Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
As a follow up to her debut book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd, Tamice Spencer-Helms is joined by folx from all walks of life and society to talk about picking up the shattered fragments of a faith we used to know. Life After Leaven is a podcast for those seeking to heal from the damage caused by toxic Christianity and rebuild something new and life giving in its place.
Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
Detangling the Knots w/ Marshall Green
Join us on a thought-provoking journey through the intersection of faith, identity, and personal transformation. The ride is made even more fascinating by our guest for the day, Marshall Green, a dynamic Black queer feminist, writer, and professor of Africana studies. Together, we'll dive deep into the history of Black gospel and church in the U.S., untying the knots of toxic faith and opening doors to the transformative power of stand-up comedy.
Get ready for an enlightening experience as Marshall-Green takes us through their unique journey. We'll traverse through their personal territory, shedding light on the trials and tribulations of growing tall, and their evolved understanding of the trans community. We'll also explore the labyrinth of the queer community, understanding each corner of the LGBT acronym, and the metamorphosis that comes with transitioning from one gender to another. This enlightening discussion promises to be respectful and engaging, leaving no stone unturned.
Tune in for this stimulating exploration of faith, identity, and personal transformation.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
On the other side of toxic Christianity. I found myself faced with one question, now what this podcast is about that question? We have conversations with folks who are asking themselves the same things. We're picking up the pieces of a fractured and fragmented faith. We're finding treasure in what the church called trash, beauty and solidarity in people and places we were told to fear, reject and dismiss. I'm Tamise Spencer-Helms, and this is Life After Levin. What's up everybody? Welcome back to this episode of Life After Levin. I'm your host, tamise Spencer-Helms, and I'm joined by Kaye Marshall-Green that I met at the BTEC conference in Dallas and we'll talk a little bit about that, but I just want to welcome you and invite you onto the show and have you introduce yourself to our listeners.
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's already been really great knowing you. I'm excited to see what you and I build together, because I see that. Yeah, for sure, but my name is Marshall-Green. I use pronouns here. They I am a Black queer feminist. I'm a writer, I'm a professor of Africana studies. Primarily, I do like film and visual culture stuff, but I teach classes like Afrofuturism, black masculinity one of my favorite classes. Well, I just taught Black trans studies. But I'm going to be teaching and this is what I want to talk to you about next year. Yeah, because I'm moving to. I've been at Williams College for the last five years, but I'm going to the University of Delaware next year.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Africana studies and I'm I'm going to propose, not this year but the following year, to teach two new classes. One is going to be on the history of Black gospel and church in the US and that was going to be on the history of Black stand up history. I love stand up comedy.
Speaker 1:So I really do, we just watch. What were we just watching? Oh, netflix just did like a mashup joint and oh yeah, we saw the cat. Cat Williams won and there was another one on there and I was like these are hilarious. I've been watching a lot. I want to watch that. Yeah, so it's called like best of the best, 20, 23 or something like that, and it's on Netflix. It's like like snippets from all the ones that have happened throughout the year, for Netflix is a joke and they like kind of picked all the best kind of snippets from each person, stand up and put them in a mashup. It was really funny.
Speaker 2:You see Monique's. No, I haven't. Is it good? I think it's quite powerful. You got to see OK. Ok, ok really because she deals with some really deep stuff and I think it's really interesting there's so many cis Black men who hate it. They're like I don't want to see all that pain and I was like, but it's not just pain. She's actually quite brilliant at bringing something that's really heavy and then takes you to that point and then makes, yeah, use some release.
Speaker 1:But comedians are supposed to do, I think. You know, what I mean.
Speaker 2:I think it's beautiful. She talks about her own queerness, which is wild.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you a question. Let me ask you this what like if you could describe your life before and after you what I call unleavened, which is just to remove the toxicity out of the way that you love, know and follow God? How would you describe the two, the before and the after?
