Transcript:
You may have noticed there is a theme that keeps coming back on Cosmic: beyond change, narratives, storytelling, the arts obviously… Identity. Identity seems intrinsically connected to how we, humans, experience change. And one story we tell about identity is structurally blocking the way.
My name is Camille, you’re listening to Cosmic Dynamics, 5 minutes of exploration on art, change & the music of the universe
A few days ago, I had a thought-provoking conversation with Artist El Seed, where he was describing his quest looking for his identity, born and raised in France in a family with roots in Tunisia, experiencing racism in France and rejection in Tunisia - for having emigrated. He highlighted something that stayed stuck in my mind, because it defines so well what we tend to forget, and because it is so current: Your identity is made of layers. It sounds obvious when you hear it, I know, but look around, let’s visualize for a minute - beyond the theoretical understanding that identity is made of layers - what we actually emanate …
Where are you from? Are you vegan? What football team do you support? Are you Catalan? Spanish? You can’t be both it seems… Are you Muslim? You don’t look like it, you don’t have a beard? You have a beard? And you’re not Muslim? Are you part of our team or part of their team? You can’t be both…what kind of artist are you? What’s the label?
Imagine a society where each one of us can embrace the multi-layer profile of identity for real, in practice, out there every day. Imagine we can live and talk to each other without any part of our identity to come under threat. This is possible if we recognize that as humans, we are more than the sum of our characteristics.
For storytellers out there, if we can engage with people considering the complexity of how they may identify deep inside, then the conversation becomes very productive, and the connection lasts. This is one of the chapters I had the privilege to touch on with El Seed, who truly incarnates this multi-layer approach to human experience. He will be on Cosmic Live tomorrow at 7pm CEST on www.cosmic.show. We’ll travel we’ll go deep . As usual, you may want to bring some good headphones.
Speak to you tomorrow
Cheers
Identity. Identity seems intrinsically connected to how we, humans, experience change.
And one story we tell about identity is structurally blocking the way…
This is one of the chapters I had the privilege to touch on with El Seed, who truly incarnates this multi-layer approach to human experience.
He will be on Cosmic Live tomorrow at 7pm CEST on www.cosmic.show. We’ll travel, we’ll go deep . As usual, you may want to bring some good headphones.
Cosmic Dynamics is also available on Spotify & on podcast apps.
Thank you for tuning in.
Camille
