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alexandra blakely

@alexandra_blakely

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🐳 ahlay
⛈️ aliveness artist
🐋 pedestalizing whales hard 😬
🦋 @hearthwood_sanctuary
🫍 @wails_songs_for_grief
🌀“Anthems for an Apocalypse” OUT!
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the grief of genocide the grief of deracination the ache of assimilation the sorrow of forgetting the burden of looking away the loss of culture, the spiritual emaciation the cultural starvation the enduring physical agony the heaviness of bearing witness to the unhealed shadows within the bloodlines the stories of the Land reduced to ashes traditions, people and rituals incinerated the privilege of historical detachment the amnesia of our origins the absence of mentors and grandparents the constant struggle to fit in the solitude in the journey the discord with the dominant culture the relentless grip of capitalism the unprocessed histories and concealed traumas the subconscious perpetuation of cycles of intergenerational trauma the inheritance of the perpetrator the haunting echoes of history in everyday interactions the un(livable?) future we leave for those to come the duty and honor of transforming our ancestors’ legacies Song: Carry this All (on Bandcamp) #newsong #groupsinging #communitysinging #grief #collectivesinging #participatorysinging by @alexandra_blakely
63
3 years ago
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What a West Coast tour. Thank you Hood River, Eugene, Sebastopol, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Portland. I’m sharing these videos from Oakland because it was one of the most meaningful nights in my musical life. The songs. The way so many of you already knew them. The presence. The grief. The longing. That synagogue (Chochmat HaLev) welcomed our voices and prayers, and lifting those particular prayers in that space felt like spell casting. Sharing Bloodlines there carried weight in my bones. That song came through the lineage of my Ashkenazi ancestors with a prayer to claim even the ones who caused harm as a result of unmetabolized trauma. To offer it beside our Free Palestine altar, with portion of proceeds going to families in Gaza, felt like a widening of what is possible. And to sing alongside Miss @lylajune, whose dissertation and life’s work nourished me in seasons I was battling suicidal ideation, was its own medicine. It was also my father’s birthday, eight years after he crossed the veil, and the anniversary of my conception. He did not want another child and struggled to accept my fate. And yet although he came to love me, I would not be here, and these songs would not be here, without my mother who fought for my life. I have not played with a band since 2016. Nearly a decade of doing it alone. To be backed by @m.reau and @miclinder, with so much laughter and joy, felt like a homecoming. Lifting up our incredible organizer for that night, Jay, and their whole team. And to every organizer, house host, volunteer, and the unseen physical, emotional, and energetic work up and down this coast. It takes a village and you showed up. I thought I might pause touring after this. But this tour showed me otherwise. You fed the songs. You fed me. I came home nourished and energized, ready to keep the channel open for the songs, to send them to the future ones, so they know we were loving them. Thank you Jonah for capturing this evening. <3 #AnthemsForAnApocalypse #WailsSongsForGrief #participatorysinging #griefsongs #choir taken in Ohlone Territory by @alexandra_blakely
143
a year ago
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this was the last choir session on the last full day at the Wails Gathering recording the last song on the album: “Apprentice.” this is an album set for release in 2024 entirely dedicated to songs for grief in the community singing tradition (songs easy to learn/teach/sing with many others) inspired by the whales and frances weller’s “the five gates of grief.” this is a video from our choir room wrap where we got to hold space for gratitude, tears and love for the magic that was created in that room over the previous 48 hours. thank you whales for surrounding us, thank you spirits in the unseen realms for coming to witness us, thank you ancestors for building a cocoon around us, thank you land for holding us and absorbing these prayers, thank you humans for uniting our voices as one. we did this. “i trust this grief to return me again, again, again. this work is holy, soul cleansing slowly again, again, again.” “apprentice” asks us to befriend and become agile in our grief. this grief, who will return us time and time again as we commit to taking on the work of healing ancestral wounding. the work of looking at what was meant to be forgotten. the work of being present with the legacies inherited waiting to be transformed. this song asks us to acknowledge that grief, pain, agony, & discomfort are all a part of life, just as beauty, joy and pleasure are. special thanks to @maxribner, @toddboston @shireenaminimusic for walking through these prayers with me in the choir room as the musical and sound pillars. also mega support in that choir room, held by @youcancallmeyin @lila.gaia @jessi_rado_ and of course the healers who kept us drinking electrolytes, fanning us and dropping iced, wet cloths on my over heated choir directing body. video by: @littleobsidian #whales #WailsSongsForGrief #choir #communitysinging #groupsinging #SongCircle #songcircles #grief #francisweller #sobonfusome #joannamacy by @alexandra_blakely