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing I wouldn't put up before and after, because I'm constantly having to face the toxicity of everything that was brought up with, whether it be like anti-Blackness, transphobia, homophobia, all these things that I learned through Christianity, but also outside of Christianity too.
Speaker 2:You know, christians aren't the only homophobes, and so, like I grew up, kojik for the most part and you know, kojik is like real deep, deep so I used to go door to door asking people, you know, do you want to take Jesus into your heart? You know I went to church, you know, like a Tuesday Bible study, Friday night service, thursday, friday rehearsal, wednesday and then Sunday school and then Sunday vacation Bible school, and then it was like, you know, they give you this. I went to one of the bigger, biggest churches in Oakland and we went to that church because they actually had a recovery program and my dad was an addict, ok, and so my mom wanted to have a place that had a ministry that could hold him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and actually was pretty powerful for him and my grandmother is actually who got us started going there. Oh, wow, ok, so it's called. It was called. It's called X full gospel is still one of the biggest churches. If you go in Oakland and deep he's, so when you'll see people have little bumper stickers to say like X full gospel and you know they got shit all over Oakland, oh, but you know they would give us a sign. It's like you got to get seven people this week and you know, I was talking to somebody last week and I was like I understand why I got bullied. I was always asking my friends if they want to take Jesus into their heart.
Speaker 2:I was like stop talking about taking Jesus into my fucking heart.
Speaker 1:So, like what, what changed for you? Like what gave you the, the shift in your thinking to be like I'm about to just move away from this. Like what was the cause of that?
Speaker 2:You know, I think God is funny. Yeah, God will If you're a step. So I'm an Aquarius, which is a fixed air sign. A fixed air sign, so that gives us some tourist qualities. Tourians are different because they want to control all of the environment. Aquarians, we- need our own. You can give me a little square like this and touch nothing in this little square and I can do whatever the hell I want in this square and I'm not going to throw nothing. I don't have to control anything. Anyone else does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my little square.
Speaker 2:Okay, See.
Speaker 1:I go on tangents and I get lost.
Speaker 2:What was the point? No.
Speaker 1:I was asking you like what moment did you face where you felt like you want to stay in that I was?
Speaker 2:thinking so God is funny. Yeah. So everything I hated, yeah, I became Mm. Hmm. So I grew up like I said in a very Just because you say something is very Christian doesn't necessarily mean it's homophobic. But the way I grew up was Christian and homophobic To the point of like me and my big cousins would like. This was like in the days of AOL and AIM and the messenger. We would go into gay chat rooms and like, call people faggots and like all this shit. And then I had this.
Speaker 2:I have this wild educational biography, but part of it was that I moved from this. I got moved from a public school to this private school in Oakland to play basketball, because I've been this height since I was 12. And I had a coach who was like dying to coach me and once I got there I learned that you couldn't just call people faggots. So he was like one of the few black people at this. I was also their test pilot. What happens if you take a poor black kid and put them in this environment? And there was two of us. They called us the Twin Towers.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute. So you were a project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, aren't we all, though, black in America? Anyways, he's in a project you write about that now it's all science fiction, you know, wow. And so he's coaching me and he pulls me to his office and he's like, oh, because I was saying this is what I said, this is horrible. And I, because I was talking to my friend. I had three best friends, two of them were black and one was white, and I used to call her a faggot all this time and I was in love with her, I didn't know. And I, my coach told me, overheard me saying that. And then, you know, I was talking to them and I was just saying, you know, yeah, like I would hate to have a gay kid, because it was suck, because, you know, then they would have to die. You know you can't have gay kids, like it would just be so sad. And so my coach pulled me in to his office and he's you know, he's like this big black guy, funny funny thing is he's actually, you know, zendaya.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's actually her dad, that's my coach, oh wow. And, like I grew up with Zendaya, like his, his wife. So Zendaya's mother was my public school teacher and she's the one who connected me to her husband, because my public school wasn't shit, we didn't have sports, we didn't have athletics, and she started the first basketball team.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love basketball. Zia yeah.
