The Baptism - Produced in collaboration with Lincoln Center

[Music] [Music] welcome to on the media's very first live stream ever good afternoon i'm joe baker a member of the delaware time of indians [Music] [Music] [Music] so good evening and welcome to the green space new york public radio's ground floor performance venue i'm john shafer it's been over a year since i've been in this building and i'm delighted to be here with you this evening and to welcome the composer and musician michelle indiguiocello and the poet and spoken word artist carl hancock rux both of whom will be giving us a new version of carl's piece called the baptism a work that was commissioned by lincoln center for the performing arts now before we see this performance recorded just a little while ago here in the green space i just want to make clear that there are a couple of iterations of this piece originally the work had a score by brian eno and uh visuals by carrianne weems which we will continue to see in the background of this performance but with the new music the new musical score by michelle indiguiocello and uh with christopher bruce playing the guitar and you'll see in here the two of them performing this new version of the baptism which is subtitled rhetoric we'll have a chance to speak with the the principles about the making of this piece after we get a chance to hear it but now from the green space here is carl hancock rocks with the baptism and music by michelle indiguio cello the farmer knows death is another stage of life nothing really dies we transition like japonica like quince the bush blossoms in spring but some winters buzz early with a cold frost new buds of japonica manifest another generation of flowers [Music] there is a great parable where one asks the japonica flowers are you the same flowers that died in the frost or are you different flowers and the flowers reply we are not different we are not the same when conditions are sufficient we manifest and when conditions are not we go into hiding it is as simple and it is as complicated as that when conditions are sufficient things manifest when conditions are no longer sufficient things withdraw they wait until the moment is right to manifest again we do not die we are always becoming we become air and molecules as soon as blood circulation and respiration stops excess carbon dioxide causes an acidic environment causing membranes and cells to rupture the membranes release enzymes that begin to nourish themselves on nutrient-rich cells and these nourished enzymes become many gases of sulfur-containing compounds and bacteria return to the earth the microorganisms and bacteria produce an old factory of sense as organ muscle skin liquefied protest when all the body's soft tissue decomposes we become byproducts of our earlier form we are never born we never die we transition the day of nourishing is here the lifeblood of transition one city to the next story upon story house upon house of wanting always cleaning the air nourishing the soil of insistence every being is a building with music grace upon grace upon grace [Music] and now both hands baptized in blood the sharecropper's son the boy from boonville the first shall go the last shall come age comes the body withers truth comes as itself a dissembling of things an entity of narrow precincts truth opens among ventured things of blood in perfect light excluding loneliness finding company tenant farmers know about hands and soil and water on earth know the lifespan of tobacco crops and what ice herds hanging over an attic window means to the sky and all its balconies vis-a-vis a higher place a terrace [Music] another room above a room taking form catching hold of the torch club i am not me i am watching me realized as two tall shadows sinking into the hardened earth not even the slightest trace of blue dust will tell of the descent of man our hours pass into the dim light of half-eaten moons so long a journey yet brief after due time we return again if we nurture that which we have planted with great concentration as a witness opposing autumn farmers know the moisture of a night coat quilted wet against translucent soil the constant swelling of hands and feet followed by complete consciousness plant planters plant build builders build take a knee and baptize imploring sucker from the breast of god for a voice a tongue a means of articulation this soil this civility this right of man must be guarded until we die and are birthed again this proclamation belongs to our walking and our wondering walk walker walk sing singers sing even when the roads are bad and the bridge is blocked and the city's gates locked against us be quick with your questions and slow with your answers as you approach the tilling of the tilling of this field you are its caretaker inheriting an old masonic hymn of migrants who compel thoughts and fear not jail nor news nor knife we're not alone in this music it is an andantino sung with four wind instruments of blues it is a flute an oboe a horn a bassoon all manner of stringed instruments coming from within our throats and the sound we produce cavatina for the mother of the dead lost to a mirror cloaked in darkness and impenetrable misery [Music] this is the nature of baptism a thank you of water and company with the web of reason entangled to it nothing can be wasted artistic cultural and personal relationships to urbanity and regenerative architecture fosters intellectual human and financial capital in restoring and replenishing resources of a historical past a sustainable present and a wellspring of future opportunities think of these two men as one building no building is wasted regenerative