Rage Out, Release Together
exorcising empire within and all around
I started this last full moon eve ~ but grief asked me to sit without writing for a lil while longer. Coming into this week of continued, expanding US-Israeli military terror, I turn to Láwû Makuriyente’s legacy more than ever.
Láwû Makuriyente’s one year angelversary was yesterday.
Our demi-god, our Beloved, opened portals in their music and performance. I first saw them play as one half of the duo Mirrored Fatality in 2019 at Omni Commons, Ohlone Land, Oakland, California. We weren’t bystanders but participants in a ritual for transmutation.
Dagger and Láwü descended into spiritual trance of world-changing proportion. They’d been deepening a path of Earth Medicine with Queen Hollins at the Earthlodge Center in Long Beach, and brought altar and exorcism to their experimental noise performances.
Witnessing 20-year olds bring us collectively into an altered state of consciousness through sound, talisman, release bent time. Diasporic Desi Muslim (Dagger) and Kapampangan-Pilipinx (Láwü) medicine came through punk expression. The magic was known by their souls long before this lifetime.
As nonlinear time-keeping teaches us, we can access choreography for tending to imbalances from long ago.
Our bloodlines have knowledge in tact even when the teachings are broken. It’s not a trajectory of healing, but an acceptance of death in service to life. Without expression of rage, our nervous systems get consumed with the impact of pain.
In a conversation between Memo Navajes, Dagger Wound and Láwû Makuriye’nte on Radio Axiom in 2021, the duo talked about how in their project of Mirrored Fatality, they’re able to die and be reborn again and again to continue on this soil.
Dagger shared: “With fatality it really came from understanding how there’s always parts of us that we are releasing…it’s kind of like letting go and giving death to things that I think either of us want to release or no longer want to carry with us.”
Láwú continued: “One of our teachers, Queen Hollins, always talks about how in Western Society we view death as something that’s very sad and very very depressing; which is very true because there’s a lot of grief with that, but death can be a new beautiful beginning and when something dies something is able to be rebirth. Whether that’s here on the Physical Realm or the Spiritual Realm. We really think that through the project of Mirrored Fatality we’re able to die and be reborn again and again to continue on this soil.
..I think also we live in a world where our chaos doesn’t have a space. We’re expected to just be like ‘Hey! How are you? Good morning!’ clock into your job and clock off, or just be on the great and you’re just…going.
I feel like through our music, we’re able to really embody all of the rage, embody all of the sadness, embody all of the things that are necessary to keep going. What that means is chaos, it’s chaotic, it’s a living breathing being that has its own life.”
Rage as resistance reigned in Mirrored Fatality, and expressions of chaos continued in EOBIONT, Láwû’s solo project.
“EOBIONT’s live performances solders infernal dissonance, kapampangan experimental music, prostheses, lethal movement, and mixed-reality visuals to encrypt its instinctual bloodcurdling resurgences.”
Music, performance, rituals of release express the pain of continuing to witness the US-Israeli war machine terrorize people at home and abroad.
Láwû brought the inside out in transmutation, while achieving an incredible amount of mutual aid to those in need through their shows, albums, and residencies.
Localized actions of solidarity contribute to global waves of liberation. Láwû made a weft of action-pattern for us to keep going.
The phosphorescent links of their love, and all the freedom fighters before them, light us up as nodes in a global cacophony of liberation.
As we generate resistance, rebellion, and alternatives to the art-education-economic-food-prison industrial complexes, we are creating holes, rips, tears in Empire’s masterplan.
While they attempt to subdue, disract, disregulate, and dissociate us into submission that colonial wars for fossil-fueled and techno-billionaire profit, every time we point to the violence, call it out, and choose to invest our time, energy, and money elsewhere, we make their masterplan obsolete.
I keep hearing Americans- people I consider friends, neighbors, peers- say “Im thankful we have peace here.” Is it really peace when our comfort is paid for by the blood of Palestinians, Iranian children, Lebanese communities? Is it really peace when terror is reigning across the globe, with real impact, no accountability, and paid for by our tax dollars?
The American population’s apathy, nihilism, corporate consumption, and feigned ignorance are co-conspirators of war.
Our multidimensional and collective action happens in iterations, out of time, out of control, out of our wildest dreams.
Whatever our art form, creative expression, collective and personal rituals might be, find them, prioritize them, and pair them with action.
Keep drafting visions of death to the US War Machine and put your time, money, energy elsewhere. Know the corporations funding war and keep divesting from them. Bank locally in credit unions.
Scream louder, cry harder, make medicine stronger; keep coming back together.