Episode 7
Creating Magic Out of Hopelessness: Kayla Farrish

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  Race remix.

Welcome to Race Remix, where we explore the intersections of racial justice and the arts. We talk with artists, educators and thought leaders from around the world. Building Knowledge One conversation at a time. This podcast is produced by the Racial Justice Studio, an initiative of Arizona Arts at the University of Arizona. Welcome to Race Remix. I’m your host, Amy Craig.

My co-host today is Duane Cyrus, the director of the school Dance at the University of Arizona. Hi there, Cyrus.

Duane Cyrus  Hi, Amy. Thank you for having me. I’m here with Kayla Farrish, a multifaceted artist whose work includes projects and collaborations that combine filmmaking, storytelling, dance, theater, performance and sounds. Score. Welcome, Kayla.

Kayla Farrish  Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. I think this is such an important piece that can be really inspiring to people having this podcast.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  But we’re thrilled that you’re here, and I want to start by letting our listeners know that you are an amazingly accomplished choreographer and performer, multimedia artist. Can you just give us a little bit of your story about when you started dancing?

Kayla Farrish  Sure. I started dancing. I think of my inspiration as my father actually. He danced recreationally after college and was my first dance teacher with my sister and I and I remember just always having music and dance in the family and expression. And I remember at a young age, like, just always wanting to create. And that would be you making the dances.

I would be writing stories. I would be imagining myself in music videos all of the above. Yeah. And that just kept building, but it felt like a really strong creative force, including even with, like, dance forms themselves, like mixing modern ballet, jazz, improvization what, whatever I can come across. I was like, I was just fascinated.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  So did you take dance classes as a young child?

Kayla Farrish  Yes, I did. I well, I took dance classes both at studio, at public school. I’m from North Carolina, so there’s the American Dance Festival there, which happens every summer. What’s really exciting is like there’s a lot of different scenes. So working with my dad or dancing with my dad and I’m thinking about working at my dancing at the church or here is like liturgical praise dance, and then at the dance studio here, like these different specific forms jazz, dance, modern dance, ballet.

And then like the festival or these public schools, I oddly got a lot of postmodern dance and partnering. They never went in one direction.

Duane Cyrus  It’s great to hear you speak about how movement was a part of your youth, like you’re growing up, and then you turn that into a career. That’s exciting. So what I also understand about your dancing and the work that you make is that you your work deals with themes of race and racialization in America. But for some newcomers, as well as longtime dance patrons, they might ask, Well, what’s race got to do with it?

What’s the connection between dance and race for you?

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, quite honestly, I knew I could. We’re talking about from these roots. I knew I wanted to choreograph and create. And I think what surprised me finding my voice was how much I was drawn to seeing my identity once in these real life. With. Yeah, with in real life situations like within living, I was like, it became really important for me to see my identity.

And then also it surprised me how the work became socio socio political. And in saying that, I wanted just to be able to give visibility, give experience, give truth, and to seeing my identity and the folks around me who are my collaborators, who are my family.

Duane Cyrus  We’re such a visual culture, right? These days we are really visual in terms of social media films and television video. And it’s interesting that as a moving artists, like a three dimensional visual artist, is what, you know, we could say, you know, dealing with time and movement. You are also working with film and photography, and I think that that’s really interesting because somehow that seems to hearken back to your youth and the imagery of your youth.

And then when you say identity, what do you mean by identity?

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, and I’ll break it down. I think so. Identity. I think there is like a visual aspect, like what you’re saying There’s, like important stuff, like visibility. And then I also what I also feel really important is feeling and experiencing. And that like having creating spaces for both that visibility and for seeing like what our true experiences are.

Not being hidden by media, not being hidden by rewritten histories, not being suppressed. Like if we really got to share how this world makes us feel or what we would hope for, or just like a different fantasy or imagination of our lives, what could that look like? I’m like, interested in creating those spaces, and I think it does build empathy and it builds an understanding of things that are unseen.

Duane Cyrus  I’m hearing from you like not only the experience of seeing, but the experience of being seen and creating spaces as an artist, I think. Does our society really think about those things when they’re thinking about art? You know what I mean? And so so here you are creating these works and telling stories connected to race and identity, but it’s not.

So it doesn’t sound like you’re only saying, See my story and that’s it. And then you leave us. It sounds like you’re creating a space for people to consider how they are seeing and how they’re being. See, that’s what I’m trying to get across.

