January 28th, 2021

facebook post - 2020

Yesterday, I realized that I spend, on average, 5-6 hours a day on my phone. And while COVID-19 is definitely making that number bigger, I know that generally, I had similar habits pre COVID-19. While that might be considered normal for some people, it is the first time I am truly considering what that means.

Our ego-consciousness is made up of narratives about ourselves, and the way they interact among each other makes up this “identity.” So, there is Chris with his girlfriend; Chris with his best friends; Chris with his mother; Chris at work; Chris in nature; etc. Each of these Chris’s is different, and yet in their entirety, they mak my identity as Chris. Let’s call these stories different “worlds,” different worlds within the ego-consciousness.

Batey, however, is a different world. In that world, when I’m really, really IN it, there is no word or narrative to name what’s happening. It’s more fundamental than that. Batey just IS. When I’m truly tapped in, there is no difference between me, my drum, the other drummers, the dancers, the singers, the vibrations, etc. We all just are. Punto y final. 

I was talking to a friend the other day about what it was like for her to live in Puerto Rico and go to bateys 3-4 times a week. What did that do for her well-being? Here in NJ/NYC, we are lucky if we have batey once a week. Here, the center of our consciousness and our being is work or school, and batey is on the margins. I wondered, what is it like when batey is the center of consciousness, and everything else is in the margins. What would that do for us? At the end of bateys in NJ/NYC, usually the vibe at work the next day is, “Okay, now I’m back in the routine, back home, back, etc.” But what if batey happened so often that when we enter, we think, “Okay, I’m back home”?

Now take this even further. What is my center right now? What is the narrative, the “world” that I ground my consciousness in? It’s social media. On my social media, I have all the people I connect with within different spaces: old poet friends, family, bomberxs, musicians, other folks who have come into my life, etc. I stitch these into one network and present a Chris that sits comfortably within all of that.

But, that’s not full connection. There is no physical space or time shared. Why do I do this, then? Because I am living alone in an apartment in suburban New Jersey and I don’t have my people around me. We are all spread out. Why are we all spread out? Because of colonialism. Because of literal land-theft and genocide. But also because of family trauma. Some of us leave the family home because the ancestral trauma is too much to hold. We need to find ourselves again. We need to heal ourselves. And so, we isolate and do our own work. We use social media to find others also doing that work.

But then that gets complicated. Social media is like a boat that we were supposed to all take to another shore. A vehicle to get us home. But then social media became the home rather than the vehicle. 

I am beginning to notice that my type of living has a lot of comforts that I have to give up in order for true connection outside of this colonial, capitalist context. Being alone most of the time and on social media means that I get to interact with people how I want to interact. I get to fashion them into neat, bite-sized fragments in my mind and take the parts of them that are most convenient for me. I get to curate conversations how I want. If I am upset, spacy, dazed, whatever, I don’t have to share it. I can just choose to log off. 

Yet, that’s not human connection, and that’s what I learn in batey. When we are truly sharing space, so much can come up: disagreements, discomforts, vulnerabilities, etc. We don’t know what energy will arise in batey, but since we are present with each other and with the moment, we welcome all energies and treat them with respect and reverence as they come and pass. 

There is another part of me that hesitates to share such intimate space and time with people again. Part of me is afraid to get hurt by toxicity and trauma again. I get caught up in questions. If I share space with people like that, will I lose my individuality and my privacy like I did in my childhood? Will I expose myself to people who will impose their beliefs and views on me? Will I take on the energies of others around me? Will I push my energy on my loved ones? These are all real anxieties that come from a childhood where we couldn’t name our traumas and how they showed up in our bodies; from a childhood where we didn’t know what buleo was, the steady rhythm held that can be sustained without being burnt out; from a childhood where boundaries and communication, even though it was much better than previous generations, were still confusing ideas and even more nebulous as practices.

But that is no excuse. To center batey -- or rather, to center radical, spiritual, loving communal space -- is a practice that takes work. It takes flexing social muscles that haven’t been flexed. What does it truly mean to live with an open door policy the way our grandparents did AND be aware of old emotional patterns? It means work. It means moments of conflict with people where we will just want to return to our individual spaces, to our social media identities and interact “safely.” But was that ever really safe?

The first time I tried to hold a rhythm in batey, I messed up over and over. I’m sure someone probably took my drum to fill in the role. I experienced embarrassment so many times. Yet, if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have been able to be present for the bateys that turned into some of the most beautiful moments of my life.

Community is possible. Relationships require sacrifice. Sacrifice doesn’t have to be the self-destructive martyrdom of our elders. We can no longer center our consciousness in work, school, individualism, toxic performative “family” dynamics, or in social media. Let’s center our consciousness in a radical sense of community and spirit that we ourselves can create.