Embracing Slow, Intentional Living and Creative Regeneration

In this warm and meandering conversation, Gazelle and friends explore the beauty of slowness, the art of finishing what we start, and the messy magic of regeneration. The dialogue unfolds like a cozy late-night chat—full of laughter, vulnerability, and unexpected wisdom.

Highlights:

• The Power of Slowness: Gazelle reflects on the joy of stretching (both physically and mentally) and the importance of "closing" projects with as much intention as starting them. "We’re so afraid of things ending," they muse, "but closure is connected to the opening of something new."

• Dissertation as Release: Gazelle describes submitting their dissertation as a physical and emotional unclenching—like giving birth or finally exhaling after holding their breath. The group laughs about academia’s paradoxical blend of obsession and obsolescence.

• Healing Through Creation: A poignant moment arises when Gazelle shares how shifting their mindset—from "dance as performance" to "dance as feeling"—transformed pain into healing. "Sometimes," they say, "you’re so absorbed in the feeling, you don’t even notice you’re hurt until after."

• Regeneration ≠ Capitalism: The group critiques superficial ideas of "regeneration" (like gentrification) and champions a deeper version—one rooted in patience, unexpected joy, and trusting intuition. "There’s no competition when you trust intuition," someone quotes Cleo Sol, sparking nods of agreement.

Why It Matters:
This conversation feels like a balm for our productivity-obsessed era. It’s a reminder that creativity thrives in imperfection, that healing is woven into the work, and that—as Gazelle puts it—"the unexpected changes... have really changed me."

"The closure of something isn’t just an end—it’s what lingers"

Read Transcript

Gazelle: I've never done this before, but this is really cool.

Sheila Chiamaka Chukwulozie: Welcome

Uzoma Orji: Sorry about all that; we have about 30 emails in the thread.

Gazelle: I know. So funny

Uzoma: Thank you for making time and space for all of that

Gazelle: It’s so fine. I'm so excited and can't wait to discuss this with you guys.

Sheila: Also, your name is so beautiful.

Gazelle: Oh, thank you. And so is yours; Sheila is very rare in Nigeria as well.

Sheila: I think Gazelle is even rarer. Like Sheila, the Indians when they find me…always have to remind me of the song like “oh my god, do you know?” I'm like, “I do know that there is a song about Sheila ki Jawani who is too sexy for you.”

Uzoma: But who is Sheila Ki Jawani? I’ve never had this.

Sheila: She sang the song called My name is Sheila, Sheila Ki Jawani. I’m too sexy for you. And they always, like- A lot of Indians I meet actually let me know, not all Indians, because I'm not racist.

Gazelle: That's quite a sick name.

Sheila: Yeah, I know. And I watched her video, and she is actually quite sexy. And I'm like, yeah, I’ll take it.

Uzoma: I am gonna check it out.

Sheila: Yeah, check it out; she's actually quite big. Like, she's actually a big celebrity, or she was a big celebrity.

Uzoma: Oh wow, okay.

Sheila: So, Gazelle, how's your day going?

Gazelle: My day has been quite strange. Like, we stopped half way, I'm moving—I sort of like, temporarily moved accommodation to stay at my friend's sister's place because someone in my house is isolating because of COVID…dropping like flies, not literally dropping, but you know, like, temporarily droppin. And so I have been moving and trying to like, sort out Wi-Fi. And just like generally, like quite boring tasks. So it's not the most like glamorous and exciting. But it's also fine. It's just a Monday. What about you guys?

Sheila: Wow, I almost forgot it was a Monday.

Gazelle: It was giving me like Saturday energy, i’ve been getting quite sleepy. What about you guys?

Uzoma: Man, I feel like every day for me is sleepy unless I decide to not have it be sleepy. So yeah, today feels sleepy but in a good way that I don't mind it. Yeah, yeah.

Sheila: Today feels for me slow. Slow, just because I'm at home i am thinking it’s slow. It’s not slow, I've actually been up since like, seven. And then I stretch because I am trying to work on my splits.

Gazelle: Oh my God, how’s that going?

Sheila: Thank you. Like, trying to learn how to be a pole dancer without doing splits is like— what did I say? like being into digital humanities and not being a gamer? I'm in both identities. And I just think one of them needs to like quit, and I’ve had enough so I am now working towards it. Working towards|now I'm not putting myself under too much pressure. But it feels nice to know that like I'm intentionally working towards it. Then, I had to do— I've just been trying to close things more. Instead of just working on just new projects, I'm intentionally putting older projects first. Like I want to work on new things at the same rate that I'm closing off old things. So I like that I've been banging those things out. And then I had, I've just had meetings from 10, so I've actually been very productive but because I'm at home, it feels slow. So I think trying to rephrase why being at home almost feels like I haven't been productive and I think about the facts that I'm like all you’ve done all day is produce my dear.