Speaker 2:She was a white woman. So she's a white woman, but she was like six, eight, and then a Jammu that's Zendaya's dad, he's about six, nine, and they just wore sweatsuits and Jordans and like they would. So, before I even went to the private school, miss Stormers and they as mom and dad, every year they would take us in the public school camping in the woods and our parents would bring like food for the week and they would take all these like 30 black kids we never been nowhere to the woods every single year. So they were some bomb ass teachers, right. So she started this basketball team.
Speaker 2:I tried out for the basketball team. We had never had no sports, so everybody want to play. I never knew how to play basketball because we never had sports. I just loved it. So we're like. She was like yeah, you're not going to make the team. I went home and I was crying. My mom caught the school angry. How embarrassing. Why did my kid make the basketball team? Your kids are not good at basketball, sorry.
Speaker 2:I was all about depressed and then this stormer brought me in and she was like look, I know you really want to play, but the thing is you just you don't know how to play and it's not your fault, you just nobody ever taught you. But you're really tall. I've been this size since I was like it's a wild thing because I feel like I'm just now getting into my body. But to be 12 and to be five, 10 and a half, if you know, if you see people who've grown up tall, like I remember, one of the first people I caught in college was this black dude named Rob Bland and he was he's like six, nine or something. But we walk like this because we were so, because we've been so tall and we're used to being around people that are smaller than us and we want to fit in, so we hunch ourselves over because that's how we've been conditioned. It's a really interesting thing to think about Spiritual metaphor. Yeah, so anyways, she was.
Speaker 2:She pulled me into the classroom and she said this was a stormer. She was like, look, my husband is a coach and he wants to coach you and you can play with him if you go to this private school and they have a really good academics and I know that like that would be good for you. Because basically I always said if I had stayed in public school in Oakland it would be really fucked up because I could have been doing the best that I could be and I would never have been able to compete with those kids at that private school ever. Because once we got there with shit that I ain't never seen before, I was like y'all got, you can play rock music, jazz music, gospel music. You got a swim swimming pool, you just have. So dance class. You know just like food times in the classroom. You could just be like, yeah, I'm not feeling it today. Oh, you want to go sit out on the tree chair?
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Are you?
Speaker 1:serious.
Speaker 2:And you know, these are the kind of things that you actually actually all the people that I was in public school with needed and I thought about this too. Someday we'll have a longer conversation. But eventually I ended up in a boarding school in New England and Wellesley at all girls boarding school and one thing that at the boarding school is that you had three mental health days per trimester and you just call your house parent and you say, hey, I want to take my mother to mental health. They. They call everybody and let everybody know you're not going to be on campus, you can go to Boston, you can go do whatever you want. And I was like this is what I needed when I was in public school, this is what we all needed.
Speaker 2:And because people have some I'm just laying now about some of the kids I went to elementary school with and the trauma that we were. We will walk to school together and it's like you watched your father, your stepfather, murder your father and we never talked about that. We walked to school every single day and it was like you know, and I got trauma that I'm carrying it and we never talked about it. We just talked about bone thugs and harmony and like low rider bikes.
Speaker 1:So when you think about like the trend, like the transition to being more fully who you are, what catapulted that? Was it a moment, an event?
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is what I was saying that God is funny because everything I hated. So I was so homophobic, right? And then it was like, oh God, you might be kind of funny yourself, yes. Then I had to contend with well, if that's me and I am of God, then I got to do some work and then the other thing was as a I identified as a stud. For a long time I've been transitioned.
Speaker 1:Help us understand what that is, because some people don't know what that is.
Speaker 2:A stud is a way of saying like a masculine, identified lesbian, a person, and so there's a whole culture. Stud is usually identified. It's more of a West Coast term and definitely a black and brown term.
