry
Dana: Jade is a Truth Teller. She says, “This is the way things are and this is how we need to become in response to the way things are” and there's no beating around the bush, there is no waiting for the people to get over themselves because there's something real to be said in real to be done. That’s Jade in her soul. The way this looks in her life is that she is a scholar, writer, mystic, and educator. She reads tarot and oracle cards. She is an artist and a pedagogical master. In all of the things, she centers black indigenous people of color (BIPOC). Jade, thank you for being here.
Jade: That was so abundant! Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this series and to chat with the folks. I'm always just kind of overjoyed at these kinds of conversations. Dana and I met “back in the way back” and I appreciate her masterful way with words and really getting to the essence of communication and how we communicate why it's important.
Dana: Let’s jump in. There is a meme going around the internet: “If you don't come out of the pandemic with a new hobby you're doing it wrong.” Yes or no?
Jade: No. (laughs)
I appreciate organic theory and lived experience as theory. A lot of my work has to do with creating organic theory or listening to organic theory. And I say all this to say is that I was on the phone with my mother just chatting about being in a global pandemic. A few folks in my direct family have been affected by Covid-19 and so in the course of our conversation, my mom was like, “You know, I kind of think the goal of a pandemic is just to live through it.”
And that's it to me! And my little addition to that is to try to survive with our souls intact. We're all in such an intense moment both individually and collectively. There's so many people who are transitioning from this virus; there are so many fundamental life shifts. Getting a hobby is not really the point! There are other important things happening now and that can be happening now.
That's not to say that if you're wrong if your hobby is what is keeping you and helping you to survive this with your soul intact, by all means, cling to your hobbies! But this is definitely not a time to put pressure on yourself to do or perform. I think there's a certain performative nature to those memes call us into performing productivity in the absence of our usual capitalistic structure. But you don’t have to perform productivity! And especially not in a global pandemic!
Dana: I'm just I'm just loving this phrase “performing productivity.” That tendency has been illuminated in this pandemic but spans way beyond. It’s an instinct that we have that we have to do it. And in our creative practice, it’s suffocating that is--to perform wellness, success, or achievement in an art career.
Jade: I think that the real work of makers and artists and communicators is to try to be true to this moment. Toni Cade Bambara, a black writer and organizer and playwright, talks about the best way to do something is to do it. I think that if we're trying to perform productivity then there's a lot of things that were NOT doing. And that may just be listening to what is my role as a cultural worker, what is my role as a communicator, what is my role as an artist or maker in this moment, in this global moment ,in this political moment? What can I give? What do I need to receive in order to give? Those things are important to be doing as well. And if all your energy is going towards performing productivity, you're not really claiming all of your creative force in ways that would be comfortable for you.
Dana: You are not “claiming your creative force” when you are channeling your energy into performing productivity.
Jade: And by all means, if this is a moment that drives you to create more, that's okay if that's what you're naturally feeling called to do! But these memes go around and become popular, and its slightly disturbing! Instead of imagining new worlds, we’re told to go get a new hobby.
Dana: Wow! Instead of upending normal which was serving no one, preserve a capitalistic economy and and perform for us now
Jade: It’s a very like low-grade level of anxiety around producing new things. Isn’t that the way it goes sometimes? I've been trying to remind folks in the work that I'm doing that there is a time to consider and reflect and a time to do and act and move. We all have our different idiorrhythmy (as Roland Barnes says) and it is for each of us, and doing your best to follow your own rhythm and figure out how that meshes and merges with the collective. That’s what I’ve been telling folks! It’s okay to just survive! It’s okay to say this is where I need extra support or where I need to not be on ten zoom calls a day or I do need to pick up a hobby! It’s sitting with yourself to understand what is required of you in this moment. And how do I balance the individual things that I'm still going through but also engage this collective moment.
Dana: A lot of what I have learned from watching you be Jade over many years has included, what it means to know what you need and the ability to know what you need and the practice of knowing what you need and asking for what you need. I've seen that express itself for you both and how you embody yourself, in life, on social media, how you hold boundaries, how you price your work, what equitable exchange is, how you care for your body. Can you speak to the process of knowing what you need?
Jade: Give that question again so that I can really put it down sharply.