design thinks ahead where architects must design the future reverse the damage and create a net positive impact on the environment at the macro scale of sight [Music] let the storm water run off the roof of your house and make your house stand beneath this ceiling of our responsibility a place for permanent dreamers a crop field for tenant farmers tenants of their own land and winds remember them well [Music] they are over and over and never die almost clear now storm resolving its fury sheer stocking of light coming over coming through the floodgates two strokes of copper arching over daysprint almost clear now keep on keep on keep on clouds braiding over the moss basin shaking the valley glistening at solutions everything washed clean soon even the sustained air keep on keep on keep on keep on keep on keep on [Music] so [Music] the baptism performed live here in the green space earlier today by my guests carl hancock rux and michelle indigiocello with christopher bruce on guitar it is a three-part work dedicated to john lewis and ct vivian and featuring video visual imagery from carrie mae weems and um it's it's a real pleasure to welcome both michelle indigiocello and carl hancock rux back to new york public radio and this actual real live real life event in the green space uh to both of you welcome thank you thank you carl um this piece the baptism um it's it's a work now that has several versions to it the original version has a very long subtitle uh this this version is subtitled rhetoric why uh because it's a the language is the same as the first version so it's rhetorical you know it's like it's like repeating what i already said and i'm saying it again except that the music is new you know the totally different yeah totally different exactly so what was it that the piece was commissioned by lincoln center for the performing arts what was the uh what was your brief what was what was the idea behind it it was a very it was actually a very brief conversation speaking briefs yeah if they they literally said would you um lincoln center called me and asked me would i write a tribute to john lewis and ct vivian and i said i would love to and then and then i i guess i i had this thought because i you know was wondering how you know i can hand you a poem or i can hand you an essay or i can hand you some you know but what are you going to do with it you know i didn't i didn't i couldn't i couldn't fathom it because of the times that we're living in like you know what i mean like not not the people aren't reading things but just i wanted it to be more of this role than and this is no disrespect to publishing of course because i do publish but i wanted it to be something else and so i called back and i said i would love to do this um is it okay if i invite carames to film it well first i said actually would you mind if i film if i filmed it you know and said yes and then i was like okay i'm gonna call carrie and they were like oh my god yes and so that was great and um and then we just went down to this theater that i'm curtis the director of and filmed it and she did she filmed several versions of it which was amazing and then it became this poem film you know this yeah it's its own thing right that that original version is a baptism of the sharecropper's son and the boy from booneville right that sounds very specific well it is because because uh john lewis was a sharecropper's son and ct vivian was from boonesville and it was when i was writing the poem or well even before i was writing it i was reading a lot about ct vivian i knew excuse me i knew a lot about john lewis but i i wanted to read much more about ct vivian and and it was also very a very fascinating story i mean the way his mother you know got him out of um uh i think she got him got him out of was it chicago or she got she got him she got him out of wherever they were living and they they were part of the great migration of course right moving north you know and that because it was her way of uh trying to ensure his survival you know in the world and she was a single mother you know at that time um and it it it's it's it's stunning to me to to to think of who he became what he became uh the civil rights movement you know because of course all this is happening when his mother is sort of you know moving him north there is no civil rights movement i mean it's it's it predates it by 50 years or so yeah uh and he winds up going back to the south to be a you know to be an activist and it's incredible um it's a pretty amazing life story and the the idea that we shared a time in history with people who were part of the great migration which was the direct result of the great flood of 1927 which had a profound lingering impact on almost every facet of american society our culture our politics that was the moment when black americans who had up to then mostly been republican turned their back on a government that seemed to have turned its back on them and you know moved to the democratic party of course john lewis famously long-serving democratic congressman so just the idea that he didn't know history he lived it he embodied it and he was with us until very recently that's a really kind of power i mean i find that a really powerful thing absolutely and let me just say that what is also powerful to me is that the great migration as african-american people know it is not necessarily because of the the great flood you know there was there was there were there were you know um people were afraid of lynchings you know people were literally afraid of losing their lives right it was there was no chance that you had for any kind of economic success or