UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM COLLECTION: Queer Brilliance Edition

02: I Want to Live Out of Tune by Alok Vaid-Menon

Alok’s way of being in the world is poetry. Reading their work is an invitation to be exquisitely present and attuned to the ways we are all connected (and not in an ethereal, sentimental way). Their prophetic body of work calls us to open to the gravity of our interconnectedness.

As I write this post about the blog post I’m sharing, it strikes me as a meta moment. I am moved by their description of being moved. ✨ I’m hoping the resonance continues in your reading.

Earlier today in the back of the car I started to tear up because the driver was singing along to Lady Gaga’s song “Shallow” so out of tune, but with so much gusto it didn’t matter. Or rather: it was the only thing that mattered. It moved me so much. how someone can feel something and write it down and someone else all the way across the world can say, “hey I felt that too.”

How can we be strangers when we feel the same pain?

-Excerpt from I Want to Live Out of Tune by Alok Vaid-Menon

This post is part of a collection of artistic expressions highlighting wisdom from queer voices calling me to deeper soul attention. What does this stir in you?

At the beginning of COVID, ALOK wrote a collection of poetry called Your Wound is My Garden. This is how they describe the book, “When we don’t process the pain, where does it go? What is the purpose of being alive when there’s so much suffering? What does it mean to live and die with dignity in a world utterly opposed to it? It's an argument for beauty in the face of grief, loss, and chronic pain.”

Here are some lines that stay with me:

Grief has no expiration date. Like bad breath, it lingers. That is, until you listen to the smell of it.

what if instead of saying “how are you?” we asked: “what hurts?”
what if we committed to the wound? what if we were honest?

From What If, by Alok Vaid- Menon

The task becomes: what nook, what alcove, what muscle do we go to discover the aftermath of the things we could not say, but felt? Where do we go to find the feelings that could not be elegantly carved into words? That which had to be sacrificed to make sense?

From What Lives in Death, by Alok Vaid-Menon

I talk more about ALOK in this issue of the soulspace newsletter.

Would you like some company or gentle guidance as you listen for wisdom and explore new ways of engaging with your soul? Kirsten offers spacious accompaniment and trauma-informed spiritual direction. I’d love to hear what’s stirring in you and meet with you for a free exploration session.