SHANGE IS AN INSPIRATION!

I found Ntozake Shange’s talk on black dance to be totally inspiring. I was practically on the edge of my seat the entire time. I found that during both the talk and the lunch she radiated an energy that seemed to include her listeners. Made me hear the music. Made me want to get up and dance. Made me want to get up and do something. Make something happen. That is the feeling I look for all around me and I think it is what makes her writing and her words so affective and infectious. The way she writes reaches out and places the words in the readers mouth.

I had never read her work before taking this course. Her work is freeing! It reminds me that writing can take so many forms. Letters and words are a malleable substance in her hands that can take shapes I have never even dreamed of. And not just words, but dance. And music. Sights and sounds and movements, everything, is just a something to be shaped into whatever you want. Whatever you feel. Not to say that it’s easy or without effort. She is brilliant. She is a master of what she does. But her work does not live by rules simply because someone says they are so, she has actively and effortfully remade language to push against those rules.

The impression I am left with from her visit, is that she is a woman constantly in motion, constantly in action. Even when a disability has restricted her motion. Seeing her as she is now, still alive and spirited, and having read the work she had produced throughout her life, I am inspired to achieve that level of action/motion!

This picture reminds me of that kind of action/movement/motion/creation that I’m talking about!