Gazelle: Yeah, that's really that's what keeps me on so many levels because like this year has been my year of stretching… I feel like I actually just love stretching. I’ve been trying to like, work out my splits as well. I feel like all that stuff. But actually, like… quite chaotic here. And then also what you said about intentionality, about finishing things, or closing things as well as opening up new possibilities and I’m so Afraid of things ending I think. And we're actually just, like, but you don't realize how much closer sometimes next to the opening of another thing, or how we have to kind of like integrate that more whatever kind of practice you’re doing. But also, just being okay with that transition phase as well, while your kind of ending, but also beginning something else. And letting something end because you have something isn't this like, “Oh yeah, I've written this thing. I've done this project, like whatever.” Its actually; what is that lingering thing that project gives you about? That episode in your life, what is it that stays that is also important? Yeah, I really feel that a lot. I think there's something I'm trying to work out.

Sheila: I think for me, it's not even fear. I think I used to maybe have more of that but it's actually quite, it's more boredom. When something is in the middle— in fact let me not even say boredom, it’s more that the work is the work of carrying the logistics of something from start to finish, that middle ground where there's no excitement of “oh, this is what it could be!” It's like, this is what it is now, we're too far into it for it to almost be something magically different. So we have to either choose to follow through as we thought or end it now, like not go through with it. So I always have to, I’m kind of left in those— in that point where I have two decisions to make, either to make it like something, whether it's not the thing I wanted in my wildest imagination, it should be something or it should be not more than an idea. And I think I'm just trying to move things more from idea phase into tangibility phase, and just watching the difficulty, but also practicing that attention span and knowing and I think it's just important for me to know how much it takes to get things through so that the next time I'm called to say yes to something, I knew or I now know what parts of my body is going to be extended for this. So I'm going to really have a better way of measuring whether I'd say yes or no, and also valuating what my gains should be.

Gazelle: Yeah, that's really interesting. I really like the phrase… I think is what I'm also trying to get to which i think, I've had maybe a couple of times in my life, but when you actually have something that came from inside of you or around you, and you can actually like see it and it's real. And it's like…really difficult to get there, we underestimate that. But also, is like the underestimation can create that feeling of like—shit, I need to give up. I need to take on something else as initial spark of like, yeah, like we could do this. Like, it's amazing. But it's like, sticking through something with the imperfections of it. I was gonna say, well, I really like how we're all having this like, sort of like transnational like, sleepiness, like slowness and I feel really comfortable with this weird like murky, slow, imperfect temporality with you guys. Nice.

Uzoma: I feel like that's what we try to center in the way we approach working and you know, just conversations and thinking about stuff. Because there's a lot of emphasis on the opposite of slowness. Yeah.

Sheila: So, how would you describe yourself to my nephew, he's three. And oh my god, he did the cutest thing yesterday. So we're watching American Dad. And then the song came on. And all of a sudden, he starts singing along. It’s crazy. I know it sounds normal, but like we've never heard him like sing along to anything on TV. Like, we don't even know he knows that many words.

Uzoma: I'm stressed that it’s American dad of all things.

Sheila: Me too. But his dad loves American dad and anything Seth Macfarlane. And his mom as well has also learned to love it because they're married and they watch similar things so you can see the sense of surprise and also pride on their faces when their son started singing along. Then they were all singing along like one happy family. I don't even know the lyrics to the song.

Uzoma: Yeah, you’re not among

Sheila: But yeah, I think watching children or toddlers in that way is like— there's a surprising intelligence Like they can actually follow some pretty complex things, but they also don't understand some very basic things. So describing yourself to someone who's three in this situation is both easy and difficult so good luck.

Gazelle: That is really interesting question…I'm gonna try to just it's adjacent like this really easy to overthink answers, like, try to like come up with some really, really…one i thought of was “lover of vibes” I’ve just finished writing my dissertation, which is actually something really close to me and i’ve been thinking about…vibrations as a kind of metaphysics and thinking about how they sort of include ideas of like, absence and presence. Disturbed dualities, and like ways that we think in ways that we can like be with each other, like around the world and reading it through these novelists and through other theorists and stuff, and a bit of like, Sun Ra sort of section, thinking about his work quite a lot. So I say that I really believe it. I literally just had a conversation about rhythm before I came here with some friends of mine. They just think that I'm really someone who loves how really the pace of things, they shape how people are with each other, and responsive to changes in that as well. So I say a sensitive lover of rhythm and vibes is how I'm feeling about myself.

Sheila: Beautiful, i would let Ira know

Gazelle: That’s exactly how I’ll describe myself. But um, sorry what were you going to say?

Uzoma: I was going to ask how your dissertation went. I was meaning to ask that earlier.

Gazelle: Um, how did it go? So it definitely went. It definitely happened. I don't have a qualitative answer, I don’t at the moment. It kind of feels like there was something in my mind or something in the spare of my body. And that thing has kind of dislodged itself. But I think it's almost like this thing, but I still have like, thoughts that I went into it. But it doesn't feel like it's mine anymore in the same way. It feels like it's gone. Which is a nice feeling. It feels like, yeah, it's its own thing.