Speaker 1:Usually in the white community. They use words like butch or, you know, mask and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I grew up with studs. That's one thing that's interesting about the trans like my, like my, I have trans kids or whatever my sons and it's like they didn't go through a lesbian, they just were trans. And I'm like, oh, I had to. I had a huge lesbian, black lesbian community and family. I still do in a way, but it's different, you know. But I think when so as a person who identified as a stud and and I was really caught up in the binary right, because the reason I became a stud was because my first date was with the stud, like the way that that felt so I was like, oh, what do I got to do to make sure I don't get?
Speaker 2:that energy again.
Speaker 2:And it was like I have to be that. And so the thing is like I was very transphobic, even as a, as a self identifying like masculine lesbian. I was very transphobic and I use the logic. This is why you understand like, oh, people can make sense of anything. Anyway, my logic was the problem is people don't understand that you can be masculine and feminine and be in a gender and like, hold those energies. And but then I took it too far and I was like the problem is trans women and trans men are just trying to be in a binary and they don't understand that. They're just like part of the problem.
Speaker 1:So what did you're thinking on that?
Speaker 2:I think, like I said, everything I hate I become. So then it was like, damn, you might be trans yourself and I was like no, I can't be trans, I don't want to be that. I think that's ugly, I think that's nasty, I think that's weird, I think that's gross, I think that's this, I think that's this. How can that be me? How can that be love? How can that be loved?
Speaker 2:How can I be loved like that? And I think so. To make a long story short, the heart of the matter is something really serious had to shift in my theology, and two things, two major things, shifted and I've never been to Divinity School though I've applied and gotten in and gotten scared and felt like I want to do it, and then I just get scared and so I just keep playing that game until something else happens.
Speaker 2:But so the first thing that shifted is the way I grew up. It was always like God, thank you so much. I'm such a horrible person and where would I be without you? I'm nothing without God. God is my saving grace. I would be nothing, I'm nothing. I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I am nothing. But the truth of the matter is, if God is in me and I am always carrying that divine, then how can I be nothing? I'm always something. So I had to shift that and that's you know we talk, it's in our gospel music, it's everywhere. God, I'm nothing without you, but you cannot be without God.
Speaker 1:You can't be nothing without God, and the only way to be nothing is to be without God, and no one is without God. It's not possible.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's impossible, and so that had to shift. And then the other thing that had to shift for me was when I read the Bible. You know how pretty just say the word never changes. The word never changes. Well, I need a word that changes because, I change because time changes the students.
Speaker 2:I have changed, like I just recently I was teaching an intro to women's and genders and sexuality studies, which I hate, I think queer theory I do, and so teaching this class and this is the first time this happened to me where the students are like I just don't really remember the world before gay marriage. So all of these debates that you're talking about, it's so new to me and I'm just like what I thought about that. Yeah, for them gay marriage is just like playing irregular, like what are you talking about? So I'm teaching them like all these different debates that were happening around it and they're like I didn't know what the thing.
Speaker 2:And so the thing is we need things to change because time changes. So in order to be, in order to make ourselves accessible like, we have to be able to change. And part of that is understanding that the Bible is not our only text and we take the Bible as stories of people's encounters with the divine and we hold the Bible up like this and we don't hold our own stories and our own encounters with the divine and that same esteem. So what would happen if I was like hey to me, when have you encountered the divine? What was that like? And now it would be red text.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually not like that Cause red is when Jesus is talking, right. So I just mean, like your big quotations, yeah, like you're the book, like your book, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what makes it so difficult. So I don't know if you've watched, if you've watched the documentary on the Bill Goddard and the Duggers and stuff like that, but there's a documentary on this.
Speaker 1:Can you answer me? Yeah, yeah, it's on. It's on Prime, amazon Prime. It's called Shiny, happy People and we just finished it and it's interesting because, you know, I was in white evangelical charismatic spaces and so encounter with God was talked about all the time.