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, And I wanted to add on to for what I’m doing with my identity, which I think is expansive. I identify as a black woman from the South and knowing also that my father’s family history is from sharecroppers and also that our lineage is cut off and lost within America. So knowing that enslavement built is a major part of where we are today.

For me, the erasure, it’s like the erasure is really harsh reduction of like how I am perceived or what I can do, different power dynamics that I’m always going up against, even when I don’t want to. The film photography sounds or writing movement symbols like performance and film can provide ways like experience, experience these stories together.

Duane Cyrus  You know, you’re using different forms to create imagery and tell stories. So that’s so how is it different then? So you’re doing live dance. You make live dance performances, but then you also deal with cinema or photography or even sound scores. How do those things, how are they different? How like what impact do you feel those have for the audience?

Kayla Farrish  When I create, I’m often thinking about words like the starting content or yeah, starting question, prompt content, where I really want to dig in farther and then I’ll visualize it either like sometimes how I visualize it is like, it needs to be this like movement expression. I, I should say film. I was really interested in film and music because of people’s ability to, like, everyone listens to music.

They are, they watch movies and their ability to be transported and their willingness to like, go with these like characters and these stories. And I wanted to feel that in live performance as well and also theater. And I do think that happens with dance. But sometimes, you know, like with our internal monologue or internal story, maybe they don’t always get to go on that ride.

So I was just trying to think about how these things speak and what they can do for the audience is I feel like the film and imagery we get to like see the person and that was so incredible to actually be seen how I was hoping to be seen.

Duane Cyrus  Yes. Yeah, it’s interesting. Somebody said to me that dancing is a moving of souls, and when I think about that, it is also visual, but it’s audible. And I love photography as well. So I thought, Well, what’s the difference between photography and dance? I feel like photography captures one moment that maybe is not even the real moment, right?

Like you never see life in one frame at a time. But dance, it’s moving. And something about that is maybe more. I won’t get corny, but more spiritual than you know. Yeah. And what you how were you speaking through? What sensory device are you speaking to? People. So music speaks to us through our ears. Photography, visual art through our eyes.

But dance, it’s maybe more total. I don’t know.

Kayla Farrish  It’s like they do different things. So sometimes I use dance or actually as layering. I’m like, realizing how much I’m just trying to plug into meaning. So kind of like a mixtape where it’ll be like, here’s this like current sound, but also I’m sampling.

Duane Cyrus  From 50 years.

Kayla Farrish  Ago, and also I’m going to pull this text from like James Baldwin took a Gaga and the and you can suddenly see the references and the ties to each other that maybe if I was listening to just this one part, I wouldn’t have understood. And so, yeah, I’m interested in the layering of meaning. So I’m like, okay, maybe watching this person, I feel spiritually connected to you, but I don’t understand like how he got here.

I feel like I can pull like through these different mediums parts of the past and into the future.

Duane Cyrus  Amy I want, I want to say something about because I love how you talking about layering, but blackness is not monolithic and it is multilayered. It’s all kinds of blackness is in our world and somehow in our society. I know you were also a student of Africana studies while you were at the University of Arizona. But the point I’m getting to is blackness lives in our society as a spectacle.

Often it is perceived as it’s it’s seen. We see from minstrelsy to sports, the bodies that we see in sports to social media now. And I often feel like that is never the truth of blackness. It is a monolithic, you know, homogenized representation of blackness that we didn’t create. But then there are these people, because I just heard you say James Baldwin or you referenced James Baldwin earlier.

And I think about these people that you that may speak truths to you. Can you talk a little bit about those people and why they speak truth to you?

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, we are not a monolith. So true. I’m really drawn to James Baldwin, specifically the fire. Next time. It felt like the first time I could read someone, like articulating how I. I feel about you. And again, not a monolithic declarative statement, but like, I guess how I felt about history into my current time. I didn’t like it.

Just hard to be able to articulate the grief, the rage, like violence, oppression, navigating, deciding to push forward any way of rebellion. I just I felt like he could speak to speak to that throughout time I was really drawn to also about sex, killing, rage and racism just felt like it made use of our feelings were words like, you’re not allowed to feel angry, you’re not allowed to.

Yeah, don’t stay in grief too long. Like if I wasn’t, you know, where I was raised in the church. Like, I would just like, you know, this is another way to deal with that. Just like, give it away and try to just be joyful. Like, yeah, I guess coming back to earlier world were the spaces where I can process and feel and how can these these feelings actually be like arrows?

