In another space, possibly in every time.

Venice. A loophole. Retreat. A tambourine as timekeeper. The water. Outta timing cameras. And afro surrealism in migration.

This is where we begin and although there will be words that run off this screen like Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, there is no end to these racing thoughts. But we must start somewhere. Maybe it was my moorish sensibility but I felt like Venice and I were meant for one another. Perhaps it was the way the water danced for me or the way the sky set its smile on me or the hundreds of black women that made the corridor, cobble stone streets their runway for 72 hours and change. Whatever it was I was meant to be there. I am not interested in making it make sense, my being there. I just was. And it was the perfect response to a call made many moons ago.

Perhaps there was a crack in time that transported me to that moment. A loophole. The namesake of this extraordinary weekend. A slit in some karmic wall that planted me at Hotel Bonvecchiati just so I could bear witness with other black diaspora women to our own souls unfolding. We were there to celebrate Simone Leigh because her artistic interest was built on celebrating us. It’s been a long time since I felt that kind of beauty. It’s been a long time since my tears conversed with the tears of others. Tears as loopholes. We were the sea. Black Mermaids on land celebrating our feet and carrying our tails as capes. We were each other’s loopholes. We acknowledged collectively that we had been our own loopholes for a long time.

I am taking a deeper breath because even writing this right now feels like an escape, a return to that moment. Words are my playmates ever since I was a smallie so the words loophole and retreat fascinate especially because of what it’s connected to. Harriet Jacobs. Simone Leigh. Rashida Bumbray and so many more, black women. Retreat is a war word. To be more specific a military tactic or strategy kind of word. It is also an architectural word, one that in its etymology defines a particular type of space. Land or water. The word speaks to the idea of returning, changing position. Navigation and defence. Time and development. It’s funny how making sense of something just drives you deeper into the thing. Mermaids inverting themselves on land. Like rising simbi. Like living kalungas. Landing across the water and watering the land. We were retreating to ourselves. What better and safer place is there for black women than inside herself amongst her sisters.

And then there was Rashida Bumbray. The curator of Loophole of Retreat, Venice. My friend. For real. She did something so brilliant besides stand at the threshold and usher us all into this moment with the other mermaid midwives, Tina Campt and Saidiyah Hartman and of course, the architect and archaeologist we call artist, Simone Leigh. Rashida did something so brilliant, so profound and when I recognised what tangible liminality she had conjured I whispered to myself tambourine as timekeeper. She bent a space where no words were necessity to administer a start and stop. Her ancestral jewel toned voice and gently rattling tambourine told us when things should start and when they were going to stop. It was genius, spiritual and a model for ancestral embodied learning and presentation. I am sure there are better ways to describe this feeling and I am not sure I will ever locate them. All I know is the overarching architecture of a tambourine is its life as a baby hand drum with cymbals as fingers. Touching everything and disturbing nothing but the attention of those who know how to alert their keenness, how to retreat being response able. A tambourine is a war instrument. Did you know that? I don’t think I even thought about it like that until I just wrote it. But it is. What wonder, small and carefully powerful enough to shift time in Venice. My friend, Rashida Bumbray did that. She taught me that a tambourine is a timekeeper.

Perhaps I will talk through outta timing cameras and Afro-surrealism in migration in my next post. But right now I hear Rashida’s tambourine.