Dana: How do we know what we need individually and collectively? Because I wonder if some of the rhetoric and the language that emerges in a pandemic both from businesses and artists, it's very much about what other people need which teams a way of bypassing our own actionable investigation of what we need.
Jade: What a beautiful question. How do we know what we need both individually and collectively? It's a lifelong process, a lifelong journey and exploration. One of the things that I always go back to is deep listening. To yourself, to the world, to the political moments, spiritual realities.
I think that having a lens and a framework for spiritual activism really helps in knowing what we can give In Gloria Anzaldúa’s definition of spiritual activism, it's about doing the outer work and the inner work. It’s about connecting to your cosmology or your systems or your symbols to your symbology so we can reimagine reality both on a spiritual level, material level, and political level. And then she goes on to say that even the political connection to spiritual or spirituality in spiritual activism is often missing. We need a process of deep listening so we can learn who we are as spiritual activists and we can learn what we're always pulled towards, feel called to in these moments. That’s what you can offer to the collective in this moment if that's where your energy is.
I'm very clear about the importance of sharing Story, recognizing that this is a salient moment in time. And people who are organizing and doing things outwardly often don't simultaneously scribe the moment. So we need those people that are telling stories. That are doing the deep listening process. It really helps you to consider what is it that I need individually in this moment and how can I share my gifts if I'm in the position to do that at this moment.
What is interesting to me too is that listening to what it is that is NEEDED on a broad scale we have to have some IMAGINATION. Can you imagine other things being possible?
Dr. Ashon Crawley does a lot of work around “otherwise possibility” and I just love that term in general so thank you Ashan for that. Deeply listening to what is the “otherwise possibility” that we can live into? How do we reimagine work to fit what it is that we need as workers? I think that when we start thinking about, “What do I need as an organic being?” it changes things! We aren’t thinking about “us vs the nature.” We are NATURE! We are included in that! Processing that is important in understanding what we need collectively. If we remember that we’re all organic beings, if we understand that we are not our organic material not an unlimited resource. What would we do? What would we create from there?
How do we know what we need? We ask questions. And in a spirit of not engineering the answer. What you might hear in response to the questions is you know what I need to have universal healthcare. We need universal healthcare! You can access the deep listening. We often think it’s jUST a spiritual reality OR a political reality but it’s definitely that there are multiple realities happening at once.
Dana: That are interconnected and interdependent on each other.
Jade: Yes! So how to know what you need is through deep listening and asking questions not trying to engineer the answer. Allow the answer to arrive. And be clear on this is what I can do and give in this moment to the collective and this is what I need to receive in this moment.
Dana: The answer will arrive when it arrives. Listening for the answer. Asking for what I need, what the collective needs. Just asking that question is enough.
Jade: We live in an organic and evolving living earth. The answer to that will change. We get obsessed with sameness and it’s how we’re socialized politically. But naturalization makes it hard for us to continuously understand that we are in a living universe! What we need individually and collectively will always be in flux and changing. To tune into that changing is the work! It’s not to get to this level of stasis.
Dana: Now I want to take you back to a piece that you wrote on your blog in May 2017, “What I What I mean When I tell You That Ability is Constructed.” In that piece you have a meditation or mantra of the words “Ability is constructed. Ability is temporary.” In that piece you quote the Buddha, “Everything is impermanent.” And in another piece you quote Octavia Butler saying, “God is Change” (Butler, Parable of the Sower). I just keep hearing this from your work as you say that the goal is not “stasis.” We’ve been programmed for stasis but Butler is like God is Change. There’s not a question in there but I wanted to present the threads!
Jade: Thank you for that. Oh my goodness. First I need to say a hearty and heartfelt and abundant thanks to the folks who have been involved in paving the way for disability justice and healing justice movements and their inceptions. If I get into it all I will forget folks so I won’t. I’m deeply grateful because they are the folks who help us come to an understanding that yes ability is temporary in our socialization of it. We’re in the living universe and there’s always change. Thank you for putting some of those threads together.
What’s funny is that as an earth sign, as a Taurus, I’m not like, “Yes! Change!” (laughs)
Dana: You know how I feel about change.
Jade: Super excited? (laughs)
Dana: Hold on. Story about change. When I was a child, my parents removed the wall between our kitchen and living room. I cried. I was devastated. The house would never be the same again. We had lost something that had existed. It made no sense to them but there I was.
