Embodiment Hour @ The Stoa Tomorrow at Noon EST ~ Kendrick's Lamar's The Heart Part 5
Kendrick Lamar's latest offering, the first since his 2017 Pulitzer-prize winning album, DAMN, hits hard with radical empathy.
Dear Friends,
I hope you’ll join me tomorrow at 12p EST for the next session of Embodiment Hour @ The Stoa. Last week I hosted a creative ideation session and it was well-attended. I loved hearing about the experience of participants thus far and also generating ideas about how we could improve the format. If I had to summarize the feedback, it would fall into 3 categories:
Time and Space - We need a little more time and space to digest what we’re watching or taking in. Maybe we could have more time for sharing or maybe we watch the stimulus piece twice to really have the opportunity to feel into it. It felt to some participants like we were trying to do too much in the hour, and I agree. This week I am going to make some minor changes to simplify the process and hopefully that will feel more spacious. I am also playing with adding 15 minutes to the experience so it’s a 75-minute session. I’ll make that call soon.
Aptitude and Capacity for Feeling Deeply - Together we recognized the challenge of hosting a deep feeling space for people with very different experience-levels in terms of somatics, empathy, embodiment…It begs the question, is this a 101 or 201 level course? I like the idea that it could be both, but we’ll see how this plays out over time. For now, I will continue to keep the invite open to anyone who feels curious and called to come.
Don’t Change Anything (Yet) - We also surfaced some anxiety about change! (Classic for humans, no?) Some folks really like what’s happening and want me to keep leading us into the unknown. I also like that plan, so I will do that.
I am so grateful to have heard your voices and to have made that space for us to feel into what this wants to become together. I am getting to know many of you better and feeling so kindred in our shared desire to feel more, feel more precisely, and learn to share our experience skillfully with others in ways that are healing.
Come tomorrow and we will continue on this unfolding journey into the heart of feeling everything ;)
Tomorrow: The Heart Part 5
Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. -- Matthew Trammell, Pitchfork
On Monday Kendrick Lamar’s The Heart Part 5 was released along with a music video. It was a notable cultural moment because Lamar is an important artist (considered a genius and a prophet by fans), and fierce advocate for and commentator on culture, especially Black culture. In The Heart Part 1 (2010) he stated his mission clearly: “I make a way for my people to see the light.”
I have been a hip-hop fan all my life, though I was late to knowing about Kendrick. I learned of his music when his Pulitzer Prize was announced in 2010 (probably when many white people learned about him). I remember the moment: I was driving, listening to NPR, when the announcement came through that a rapper had won for the first time, the prestigious award. I felt a wave of relief and curiosity. I knew it must be something special and it was.
I listened to DAMN start to finish while walking through vineyards in Sonoma, California. My surroundings could not have been more different from the world being conjured and animated through the music, but I was totally absorbed, transported. Where? Into the Black American experience. And I was so grateful; so grateful to be offered the chance to understand better. I cried. I felt fear. I felt rage. I felt passion. I felt prayer. He gave us a full spectrum experience on that album.
Tomorrow we will watch the video. It uses deepfake technology to morph Lamar’s face into the faces of oft-criticized and maligned black celebrities including (in this order): O.J. Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant and Nipsey Hussle. He speaks as them and for them, offering us an access point to empathy. Here are the lyrics in case you want to read them (I have several times). The song moves fast and it is very dense.
As always we will watch with attention to the feelings it provokes and evokes in the body and emotional body. We will then have space to share our experience. Please join if you feel called to witness this piece of art and take it in together through this unique process we’re pioneering here. I look forward to being with you.