Speaker 1:But what you don't end up realizing is that some of the things that were stirred up in those places were really just about how we're physiologically made Like music is supposed to move you and singing together with a large group of people is supposed to make you feel calm, and these types of things are actually physiological that happen in every religion that other people experience, and it's not just here, but when you're in that kind of a bubble and you don't know, you think, oh, I'm encountering God, like I'm encountering whoever they say God is.
Speaker 1:That's who I'm encountering. Now I do believe I did have encounters with God, but I was not having encounters with white Jesus, and I think that's like the difference, because you leave white Jesus and you have similar things happen, right, you just frame them differently. So I'm curious to know from you when you heard that it was okay to love yourself and when you heard it was okay for you to kind of like, let the text go with you. What was the next step? How did you get from being at Wellesley to now being Marshall Green? What was that journey like?
Speaker 2:Well, I think part of it is realizing that it's a journey, so there's always change. So trans means to move, to change, to transform constantly. We think of, honestly we talk about. When we think about trans people. We think, oh, you're moving from one gender to another, but that's how it works for me. Like I never can forget what it means to grow up and be a black girl and a black woman until I was 26. And like I'm not gonna, however people see me, I'm not gonna forget that history and forget how that upbringing, you know, and I'm not gonna forget what it means to be a woman because I felt it what it means to be a girl and, honestly, we probably have a lot more of a better man if they knew what that experience was like. Yeah, but so say the question one more time for me.
Speaker 1:Like what the journey was. But I mean, you said something that's got me wanting to ask you a question about I feel similarly right, like as I'm leaning into being non-binary and thinking I consider myself a non-binary black woman because the black woman is very important to me. I feel like I've lived that experience in this country. I feel like I think like that and have a lot of honor and respect for that, but at the same time, male or female are too. It's like a tight shoe, like who I am is restricted by those things. Yeah it always is.
Speaker 2:So I would rather just say, yeah, as trans people, we exceed those things. So I don't hate on how anybody is, because everybody has their own journey and a lot of trans people love the binary because all we've done is work so hard to be this thing and like fit in the world in this way, gendered properly, so I get that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true, because there are conversations we need to have, right Like within the queer community itself. There are conversations we need to have. There's reconciliation that needs to take place and a lot of people don't realize that there has been. Historically, there have been issues with those who identify as lesbian and gay, with those who identify as trans. Can you speak to that a little bit, because you went from?
Speaker 2:one to the other. I would also say there's also challenges between those who identify as trans. So I think when we think about LGBT, the thing is that trans does not belong, because trans people can be lesbian, gay and bisexual In. Gay and bisexual are sexualities. That is about what your desire is. Gender is about who you desire to be and how you desire to be seen.
Speaker 1:Very interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:So there are different things and so it's interesting that we put those things together. They don't actually belong to me, to me, that's just me. But I think that, like I have conversations, some conversations I don't even, I'm afraid. Like I just had a very interesting conversation with one of my trans kids, who I still call my son, but uses she her pronouns now. So I met this person and they were a teenager and she I'll use she her pronouns, she uses she her pronouns, but when I met them, they were transitioning to using he, him pronouns and that's all. I knew them as was, like he him, my son.
Speaker 2:And then came to a moment where she was like I want to lean more into my feminine energy.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I wanna use she her pronouns. You can still call me your son, but I wanna use she her pronouns. So it was really interesting because then I had to contend with my, with my mother. I had to contend with because I'm like this is my son, but now this is my daughter. Too Interesting, I don't really know how to interact with you like that, like you wanna play basketball or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, it was trippy because it's like now the binary comes back up, I'm the queerest person there is and this is making me and I think that is why we have to shift and change, because, like, it makes me understand, like, oh, I'm old school now, like I'm from different generation so we had a whole discussion because they identify as a non-binary film, like that's just something I don't really understand. It's not that I don't understand it, like I can't have compassion and empathy for a person who identifies as that, but if I take, if I go away from the human and think about logic, you're saying non-binary, and then you say film well, that's a binary.