political success um in the south you didn't even know if you would survive the day right and so lynching was a huge there was a huge anti-lynching movement you know that that we can speak about not speak about whatever that started in the early 20th century and uh that was going on so that that that whole reconstruction period a lot of a lot of black people were literally deciding that they needed to get out of this impoverished state of being and this physical threat to their lives and the lives of their children so yeah it was huge um i want to bring michelle into the conversation as well and also those of you watching if you're watching on youtube or facebook uh and have a question for carl hancock rocks or michelle and diocello um we'll try and get to those during the uh the course of the conversation so the original call the original version of the baptism had music by brian eno kind of an a-list named and yet there was something that you know tell us how you and michelle came to do this version of the piece well carrie she you know she was only supposed to film one version of the you know of the poem but that's not carrie i mean carrie is a consummate artist and she i think she filmed probably about three or four versions of it so she we did the we did the original version and that was with brian brian nino's music well later became uh brian eno's music and then she while we were there she wanted me to uh we went into another room of the theater and she put her art behind me and a table in front of me and said let's do it this way you know and she was like and let's do it that way and let's you know she kept you know she's a visual artist and so she kept thinking about differently so i had to i probably read that poem about 40 times that day it was filmed literally about 40 times because that's what carrie does and so uh when we decided that we really loved this other version of me sitting at the table with carrie's art behind me that's when i also then asked michelle would she compose the music to that so that it wouldn't be so that we wouldn't try to make it as if it was exactly the same thing as it was before because it wasn't you know even though the words were the same but it was you know but it was in a different place and it was a different moment and therefore i felt like it needed um a different kind of musical uh voice or a composer's voice and michelle you have done so many different types of music both your own and you know recent albums of wonderful covers of other people's music what was how was it walking into this where you had a ready-made kind of multi-disciplinary art piece that was kind of presented to you and all right go score this oh um well as uh my career has shifted i i score t for tv and film and that's how i approached it is i just wanted to enhance his words and aid the visuals uh so that that was my mindset going into it i enjoy work like that it gives its clarity instead of being on your own emotional tangents also if you're supporting the words you don't want to overwhelm the words so there's a certain kind of spare texture simplicity of melody repetition is important right yes for me that's what i felt uh i mean the migration of the birds and the and also how he's distilling it and and in its juxtaposition to flowers and life i i remember when i first started working on it i i i have trouble sleeping so i listened to alan watts in my head talk but once i started working on this i really found that it was so soothing in both its tone the tone of his voice and also the imagery he was creating so i just tried to hone into that and bring that to a sonic place it may be seen as simple but i i want it to be enchanting yeah how long have the two of you known each other oh wow well oh well i don't know i've been i've been a fan forever and then a friend i don't i have no idea you know yeah maybe sometimes probably um i think we probably met through toshi regan and you know i wanted to say that it was it's interesting that you say that that michelle about uh and what you've just said too about your relationship to words and music because that is why i asked you and you know because i have so much respect for what you've done over the years and i think maybe two summers ago i think i told you that story i told you that you remember i said i was walking um i was like i haven't done this in years i was headphones on walking probably from like 42nd street all the way down to the village you know like down right if and i was listening to like and all i was listening to was you i was just listening to every uh just all these albums and your and the tonalities and the uh the intricacies of how you composed and or played and or sung to your own music um it was it was just breathtaking and so i knew i knew that that that you know obviously this would be a no-brainer for you in fact i didn't think that you know i i wasn't even sure whether or not it was it was up to you know your standards but i but i but absolutely but i absolutely no plus i just owed you a solid out here he did a video so when he asked me i i had to say yes and i'm glad i did right but also you know the other thing about knowing each other is that remember i always make the joke that i knew you before i knew you because i because of beverly oh who used to babysit your son yes and um sometimes she would babysit him at my house all right so yeah son used to be babysitting about the whole thing so there's a whole story that goes yeah um nobody really cares when i first heard carl but i'm gonna i'm gonna tell the story not much of a story anyway simply because it does seem to be germane to this piece in particular after 9 11 