Sheila: Did you feel like you were constipated with it?

Gazelle: I definitely felt like I was pregnant. It definitely was like you said, it definitely… when I'm quite stressed… I could be such a groaner. So many late hours, looking into my laptop, groaning cuz I need to get this out.
Sheila: When you're talking. Yeah, sorry. Just based on what you said. Now, I have just realized that sometimes education feels like an opportunity for us to exchange ideas.

Gazelle: Yeah.

Sheila: To put out because you could just be carrying that forever. You could be having this idea but you went into a program and then it’s like you submitted yourself to this prison to get something from it. Why do we do it?

Uzoma: Do you think everybody sees it that way?

Sheila: I'm curious as to how Gazelle sees it.

Gazelle: That's really interesting because I was actually just talking about this to people I was chatting to before I came on this call, about how trying to, in some ways work out the reasons why I wanted to go into academia and the way that we get socialized into it from a young age which is like “Oh, you're good at school, you’re quiet..you like to read like that's who you are. Okay, now, we want you to succeed because if you don't succeed here's all the terrible things that could happen to you.” And where your parents who love you and family who love you want to prevent that from happening. We want to show that we are good family. We want to raise kids in this way” (but this is quite a cynical reading of it. There's another side of it, but I'm just kind of like following this one trend of thought) And then you grow up and you're like, “Oh, I'm really invested in this. I love it, It brings me so much joy. But this is what I have to do.” Which is like this is a really punishing academic institution, which forces you to, which makes you feel like work is a form of sacrifice that you have to make to get something at the end of it. So you feel as you're like, you have this carrot in front of you that's being dangled all the time. And it's just like, just push a bit harder, just push a bit harder, do it, do it, do it, get this idea, get this idea out. And then you get it out, and it becomes this, there's almost like an obsolescence to it, which is kind of sad, because there's something about the way that our culture moves when you get rid of something. And then it's like, onto the next thing, right? or it loses that initial value and importance that it had. I’ve been thinking about ways, going forward ways to, lose that sense of sacrifice or that sense of suffering in academia, like creative work, where it's not about you needing to do something, to prove yourself to someone else for it to be worthy. The work comes from somewhere, like connections and relationships that you have. But I think I'm still in the early stages of thinking about that. But I do want to actually invest a lot of time working out something that doesn't look…. just like these artists I love— Her name is like…And I was actually really interested in her work, like at the start of 2020, and stuff. And she wrote that she’s trying to make art in a way that doesn't hurt her because she's, the same. Like I just like, actually so meaningful, because I think a lot of us do things that does hurt us you know. Oh, yeah, I guess, because that’s how it’s supposed to feel but maybe there's other ways of doing it.

Sheila: It's such a big shift. I remember when I was about to do my thesis because I was a theater and dance major in college. So my piece was going to be a mix of both ,I knew, somehow. And then I started having day nightmares. And even just nightmares where I would, like, be in a car. Then I would look down and realize, like, I had no legs. Yeah, so I started having those nightmares. And I realized that I was panicking because the year before, well, I guess months before that, I had slipped my disc. So I had a really bad back pain. And I just, I knew that my body wouldn't be the same. It’s funny because now I take care, I take so much better care of my body because I slipped my disk. When I realized that my disk had slipped, I knew I couldn't actually take my spinal health for granted. And a lot of things have unfolded because of that. But anyway, I told my advisor that I was so… I think I'm really worried about how my thesis is going to go. And then he said, “Okay, how do we make something that's going to heal you? Instead of harm you.” I went back, and I thought about it so much. And I was like, oh my god, the reason I was having these dreams, actually, was that I've always thought that dance was something that was supposed to take from me. I'm kind of a trickster. And the more tricks that I can pull that other people can't pull makes me a better dancer. So, actually, doing things for showmanship makes me… show that I work hard. I was thinking more about the performance of dance than actually the movements embedded in dance. Like I wasn't putting myself, I'm not supposed to care about how I feel to be a good dancer. I'm supposed to care about how I look and how it looks. And just changing the rhythm of that allowed me to free myself when I was like if something was hurting so bad. And it's not that there was no pain involved… During the rehearsal of the performance and spraining of my pelvic hip and cheekbone, I sprained my toe. All sorts of things happened during that, but they didn't happen because I was doing something outrageous. They didn't happen because I was pushing myself based on how I looked. I was getting to a feeling, and sometimes, I would need to do something that got me there. And because I'm so stuck in the feeling like I'm so absorbed, I wouldn't even know I was injured until after the performance. The way the story fulfilled something in me gave me so much back that healing, in fact, was so easy because I was already healed before I started healing physically, if that makes sense.

Uzoma: Yeah, yeah.

