by GOODW.Y.N.

“Oh, don’t worry! Sumbody jus’ spilt sum coffee!”

The female janitor said to me with a smile. Her skin, a mahogany complexion, was soft and creamy like mousse in the dim Los Angeles sunlight, under the large stone, grey canopy that shielded us from the beams of light that could have colored my cheeks and warmed my hands and face. I remember that her uniform was an ashy forest green coverall set, her hair underneath a blue rag or cap.

Why do I remember her? I ask myself. Why does the image of her mopping the gray cement walkway send a fury through the blood in my veins, so dense and thick with hatred it chills the bone?

Lately, I have been examining my relationship with women—Black women in particular. This insurmountable feeling comes over me; no, it overwhelms my heart. I do not feel that my relationship with Black women is that of a healthy correspondence. This schism has exasperated even further since I have been producing/directing and performing my very public experimental body movement work entitled the Ain’t I a Woman (?/!) Series for the past six years, as well as other works that challenge the notion of Black-femme body autonomy, presence, existence and ownership of one’s own representations of their physical being. Notwithstanding, much of this work has rendered me partially or completely nude, before audiences of people—the majority of which has been in predominantly in White spaces and institutions, and audiences. To be honest, with much of the viewership of my work the vast proportion of onlookers haven’t been Black or Brown whatsoever.

I say of that to say this, much of the objection of my person—whether it be left up to my personal choices, or my artistic endeavors has come from the minds and mouths of Black women that are 45+ years old. It’s as if they don’t see themselves the way I see myself; who would I be if I didn’t have my degrees, or my daughter, my tattoos, my vernacular? The things that make me who I am, aren’t necessarily the things that make me, well, who I am. It’s the decisions I believe that truly forge us—and the motivators within our clockwork that drive us to follow those decisions, to manifest our chosen path. Without those layers we would only be what we are “told” to be. I dare believe that if you strip me of all the identifiers, of all the experiences, of all the knowledge I have gained first and foremost, I would not only be “another” me, but also the “same” me at the root.

That is what performance does for me—even when stripped to the core of myself, I was and still am able to find something powerful, something ungovernable to the likes of what society tells Black women to be, and how we should behave. The closer I am allowed to become to that source, the closer I am to freedom. Which makes it unbearable to see so many of my “sistahs,” in invisible chains. Our lives, no our very foundations have become sunken into the very notions of being on our “best behavior.”

GOODW.Y.N. (aka Nicole Goodwin) is an Interdisciplinary Artist living and working in East Harlem, NYC, USA. Currently, they are working on several projects that include their experiences in Poetry/Writing and Performance Arts. GOODW.Y.N. can be found on instagram at @goodw.y.n9 and on PerformVU (discount code GOODWYN to subscribe).