you performed your lamentations on stage at bam and i was a wreck you know our studios then were literally two blocks from ground zero and i'd been there that morning and i found something so and i hate to use this word healing about that peace on that night you know in that space and like baptism there's religious imagery at play in the title and this piece seems to be cut from the same cloth in terms of you know themes of of healing of of acceptance of of being able to move beyond death always um and i wasn't sure you said on the stage that damn do you mean the the the play performance that i did or a song that i did uh it was you reading okay it was the first time i i you walked out on stage you opened your mouth and and i the guy who uses his voice as his profession felt instantly like oh my god this guy has like pipes to kill for on that day and excuse me audience for having this voice right now because whatever reason it's kind of hoarse but the the um yeah there's always a spiritual i do have i i think i i do look for the spirit the spiritual tonality of the moment that we are in whatever that moment is and i'm i'm i'm unable to write create think in any other way even in creating lamentations when i recorded it as a song for my apothecary album uh i i went down to the buddhist the buddhist monks were protesting remember at the at the site of 9 11 yep and i had my handheld recorder and i was recording them so actually that's how it it sort of opens with you know these these these buddhism chanting or whatever and then you know and then we kind of like you know mix it into the music or whatever so yeah it's um we have to when i say we i just mean humanity um the only i feel like the only way that we are able to even get through day to day is to literally tap into something that is intangible and that lifts us up and and helps us believe that we'll get to um another moment so yeah and so you know in the wake of you know wrestling with inequity and inequality you know with systemic racism what you've come up with is not screed it's not angry any more than lamentations was you know rending of garments and beating of drums it was uh you know what i always say that i take my i took the greatest notes from my adoptive parents my adoptive parents my adoptive father was born in 1915 and his wife was born in 1923 in harlem and they were huge jazz fans and they would play every saturday night they would open up their little bar in their apartment and play all this music that i had no relationship to i didn't understand you know i mean i mean the instrumental stuff the vocals i i didn't i didn't get it i mean these people are generations older than me and the conversations that they would have with each other you know it was almost like musicologists kind of arguing with each other about things but also sometimes they would call me into the room you know my father would be like you know like do you hear that do you hear what training is doing do you hear that did you hear how you bent that note or do you like you know what does that mean to you and i'm like i don't know i don't know what is bending a note you know or she would say like you know did you hear like what you know what billy did or what just or what betty carter did or whoever you know there was and every saturday it was this it was this jazz lesson lesson it was this um this lesson that was even greater than just hearing those albums but i think that they were giving me their lies you know he'd fought in world war ii and had come back you know as an african-american man and in america and uh you know struggled uh you know they you know they they they existed in this country and i think it's the music that actually got them through you know all of those decades and to the day that they died you know those albums were those 78s and 33s handled very carefully you know in my home you know vinyl was a big deal and i was never allowed even to go near the needle so that i wouldn't you know destroy you know that would mess it up because that was that was the sound track of their lives in the history and that and they needed to give to me um and that's what i inherited so yeah i don't think that it's i don't think that i inherited well i did not inherit from them i did not inherit anger and i'm not saying that they weren't but you know that wasn't that wasn't the that wasn't the that wasn't the thesis you know the thesis of the thesis of listening to the music was actually about survival and about existence and um about understanding something else other than what we are taught in school and how we come to know ourselves and who we who we come to be michelle how much of that did you get from i mean when you're writing you're listening to the the baptism and you you know how much of that ends up in your contribution and your your score to the piece yeah it's uh i mean my own personal connection to it is also yeah anger is not my thesis because i i come from a lot of anger and i think uh somehow it it uh you know filters itself through me in a totally different way and so i just i just try to have that energy that's very centered in the source and not to be arrogant and enough to think that it's anything i'm generating i just try to serve the peace and the spirit of the peace the emotionality of the peace and uh and carl's word imagery it's just so it's just so beautiful especially about the seed and just the way he talks about you know i i think of death as an adventure the way that carl presents the adventure that we're all in is uh just so beautiful and i i just hope i somehow mirrored that sonically for you yeah but yeah anger is not the thesis i try that