109
3 years ago
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JANUARY 30 TO FEBRUARY 5, 2027 Mount Rainier | Ashford, WA Join Linda Thai + ahlay blakely for a six night, seven day BIPOC mostly Grief Ritual + Psychodrama Structures Retreat, immersed in the forests at the foot of Mount Rainier. We’re slowing down. Letting the ritual simmer longer. Holding sacred witness to one another with tender care. Making room for deep integration. You are invited to step into ritual time, a space where the clock is set aside and we move at the pace of breath, grief, song, and the body. Together, we will weave song, poetry, movement, sacred listening, sacred holding, witnessing and being witnessed. We’ll move between the fullness of the larger circle and the intimacy of smaller groups, making space for what longs to be seen, felt, grieved, and held. This ceremony is shaped by many streams of wisdom and practice: Joanna Macy; the professional mourning women of Greece and Italy; the keeners of Ireland and Scotland; the Mikonenet of Jewish lineage; the late Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé; Francis Weller; Martin Prechtel; Stephen Jenkinson; the immense grief of our times; the whales; and many others. We will also draw from the lineage of Al Pesso and Diane Boyden, whose work with symbolic structures allows us to somatically experience representations of Ideal Caregivers and Ideal Societies, and encounter both the grief and the relief of being deeply real to another. Save the date: January 30 to February 5, 2027. Preregistration required to register. Link in bio. by @alexandra_blakely
6
9 days ago
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We are welcoming 33 participants into our second cohort of Grieving White Supremacy. We know there are still some of you who have been considering joining us and haven’t yet applied, so we wanted to offer a gentle reminder that October 11 is the deadline for priority consideration. Applications received after October 11 will be considered on a rolling basis as space allows. If this gathering feels aligned for you, we welcome your application. Grieving White Supremacy is a caucus space for people of European descent who are aching for a place to grieve both the weapon and the wound of white supremacy. As white people, we are responsible for dismantling the systems that uphold white supremacist policies, laws, and institutions. We are also worthy of our own ancestral healing. These are inseparable parts of the work. Together, we will grieve internalized white supremacy and the ways we and our ancestors have perpetuated harm, intentionally and unintentionally. And we will grieve our own ancestral losses: cultural disconnection, deracination, spiritual starvation, unbelonging, and the ruptures that helped shape what whiteness became. The grief points to the longing. Our time together is rooted in communal grief ritual, somatics, ancestral healing, relationship, and collective liberation. We gather to metabolize what has gone ungrieved and transform how we show up for the work that is ours to do. We’ve gotta start somewhere. And we have a long, long way to go. Facilitated by Briana Herman-Brand + ahlay blakely, with the guidance and support of our advisory board: Kai Cheng Thom, MawuLisa, Aaron Johnson, BJ Star, Rachel Heaton, and Leticia Nieto. Priority consideration deadline: October 11. Applications will continue to be considered on a rolling basis as space allows. More information + application at the link in bio. by @alexandra_blakely
2
10 days ago
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I want to celebrate the two-year birthday of this baby whale. We had no idea when we gathered in this 90-degree room that these songs would swim through so many hearts and across so many oceans. But they did. And we did pray for it. We prayed that these songs would accompany us, would accompany so many of us, through this rapidly accelerating time of crisis and collapse and heartbreak. And as tears stream down my cheeks and I tremble watching this video, seeing so many faces and knowing so many of the stories of the people just in this room, I am thinking about how much has CHANGED for each of us, and collectively, since this recording. I want to celebrate the immense beauty of being alive. How we just never know if this will be the last time we are in a moment just like this, or just like that: “good” ... “bad.” We just get to be here. In bodies. Like, what the actual fuck? Thank you to every single being who made this album possible from the seen to the unseen. And thank you to these songs for continuing to be balms and hugs in these times. We love you. WAILS: Songs for Grief by @alexandra_blakely
