Please Call Me Gogo
The first time I lost my wallet, I was unmoored.
It was three months before the premiere of SKiNFoLK at the Bushwick Starr, on Starr street, in Brooklyn.
My wallet dropped,
Somewhere outside that very same building where the show would take place,
Where the witnessing of that work with my Ancestors, would happen.
I didn’t know then that it was the beginning of a redefining,
But I also knew I knew Nothing Else:
I was being called into the mouth of the Mother,
Called into the dark to be remade and made anew.
Called back to blood, to breath and to bone
through the Art of Ancestral remembering.
Through the portal of all that grief I didn’t know how to place,
Other than to sing it.
Out.
Up.
Down.
I am Gogo now.
…
Gogo is a name given to me; a title I called toward from that stage, from the many stages of my life,
and it answered.
S/he answered.
They answered.
Gogo is home.
Gogo is where I find the surrender I had been searching for when my wallet took me on a journey
to find a new kind of passport:
Through the dream realm. Into the medicine of plants, animals, rocks, trees, sounds, make-ways.
Through the lessons of my teachers; harsh,
and tender.
Gogo made a Way for me.
Opening my throat wider than I thought it could
When I believed the other, was an Other.
When I didn’t know if I would make it,
When I didn’t know if I could give up another layer of worldly attachment,
“Concrete” understanding
And the knowledge of institutional bestowment that held me well,
But closed.
Go go
Open.
Gogo
OPEN.
+++
I use it to be accountable to Them, to my community, to myself. To love.
I use it to be in Reality: to walk in the Real world as the unreal dissolves,
Inside us,
As us
With us.
I am still Jillian Walker, too. I am still my Mommy’s blessing. My daddy’s heart.
Jillian Brie Walker will always be my name.
She is protected by Gogos of many worlds.
And Rootwalker. Is there: Picking up the slack when I am tired of making excuses for myself. Rootwalker: walking the path through dark water, stepping without knowing how deep it goes down. Moving not solely in Faith, but alongside it in Knowing.
Rootwalker picking up the medicines.
This plant—
That.
This word,
these words—
Reweaving recipes with language and color, herb and image.
+++
Somewhere in between rituals that tore me open to worlds I never thought I could touch, I stopped thinking,
and forgot
they told me
I was lost.
That “it” – my people, were lost.
A lineage irretrievable, irreparable, inconsolable.
I forgot they told me the waters were too treacherous, wide, unforgivable, traumatic, scary, overwhelming.
I forgot
what they said about records.
I forgot I couldn’t have what I truly wanted.
I forgot
I couldn’t be,
wasn’t supposed to be,
as Powerful in the world as I was in my Art.
To be as whole in the world as I was in my dreamtime.
Flying.
I remembered What I actually knew-knew.
They lied.
About the Ancestors.
They lied
about Portals.
That was, after all, why I wrote: to Open them,
even if I didn’t fully realize.
OPEN.
They were Open.
I was Open.
I wrote myself through and out of the lies
lies
So many lies– not (always) on purpose, but because we really believe(d) them.
We believe(d) the ways Back to wisdom, or to prayer, or to tenderness, or to life.
True life.
Real life.
Were closed down.
irretrievable, irreparable, inconsolable.
Because we are, we believed, a Generation of misfits; bloodlines too muddy for truth to pour through.
Too late. Home nowhere.
+++
I remembered our grief is what made us lie. Our rage. Our terrified ghosts who needed us to speak their Names.
I remembered our hearts were broken in the rhythm cacophonous sadness,
Grief ungrieved,
because we had forgotten it mattered.
All of it mattered, matters—
Makes matter.
I remembered
the stacks of information, but little wisdom.
I remembered the confusion; my confusion, all the confusion.
I could see it now.
Through the grief.
I grieved as the bridge I became.
Gogo is how I lead.
And there will be more names as I keep leading.
As I keep walking,
Teaching
(Gobela)
Singing
Loving
Touching
Moving
and sitting still
with a pipe in my mouth.
Listening to the drum say the map.
Say
the Inevitable mysteries of untold archives.
Say
Say.
Say that looking up, is looking in, is looking out.
Say the mirror you seek is looking at you through your Grandfather’s eyes.
Say that he is not lost because he is not beside your body,
He is
your body.
[Ma-khosi.]
So, please call me Gogo as you see me walking. Walking as the Walker I have always been.
Please call me Gogo when you hear me praying. Holding the new world between my teeth with fervor, anticipation.
Reverence,
Heart.
Please call me
See me
Taste me
Walking as the Grandmother who devoured my face.
Walking as the trumpet who blasts in the air – remembering.
Gogo Yema Takhakhan Gogo Rootwalker. Jillian Brie Walker.
Ma-khosi.
Gogo.
Gogo.
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