16 August 2024, Arteles Finland
MD: This is Melissa DeLaney and it is Friday, the 16th of August 2024 at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. And I'm joined by Arisa White. Welcome. Thank you.
The first question is, beyond your name and your locality, tell me who you are.
Arisa: I'm a poet based in Maine, USA.
That's a question that makes me pause. Yeah, because I'm here and an artist, community poet comes up. And it comes up not as a sort of artistic practice. Yes, but it also is a way of being in the world and experiencing language in a defamiliarising way, as a kind of haptics, as a kind of spiritual scoring, as a dialogue with my environment. As a way to connect to God. So being a poet is my human experience that allows me to tolerate systems that may estrange me from that humanity.
I am also a sister and an aunt. And these kinds of familial designations are all about relationship and a way of being mirrored and thinking about how to care for and be cared for by others. I'm also a professor, a teacher, and that has taken me some time to embrace, in part because it has taken time for me to embrace what I know and don't know, and becoming comfortable with those ways of knowing so that I can share it with others. But I'm quite excited about those ways of sharing what goes on intellectually and emotionally, and how those things get translated through my body and into language.
MD: That is incredible. Thank you. Within some of those experiences that you are having here as a poet and all of those other elements that you've talked about,
How are you thinking that's going to translate when you go back to your routine and your life away from Arteles?
Arisa: I am learning to be more in the quiet parts of myself. The moments before speech, the moments before action and elongating that. That was one of your words of the day. And creating that space so I can just inhabit whatever it is I'm doing, whatever verb I'm being. And a different kind of way. So just making this a quiet house for myself to arrive in and practice nothing. And being comfortable with nothing as the starting point for everything. So yeah I think it's just this calming down.
I've been doing so many different things and extending myself in so many different ways. So it feels like a retrieval and things are coming back to me. Parts of myself are coming back to me and I get to say hello and ask, what is it that you have learned? What is it that we can better integrate? So it's just a matter of creating more of those quiet spaces and not being pressured to fill it up because it's its own filling. It has its own contours that require attention. Also thinking about how to share it, how I can pedagogically offer silence to my students. How I can offer the quiet to my sweetheart. How I can be more comfortable with my own non-speaking. But also knowing that I'm a part of this ecosystem that is taking me in and I'm actually contributing. I don't have to be in this state of action. Action doing, doing, that my presence is also an action.
MD: Yes. That's beautiful. My word for today is connected. So that's really relating to what I was thinking in meditation this morning, or what I was experiencing in my walk. So connected, very much flows on from what you were just talking about.
Arisa: And the connection just feels so juicy and nourishing and it gives a lot when we're just still.
MD: The next question is multi-stranded. It’s about you, your personal self, also your personal self in relationship to all of those aspects of your life you've talked about and then the broader public.
Let's talk about your own personal perspective first.
What's the first thing you think about when you hear the term care? In relationship to you?
Arisa: I guess, it's not a thought. It's more of a feeling like When you said it, I just felt hands on my chest and on my back. As if a person is sort of cupping my whole heart in a way, from front to back. And it also says it's quite emotional. I sort of feel some tears coming up, but there's that sense of having presence that's in front of me and behind me. And I feel I feel guided and I feel protected. I also feel listened to. The rhythm of my being and aliveness is being held and considered and that is being communicated through that touch. So it's a kind of touch, a touch that's sensitive and gentle and, and is willing to journey into a kind of dialogue with my body so that I'm being met in such a way that really meets my needs, um, needs that I may not have language for. But through this relationship of touch, we come to a language that allows, I would say, like the both of us to do healing work, reparative work. Um, imaginative work. A care that doesn't feel static but is dynamic and adaptable. It's living because it wants you living.
MD: I'll take a drink of water after that one.
Arisa: I'll have some tea.
MD: Mhm. Wow.
That's an incredible. Incredible experience. There's incredible depth to that concept of care.
Tell me, in relationship broadly in your own life, what's the first thing that comes into your mind when you think about care?
Arisa: Well, I just started a relationship, and, um. and it's so amazing because I just started a romantic relationship, I must say. And it's so amazing because I never thought that, like, a dream could come true, that we are each other's dreams. And for so long, just kind of living in this very capitalistic, binary driven world where there's this constant separation of the imagination from reality, and then kind of growing up and being told, I'm too sensitive and I need to get out of my fantasy and get into reality. This feels like a meeting of that. Those worlds are coming together in a way where I feel that I recognise the lies that I've been operating in and the way in which that has wounded me.
