Where do all the unborn babies go.. who death comes in womb or shortly after breath, or those who pass premature--suffocated on pavement, found floating on the Hudson, whose wail never heard but still whistles in the water, unnamed & thrown overboard. I heard there's life in the bottom of the ocean. That there they call spirit Black; that Black is always rebirthing; that they dead living; right there; down there;  that there, in the bottom of the ocean, to sink don’t mean we die. 

"Down In the Deep" explores the life that exists in the bottom of the ocean, a location void of light and often relegated to a space of impossibility of occurring life. Here, coral co-conspires with algae and phytoplankton, and they know the bodies that rest there, they show reverence for Olokun--the keeper of souls, who is still down there & keeps on keeping. And Tahlequah is still carrying her baby across the waters like Emmett’s casket is still open & we still want the world to see their/our grief. Lady in Blue, who “usedta live in the world” anchors the photo as a recognition that “we don’t have the luxury of surface”. This image allows me to think through the histories of these various forms of life (particularly within the domain of bodies of water), and how their wisdoms may have been shared amongst each other, and how these ancestors inform my connection to myself and the land around. 

In the piece, “Dub: Finding Ceremony”, Alexis Pauline Gumbs offers up an ontological and epistemological standpoint that speaks to the interconnection between ancestry, Africanity, and marine life, and suggests that coral, whales, and other sea life are ancestors of the diaspora. In an excerpt she states,

 “tell them about the whales. and how they swam next to us singing. how they breathed sometimes bigger than the boats. what they taught us about evolution. how they clicked sometimes louder than the chains. how they taught us to make time out of salt. how they deepened our lungs. opened the top of our heads. how they made their whole bodies into drums to show us how it would be. tell them who taught you to dream. to stay. to breathe. and then show them who taught you to leave.” 

What the excerpt does is asserts a knowing that “human” is deeply tied to other forms of life and that our histories are connected, unlike what is suggested by western epistemologies and the separation of human and nature. In Gumb’s world view, much like many other African and indegious epistemological standpoints, everything has ashe, everything holds wisdom, and much can be learned from every vessel that spirit carries.  

I've been casted as the character of "Lady In Blue" in Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls" countless times. I have always been struck by the depths of this characters dealt cards: navigating a traumatic back-alley abortion, rape by a "friend", abstaining from living "in the world" due to the cold streets of Harlem. Considering this, by the end of the production, I'd utter the last words of "I found God in myself, and I loved her, I loved her fiercely", resounding deeply as a truth. In the deep, where there is seemingly no light, life is still happening. Black folk are still breathing. Black folk still cultivate ways to thrive. And this is an amalgam of learned, downloaded, and intuitive behaviors.  In another excerpt Gumbs writes,

 “they say god moved over the face of the deep, but in the deep there we already were. already pulsing, already pulled by moon, relevant to us whether or not it was lit by sun. they fear the depth of the ocean rightly. we know what it means to be encumbered under there. We know what it is to have no choice but to pull from the bottom of ourselves daily. we don’t have the luxury of surface. whether or not we want it”. 

Perhaps we learned how to survive the deep from corals who knew it before we did.