Gazelle: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Uzoma: I think this story is really beautiful because it connects so many things on so many levels. I think it Connects what we were saying earlier about slowness and the need for, you know, taking a step back and trying to like divest from the pace of things generally. And I think it also connects to like the questions Sheila and I have been asking for so long. And Gazelle, when you say that these are things you started thinking about and considering, I feel like these are things that were all like generally like we're all, we've all just started thinking about. because we're now starting to really feel the effects of just doing things in a way that harms us. Yeah, maybe we increasingly learned that this status quo is kind of weird for I feel like now is really, it's really coming to…like the questions that we've been asking in our research have revolved around reverting to a model and a way, just, an approach to doing things that honor, that’s more embodied, honors our health, like mentally and physically. And so, I’m making this comment to say that, you know, I feel like the collective consideration of these questions is like, “What is going to save us?”. And I'm always glad to hear that it's like being thought about and reproduced in so many ways for so many different reasons.

Gazelle: Yeah, that makes me so happy as well, to know that you're thinking about this too, because I think that the act of thinking is also a form of creation, where even what you were saying, Sheila, about getting so deep into the feeling that you don't realize your hurt but it feels like afterward able to attend to your wounds in a more, actually healing way. The fact that you are having to think about this is because of some kind of hurt or some kind of pain or suffering that you've experienced— doing that also enables you to create, enables you to regenerate and to grow and have more kind and generative with practice with yourself and with the people around you. And it's really, really exciting that so many people are gonna be doing that, thinking about ways that you can share or give back to each other in the future. And…

Sheila: You mentioned regeneration, and my antennae peaked because I just loved the concept so much. I think it's just one of the most essential truths. And so, just recently, I guess, in your work, your practice, your dissertation, your personal relationships, like, what do you find most confusing and also most rewarding about the concept of regeneration?

Gazelle: That is a really great question. Oh my god I am having so much fun. So I’m just gonna get that straight. So the thing that I find most confusing and most rewarding about regeneration? Ok…I’m always confused, I always feel like I'm counting problems that I'm trying to work out and realizing that there’s no solution but also whatnot, as well as maybe most important, but Okay, so the thing I find most confusing about regeneration… I think that I find it most confusing in my personal life, my research and creative things that I want to do is that like— there isn't a route to regeneration, that there isn't a place that it nests, it doesn't make a singular place a moment where it starts from and then echoes out or branches out that it can happen in all kinds of premises and small places and nodes of things and places that we didn't know any wouldn't expect to look for. Because I think that regeneration, okay I am gonna give an example of kind of a world leaping around me, which is, let’s say there’s a place that's has disrepair, that a building is falling down that and the government will be like, “Oh, yeah, okay. This is a slum.” Like the way to regenerate it, is to get loads of investors get loads of capitalists to like, basically take over this area, ignore all the people, people's lives, the history of that place, ignore everything that it's meant for the last, fucking 1000 years that it's been there and then just build this new thing over what existed before, okay? And that's regeneration. And that's the way it's used quite a lot in the normal day to day life all over the world. But that's not what regeneration is. Regeneration isn't about moving something from one place to another. It's not about a fixed movement or a fixed change. It's about the different strategies of coexistence and care and support. And, finding beauty in places I wouldn't necessarily, tend to look for that exists, mostly that is what is kind of confusing, but also like really liberating about regeneration. And then, what I find really rewarding about it, I think, is teaching kind of like patience and thinking about again, sort of going back to this temporality thing of, yeah, it's just something I'm currently trying to work through, but it's like looking back on my life and looking back on the past three to five years or whatever. And realizing how much has changed, and how much I could never have expected to know that would change and that being really important for me because it's not the thing that I necessarily would have, like, wanted to say, “oh, by this time, this will happen. That would be like, me set or that would be the concrete thing that would make my life better, easier.” It's more the unexpected changes and the unexpected moments of beauty or joy or excitement, or pleasure, or even pain that has really changed me. And I think that is, it's like being patient that those things will always be there, that those things will always come as long as you're following the sort of instincts or the spirit or the internal voice, whatever you want to call what is within you and is within everyone else, just like the world recognize what the world is. But yeah, that's basically it. That’s my answer.

Uzoma: Rock paper scissors for who talks.

Sheila: No Uzoma, go on.

Uzoma: I just remembered my favorite Cleo Sol lyric. I love Cleo Sol, she is amazing. There is this, I'm trying to remember the exact words: “There's no competition, when you trust intuition, you win.”...Yeah, something like that. I feel like that speaks to what you just said.