Jade: Yes! I can relate to that. The holding onto the known. But sometimes the known needs to get! (laughs)
Dana: If it’s not working, let it go.
Jade: And things are changing anyway so that’s a meditation for me. I know my own proclivities around change and what it does to me. I think it’s helpful soul medicine to remember the words of Octavia Butler that “God is Change”. It’s helpful for me to remember as I'm talking about disability justice and sometimes feeling misunderstood in that, remembering that this is work that all of us have to do. Our bodies are all changing and flowing. A practice of Buddhism is also very helpful in embracing that and not clinging so hard to it has to be this way or the same. It affects my spiritual activism too to understand that we live in a changing and changeable world. It helps me as a tarot reader too to know that we live in a changing, changeable universe. You don’t have to stay with the story the cards tell you! You can change the influences! It’s a powerful thing.
Dana: “We live in a changing and changeable universe.”
Jade: Thank you Octavia Butler for even the seed of that! It presents us with an agency.
Dana: Someone asked me the other day what patterns I’m seeing in conversations I’m having. Side note: I’m having a lot of conversations right now. My instinct when the pandemic hit was I’m going to talk to as many people as possible! Friends and strangers alike!
Jade: It’s so you!
Dana: Other people went to cocoon and I was, “How can I become more social than I was pre-pandemic?”
The patterns I’m seeing are intertwined and distinct. 1) I’m seeing people in deep grief for what was, for what is no longer possible now and may not be possible going forward. 2) I see people embracing change and saying “This is my moment I am called into the act of service that I have been preparing for. Let’s go. It’s time. I’m running.” And finally 3) I see people grappling with the intensity of needs that cannot be met individually. A society that’s not set up to care for them. All three of these things are called into depth and being, I see people so deep in grief that they aren’t responding “well” (ps there’s no such thing as grieving “well”), and needs. But as we are all in change, what I’m seeing is that grief is an essential part of embracing change.
Jade: Oh my gosh. Dana, I was having a conversation with somebody about this the other day. I was just talking about grief and grieving rituals. Because one of the things Octavia Butler is calling into their work when she says God is Change the reality that change can be amazing but it can also be terrifying.
Dana: Involves loss a lot of the time.
Jade: Yes! Loss! And pain. One of the things that has been pulling on me is what if all of these transitions, what if we weren’t focused on new hobbies or performative productivity but focused on grieving well? And that might include getting a new hobby! But what if we could really grieve this movement and not just this moment but how we got to this moment. When we think about this global pandemic is part of a living and alive universe, unfortunately. And, like you said, there are societal structures at least in the United States of America that have corportized care. So when these moments happen, everything has already become corporatized. We have to grieve even that. And consider that as good work. What’s been interesting to me is this push to just keep going, business as usual, and I understand that’s how some of us cope but I worry for people’s soul health when so much is happening, the reality we have consented to has shifted. And now that this reality we’ve consented to has shifted, what do we need to cry over, what do we need to release and let go, what do we need to hold close, what does that look like?! Especially when our grieving rituals are different right now. THat’s been on my mind since the beginning of March. Do people have tools to participate in the healing properties of grief and release grief can bring us? In this western perspective, grieve has been so suppressed and privatized, it’s something we do away from everybody else. We remove collective grieving from the public. Black and indigenous grieving practices and the ability to wail and to moan and sing and cry collectively is deeply powerful. I could go on about grief in this moment for a while! It’s interesting how we’re rerouted from grief to “Open back up” what does that mean when we’ve lost so many?
When people think about Hollywood / Instagrammable spirituality, people assume it has to be super glamorous. But the moment right now is heavy. You can be communicating about that too. If you are on here and an artist and thinker and communicate, you can communicate about this! We’re in a global pandemic! Your work is going to take longer because we’re grieving!
Dana: I personally can say that I’m grateful you’re someone in my life that I can be clear about that with. We were supposed to talk a few weeks ago and I called you an hour before and said, “I need to cancel today. I’m in grief. I’m going to spend the day crying.” And you were like “Yep. Got it. Grieve. Well done.”
Jade: My hope is that we understand that that is possible. That change is possible on large scales.