Like I can, I can use them to make change.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  As you’re responding to Cyrus’s questions, you’re you’re speaking with your body. I don’t know if you know that, but you are very much speaking with your body and pulling the bow back. But you also use language much like bell hooks and. James Baldwin. So will you read this line of a poem that you wrote?

Kayla Farrish  I’ve got Swing Low, Sweet Chariot on my mind and ancestors breaking their backs, creating magic out of hopelessness, turning soil into a nation.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  When did you compose these words?

Kayla Farrish  So actually, I was putting together these my some of my initial pieces, Black Body Sonata, which is a duet that talks about police brutality, but also talks about what it is like. Navigate. Yeah, different mannerisms of having to navigate and survive, I should say mannerisms, behaviors as black folks in predominantly white spaces and like how like how we navigate and manage that and then getting to see our real responses to the constant deaths and then with Grit from Grace was originally a solo that I did that I just want to see myself at my flawless power.

I was like, What does that feel like? And power became many definitions, and then it became a quartet that I wanted to open that up to women and feminism and feeling empowered in different ways. And I put together this work, the New Frontier, which was both of my first, like massive film. Like I’m laughing because it was everything that could go wrong went wrong, but that’s okay.

There was art and there was learning how to produce that. And then and then became also a live performance work at dance based in New York. And they actually just wanted it to be a multi piece work. But I wanted to imagine what if indigenous folks, bipoc folks historically excluded folks got to find this frontier of America, which did happen.

And I was just trying to imagine, like what what would what would this look like with less with without the exploitation, without so many things that you make me think of.

Duane Cyrus  Octavia Butler, for some reason, just how you’re imagining other other futures or other paths actually could be also interesting. And something about that me made me think of Octavia Butler.

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, that’s actually that’s when I was making this work and my last two Masters fiction and Put Away the Fire, which is my next work. I was recommended to read Magical realism. There’s mostly reading like these historical books and poetry of Audre Lorde as well. I didn’t say that earlier, but you’re like, There’s something about magical realism both in Latin America and and like Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.

Yeah, they kept giving you. Yeah, I really am interested in radical imagination and this. I love this poem. What The end of this total work we’ve like navigated through this quartet to do and find it like playing with different ideas of power and history. And at the end there’s one person becomes the reporter and they’re just telling us all the news events.

But it’s sort of like just like, what headlines have happened under the Trump administration that could be both imaginative or, or real? And what was scary, as we were saying, these headlines, even if they were imaginative, they weren’t very far from the truth. So it was like this, like high impact and also trying again to like, play into the erasure and things that have been happening and like create in satire.

So it’s just like this reporter’s ridiculously cracking and then this person comes out at the end and is reading this poem, which I was inspired by James Baldwin, actually, and, and then finding my own words to I mean, it’s it’s pulling a lot. Swing low, sweet chariot. It’s swing low, sweet. That’s the song that’s been there forever. And then just imagining like turning the trauma that enslaved folks have lived and breaking their backs, creating magic out of hopelessness, turning well into an Asian like such a powerful image, while also saying, we’re still here.

Like, you can’t you can’t change this. You can’t alter it. I mean, this is what happened, but we’re still here. So, yeah.

Duane Cyrus  Sweet home screen Chevy had come inside to carry me home saying, sweet and me and come to carry me home.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  You’ve said, and I quote, I aim to hold a mirror to the society we form and participate in. What is it that you are doing as a dancer to create that mirror?

Kayla Farrish  I was combining at first, like really images of humanism, things that might feel like the feel very honest and are vulnerable to having like human movement, human gestures, relationship between people, even building up the space and set in a certain way of like places that we recognize.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  So you’re using like the, the, the set, the physical props and placement. Physical things that you choose to bring onto the stage.

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, like a chair, a certain light fixture, like the things that I’m like, these are already in our daily lives I like I take out that some of that like imaginative work. And so you can see what I’m engaging with or see can like the photographer in the cinema, like where am I in, who is this person?

And physically I think there’s also a part with texts as a text speaking dialogs monologue. That’s yeah, I feel like speaking has been helpful, helpful tool, but also I’ve always been interested also in sharing what I’m feeling on stage. So speaking is another way to know, to give more context and then movement wise, being like really deep in improvization or playing creativity, I’m really curious about like how those like what do those feelings like what does anger look like and like actually seeing how does that move through the body?

And now what’s that in relationship to someone else? What is like grief?