Speaker 2:That seems like an oxymoron to me.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's so interesting because I remember saying that to my spouse when we were dating and they were talking about how they really didn't identify as a female. They were mostly non-binary or they actually were non-binary and I didn't know what that meant for me, right, because I'm out here like I think I'm just gay, like I think I'm gay, like I don't, but what do you say? I'm not playing regular gay. And really it was funny. It was like, damn, all these evangelicals, if I had known you were gonna transition and be a man like I could have just been like I'm with a man and they were fine.
Speaker 1:There are all of those thoughts that come and it shows you how much like social construction, how powerful that is. And what I love about these conversations that I'm having with people in the queer community is that we're figuring it out too, but it just seems like the gap is shorter right, like I think about. We're kind of dealing with our issues and dealing with the questions we all have and the dissonance, like in real time it's happening as we grow together. Right Before, yeah, like before. It's like you look back and you're like, okay, what do we do wrong and let's fix what happened, but it feels very present, everything feels very present and I love that about queerness in general, that there is so much tension and it necessitates being present, that I think that we can learn a lot from it, in my opinion for sure.
Speaker 2:That's so key being present.
Speaker 2:That's kind of. So I have, if so, the only I have one article. I have multiple articles, but there's an article where I give my proposition of trans with an asterisk as a theory, and it is not about a trans being, but trans with an asterisk is when you put the asterisk sign on something and you're doing a library search, if you like, the multiple possibilities that go along with that thing. I think about trans with an asterisk as like the potential to understand how two or more things might potentially meet one another, whether it be in the friction, the conflict or the like, synergy, and so the article that I kind of like laid this out. I actually start so this gets back to your other question.
Speaker 2:I start out with a story about going to, or not going to, this black lesbian retreat that I used to go to regularly in LA and I didn't go because it was post me having top surgery and they said, well, you can come still, but you can't take off your shirt anymore. And I was like that doesn't sound right to me, they don't feel right to me, and yet I understand, because y'all are trying to figure it out too. But it's just funny the kind of policing we do and how we do it on each other's bodies in order to figure out our own stuff. It just kind of sucks. I always think about that, like how we work our stuff out on other people's bodies, and this is like sometimes I'll be like don't work that out on me, baby, don't want that energy.
Speaker 1:Wow, we work out our stuff on other people's bodies. Yeah, that ain't number of words. So, like what you talked about, you grew up, kojic, and it was like every day you etched. Every day we church.
Speaker 2:I still go to church. I love church. That's what I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that's what I want to talk to you about. Is that? Was there ever a point where you felt like you had to choose between the two, or it just never was a choice for you?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, the only reason I'm alive is because of my Christian upbringing and because of that faith and because of one particular ideology that I grew up with that was a Christian base for me, which is like you can't kill yourself because that's the ultimate sin, and I know it. I don't believe in that. So, like I've had a lot of people who've committed suicide in my life and I don't believe that they've gone to hell, I don't believe in hell. Actually, I'm a Carlton Pearson person, but I also am a person who is bipolar. I've been hospitalized three times.
Speaker 2:I have these manic episodes super high, and then I have I've always had depression my whole entire life. This manic depression, this bipolar depression, is like not like anything I've ever experienced, because it's not feeling. Sad is that you're absent of feeling, and so I wake up every day and it lasts for about a year and a half to two years. Wow, every single day. Try to do the things that I know make me feel good, that I love Feel nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing touches me. I can't listen to music. I love music. I can't play my drum. I love the drum. For a year and a half this last time and honestly, it was like if I believed, that if I didn't have my faith, I would have killed myself. I definitely would have, because there was no point for me to wake up every day. So I was doing this thinking well, god, I know something is going to change, because you keep waking me up every day and I keep being like I don't know why the fuck. I'm here and this shit sucks, everything sucks, suck.