for many years it uh just didn't doesn't work really work for me yeah well it is um it's a poem that has a three-part form to it and so you know how does that reflect the musical form i mean were you able to there's there's a there's an expression in a silent film accompaniment where it's called mickey mousing so you know there's the whole part of the poem where carl is talking about musical forms and musical instruments and if you were mickey mousing your music would have turned into a cavatina at one point and you would have scored a bassoon in there or whatever you chose not to do that oh yeah yeah definitely uh i mean i've been lucky uh my first like scoring like gig is was with ava duvernay for queen sugar and this definitely taught me not to mickey mouse and also to like i said uh honor the the scoring position which is you're i'm just there i don't want you to really hear me but i just want to be able to through your sonic apparatus aid you in this memory transfer or you know astral travel through the words so like i i come from like the african diaspora so the repetition for me is to just enchant you and so you can take in his words and i think the thing that chris and i do mostly or the most important aspect of the piece in conjunction is the space we're just trying to create a space for the words to exist in yeah enchantment is a really interesting word and very close to another word entrainment which is you know what it's it's a term from neurology but traditional musicians have cottoned on to this thousands of years ago that repetition works on the brain and changes the brain and changes the the state of mind and state of consciousness of the people who are listening to it it's a very powerful tool for both forms for music and poetry and even beyond music and poetry i think that it's a it's a very powerful tool for life and for humanity that you know that rep there's repetition in all of our experiences of death in a way or i mean we we've experienced i don't know anybody who has not experienced someone dying you know even if it's a grandmother or great-grandmother but also living writing this poem about these men during this time of pandemic and isolation was was interesting because nothing about it felt completely unfamiliar to me you know and i know that may sound weird but i i i wasn't there wasn't a moment that i was alarmist that i wasn't that i became an alarmist about covid19 and you know this is with all due respect all due respect to all the many people who've lost people you know um to this this terrible heinous pandemic but i felt like this this this notionality or this this this sense of danger was was already in my dna and uh and had been repeated over and over and over again and was in my father's dna you know adopted father adoptive mother biological father whoever he is biological mother you know on and on so i just i yeah absolutely well you know early in the poem you know the image of the the flower you know are you the same flowers that you know that died last winter or you know the the the whole circular repeating of right of life i mean we were also we were also we were it wasn't just a pandemic that we were experiencing when i was commissioned to write the peace but we were also dealing with the black lives matter movement right and so you had you know scores and scores and scores and tours and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people uh either passing by my house or um i found myself either leaving my house and joining them you know to to protest and you know you you begin to wonder you know it's that what was that what's that old negro song you know how long like you know like you know what i mean like how long like what we've we from the beginning of the century you know there was an anti-lynching movement um you know we we we moved toward a civil rights movement in which so many people were assassinated one of my favorite interviews with james baldwin when someone asked him you know why aren't you writing you know because you're really supposed to be a writer right now you seem to be more of an activist with a speaker and he said you know because they're they're killing all of my friends malcolm medgar you know um martin you know so so to have gone through that heinous period and to think that humanity hadn't learned or that we haven't learned something about uh who we all are and that here we are 50 years later still protesting still demanding still deciding that you know uh that our lives matter and and that there are also people who are like storming the pentagon or whatever saying you know or and and saying that and saying you know well our lives matter too like they like like you know as if they don't get what was really being expressed you know and so that that that that that continuum that continuum of struggle that continuum of explanation that continuum of having to say the same thing over and over and over again that continuum actually of restorative and regenerative architecture that we have to employ in order to survive uh for me finds itself into the pawn and i think it is the only way that john lewis and ct vivian were able to do what they did you know to be the great activists that they were um they they experienced the world in a way that i i would never i'll never know well we have an interesting question from one of our viewers um have the two of you michelle carl felt a momentum surge in civil rights awareness in your communities and also thank you for your brilliant performance yeah are you feeling serious do i feel a momentum search um but in that it be in that in that this particular protest was a global you know uh uh protest or