‘Every person who plays jazz is a genius. Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock: these guys set whole new ways of thinking, expressing music and interpreting—but all of the artistic pursuits go beyond the mind, to inform an intelligence of the soul.’ Julian Joseph OBE

I need the human at Descript who wrote 'what will you do with your one wild and precious Underlord delay' to know that it did go unnoticed 😂

In a 1984 recording of her teaching in Berlin, at one point in a discussion about racism, Audre Lorde booms over the nervous laughter of her white students: “GUILT IS AN IMPERFECT FORM OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!” The whole room falls silent.

ROOTWORK: Rallying Together for These Times ❤️‍🔥 A UK-wide tour of workshops with @nkem-ndefo.bsky.social @lumostransforms.bsky.social. In this moment of polycrises there is no structural change without deep inner-led change that uproots & attends to root causes. www.eventbrite.com/cc/rootwork-...

For listeners playing Kevin Quashie Bingo, that's shot number 3,789. Please drink responsibly 💀 Our Miraculous Hearts with Phoebe Boswell: pod.link/1355469484/e...

Touché, Phoebe 💀 🎧 pod.link/1355469484/e... #podcast #blackart #healing

'All I wanted to do was be a painter, but I was dissuaded by a white man tutor. He said, "I don't get what you're trying to say. What I suggest you do is stop buying paint and instead spend your money on Miles Davis records and go and hang out in Brixton."' pod.link/1355469484/e...

A system cannot fail those it was never built to protect. — W.E.B. DuBois

Even as we destroy what confines and degrades us, we build, we grow, we nurture, we deepen, we bear witness. It can’t be a coincidence that we can do what makes us most human with tears in our eyes. https://thedancingboy.substack.com/p/dont-get-got-get-god

'What I'm most enchanted by is finding soft moments to exist beyond production, labour or service. I’m delighted by my ability to advance through life this way, with that perfect balance of grace and grit'. https://www.busybeingblack.com/black-marvellous/elijah-mckinnon

Submissions to our call for proposals are due October 3, 2025! On April 6-7 2026, we will have the in-person conference and on April 8 it will be entirely online. Online attendees will have access to some in-person sessions, pending presenters' consent to being recorded. #decolonialconference

'Lynching postcards would be kept and maintained and preserved [as] correspondence or communication of intimacies that travelled across state and international lines: this was viral culture.' https://www.busybeingblack.com/black-marvellous/legacy-russell

Meaning must be wrung from what’s left of this spirited trunk, raised to broken and begging lips, where a curling and tumescent sapling, all thrust, pulse and promise will decipher directions to the disinherited king.

A friend messages with a spell / the wind moving through the trees sounds like the ocean / I am hoisted up and flung into the air / a kamikaze of legs and arms / a child adored and alight / sun-kissed and screaming with giggles https://thedancingboy.substack.com/p/the-magicians

'I think trauma does things to you that are non-linear, and with all the best intentions, and all the will in the world to want to learn from the lesson, you still find yourself putting walls up.' https://pod.link/1355469484/episode/YjNjNzg2YmEtOTZlYy0xMWYwLThhZGEtOTczMWIyNmY2NjU2

The children, possessed with their survival and rabid with betrayal, covered themselves in the blood of the complicit, set alight what was left of the pretences and disappeared into the woods. https://thedancingboy.substack.com/p/the-end-of-days

Her decision to illustrate herself in willow charcoal on the walls of the gallery was a gesture of trust that I found difficult to comprehend. I couldn’t understand myself as just as delicate: to my mind, I deserved my pain. https://thedancingboy.substack.com/p/you-must-surrender-your-armour

When Phoebe Boswell learned that 95% of Black British adults don't swim, she invited couples, friends and family members to hold each other in the water. Their courage called her back to her first love. https://pod.link/1355469484/episode/YjNjNzg2YmEtOTZlYy0xMWYwLThhZGEtOTczMWIyNmY2NjU2

just as you begin to feel you figured it out / you will harden into stone / boy-cum-comet ablaze / and you will plummet / and they will weep for you / in the valleys you felt so trapped in. https://thedancingboy.substack.com/p/wild-horses

Just in: a tender meditation on grief, healing and courage with Phoebe Boswell, a multidisciplinary artist creating portals that return us to our miraculous hearts. pod.link/1355469484/e... #busybeingblack #art #podcast

A good example is my good friend @busybeingblack.com www.busybeingblack.com

giving youtube a shot youtu.be/ck_LblMibhM?...

"We Are Rehearsing Freedom" is a tender and enlivening conversation about the potential of the Black radical imagination to help shift us out of oppressive landscapes and towards just and dignifying worlds that affirm Black aliveness. #BlackSky #BusyBeingBlack 🎧 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

This time of year can be difficult for many of us, so I’ve pulled together a Spotify playlist of Busy Being Black conversations called “We Are Divine.” The goal is to remind you who tf you are and that you are not alone ✨ open.spotify.com/playlist/7M7...

