Stirring: A Long Post After a Long Week

During the past two years I have mostly avoided social media. I switched to Instagram (because pictures) and also to Twitter (because academic news). One main reason I left other platforms is because I felt I lost the power to curate my own feed, and when I friended everyone it means I got bombarded by posts that I may not necessarily have agreed with. In short, looking at FB made me crazy mad, so I had to shut it down. This also means, unfortunately, that I have become too shy in expressing what I am thinking, that I became hyper aware of my presence and overly curated my own posts, knowing they weren't for me but for others to like and comment on. Consequently, I started this blog, not because I need a platform, but because I needed a way to write through my thoughts and my life, to practice putting these thoughts into public because as a PhD student, part of my role is to make public my thoughts, my scholarship. This is perhaps the irony of my life as an artist, I hated to publicize, and now here I am in another life where I absolutely must publish, or I will perish.

Needless to say, the past week's events have been stirring inside me. They have been stirring and scooping up my experiences in the Netherlands, and contrasting how American politics and European politics are so different and also so very much alike when it comes to matters of race. Last night, it was as if the nation's collective mourning turned into the Michigan skies and let out a giant cry. Giant hail, inches of rain, down trees, power outages, and whipping wind, came smashing through the middle of the state. And because my mind was empty with grief, I thought, "I guess I don't need to water the plants" and then I cried.

I am often between two worlds, one as a woman of color, and one as a privileged white woman. This makes me extremely self-conscious. But it also gives me the ability, in part, to understand the powers I have to know marginalization and express that marginalization to those who don't experience it. I can switch, I can pretend because I'm ambiguous. But I'm also aware that my ambiguity marks me. I am always aware of my positionality. And because of this positionality I feel compelled to write something, however I know that often the best way to say something is to listen. This morning, I decided to listen to a professor here at MSU, and this is what she said. While I am not in the same position she is, I felt her post said a lot of the things I think about yet am often unable to put into words.