or that there were other you know at the same time and that there were other countries you know all around the world that we could turn on the tv and we could not just see brown and black people crying you know but but we could also see people you know in asia wherever you know protesting that that was a a first for me but it was also uh i'd like to think that it somehow has happened before in some other way you know that that that globally you know humans have made you know that that kind of declaration um but i don't know that i think that there was a um what was the word what was the word used a surge i don't know if it was i don't know if i felt like it was a surge because i feel like to be black in america for me is you know we've been protesting every day you know monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday you know there's not a day that there's not a protest even if that protest is you know whether it's whether it's hip-hop or whether it's a conversation or whether it's a you know uh you know we're just talking on the street just shooting whatever or you know like just i mean i don't mean shooting with a gun but i mean just dealing with each other you know i mean the protest that we live you know um finds itself in so many different ways that i am no stranger to protest i don't think any any of us are not especially those of us who believe in freedom who demand our freedoms who want our freedoms um and who have been marginalized so that we have had to find a way to articulate how we want our freedoms which we shouldn't really have to do because humanity is humanity you know so that's no so i don't i don't know i think we i think we've been protesting for a long time i guess it's a sort of a community thing because you know i i found last summer when we were all being told to stay home that going out and marching through brooklyn as it happened was i i felt something new just just because it was just because it was it was we were being told to stay indoors and people were in their thousands were ignoring that and going out in the middle of the pandemic because it was the right thing to do right and it was a rainbow it was a rainbow coalition you know of people who left their houses and joined that movement you know what a great thing yeah but also i think a lot of people were if they were told to stay in their houses you know they were they were probably told to stay in their houses for fear that this uprising you know this absurd you know this this this uh surgeons would would uh you know would threaten would threaten their lives with the lives of their family or their property you know or their property exactly oh god they're gonna break a window you know which we did and you know what and i say so what it's like that's it not too you know all due respect to all the people whose windows were broken and had to get a new window but that has nothing to do uh with all the people who lost people yeah and were unable to get another one of the people that they lost so that's it's entirely different and that's what we were protesting to break a window is this it's a you know it is the slightest most minuscule thing that could be done in any kind of a um upsurge or upheaval of a moment so we've been talking among other things about repetition and this that there is michelle in carl's poem a kind of never the same river twice kind of feeling to it what about the music is there's there's literal repetition is there as much literal repetition as maybe i thought i was hearing or is it never quite the same thing twice huh it's never quite the same and nothing's the same way twice i'm sure things shift um [Music] but i want to i wanted to go back to do we think the surge you know or more people involved that's how i took the question is that right i think a lot of people more are more aware of the environment that has been created by by the by the last four years of a leader who just created an environment that i think uh it's hard to be apathetic it's hard to sit on the sideline and i am seeing that and i see a lot more people willing to be involved in situations and involved with people that they probably just would never cross their minds so i'm i'm i am excited about that the only the thing i would like to see a surge in personally is um sort of we've had a great distance from pain for a long time from i'll never understand i'll never what what john lewis went through i can't even fathom or with my parents experience i can't even fathom and those before me but when i'm i'm hoping that we have a surge in our ability to see that some things are in a loop that we should question some things are repetitive that should be more talked about or that that just that we might need to break that cycle in and um and that that's what i'm really hoping for that this administration this moment in time all this death that people are experiencing bill bryson says eventually your atoms will you know you know die and move on to become other things perhaps that's an interesting way to think of this all they'll cease to form and become different things and i'm hoping like i said this moment will just allow people to really ask themselves what's important you know what's important in their their community and in the larger picture that's the surge i'm hoping for more intimate conversations about that and that um pieces like this i hope people understand you know think i really am grateful to the lincoln center um it pays artists fair wages this has been a hard year for people who are you know live in the clouds and write poetry and so you know this uh you know i'm just hoping that you know just humanity will start to