Duane Cyrus  I had the pleasure of watching you, Kayla, set up the audition for the students that are going to perform a work this semester. And that was really interesting in terms of this question that Amy asks about holding up a mirror to society. You started what I I’ll try and describe it when I saw you had all the dancers in the space and you prompted them through improvisation that helped them to engage with each other.

It wasn’t about structured lines and everyone trying to do the same move with that concept of perfection. What looked like a mirror to me was the fact that they were making choices about how they were going to be in the space and they were responding to the other people in the space. And when we look at each other, we are reflections of each other.

That’s a mirror, right? And so it seemed like that was the doorway that you brought. Our school of dance students through was a doorway of reflection or a mirror. That’s what.

Kayla Farrish  I saw, an intention. It’s like, what is your intention with then? Whatever movement that you’re doing, like you can see it. And another way I’m trying to show this mirror reflection is to show, okay, what is what is our current experience? It’s like one way, like having space to exist and be and be seen. The radical imagination was another way of like, I’m going to try on a role that doesn’t belong to me or I didn’t get to inherit, or I’m going to do what I’m not supposed to do, I’m going to erupt.

To me, it feels like liberation or transformation. You get spaces to experience something else. And and in discussing like these experiences, these current experiences or future experiences and history, that ends up being a reflection of what’s what’s happening.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  What are you working on right now?

Kayla Farrish  Wow. I feel like I have to describe everything. I’m working on a new full length work called Put Away the Fired Year, and it’s my first venture into combining my love for cinema and live performance. And what I mean by that is a breaking down. These characters are archetypes. In the 1936 years, there are like the archetypes of Mammy archetypes, some like still some cocooning, meaning I’m looking at the reduction of bipoc characters.

Sometimes they’re placement like servants. The entertainer just reduced archetypes, and in researching and reading about them, they literally are written into the story with full narratives. The writers like, like, I’ll get Bojangles into here for this like dance scene, but without like outside of that, they don’t really exist.

Duane Cyrus  So do you see those archetypes? Do you see in any way those archetypes echoing through time to this day? Like, what do you think about what has happened to those archetypes? What.

Kayla Farrish  That’s a great question. I mean, I saw the reflection or I see the you know, I see the reflection of history where history is fragmented. I’ll speak as as for like what I feel is my history as an African-American feels very fragmented. It feels like, you know, whatever I can gather and piece together, there’s missing holes in that lineage.

So when I look see characters with missing storylines, where do they go after like the entertainer maybe now is like the spectacle of like an athlete or B, the singer, B, the singer. But we don’t want to like here you talk about politics, You know, you don’t want that. Yeah, I wonder how that echoes.

Duane Cyrus  It’s so interesting that musically, you you shared information with us earlier. You mentioned Nina Simone and Sam Cooke. I’m like, wow, those two really? And I just think about so much what Nina Simone, the great Nina Simone, went through in her life. And she had so much to say. And I’m I wonder what your thoughts are about what’s left.

You know, like what is left when history discusses Nina Simone? Is it her message or is it her trauma?

Kayla Farrish  I see and feel her message. I can like it feels spiritual through them, like the music that I like and it moves me. And I think that it feels like it echoes forever. I feel sad about her trauma. Yeah, I just makes me sad that such an incredible artist, such an incredible artist and human and they’re giving so much. Like, I’m like, Yeah, like they don’t deserve a No one does those. Like, they don’t deserve that for.

Duane Cyrus  Ever contributed to our society. Yes. Our culture. And so then it gives me the thought you’ve already touched on it, but as a black woman, I think of our musical artists. And can I say Whitney, right now, and you know, the trauma traumas, Billie Holiday, you know, if you’re talking about the thirties through the sixties, Billie Holiday, and so what I’m trying to get to is this question of as a black woman creating art in New York City or in America beyond the trauma, where are the impacts that you feel you are having.

Kayla Farrish  And just starting to to make these honest works? It felt like rebellions and and then it’s like I think I’m unpacking it slowly over time, like even making the work. Black bodies, not the new frontier. My parents came to watch those shows and I remember in them trying to protect me, they’re like, we don’t normally yes, we have this impact of like these things happening to us, but we don’t talk about them because we don’t want to make other people uncomfortable or to have a consequence by sharing our experiences.

And I, I feel fortunate in this like time that I can I’m not saying there aren’t like sometimes I’ve had people like, get up and leave and in a show or Yeah. Or some other workplaces like don’t they want we want to have the change in diversity, but we don’t want to have the conversations about like why someone might be not comfortable to come into that space.