Dana: I want to go into the structures in which people are communicating right now. And I want to look at it through this phrase you’ve introduced, “the otherwise possible.” How are we taking our time and energy back from the performance of productivity and going into the imaging of what can be? And one of the ways i think we can do that is through genre reimagining and the structures we communicate in. And the reason I bring this up Jade, is because your writing and your work do not fit in genres. Boxes don’t work for Jade T. Perry! And your work weaves together into a coherent whole, scholarship, oped, memoir, mantra, meditation, memory, research and reference. It creates a richness even to your shortest pieces of writing. It’s been that way for a long time. I remember reading “What I What I mean When I tell You That Ability is Constructed” in 2017 and going woah this is nothing like anything else. And you were inspired by another writer genre bending. What are some of the practices that have informed your freedom in creating whatever structure works, that whatever you have to say will find the form it wants to take?
Jade: You know what, I wish I could say that I felt that freedom all of the time. I have to give myself permission to have it even when I don’t feel it. Something that Toni Morrison said that changed so much for me, and I paraphrase, “The page is where I can just be me.” Whatever I say goes here! Giving yourself that license and freedom is important.
I come from a family of storytellers. Most of y’all would never hear their name because of red lining, because of access to resources, because of access to education, because education costs money. But the way my family tells stories, I used to make fun of as a child! You’d think you’re listening to a story about eating breakfast but it was really about family kinship and the like. I come from people who just know how to work stories that acknowledge multiple realities going on at the same time. It’s black folk storytelling. One of the things that we’ve talked about is how we all talk over each other and weave in and weave out. I try to decolonize in my own self the belief that this is not a worthy way of telling stories. Because we’re so westernized and see time as linear and so we tell linear stories where you don’t get the full circle. Now yes, in order to be understood you have to have a thesis, but I think that there are so many different ways that you can tell a story and commit to the full expression of a story even if you don’t feel that freedom. You can give yourself that license! There are some pieces that time is very important; there are pieces I will start writing years before. Maybe I get to the point where I haven’t had the experience I need to crystalize this yet or haven’t had the right conversation. Even thinking of your work as living and alive and organic is helpful too. We tend to worship the written word and that is unhealthy. Once it’s written it is so! And that’s not reality or life. There’s the life of your art and the life beyond the life of your art and the life beyond the life beyond the life of your art. I write with that in my contextual background of my mind. That’s how I come to the places that I come to.
I also think it’s important, instilled in me as a person of color and an educator of color, is that you always acknowledge your teachers. I live in a web, a constellation of work. My work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If you’re interested in this then you will be interested in the constellation so why wouldn’t I share that? You can be part of this!
Dana: The invitation into the constellation and honoring your teachers--I wish I had had that language in teaching high school students in Bulgaria. These kids plagiarized left and right because there was a mindset that “The work I’m doing now is just to pass the benchmark so I can get out of here.” I did not have an understanding that their work could be an invitation into their own interconnected narratives and story and family and place. All of that was not in my ability to say. I was just confused. You know I can google right? That’s such a beautiful framing though. And you said earlier, we have to have a thesis. Some people don’t remember that! We get so stuck in our structures that our thesis and the thing to say is never defined. But when that clarity of story, even as it grows and evolves, gives that liberty into evolving forms infinitely because life is changing infinitely.
Jade: In Dr. Rosales Meza’s work around honoring your teachers, she talks about it as an indigenous practice. I ab-so-lute-ly ag-ree! And one thing I know about teaching college students, we have to think about what is the system we have created where there’s a benefit to plagiarizing. Sometimes its because they don’t actually know the citation methods! But there’s a technical thing different than stealing. When it's taking and stealing, and it continues to happen, we have to ask what about our structure creates that. Paulo Freire in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” talks about banking method of learning and communication. I bring this up because I think it works very similarly to what we’re talking about with writing and organic theory, where we’ve set up a system where it's “I know the things and then I tell you the things” and my success is based upon you repeating that back to me. So we’re not even in the first place introducing a constellation or synthesis of thought. How do we change this?
In my work, I am always present to this question as a black, queer, disabled woman. I’ve seen my work be taken and moved and shifted. It happens more than I think people know. I think about who’s benefiting from that taking from me? What is this culture of taking? And it’s important to protect your intellectual property! Mama didn’t raise no fool! That’s only going to happen so many times.