Sheila: I think there is a version of self-belief, which I can, in my own self, I can substitute for intuition. That is just it doesn't like greed. I tell people that, like, every time we experience excess, just, let's say, in food or drink or smoke, whatever it is, I just feel so bad. Like, my whole body is just irritated at what is going on, and that's part of why I either want to throw up or I'm on the toilet because my whole body's like, what did you do? as in, I'm stuffed. I need things to flow in and out of me. But what you've done is that you've blocked everything. You’ve gone ahead, and you've eaten with your eyes to consume this thing that I guess you've been craving, you've been waiting for. And the anticipation has actually killed your or our ability to savor something. And that's why I love Shakespeare's words which I brought up many times but I still continue to not know the name the particular name of the word that he created, but the meaning is basically a moment that after a long period of anticipation and you satisfy yourself of something but the moment you are the most satisfied is right beside the moment you are most disgusted by the thing and it's a feeling that so many people have and it's like why do we get there? is it that there are certain things that make us feel like this? Was this also just right next to our disgust of them, or is it that our concept of contentment is so broken that we’re most satisfied when we're closest to being disgusted?

I think it is somewhere there in the second thing you said, and that's the problem with desire, or that’s why desire can very easily become a problem. And it's like how much emphasis and worth are you placing on an external thing? that disgust is a factor of how much emphasis you're placing. And it happens because you aren't, you're not supposed to.

Uzoma: What do you think? Gazelle?

Gazelle: I think it’s so interesting, going back to the body, I really like, like, that muscle they're using and like the bodies. But also.

Sheila: it can be, it can be.

Gazelle: it is both things. Or like multiple things. But yeah, like how I'm trying to, I had this idea, which I didn't really follow through with, classic, of like setting up a diary where i just write about everything that happens to my body in one day and doing that all the time. The reason I can't do it is because I'm not consistent enough at anything to be dedicated to the practice, but…

Sheila: maybe you're consistent with inconsistency.

Gazelle: I was doing that because I wanted, I felt that there was this kind of moments of union where the body and whatever, my intuition is just so connected, we believe that because of the way that like society works, and we are socialized into dividing both of those things all the time, and that maybe by like writing, all the stuff that happens, I can really see what my body is trying to tell me about everything else that is going on in my life. Right. And I think that moment when you feel so full, and you feel so like, constipated or you feel so like blocked or stuffed up or something is really like a kind of…and also, it's connected to the pandemic and like what's going on now of like breath of like people actually congestion that's like existing around so many places in the world right now, but that’s also so tight, the kind of enormous inundation with wealth and objects and products and everything that currently exists. And I don't think, I don't know, if it’s a mistake that we're experiencing both of those parallel at the same time, that there's something about the enormous, the enormity of what capitalism has rubbed on the palette, and also the very physical manifestations of it in the back of, our breath. Or its darkening of things that are so vital to our life. And so, I think those two things exist, like so close to each other. I think it’s so spot on. We become, we lose the feature, become disgusted by the things that are supposed to satisfy our most supposed deep-seated cravings and desires and this idea that desire doesn't have a limit, which is so.

Sheila: Yeah.

Gazelle: is like what capitalism definitely gets us to believe which is just like, there will always be another favorite combination that we need to make this one specific.

Sheila: When we even say capitalism, I want us to even be more specific sometimes. Sometimes when we say capitalism, I imagine some white guy in a suit but capitalism most differently right now is my mother, or my auntie.

Gazelle: Yeah.

Sheila: these are very Igbo women in very Igbo ways. We're not very much alike so that makes me sometimes. even though I understand how deeply capitalism has infiltrated society, I still see some things that they believe because their mother made them believe it and they believe all of that was, you can trace it back precolonial.

Gazelle: Yeah.

Sheila: Some desires that are also oppressive aren't in the nature of capitalism. oppressive because I think sometimes people aren't willing to share a world where different ideologies exist, because as well sometimes it comes from a place of love in quote, or really concern not really love but concern, where having a husband and children has changed my life so dramatically. It has made me so much happier and I worry that you're actually not as happy as you think you can be. Because while I thought I was happy, single and childless, I'm telling you that now that I have children, I am so much happier. So it's like, I want my child to be as happy as me, like, I get worried when my child is not as happy as me. So I think sometimes there's that extension of self over another self, where it's like, i mean people do it to their children, they do it to their friends, even. Like, I've known you since you were born. I've known you since you were a kid, this is outside you. So how is your life Do you find that? Maybe it's going back to your dissertation. That the vibration? How can you say that the vibration that you're on Is your new rhythm? Or it's out of your essential rhythm? How can you tell the difference?