In talking about the the racial reckoning in 2020, seeing George Floyd, seeing Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, it felt hopeful that people were making space, but it also felt I just got met actually with a lot of like I’d get into a room and they would be met with a lot of resistance. It’s like they’ll only go this far, or We don’t really want to change our language to be more truthful about what’s happening.

You want it to be like more flowery. I know. Like just change the tone and then also, yeah, and, and getting farther along that and getting more people into different art spaces, trying to change casting and who can view what character.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  How is that changing casting?

Kayla Farrish  I think it’s becoming more expansive in that specific situation. I was explaining how some black folks are Bipoc folks may not have a lot of access to play to express in a society that is telling us to suppress or we have to come into the room and succeed like we need to do. Well, it’s important so you can navigate this world like you can’t.

You can’t be in between. You can’t fail. So trying to explain that for casting, I was like, Can can we give more tools or room? And so people know that they can come in more as incels or that they can play around as like in the audition, like, what’s your choice? Can it be maybe a little bit messier and you’re still going to get the job?

So I feel like there’s like the understanding that the lens of like how what we’re seeing for art needs to change. But I still feel the resistance. I feel like that like let’s get into the nitty gritty of like these conversations. Like what? What does this mean? What are people experiencing? How can we expand? What are like where, where areas that we’re not doing well and like being honest about that?

Duane Cyrus  Yeah, you talked about sometimes in your in presenting and creating your work that doesn’t always have to do with the traumas of blackness. You talked about the space for blackness, the imagination, for blackness, and then not having to be black about blackness. How about that? Like you could just make work and it doesn’t have to have black put on it all the time.

So I hear you talking about that and the troops and archetypes that echo through history, through time. When I think about what must it be like for you to get the funding, the resources, the space to make life performance work? Do you also feel a push toward having to make work a certain way? But what do you feel in terms of what you want to make and what the the resources, the funders, the opportunities are wanting to see from you?

Kayla Farrish  As far as what I want to make, I think I follow like like the questions, the desire of, of like the projects that I envision. So I feel fortunate in that regard. And I think because I do dream big, that is helpful for like grants or opportunities because, you know, there’s it’s, it’s a new idea and you take what I feel feel pressure about resources for sure that it feels like, you know, I take this big vision and then like how to do it with whatever is here.

I do think that helps build community, like asking for help who can help me on the way I feel pressure about the opportunity sometimes, and I’m working on this. I think my in my like survival, I’m like, okay, you only get these opportunities so often we have to do well. We have to or this needs to come to the fullest thing.

And realizing like that, like I want to be able to keep going. I want to have this momentum. And I think as you know, as a bipoc person and survival, there’s, you know, sadly sometimes a mentality for me. I’m like, how long can this last? Like, how sustainable can this be? Am I like this? My only opportunity and I’m really trying to work on that mindset.

I’m like, Why can’t there be more for you? If you can create this space, why can’t there be more beyond this? I’m doing that and and continuing to return to play and failure like that as my role as an artist.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  What advice do you have for dancers, performers, artists, anyone who has a radical imagination who wants to put work in the world?

Kayla Farrish  I didn’t do it anywhere. I was like, do it as much as fear or doubt or things can come in. I feel like my vision is always stronger and reading Audre Lorde, your silence will not protect you for her. She just talks about she could live and just like, you know, silence these ideas or put them away, or she could just speak them to truth and existence.

And for her it was like the same outcomes or consequences. And I know that just really resonated with me. That’s like, I think I’m going to whether I wanted to change how I’m doing these things, I think I’m going to do this vision regardless, like I’m not someone else and not I. Yeah, this is my voice. So just trying to like, listen and protect myself or celebrate myself where I can do it anyway.

Duane Cyrus  Can you tell us a little bit I know you’re just at the first week of making it, but can you tell us a little bit about your the work that you’re creating here at the School of Dance?

Kayla Farrish  Yeah, I I’m seeing like characters and environments and in choosing this cast, they’re all so unique, like they’re individually so fascinating and they feel like they each have like stories within them. And so I’m kind of following that within building this piece and like the beginning that we’re just working with right now and calling the Wanderer, and they feel like they’ve been navigating this like darkness or dark environment for a long time and instead of being, like, squashed by their environment or, yeah, we’re defeated.

Yeah. I’m just curious maybe even about that like line, like not all wonder are lost. Like, what are they’re like magic. What was their magical crafts like? Is it to like, you know, be able to yield something that isn’t there? Is it the ability to follow their curiosity even though they can’t see what’s in front of them? And yeah, I’m curious about taking that, like pushing them to new like to do different dynamics and then also bringing them into like more community and supporting one another.