And brought me into places where I was continuing patterns of behavior that caused me harm and created harm in the relationships I were in at the time. So to think about love in this way and a way that is both analytic, it's a practice. It's this overflowing of water and the chest. It makes me want to be better and show up and to give the whole parts of myself, like everything is a kind of possibility for planting and growing and nurturing. Once again, it adds a sparkle to the interconnected nature of ourselves. I feel like I'm in this ultimate care of me because I said yes to breaking trans generational patterns. Personal patterns. Breaking this belief that dreams don't come true, that we cannot have what we want. And that wanting not in this entitled way. It comes with hard work, with an understanding that you don't get what you want. You know, like it's not about being willful and and pushing yourself onto others and, and forcing your energy into the environment. But it is an acceptance and an allowance and learning to listen to all that's going on around you so that you can receive it when it comes. And it often doesn't look like what you expected, but your eyes get refreshed by it. You see things in a new way, and that newness peels back the old layers so that you can show up in these ways that are attentive. That doesn't make you afraid to touch another because you've made them another you've made them monsters. You've cast this abject experience on them. So now there's distance. But, something just feels so magical about it. Like this. This sensation, so subtle, is touching all things material and all things dense and and it's like more than hope. It's like. It's godly. It's you recognising that your universe in conversation with another universe and together and collectively, we can fuck some shit up. We can agitate, we can frustrate. And all of that is a process of making new forms come into emergence.
MD: Wow.
Arisa: So, yeah. I'm in love.
MD: Yeah. That's a beautiful, crazy, gorgeous kind of love.
Arisa: Yes.
MD: I love the two universes and that dialogue. I love the breaking apart of something that you saw that was a lie. And that was always alien to your experience. And you knew deep down that that was a lie. And it's still happening. My hair, my hair are all standing on edge because it's the truth. And it's really easy to sit back into losing that dream and losing sight of that truth. But I'm so glad that you're experiencing it. That's really, really incredible. And the work that you talk about does not work as in hard slog or pushing or the Lucky Girl syndrome or something like that. It's much different to those kinds of versions that we're told about on that surface level of relationship. Wow. Congratulations. It's beautiful. And I also love that because that's the dream as well, as that person, because there are multiple, multiple opportunities for us to connect with other humans and to have a relationship of love centered in that together. I love that idea of the agitation and doing something together and those kinds of things of what you do in relationships. So the power dynamic is bringing something together. That's the power dynamic that you're creating together. Is your power dynamic not two individuals clashing against each other. What is this? What's the triangle that we're creating together? So the relationship is a triangle with two being the edges of the triangle and making this thing together.
Arisa: That's so true. And becoming like a foundation to build that third thing. Yeah. That power, that field of whatever.
MD: Yeah yeah.
Let's go to the public, the broader public. You can take this as your own public engagement or broader, beyond you, the world and society.
What is the first thing in that sphere that you think about when you hear the word care?
Arisa: I think about my students, which is interesting. This, you know, this kind of it's new. I mean, for me sort of being a professor, I'm with a college recently tenured.
MD: What are you teaching?
Arisa: I teach poetry writing. Creative writing. I'm doing what I love, which is great. I didn't have to compromise in that regard. I came into this sort of job and I kind of paused because there's a certain way in which a job just feels like your life. But this position where I was honest, I was truthful about what I could bring, and that was received openly. And I didn't want to do anything else besides poetry.
I stepped into the truth of myself. And because of that, I get to activate it more and more each academic year. I'm there. And that activation brings me out of my personal little bubble into a community, into the community where the college is, into the whole state of Maine, actually. And but I feel very rooted there, where I get to practice bringing all of my interests together, poetry writing, thinking about, somatics and how Somatics can enter into my teaching, thinking about performance and theatre work and how we can take our words off the page and and bring them to the communities around us. How can we make our language material? How can we see a poem as a kind of happening, as a space to enter into, as an experience that is not just about sitting and reading, which is also important, but also is a kind of movement. So in that way, I feel like I'm caring for the mind and bodies of the next generation and giving them the permission to feel, to make mistakes, to use those mistakes as generative, as opportunities to create and see something differently, to practice being fearless, to practice being in kinship.
With their messy, funky selves, with the messy, funky selves of other people without trying to shut it down or make or just impose their opinions on other people. So for me, it's that sense of public brings a sense of how to carefully be with, alongside being attentive, noticing the patterns, like understanding the power of one's language, as it's scored inside of you and and as it comes out of you and the impact of that. So there is that kind of care. That feels a kind like kind of cautious and gingerly, but it's but it's kind of the way in which my body shows up to tenderness, to tend the tenderness that is the experience of learning and opening yourself up to new ideas and new states of feeling and learning how to surrender to those those states of of feeling and learning in such a way that frees you to recognise that everything is a classroom. Everything is living, and it's a library and it's teaching and it's not happening in.
These walls are with a diploma or a degree. It's more so like, what are the degrees of openness that I can facilitate in myself so that I can model that for those who are in my classrooms.
MD: Absolutely. Yeah. It's really important that you are also a resource that you're replenishing and nourishing. So then you can take that out into the world as well. That's a really good way to teach and show people. I love that your ways of communicating as a poet, working with words is beyond that as well, because there are so many different ways that we communicate beyond our written word. We feel it, the somatic thing. We experience it around us. And being able to tune into that and then articulate that with your students, raising their sensory experiences as well, so that they can read the world in different ways.
So again a two strand question, one about yourself. We'll approach ourselves first and then the bigger picture. So this is about the future. And the future could be any time frame.
How would you like to see more care enacted in your future?