rethink libraries and museums and performance spaces and um we can all interact in different ways and you know and learn more about one another to sort of bridge that otherness that that that loop of otherness is what i'm hoping somebody comes in and plays some freeform jazz on it up a little bit i like to think of i i just like what you just said reminded me so much of what i constantly quote which is bernice johnson regan dr bernice johnson regan singer anthropologist activist and toshi's mom founder of sweet honey in the rock um you know what she said to me one time in in france you know there comes a time in your life when you discover an emptiness and you've had no thought of yourself as being empty and you've been operating as if you were not but it is there this emptiness and the moment that you discover your emptiness nothing hurts more than your emptiness except you're yearning to be full and that's when for the first time in your life and the first time with your life you search for a tongue a language a means of articulation i will and i've and i've i've always remembered her saying that to me and i've always remembered those words and how powerful i will take them with me to my grave and i think that that that we must all find a tongue a language a means of articulation in order to enact our freedoms however we do it whether it's through music whether it's the poetry whether it's through dance or whatever but you know but in order to do that we also have to acknowledge that that darkness right that we have to acknowledge the very dark place that we've been ignoring has been existent all along right those dark places even throughout our bodies that we've just been sort of skipping down the street thinking you know yeah i can get through i'm all right you know yeah right we'll be we'll be okay everything's gonna be all right that's all good everything's fine everything's not going to be fine you know and and when i say everything's not going to be fun doesn't mean i don't have hope for tomorrow i'm just saying that everything will be fine when you find a way to speak to what is not okay and which is basically what dr regan was saying and to do something about it right and i think that's exactly what john lewis did that's exactly what ct vivian did that's exactly what many people whose names we cannot name did um you know they found an articulation a tongue a language and they stirred up good trouble yeah that's right that's right good trouble good drum so um one of the things about this is that you know we we use these phrases in our language and they're not new but because of the changing context they become new and some of them appear in your poem i can't breathe take a knee these things have resonance and layers of meaning in 2021 that they didn't have just a couple of years ago and you know that's yeah and i was on purpose without being without being obvious about it you know like it i i didn't i didn't want to be you know it's a fine thing that any any any any any artist who cares about their work knows what it is to explore the intricacies of you know this one line you know or the you know whether it's the phrase how you phrase a note or how you you know how you paint that one line on the wall or you know where you might put this one word that may or may not be um perceived as having something to do with this moment that we are in but it was absolutely on purpose you know to say that where we were is where we are and as where we're going um so we do not die in several ways right our pain does not die our struggle does not die our yearnings do not die our need to understand who we are and understand each other should not die um the space that we must create in order to hear each other cannot die uh and oppression itself has not died so that's that's that's absolutely true well and it's interesting uh michelle to hear carl talking about you know that that line the shape of the law i mean that's that's your job as a composer right that's that's what every musician worth her his or her assault does is what's the shape of the line you know how do i how do i end this phrase i mean the the similarities between the two art forms is i mean they were at one point thousands of years ago a single art form weren't they yeah i mean the human voice and telling stories and and that is that's the universal you're right i mean i mean i know that's the glue yeah that's the glue yeah i mean i i think you're a great poet i mean i really do i mean i think you are an amazing poet and and and and i'm not saying that to you know i honestly i'm and i'm not the only one but you know it's a before we put a name before we decided to call you know poets poets or singer singers you know we've been exploring language and we've been exploring music and tonality and their relationship to communication um something i learned really uh in a great way like being in africa living in west africa for a period that you know it it made me strip away all of all of my you know sort of college education western ideologies of you know what this is what that is and what i thought i could do and what i thought i could not do um right down to uh even using my body to dance you know that everybody is a dancer everybody is a singer everybody is a poet everybody is uh everybody has a breath everybody has a sound that they can make um you know everybody so that's all we need to do we become the community that finds you know become the person within the community that finds your particular relationship to the sound and the movement that you need to make and nobody needs to be necessarily anointed as a poet a recording artist a singer because we