Dana: And to extend that to this language you’ve introduced of the “constellation,” to steal your work is to steal from hundreds of years of thinking and creativity and language and art and culture and family. You’re not stealing from one person on the internet, you are stealing from many. And especially black queer disabled body, yours is the context that has been stolen from infinitely.
Jade: Forever, right? It’s fascinating. Dana, it’s so interesting because I think about it in terms of the price of visibility of one’s work. There is work I do in public spaces. And there’s work I do in community spaces that you do not get to access unless you’re in community and integrity with the community.
Dana: aka on the other side of the paywall and equitable exchange.
Jade: I want to always offer heart centered work that happens in the context of Community so that people are clear that our learning and growing is co curated. It doesn’t happen in the background. I’m informed even by the people I’m providing word and writing and writing o and for. There are better ways to do all of this. It’s a process of unlearning and learning.
Dana: So this leads me to a space where stealing happens often. There is a rising trend of integration of spirituality and business, either privately or publicly. You have been doing this work forever and are really integrated as you just said a “heart centered and community based way.” There are others who are just figuring this out. So much to talk about here, not least the white culture’s use of black and indigenous practices for their own use and then selling in their own business. But I want to talk about vocabulary. “Woo.” I would love to know your relationship with this word. And address your work with the Mystic Soul Conference.
Jade: I feel where we’re going. Yes, Mystic Soul. It’s a nonprofit organization cofounded by myself Teresa P Mateus and Ra Mendoza. It centers the magic, wisdoms, and healing practices of QTBIPOC, (Queer and Trans, Black and Indigenous People of Color). It’s across symbology systems and traditions. It’s a place for us to practice and learn. And one of our rules of life is invitation not appropriation. You're invited to sit in certain spaces. But that does not mean you take it back to your conference and try to replicate it. You don’t have the ceremonial pieces in order for the ritual to work well. Not only is that politically wrong but spiritually dangerous to take from other traditions if you don’t have understanding or tie to that system.
When it comes to the word woo, it’s a complicated word. You’re right in that people say it to be condescending or to indicate something is “unreal” or
Dana: --“Unscientific” God Forbid.
Jade: As if anything is actually objective! I use that word in the community behind the paywall when I do dream work or how to handle nightmares.
Dana: I see people use it to apologize for their spirituality and mysticism or something they don’t know what it’s about.
Jade: Whenever we use certain words we have to be careful. We have to ask what does this word do? What am I using it for? So I don’t know if I can say use it or not, but in the case of “woo”, context always matters. I’m a little bit of a sarcastic babe so that word is useful as a filter. There are conversations I don’t want to have because someone is saying it’s unfounded. I’ll say, “This is woo talk” and it’s a nice barrier against energy that doesn’t feel good, bless you and release you! Now when I’ve heard white spiritual folks use “woo” or white folks who consider themselves to be spiritual say “woo” usually the signification is around a mishmash of practices that may or may not be a thing.
I will say that the thing I know about mysticism is whenever you’re a mystic we’re talking about the direct experience of the divine and so it’s not hard and fast. There are time tested ways and traditions that you have to be clear around before you start launching into elaborate spell words and business services! Let’s start with basic theology! What do you believe about the universe? What are you calling on? People need to interrogate their why with anything woo!
Dana: What are you trying to do? To what end? For whom? On whose time are you learning this work? Who benefits? All these questions! These are the questions of communication and not just intentionality but actual effects that have to be asked! This is one of my passions.
Jade: I’m here for it! And here’s what I’m going to add: Black folk mysticism in many iterations has an ethic of accountability built in. When you’re working with materials or crystals or candles or colors or moods or herbs, if you’re not respecting the life force of that, then your work will not be potent or you’ll feel a kick back. Basically: There are ways to do this that are responsible and ways to do it that are irresponsible.
Dana: Jade T. Perry. Thank you for being here. How can people follow your work and be part of what you’re creating?
Jade: www.jadetperry.com is the best place to start. The whole arc is there. If this is work is something you want to be in conversation with, then go to Patreon.com/jadetperry. That is where I teach most often. If you want to support the work www.jadetperry.com/support. And instagram! I’m here y’all!
Dana: And I want to put my voice behind that invitation. For all the ways you show up in the world, you have taught me and teach me. You are called to Truth Telling in a powerful way and we all get to benefit from it.