Gazelle: That was a very good question. And I think you're right, when we talk about, I'll start with that first. Like when we talk about like capitalism, of that, there is this idea of like a white man in a suit who's just like working like Wall Street, or whatever important financial burdens existence, as well as calling all the shots, but really, I think that's why starting with the body is like such a good example. Because there's not really, necessarily what decisions that person is making. It's how I feel like walking down the street, or what happened when I walk on the street, or when I meet someone or day-to-day, really minute everyday reactions that are your world and compromise how you're made to live or how you feel or what forms of life are possible for you and problems that’s possible for every person that exists, trying to displace the totality of that as capitalism is actually what is quite fragmentary or what is quite ephemeral, or changing or shifting according to different places at different times at different speeds are so important. And I really love that you brought that, countered that right now. But going back to that question of vibrations, and there's this negative, that being an essential vibration and then being like, so it's a vibration that's more continuous, that's more flexible, that's kind of what you're trying to say, like, the beauty of vibrations for me or what I was trying to talk about in the dissertation. Like the sun rail quotation, I thought about a section with a kind of talking about twin vibrations. And it's a thing that in the title as a side doubling, there's never just one vibration, there's never … a vibration that can never be singular, there's always be multiple, it’ll always exist alongside multiple temporalities, always engage, and change people in different ways. Always be like, it really resists that, like, a kind of mono, conceptual, singular framing of things. And because it's also moving into the sphere that I think is the most important, which is the body, it's like you can wake up feeling good, and next thing you know, you're literally in a hospital or like, just that is like quite an extreme example. But like, so many things happen to us through our bodies every single day. And it's five vibrations engaging with what is most continuing what is most changing about what it means to be a human being or what it means to be alive. I think that there's something about it that doesn't suggest that the characters and novels or like the situations and stories novels are trying to write about what we're saying is that there's a power that we have to shape and shift and alter reality and to alter what is around us and by tapping into the kind of vibrations whether it's in language or it's in like music, or it's in the realm of a car or something that we're generating new energies, new ways of being and there's also, that’s also interesting as well, because it kind of goes into more recent scientific research or quasi like scientific and philosophical research, which is like looking at how theories of resonance and how resonance creates consciousness and how a thing can have consciousness because of the way they're able to resonate between each other. And resonance is a form of communication as vibration is a form of communication. also thinking about, even ancient philosophers who thought that like the world was, kind of rhythms of others are connected to like, the larger universal movement of the spheres and how and I think that creates this like imaginative space where as cultural practitioners in whatever form, we can access the vibration that exists and alter them and change them.

That's what I mean; I guess it's like has kind of meaning by being a lover of vibrations, which is just something that sometimes connects to everyone, but also you have this power to transform it and technique it means you'd say different things. I don't know if that really answered your question, but that's what made me think.

Sheila: It does. I love that answer.

Uzoma: Yeah, as always, like, I'm taking everything in but Two things that have just kind of lodged themselves in my mind. I think what you were saying, Sheila, about really understanding, you know, some of these words that we throw out about capitalism and stuff, really understanding how, in many ways, it's not just the white man in the suit; there are so many sorts of implications there. Also, just like the idea that the precolonial or the ancestral is not necessarily this, past utopia or whatever like, it's worth interrogating as well. Because that tends not to the narrative

Sheila: It were so perfect, it would never have changed.

Uzoma: That’s true.

Sheila: This is hard to hear sometimes is that if it was so perfect, it would never have changed. But there's a reason why, again, some places were even tricked by just contracts by just talking because there is a space where things can be improved. And when someone suggests something that's going to improve something you might take it or you take it and you think it might improve, not like knowing that nothing about is that utopia. And that's also what's so painful because sometimes that's on the fact that that utopia will always reside in the imagination. In fact, we need the utopic to actually wizard in imagination, so we can imagine so that we can actually have dreams because imagine a life without dreams.

Gazelle: Yeah, that is so, oh my god. What? Okay, so I’m just gonna say all the things that made me think about. And I completely agree in the sense that there's a narrative of this perfect past or utopia that existed in Africa before colonialism. And that came to ruin and destroy everything and what kind of, but it doesn't actually exist anywhere else, but within the imagination, but that's also precisely its power, not the kind of future which you might not also be that utopia, but will allow us to think through the problems and the questions of the now, which is the whole point to me, which is also kind of ultimately why I was trying to argue my dissertation as well, which is that, freedom is not complete, this idea of a mythical normative thing is not true. But what is powerful about fiction, what is powerful about the imagination is the ability to creatively reconsider, intervene, alter what is and show how it's almost impossible from what is not from what is not here yet, from what could not be. And I think that's what you're saying about something being perfect and something changing. What is true is change. And so the enemy is something that's so fixed as to be perfect.

Sheila: Exactly. That might have even been What made the pastoral, ancient or ancestral way of being seem like even perfection is that there was probably more room to dream I always say, if you think about how, when challenges… one of the things I'm currently obsessed with is that video about like this woman that's just singing, I'm about to go lay down. And then people add, like their own like harmonies on top and on top.

And by the end, there's like a pastor that's preaching from the book of Ecclesiastes about laying down to rest. I love it because that is….

Gazelle: Please send that to me.

Sheila: sorry, I will, I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. That's what I connect to on an ancestral plane is that even if we may not be living a singular perfect life, we're all living very diverse Okay lives, p with improving upon them separately. There's always something we're changing. There's always something that we're tweaking. And then I think where the colonial idea came is that actually we need to stop tweaking in small circles? is one everlasting answer. problems. Yeah, exactly.