Speaker 1:You suck Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:And it's just like but the and this is why I have so much, I have so much gratitude for the ability to feel, Because in those moments what's going on is I can't feel, Can't feel anything, and when I do feel, it's just negative. And so I think that one. I wasn't diagnosed as bipolar until I was 33, which is very late. I grew up with a mother who struggled with mental health stuff, so I watched her and took care of her through many mental health breakdowns and I witnessed it and it was my greatest fear. It was always my greatest fear that something like that would happen to me.
Speaker 2:But I was, you know, way past the age that anything like that should happen. That should happen, and it has totally shifted and changed my life. How soon Everything is different One it was like. So the first time I had my manic episode, the first manic episode I had, was here at Williams College. The second manic episode I had was in Oakland, where I was from, where I'm from home, and basically when I was in Oakland I walked up and down the streets from the lake to the airport, which, if you know Oakland, you know it's about eight, nine miles all night.
Speaker 2:I just walked back and forth and I went in all kinds of different spaces. But there was also like, when you have manic episodes, there's also a very spiritual thing happening too. So they're in Oakland right now. There's more homelessness than I've ever seen or witnessed before in my whole life and at that moment it was fucking with me. I started walking through the encampments and, because I couldn't like take in that this was a reality, made it in my head like, oh, this is actually an art show and this is an exhibition. And I just was walking through you know, all these encampments, talking to people.
Speaker 2:But you know, when you're manic it gets. Then it gets to a point where it's just scary. And then I got hospitalized and my mom was a person who took care of me as best as she could. It was really interesting. And that happened, you know, during my Jesus year 33. And I got out of the hospital the day before I turned 34. So it felt like a real, true death and resurrection. They rebuild my understanding of myself and I learned how to love myself again, because I felt so disappointed in myself.
Speaker 1:Really Okay.
Speaker 2:I felt like I let myself down. I mean because I couldn't control it. Nothing you can do, wow. And then you know, hospitalization is like incarceration the way they strap you down, shoot you up with stuff. The last episode I had was in LA and I was in the hospital for a month. The only thing I remember is the day before I left the hospital. So that freaks me the fuck out. I try not to think about it so much because I'm like I have no idea what was going, like anybody could do anything to me. I don't remember.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow. So there's an also that experience.
Speaker 2:This might, you know, you help with me, because this might be another way that God is again showing me myself, because going through it, it gave me such compassion for my mother in a way that I hadn't had before, because I was like, oh, there's shit that you probably really don't remember, had this experience and you know, it gets to the point where it's like I'm telling my mom what happened and she's like, oh yeah, I did those same exact movements, I did that same exact thing. And then you start to think where's this coming from? What ancestor is this?
Speaker 1:Wow, whoo, I'm just glad you're still here. I mean, having met you and had the conversations with you, I'm like, yeah, this person is extremely gifted and such a bright light. I'm just glad that you stayed. I'm glad that you're here. What would you say if you had to, like, pick something that you kept with you from before you loved yourself? Is there anything worth keeping from, like the way that you did God or life and God before you transition, before you fully entered into being who you are? Is there anything that you brought with you from the rubble?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything, everything, because everyone has ever said that Everything is constantly with me, because I'm constantly changing and transforming, but there are roots that hold me and ground me, and some of those roots might have some things that are not that great and, like I said, the only thing that has kept me here was my faith. As toxic as it was, I had so many visions of how I was going to kill myself. I was like but I know I'm not going to do it because you know that's against God and, as fucked up as that is, it actually saved my life. So I appreciate that boundary being instilled in me.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's deep.
Speaker 1:It's making me feel a lot of things, because I know that trans kids are killing themselves at alarming rates and I cannot imagine what it's like to live as though if I, if I'm in the misery here, I'm headed for misery there and I don't know which misery is better that type of existence.
