Embodiment Hour Tomorrow @ The Stoa 12pm-1pm EST ~ Summer of Soul
Join me tomorrow to feel into the Questlove documentary that is rewriting the past and opening up new possibilities.
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow we’re back at The Stoa for Embodiment Hour, a weekly practice of feeling into a piece of culture or news together to make sense of the world for ourselves, together.
Please come. It’s a beautiful and moving experience. You can share, witness your emotions, learn something about yourself and others. You can speak, hold space, or just observe. It’s an open invitation to anyone curious about how embodiment is an essential tool for navigating changes and knowing how we really feel about what’s going on.
In these sessions, we put aside our stories and conceptual understanding to really feel our way forward. It’s a different way of digesting media and culture. We’re not looking for a mental analysis of the content; for ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. These judgments might emerge, but they will come from a deeper sense of what is true.
We’re noticing how the cultural content we take in works on our emotional body; how it works at the level of sensation; how it moves us. So much of this happens without our conscious knowledge and that is dangerous. We can be manipulated when we can no longer FEEL how the media is working on us.
We are living in a time where media frequently has an undisclosed agenda; where big journalism is owned by commercial interests; where corporations have a heavy hand in politics; when sociopaths have scaled the hierarchical rungs of power and are working diligently to influence our minds, our hearts, our pocketbooks, and our votes. We must be extremely attuned to the media we consume—be able to discern the intention of the maker, the veracity of the content, and how we stand in relation to the story being told. Is it one we resonate with at the deepest levels of our being? Or is it one that seeks to knock us off our center?
When we feel a piece of culture deeply, when we give it our attention and tune into it with our full awareness, we understand more about the piece, but also about ourselves—who we are as a culture and what we stand for. Because culture-making is world creation. How does our culture reflect or support the kind of world we want to be a part of?
Tomorrow, we will look at a new piece of culture about an old piece of culture that was nearly forgotten—a documentary—that is changing the story of who we were and as a result opening up new possibilities for who we can be.
Tomorrow: Summer of Soul
The Academy Awards ceremony will be on March 27. One of the most talked-about films up for an award this year is the documentary, Summer of Soul, directed by Amir "Questlove" Thompson. I saw it a couple of weeks ago and I am still high, still revisiting the images and performances…still dancing.
Aside from being a well-crafted story, the project has a fascinating and important backstory that the film also investigates. Basically, the festival drew zero attention after it was over, while Woodstock, which happened a couple of hours up the road was heralded around the world for being a watershed, generation-defining cultural event. Not to take anything away from Woodstock, but the film grapples with this central question…why was this “Black Woodstock” forgotten? Nearly 40 hours of footage of incredible performances by some of music’s biggest legends—Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Sly and the Family Stone—went unseen for 50 years. The tapes literally sat in a basement and the folks who had attended the festival all those years ago said they’d begun to feel like maybe it never happened at all, maybe they’d made up this magical experience.
Well, it’s being seen now. Questlove has unearthed an important cultural artifact and the film makes the case that this literally changes history. You can almost feel it happening as you watch it. I found this lovely interview with Questlove on NPR. It’s brief (11 min) if you’d like to hear him discuss it. This quote because it captures the essence of his WHY for making the movie:
I think it's important because oftentimes when we talk about civil rights, you only see our pain. You see the bloodshed. You see the dogs attacking us. You see us hosed down. You see us getting shot and in jail, mired in violence. But Black joy is such an important component to our story. And without that, we're not seen as human.
Like, a lot of America's first views of us are just watching us in movies and watching us on the news. And that's how they form their opinions. And without really, truly getting to know us and really empathizing with us…
Tomorrow we’ll watch the trailer for this movie and perhaps a clip. I believe it will be a beautiful experience to fully take it in together and to explore the wide range of emotions it will evoke in us. And to explore the question of who makes history and how we can change the future by changing the past. Yes, we are changing the future right now when we include more and more of the past. And this is a beautiful piece to include. Watch now if you like to be prepared or save it for our shared viewing tomorrow…
As always, Embodiment Hour is open to both Patreon subscribers of the Stoa and paid subscribers at The Art of Emergence. I will send the link to any paid subscribers separately. If you'd like to experience a session before subscribing, message me directly (schuyler@artofemergence.com) and I will share the link to you for a trial.