Gazelle: Exactly

Uzoma: I feel like this is where we keep coming back to, so Gazelle our we read arrow of God together a few months back, and there's one. There's like a little passage where the main character isn't who's talking about according to things, I can't remember exactly what he was talking about, even though I keep using this example, but he's like, holding two things in his hand. It’s like a proverb almost, like a phrase that he keeps using? Or that we keep coming back to that? How do we hold two things in our two hands? Like what we've been told is that like, you don't like it's the one thing are you protect and you guard then, again, I think is what you were thinking about, like vibrations? How do you how do you hold two things? and then also, as you were speaking, Sheila, i was thinking about, isn't as the answer to the question about satisfaction and disgust, it is that utopic, that striving or whatever, it’s like the conversation we had about perfection as well, you know,

Sheila: an incompleteness

Uzoma: An incompleteness, exactly like striving for perfection. How much suffering is it causing?

Gazelle: Yeah, I really, really feel that as well. Like, the image of perfection or the idea of perfection, my ideal state, just totally eclipses other realities, or other ways of being, the way that the colonial message really was that, yeah, we are on this universal march of history. Everyone, you're behind we’re at the front Okay, we're gonna like take you to also not gonna take you up at the top that you're supposed to be on the bottom, but there's an image or structure of everything that's supposed to conform to this right? So we’re gonna destroy all the parts that look like this, we're gonna make everything here look the same we're gonna raise all this ground we're gonna…

Sheila: Like, what people can get high? ban marijuana. banned, burn it to the ground.

Gazelle: Those really tie into drugs as well, if you haven't really spoken about that

Sheila: Yes.

Gazelle: And also, this idea of like, disgust at satisfaction, or like, this ordinary lesson of disobedience attached to like drug taking, is also this idea that you are not within this particular pain of reality anymore, you are not performing to discover, like I was like, okay, no, we need to really discipline also, it’s interesting as well, really thinking about opium and drugs and colonialism and the way that the regulation of those substances, and the tail of them was accelerated, like colonial capitalism that exist in now, and still does in lots of other subtle ways. And even the kind of like the moral economy of all of this as well, which is just so much about putting that onus on the individual, so much on your moral responsibility to act a certain way, when your entire structure around you is like so violent towards you, people who are poor, people who expect all these things and I think, yeah, it really goes together. it’s like seeking that image of perfection, but actually, ignoring all the things that are really wrong.

Sheila: This is a really interesting point of this conversation because right before I came in, I was looking at the psychedelic clinic, I think, in California, and I just learned that on June 1, there's basically the first level of being okay with individuals having psychedelics, like not be illegal, like mushrooms and MDMA and stuff like that. And it's a very complex conversation for me because there's some… I was just telling someone the other day that I think that sometimes when I see friends of mine on particular drugs that I don't feel welcome in their arms because I just feel like their soul is gone, like it is missing. Because the next day, when I see them, I don't recognize who they were; they don't even want to acknowledge who they were when they were on drugs. And that makes me worried because anything that to me like, when you search for itself that you want to reject. It feels painful. People do that through relationships, they do that through alcohol, and they do that through drugs. But then I also know that drugs are not just one thing. Crystals are not the only drugs to take. There are so many different… in fact Panadol itself is a drug like people who are fine, then they’re all just drowsy. I don't even want to see you because I say one thing, and you’ve fallen asleep? Like, that's not my friend. what I don't like as well is when people will say things like, oh, yeah, you know that people, people die from drugs. People die from capitalism. Have you seen how many people are in the hospital for stroke, like, from their blood vessels being blocked, because they literally do not know anything but worry? worrying is the main fuel for so many companies like shout out consulting, y’all know y’all run on worry, for certain. And it's, it's confirmed, like by the kind of work that they do, and in fact, not working. Not Working gives you the anxiety that you will be preparing yourself to work in that worry environment. So you have to keep working so that…

Gazelle: Yeah.

Sheila: You don't remember how to not worry. Because if you remember that there's a state in which you can exist without worry, it doesn't feel good. It reminds you too much that there's actually another opportunity to live on less. And that's not something you want to do. So I just think that, for me some conversations about certain things, we take out the conversation about excess or restraints, or balance where it's like Is it a conversation about drugs? Or is there a conversation about the value with which you approach something that may help you or harm you?

Uzoma: Yeah, that's, I feel like at this point, I also because we're getting to the end, i kind of wants us to… I really liked and enjoyed what Gazelle said and appreciate it, …about the sort of like your body journal. And I appreciated that because it's such a, it's so practical, it's so okay, you can start doing this. And I feel like, you know, when we have these conversations, practicalizing them is one way for them to sort of like percolate into your life and your spirits. And, I'm just wondering if, you know, thinking about worrying, for example and just like, you know, the goal to exist in worry less state even within capitalism.

Gazelle: that is like, that, is it?

Uzoma: it sounds impossible, but like it is, it is possible.

Sheila: isn't that anti anti capitalist Sometimes? Because when you get to the capitalist.

Uzoma: Anti-anti?