Arisa: The first thing, I think … I'm a recent resident of the state of Maine. And Maine has an elderly population. And there's a lot of geographic sprawl. I grew up in New York City, Brooklyn, which is kind of like…growing up in the city, I was able to move around freely because of public transportation. And when I moved to Maine, I was like, oh, my God, the state doesn't care about its people. There's no public transportation.
The winters are long, and driving can be dangerous. And I'm just thinking, where are the buses? Where are the trains that go up and down the state? And just ways to connect that's not about getting in a car. And most of the time I'm driving alone. So that's kind of like the first thing that came to mind is this, like infrastructure. One, we're not using so much gas. But those moments of public transportation, I think, taught me to be a poet, to be a writer, to get comfortable with people in all sorts of ways and to expect a certain kind of intimacy. Even though it's anonymous. But it's like I'm sitting next to shoulder to shoulder with someone that I will never sit shoulder to shoulder with ever again. Or like people, little kids who fall asleep. And next thing you know, they're resting on you and then you're caring for them in that moment of rest between train stops or bus stops, or the way that when a pregnant woman or an elderly person or someone with a visible physical disability comes on. We stand up and we offer our chairs and or holding the doors open or someone's running to get on the train. It's these moments of public transport, of us moving from one place to the next, when we are caring for each other in these very small, subtle ways. And even folks who would come and dance and ask for money, we offer what we can. It would be a sandwich or some coins or a candy bar. Or yes, I can help you raise funds for your basketball team. And even though in the back of our brains we're like, they're going to use that money for God knows what. We still believe in this moment of supporting each other. However, if we choose to turn away, do you feel that turning away?
You feel yourself shutting down and saying no. And you have to be with the discomfort of that disconnection in that moment when someone's asking for something and, and so and it's because of that closeness. It's thus on top of each other, that you experience all of that sense of connection and disconnection. Even then, after New York and then moving to the San Francisco Bay area in California, same thing. Arriving at a place where there's very limited public transportation, I realised, I don't get to know the people, like, just in this arbitrary way. I get to choose who I'm going to interact with because I get in a car and I go to a place, and that's where I'm going to be.
I'm choosing to be around those people. But when I have to ride the bus, God knows who is going to be sitting next to me. Those encounters are those moments where so much happens. I learned so much. So immediately, I want to get involved with building Maine's infrastructure when it comes to public transportation. For me, that’s kind of the most immediate, immediate thing.
When I go beyond that, the anxiety starts to happen where I don't. I start to feel like I'm enough. Everything's so big. But when it's like home, when it's neighborhood, when it's state, I feel like I can contribute. I feel like a citizen, a part of and capable of creating change. I'm also thinking of, I'm from a large family. I'm one of seven children. And so I'm just thinking about how my siblings and I, how can we all grow old together? Because we grew up together. and in some ways, I want us to return to that in our elder years.
MD: That's a nice thing to think about. I think that that's a theme as well in terms of the work we do within our communities and ourselves. It's always bringing it back to the local, because that's what's in our power. That’s the same for us as individuals. This is what we have presently in the present moment. This is it. Yeah, all of the other stuff does exist, but somewhere else, not here, right now. And then it feeds out like that. That's what is in our control. Or not in our control. But that's what we see and that's what we experience.
I enjoy that idea of you thinking about that local infrastructure and what is lacking there and that beautiful story about public transport. I love public transport as well. And being out in public In Melbourne. They've got a great public transport system, the trams. And when I was in Adelaide I used to catch the bus and nobody caught the bus, but when I caught the bus I realised who the people were. Ah, these are the people. And then one of my happiest experiences in my life was being on the subway in New York. And it was just because I was on the subway in New York, and I just could not stop smiling. I was such a newbie, but it was such an incredibly beautiful experience. A person actually followed me off the subway because I was smiling so much and asked me out for a drink.
Arisa: Oh my God, that's so great.
MD: Because I was just smiling and so joyous. And it was only because I'm on the subway. This is amazing. I'm so happy. Yeah. So all of those moments,, I think they're really beautiful. And the way that you talked about those factors of care that happens in those spaces. There we become human and we're in these contained spaces with other people. And it's really heartening, actually, because it's a natural system of care that everyone's looking out for each other in some way. Um, and it's a natural thing. Nobody's forcing you to behave a certain way. The infrastructure is designed. And then as humans, we habitate these spaces. And then how do we habitate those spaces? We bring those aspects of care and community into those spaces quite accidentally. It is a system of care. I really love people paths, when local planning or architects build a path or a building. So they build it as an infrastructure with their idea in mind, but then the people come into the space and might start walking that way instead of the path they've made.
Arisa: Desire lines.
MD: Desire lines. Right. I love desire lines. And that whole concept of, well, the space has been built and designed, but now we, the humans, will decide through our desire lines how we're going to make that space activated.
Arisa: Yes.
MD: It’s like how we as humans are inhabiting that world. So thank you so much for today. Thank you.
Arisa: This is great.
MD: Is there anything else before we close off that you'd like to add?
Arisa: No, just thank you.
MD: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much I loved this…