"Intimacy finds its ultimate expression in all the forms of surrender human beings find difficult to embrace." – David Whyte

"WHAT ABOUT BLACK CULTURE IS BEING SUSTAINED AND COMMUNICATED IN [AN ARTISTIC] GESTURE IF IT REQUIRES US TO FOREGROUND WHITE CULTURAL ICONOGRAPHY?" #BusyBeingBlack #BlackSky open.spotify.com/episode/2oBC...

This comment about Busy Being Black has made my day 🥹😭 "As a Black queer person, I still wrestle so much with knowing my worth in this white supremacist, anti-Black world but it's these conversations that uplift me and make me feel so seen!" 👉🏾 open.spotify.com/show/1sMQ0Tk... #busybeingblack

“I want to be like jazz. I want to be alive and to be flexible and fluid and queer and curious—and to be ugly. I’m having such a good relationship with ugliness right now. I no longer want to perform morality.” 👉🏾 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b... #busybeingblack #podcast

Brilliant thread ⚡️

I was also stunned to learn that one can purchase a 15-year license for lynching photographs via Getty Images. The “Add to Basket” button under these photos is a little too on-the-nose for me: the auction block has quite the afterlife 🫠 #AddtoBlackSky 👉🏾 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

“Images always live inside of other images, and every image of Blackness is also bound up with the carrying of so many other images of Black people. The responsibility of that is huge.” — Legacy Russell 👉🏾 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

Today, I'm #BusyBeingBlack with Legacy Russell. We explore her book, #BlackMeme, a timely investigation into visual culture that helps us appreciate and reckon with Black people's role in shaping the modern world. Available now wherever you listen to podcasts ✨

I feel very grateful for Nikki Giovanni. Among much else, she provoked my favourite poem out of me, and she has taught me so much about the irreverence of everyday life. She will be missed and honoured. Rest in power 🤍 #AddtoBlackSky #NikkiGiovanni #Poetry

“Images of arrested people who were innocent of any crimes are still being stored in a police database that may be used for facial recognition purposes, an official report has warned.”

"There is no single regulator for a private health-insurance company, even when it is found to be violating the law. For United’s practices to be curbed, mental-health advocates told ProPublica, every single jurisdiction in which it operates would have to successfully bring a case against it."

one thing i love about @busybeingblack.com (and there are many) is his ability to quote multiple sources in one breath. he is the blueprint of "read another book"

Dagmawi Woubshet illuminates how political funerals during the AIDS crisis serve as an eloquent blueprint for how we confront death in the face of shame, stigma and governmental neglect: with a fierce political sensibility anchored in a longing for justice.  #WorldAIDSDay #AddtoBlackSky

"The persons who have the privilege to touch a particular industry may not have a relationship with a community, but they may be made a spokesperson—and sometimes a community doesn't need a spokesperson: they can speak for themselves." #AddtoBlackSky #BusyBeingBlack

In my conversation with curator and scholar Maleke Glee, we explore the spiritual and percussive traditions of go-go music—a genre and sonic landscape native to D.C.—and how initiatives for Black inclusion within the art world often stifle Black vernacular cultures. #AddtoBlackSky #BusyBeingBlack

In this lecture I talk more about that Anthropocene judgment, its relation to the Zong case and what the foregoing tells us about the nature of law and its capacity to protect human life and the earth upon which we currently precariously survive youtu.be/a4QiiDHs6_4?...

I want to be like jazz. I want to be alive and to be flexible and fluid and queer and curious—and ugly. I don't think Black culture has privileged our curiosity in things that are not overtly morally astute. I no longer want to perform morality. Maleke Glee #BlackSky #BusyBeingBlack

😍🚨 @irrnews.bsky.social is looking for a Deputy Director to help develop its next phase as a radical, uncompromising educational body, which "thinks in order to do", so as to eliminate the violence of state and structural racism 🚨😍

His mind’s refusal to reveal the root, stem and blossom of his desire to live was a debt finally repaid. He had earned a way to protect what could be violated, even if it meant he wandered the grand halls of his vacant world haunting his own existence with his questions.

'The readiness to repudiate identity politics & group them under “bad woke” is less about policy and more about the fact that social justice never really found a home amongst liberals, who were happy to capture its energy but not its demands.' The week's column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Trained in the mechanics of bioengineering and empowered by the imaginative possibilities of photography, Mikael Owunna's artistic practice conjures queer Black people as embodied reflections of the black and brilliant cosmos. #BusyBeingBlack #BlackSky

In my conversation with Farzana Khan, the tender titan leading Healing Justice London, we explore the importance of attending to our grief, mobilising with an improved class consciousness and the transformative work of extending ourselves to each other’s aliveness. #BusyBeingBlack