Sheila: yeah, like, it seems anti anti capitalism, because sometimes when you get to some anti capitalism camps, there's like, silence is violence, you should not be silent, you should not just be living your life, you have to amplify this, you have to be thinking about this, you have to be thinking about that. And it's like, Am I not allowed to be called in?

Uzoma: That's why I should like, shoot itself. I will shoot his violin and get some time. And it’s like that’s the aim of holding two things in your hands. Holding multiple things that can do. forms of anti-capitalism don’t have to be does have to follow these scripts.

Gazelle: Yes, like one thing doesn't necessarily have to cancel the other out. But it's learning how to attend to both of them even despite their contradictions. Yeah

Sheila: So what value do we need to hold to make that true in our lives?

Gazelle: That’s a good question.

Uzoma: I think the values can manifest in various ways that can sometimes be contradictory for like the efficiency of them is that they are all being held by some people on some level.

Sheila: So, like, what?

Uzoma: I'm gonna do examples 130 contest

Sheila: That’s what I am thirsty for, for those suggestions or ….

Uzoma: Okay, so some people say silence is violence. But what if like me not being silent ….

Gazelle: What do you mean about silence is violence? What do they say it at, and what do they mean?

Sheila: They mean it. So if something happens, let's say in Peru, they need to amplify it. Yeah. Become silence is violence. Like, for instance, It was very popular with the George Floyd situation.

Gazelle: Yeah.

Sheila: And I think it's the question, of course, of, well, am I? Are they talking to me all the way Nigeria? Yeah. Or is that just my own imagination of me wanting to join the conversation? Is it on me to reject that? Or is it on them to say, actually, not you guys, I am talking to Americans?

Uzoma: Yeah, I also remember during that period that in the midst of all the silence is violence and speak up, there was an acknowledgment of, self-care in that period, and if engaging with this news felt like it was too much for you, then you also owe it to yourself to not do that. So it's like, what can you do? It’s also like ENDSARS? Like, can you be out on the streets? Go out on the streets can be on social media, like just play your part. And I feel like we are all cosmically configured for balance, like everybody has to balance Everyone else out. And that's why it is dangerous, in my opinion.

Sheila: Yeah, well, how do we close this?

Uzoma: Gazelle, do you have any thoughts at this point? I was asking the question earlier about practicalities to ground this conversation. If you have…

Gazelle: practical things to go on with conversation?

Uzoma: like, in line with the body journal, that type of stuff

Gazelle: okay, yeah. I'm thinking, so like, yeah, just thoughts that popping into my head based on like, our conversation, the word give is like coming into my head. And I was like, saying a lot of likes, Oh, so can do it to say, give us thinking about, knowledge, or care, or what we do in the world as a gift that we give each other and not as something that the world takes from us. And the way that the gift is the opposite of that, or the hopeful opposite or reversal of that, but it's not about the transaction it’s not about the exchange, it's not about. it's a difference of time to get any form of reciprocity. And the way that creating things or doing things can be a way of giving to one another. That’s what we need. And that’s like the first thought that comes into my head is, what can we give each other? What do we need? And also asking, if you go from a question of like, what are the practical things that you can do to create a sort of new vibes or son there’s like, the question of like, what do we actually need? What can we do away with? What do we not have? I feel like questions Obviously lead to more questions. They were like a practical thing that we could do. I’ll definitely think about it, and if they have any more ideas, I will message I will send them. what is something I am actually trying to do now?

Sheila: Stretch more

Gazelle: I’m definitely trying to stretch more yeah.

Uzoma: That’s a big one yeah

Gazelle: Trying to drink more water. But I'm trying to start a project about lgbo women and their lives and their histories and thinking more about it on a historical level and a creative level as well.

Sheila: Amazing

Gazelle: Going back into, like, the cosmology of things. As all that really made me think a lot when you mentioned that this at the end is about because my dissertation is also about cosmology and stuff and just thinking about what we can learn from the different cosmologies and different ways of framing understanding the world and bringing that into contract, writing or music or whatever that we do. Maybe that can be a practical step, but thinking about stuff like that. Trying to find out new languages for things, new words, new ways of saying things, maybe that can shape how we consider the world. Why does this word not exist in this language? Why does it exist in this one? What can it be thinking about it from this perspective? Yeah, I was planning off your dance time saying things like that. Going on a walk getting lost. Just the Yeah, so that's my dance. Okay, yeah, that's those are my questions.

Sheila: Thank you so much, because this has been a very exciting conversation.

Uzoma: It has

Gazelle: Honestly, I've had so much fun. It's so nice. I caught up with you guys. I've learned so much from both of you. And honestly, mind blowing.

Sheila: Same great, great have a beautiful day

Uzoma: Thank you.

Gazelle: Thank you you too. Sending you slow healing vibes

Uzoma: Amen

Gazelle: We’ll get to chat or do something again. Really nice.

Uzoma: Yes
Gazelle: Bye.

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