54
21 days ago
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Heart palpitations and hot flashes while drafting this. And… may (our) truth set us free. Find Holly Truhlar’s Substack through the link at the top of @hollytruhlar IG bio. by @alexandra_blakely
167
a month ago
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Save the Date I’m grateful to share that Grieving White Supremacy: The Weapon & The Wound will return February 25–28, 2027 for our second co-hort in Union, Washington Applications for this application-based ceremony will open in mid to late September. This gathering is for people of European descent who are longing for a space to grieve both the weapon and the wound of white supremacy—tending our own ancestral healing while deepening our capacity to participate in collective liberation. Facilitated by ahlay blakely (communal grief tender, artist, and songstress) and @brianahermanbrand (providing facilitation, training, and counsel in the realms of conflict transformation, embodied trauma healing, social justice leadership, and youth empowerment). image is of Moirologia by a graveside in Mani, Greece 1962 To learn more, link in Bio. by @alexandra_blakely
6
3 months ago
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My bitch slapping auntie wrote this to me... and I figured... maybe some other kin needed an {{{bitch slapping}}} auntie tonight too... by @alexandra_blakely
226
4 months ago
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In this episode of the Holy Wild Podcast, Victoria Loorz speaks with @alexandra_blakely , singer-songwriter, communal grief tender, and community organizer, and the creator of WAILS: Songs for Grief, an album recorded with 200 voices entirely dedicated to grief, inspired by whales and Francis Weller's five gates of grief. Drawing from the lineages of movement song, Dagara grief ritual, and a lifelong relationship with whales, Alexandra has spent years developing her practice at the intersection of collective mourning, ancestral remembrance, and the emerging movement for the rights of nature. Together, they explore what it means to grieve what we love as an act of reverence — and what it takes to carry that grief without being destroyed by it. Alexandra reflects on the land and water that raised her, the dreams that called her home after eleven years in Mexico, and a vision of multi-species liberation rooted in the belief that humans belong to this earth — and have a role within it urgently worth reclaiming. Link in bio! by @alexandra_blakely
5
4 months ago
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This one has been working me hard. For a long time I have been tracking something in myself::: the way I reach for legitimacy from systems that were never built to recognize what my body already knows. The way I apologize for the sensing. The way I translate the knowing into language the culture will accept, as though the original language was not enough. These slides are an attempt to stop doing that. For the modern day seers and oracles living at the edges. The hermits dreaming prophecy in small rooms. The ones whose bodies pick up the field before the room knows what it is carrying. The ones who feel the grief of a stranger across a crowd, the pleasure of an ecosystem in bloom, the distress of a body of water in collapse. The ones who have been told, in a hundred different ways, that none of this counts. Many of us grew up without elders who could name what we were. Without mentors who had walked this path and could initiate us into it. Without communities that held a ceremony for the kind of knowing that lives below the chest. That grief is real and it deserves to be named. And yet here we are. Still finding our way. Still echolocating for each other in the dark waters of these times. I followed a thread back through the bone house, through Old English words that held a different relationship to the body’s intelligence, through ancestors who lived inside a world that recognized what the chest was doing. What I found was that the knowing was never lost. Only unwitnessed. Only unnamed. This is for me. And for anyone else who needed to hear it. We are not alone. by @alexandra_blakely
52
4 months ago
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Carry This All now in Spanish::: La Carga (w/translation support by Leticia Nieto) is officially on all streaming platforms as of TODAY! And if you are one of those faithful Patrons as so many of you are... you can still purchase it on Bandcamp. Link in bio. 🐋🐳 by @alexandra_blakely
5
5 months ago
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