all are right well of course the west african tradition of the jolly or the griot to use the french word what are they they are storytellers right poets musicians right town criers court historians right that's why i don't blow the i don't blow the lines and i never did you know between writing poetry and music and um or or singing poetry or you know i mean this this this particular poem i speak but i mean there as you know i mean there are many poems that i i i i would in tone or i would you know and and people would be like oh wow that's kind of interesting way he's he's sort of singing it and yeah and then and then you know i guess i would find myself actually completely singing some of the poems that i wrote it but it's all the same thing yeah so all the same thing have you uh have you heard michelle's version of uh the prince song uh sometimes it snows in april i mean when you were talking just now about you know sort of in toning and that i just suddenly flashed back on that magical performance michelle that you recorded shortly after prince died wow five years ago already hard to believe but you know that there is a poetry in performance as well that wasn't your song but you made it your song through the way that you felt it and and communicated it how do you do you do many different shows do you find you have to switch yourselves and your that's that's an interesting question um i only have the one self um you know i try not to put on another person um i i'm just i'm you know i think curiosity is a wonderful thing and i'm i'm always curious about people's process and you know which is why i ask you how did you do this why did you do this um and i think that as long as you have that because curiosity comes with it a certain open eyed open-eared sensibility so you know i think i think curiosity is a wonderful thing and i i think if people storming the capital on january 6th had been a little more curious about the people who six months earlier had been protesting across the street you might not have had that situation you know curiosity is is a very short step to empathy absolutely but who but i but i i you know i will disagree with you that you only have the oneself yeah because who you were yesterday signs proves this oh yeah yeah who you were yesterday is not who you are today you are one day older than you were yesterday um and so you are a different self uh what does that mean and what does it mean to how you express yourself and what you need to say or what you need to see well who you need to love or who you need not to love anymore and what you need not to love anymore you know what you need not to wear anymore and what names you know you need you know i'm serious you know what you know the words that were given us uh you know to to ascribe to things or ourselves or movements or whatever you know sometimes you know it's like i've always said the american polyglot you know sort of fails me it fails it fails me in the way that it it does not describe me right you know uh and that i'm in my search for words my curiosity like you my my curiosity is to constantly find words that help me frame me you know um because i'm and i'm always framing in a different way and that curiosity is always a different kind of curiosity right yeah he said that's so confident you only have the one so that's going to haunt you tonight yeah well that's what happens when you turn the tables on the interviewer and he is suddenly forced to dance for all he's worth i was just making that up as i went along so then you know that's not true right you know i'm like i'm thinking you know why are you doing it if she heard this i bet she questioned that his wife would question would oh i'm sure yeah but no i i'm just i i only ask that because yeah there's a as a singer or a poet or performance a performer you have to you have to engage with all yourselves in order to bring something to the moment that's that's that allows the other people to enter your space i think so the multiplicity of cells really is your consciousness you know and without getting too like because i'm sure people out there like but you know but but but you know this but we all we all are many we all have many selves yeah and and if you don't want to believe it in a spiritual kind of way you can just again like i said look at science which i do even in the poem you know you know look at science look at what science tells us we are never the same we are the same but we're not the same you know with the same things you think you saw yesterday but we're not the same thing you saw yesterday we're something else well uh that kind of brings us back to where we started and uh that seems appropriate somehow for um for tonight's proceedings here in the green space we've been uh speaking with carl hancock rocks michelle indiguio cello and listening to the baptism the second iteration subtitled rhetoric both versions have visuals by carrie may weems and folks who are watching if you want to check out both versions they are online you can see them and hear them at thebaptismpoem.org the baptism was commissioned by lincoln center for the performing arts i'd like to thank the crew here at the green space here in real life in the room with us thank you so much and christopher bruce who uh thank you christopher thank you and of course michelle carl great to have the two of you here thank you so much i look forward to seeing your next self yeah good night everybody good night yeah you

Channel: The Greene Space at WNYC & WQXR

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Id: KtlfSuVMLsM

Length: 65min 40sec (3940 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021