Like I see the characters environment, but it feels like a piece on, like allowing, like trust with yourself and trust with a group.

Duane Cyrus  It sounds like their experience is a very important part of the fabric of the work. Yes. Can you say why?

Kayla Farrish  I mean, I always think with who’s in the room in mind and they’re incredibly gifted artists, I feel like they could execute the step, they could do the dance. But I yeah, it’s important for me to like, see them. And even in giving, like, specific prompts, I’m like, okay, now what’s your take on that? Like, what’s your voice?

What like, what does this make you feel? As I want to build a piece, that they can like journey through?

Duane Cyrus  It’s so interesting because choice feels like I would imagine when you take away someone’s right for something, you’ve taken away their choice. Yes. And as artists, especially live performing artists, I always believe one of the greatest freedoms we have is choice. You’re on stage. Whatever the director said, you want to do it, but you have to choose to do it. And like on what timing will you do it? So that’s a choice in Improvization it’s a choice. And what would you say about how does choice for you connect to racial justice, for example?

Kayla Farrish  I mean a just like, yeah, what we’ve what we’re fighting for or the rights to exist, rights to live, the rights to make change? Yeah. Feels like I’m trying to, like, give that to each person inside out and like, whether it’s with this piece or other works, I’m doing, I’ve thought a lot about how much it changes me.

It changes like what I think is possible for myself, and then I see like my collaborators and they expand, which is very exciting. And then we take that to an audience, whether that’s in a theater space or putting it into a film so it can reach more people or doing a workshop and just talking. I feel like survival feeds that we need to like stay in these parameters.

But if there’s a way to kind of crack that open to maybe question if we can change our circumstances, whether that’s on our own or together as a community.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  It seems like you’ve done that with breaking free of traditional dance training within a particular discipline. I mean, you’re well beyond any particular style or discipline of dance. You’re already going beyond the boundaries of what was and what’s the standard or what widely accepted. Right? You’re choosing that too. You choose it again and again and again. It sounds like you’re teaching your students that way of moving through your work.

So what else do you do in your teaching that really encapsulates or expresses your orientation toward racial justice or anti-racism?

Kayla Farrish  You feel like agency and empowerment is a huge tool. Yeah, it’s like for them to feel like they have a voice. I think in changing what roles were given or like in building a work feels like another way of like decolonizing anti-racism. Like what is it to experience power and what does power have to look like? It was fascinating because at first the power was like it was force.

It was like, wow, like high energy. And then I was like, this interesting history, you know, like you force people to do this or we do like, control. So it was like, I think I’m imitating what I’ve seen. And then, you know, I got tired and then it was like, power could be like, be my engine to be able to continue.

Hey, resilience power can be the ability to love, to care for myself and others anyway. And it was like, it has so many forms. And yeah, I just, I guess in like one character in particular was like the most powerful in the, in this storyline. And I’d say I spent six months, like proving I was powerful. I was like, exhausted by it.

And I was like, what if I just already was? I came in like, when I come in here, like, I just am. And that was like, shocking to me because I was like, I don’t exist in this. Like outside of here, like, outside of this, like fantasy. Like, this is not how I walk around the world.

I like this is like a different way, like a different learning, a different part of me, a different aspect. And it was super exciting to like tap into that and like, open it up. Yeah. And so trying to, I guess like provide these other is like there’s, there’s other ways, there’s like whether it’s like coming into yourself or like tapping into something new.

Yeah. I’m like realizing how much also I embrace the uncomfortable and this summer or these other spaces I was in before realizing like, by me taking a risk, it’s helpful for someone else to see that I’m, you know, I’m like trying this on. So then like if they’re like, I don’t know what we’re doing, they’re like, but she’s trying.

Like, I can let me see what that’s like. So yeah, there’s this like, dialog back and forth already with like, okay, I’m going to try this on, but I’m not going to say this is the one way and then you’re going to try this on and then we’ll start to exchange that and see where we can go with it.

Duane Cyrus  Yes and yes and yes. And I want to ask you if there’s anything you wish you could have said that you haven’t discussed with us yet.

Kayla Farrish  It’s just so meaningful to have space. It’s so meaningful to have a space where we can be ourselves and release.

Amelia (Amy) Kraehe  Thank you. Thank you, Kayla. It’s a real pleasure.

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