Speaker 1:And to demand that someone live that type of existence from your little comfortable house, happy little family, you got everything you want in life you got a boo, you got a bae, you got a house, you got God, and you sit across from people who live miserable lives every single day because you are uncomfortable with them just living, and that to me feels wrong and it feels wicked. So to see someone say you know, if it hadn't been for my faith, I wouldn't be here, that's another beautiful tension to hold right as we have these conversations. I mean, I'm not that far into the journey, of my own journey with queerness. I like, came out married the first person I dated, like it was, you know it wasn't. My story is very, but my story is mine and it will make sense when it's supposed to make sense and to whom it's supposed to make sense, and so that said I'm gonna ask you two more questions, but I'm gonna start with the third question.
Speaker 1:first, if you had to give people some words to live, by what would they be?
Speaker 2:Perfect, you already segued into it. So there's two things. One is Audre Lorde. There are no new ideas, only new ways of making them felt. Which leads into the second point, which is everybody here comes bearing medicine. But everybody don't need your medicine. But somebody needs your medicine. Everybody don't need it. You have to cultivate that medicine in you because there's the people who need it, need it, and don't get hurt when somebody doesn't need it because it's just not. That's not your ministry, but you have a ministry and it's yours.
Speaker 1:So both of those things are what I would say yes, it makes me think of Amanda Seales, who's like what does her thing say? I'm not for everyone, and just be okay with that, I'm not for everyone.
Speaker 2:I mean you will kill yourself trying to pleasure everybody.
Speaker 1:It's no way to live. Yeah, it's no way to live. All right, what are you binging? Are you watching or listening or reading?
Speaker 2:Oh, oh my God. I love TV. I'm a TV kid, so I am watching Moisha, I'm watching the Parkers, I'm watching Claws, I'm watching Dynasty for the third time, I'm always watching Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I like criminal intent better, sbub, that would get you to.
Speaker 2:It's such a formula, though, because you're like it's not you. Again you know that's not the person. It's only 15 minutes into the show. They didn't stop the case yet.
Speaker 1:You fall for it every time.
Speaker 2:Exactly what else, I wonder. Well, now I wanna see the Little Mermaid Binging. Oh music. I just we were talking about earlier. I just went to the Roots Fest and I got to see my favorites, like Lorne Hill, who's my ultimate favorite. I first saw Lorne Hill during the. It's been 25 years since the Miseducation she said at the concert.
Speaker 1:Don't say that, Marshall. That made me feel old as hell.
Speaker 2:I went to the Miseducation concert and Buster Rhymes opened for her and Buster Rhymes, surprised, guested at the Roots Festival, so it felt like this full circle thing. And then my ultimate favorite rapper, eve, was there, who's from Philly, so you know she's so live.
Speaker 2:And then Usher. I mean Usher, he's an out like Usher baby. He's such an amazing performer I was just like. And then 60,000 black people just being there just listening and absorbing. Mary Mary was there, maverick City was there. I love that's what I binge too. I love gospel music, especially this new stuff, like Pastor Mike. Have you heard Pastor Mike? No, I haven't. Oh, I gotta see some stuff. I like that and I like Titrebet's new latest album. You know it's hard for me to do Titrebet because his earlier stuff was so funky, but he's a really amazing composer, always a Kirk Franklin fan.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say, and then you have to say, kirk, yes, yeah, ultimate favorite.
Speaker 2:Also, kirk Franklin has always been on the cutting edge when it comes to his way. He thinks I mean it's really corny on that album where he does that poem about gay people, but it was also really quite beautiful because no one else had ever explicitly said love gay people, you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, all right, it has been like such a joy having you. Where can people find you If they want to follow you, learn from you? Where can they find you at?
Speaker 2:So on all the socials I'm Dr Drummerboyboi-g, dr Drummerboyg and I have a website. If you just look up Marshall Green or the name that, my first name is Kai, my middle name is Marshall, my last name is Green, so I usually go by my middle name, now Marshall. But if you look up Kai Green, you probably find a lot of stuff that way too.
Speaker 1:Cool. Thank you so much for being on here.
Speaker 2:You can have me. It's been a pleasure. I'm like I said, I'm looking forward to building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Thank you for listening To pick your money and your heart is donate to Subquatcher Inc and clear the path for black students today.