We're going to get started in like one minute, so if you can start finding your seats, we'll be ready. Welcome everyone. One minute? Okay. We're going to hold for one minute. I'll be back. Okay. I think we're ready. So welcome everyone. My name is Candice Thompson-Zachary and I'm the External Artistic Advisor on the Caribbean Theater Project. Otherwise, Action Café Bien Téachal, which has been happening here for the last day, today's day two, at the Segal Theater Center. We're about to see the work of Gaia Regis Jr. and the whole world quakes the Great Collapse. This reading will be staged by Kanesa Shawl with Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse and Cheyenne Williams portraying the characters. A bit about Gaia Regis Jr. He was born in Haiti in 1974. He's a dramatist, novelist, poet, director, actor, video maker, and has translated Camus and Proust into Creole. In 2001, he founded the company New Theatre, We Theatre, which promotes a political and experimental physical theatre. His plays have been staged in Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and South America. A bit about Kanesa Shawl. Kanesa Shawl is a New York City-based theatre artist. Her recent work, Jack and, showed at BAM's 2018 Next Race Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and with its co-commissioners, Walker Art Center, Red Cat on the Boards, etc. Shawl received a 2019 United States Artist Fellowship, Soros Art and Migration and Public Space Fellowship, and the 2018 Ford Foundation Art for Justice Bering Witness Award. And they continue. A bit about Dr. Gina Ulysse. Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse is a feminist interdisciplinary artist whose research questions concerning the Black Diaspora, considers power and vulnerability in the unprocessed horrors of colonialism and the making of the Empire, with her method and practice of rath and blage, gathering of ideas, things, people, and spirits. Cheyenne Williams, a New York-based theatre artist, selected performance work, includes workshop performances of Kanesa Shawl's cartography, Go Forth, and the East Coast premiere of Up Your Aesthetic. And she's also a technical collaborator. So let's look at the work and we'll talk after. To give a little context of our angle in on that text, kind of our approach into the material, just to set the world for which we are thinking. And that text is called, Haiti Solidarity with Angels, which Gina wrote in 2010, right? When? April 2010. April 2010. Great. Sometimes I joke that if Mother Teresa had been the president of Haiti, she too would have been corrupt. After all, she would have been surrounded by fraudulence. All the key players in Haitian affairs, the United States, France, international financial institutions, the United Nations, and the Haitian government, unevenly partaken, imperialist projects, diplomatic inspired games, and exploits of all kinds for the recirculation of capital, disrespectful, maybe, sacrilegious, no. Hard shock factor, hard common sense, hard frustration. An ill-fated shout-out to Gujiro and Gramsci, an attempt to press the Exigency of recognizing that those issues which have continually compromised the First Black Republic must be understood as structural and should be articulated in terms of the reproduction of structure. At the same time, the common fees or rebellious need to flip the script on icons and symbols, living or dead, in order to make a not so subtle point about the divinity of whiteness without clothes in a country where the use, exchange, and symbolic value of color with its multiple significations has continually accrued interest since the first documented encounter between Europeans and the indigenous population, the two are not unrelated. Angels were always white, flesh-colored white, that is, until activist lobby Criola and the company changed flesh-white to be each. It is nothing short of fiction to think that Mother's Recycle saved Haiti any more than the two genuflecting angels looking for deliverance from the American people and the USAID logo unseen and the photo of two clasped hands, one dark, one light, signifying an impossible partnership between unequals, rivals. No one can save Haiti. Regardless of individual intent, the president enters into preordained relations from which he can hardly be extricated unscathed at the very moment in which he is placed in, rises to, or buys the office with borrowed funds that need to be repaid. No one is above the fray, whether they be men of arms, men of commerce, men of the cloth, men of letters, or the arts and the like. Hats off to the aberration, but they will likely always be men. Haiti does not need to be rescued. If that was not evident before January 12th when the earth cracked open, it became hyper-visible to the world soon after. As we all became witness to human rights violations of all kinds and the name of expediency, children labeled orphans were whisked off to far away lands, humanitarian aid came bearing guns to protect the borders and desperate times thou shall not question the benevolence of the gift. Brown angels always seemed to be revocations of originals. Simply darkened, others remade and the image of self. Haiti does not need to be saved. Haiti needs to be restructured if those who have always been his casualties of non-representation, the nameless poor, are to ever matter given that the state abandoned its nation long ago. Nothing made this more apparent than the mass graves. The overspill of misery had to be contained. The state treats the dead as they do the living. Now rain threatens to wash them all away. Will the earthquakes dead ascend and become angels? Too many of them knew solidarity is improbable. And the whole world quakes, the great collapse, chronicle of a slaughter foretold. A preparatory remark. At the same time that Haiti suffered the worst humanitarian catastrophe ever recorded, two nations, France and the United States, among the dozens of others who had come to bring aid to a helpless population, which is why so many nations had come, started their own small war. A battle whose raison d'etre was absolutely frivolous given the horrendous situation they were meant to come to grips with. Scrapping and yelping, the French and Americans started quarreling over the landing strip at the airport, whose buildings, the terminal and especially the control tower, had been seriously damaged. The entire process of putting into place international aid was thereby undermined. This text of fiction and far from being an exact account of what happened is, nevertheless, an act of accusation. An accusation against the international community's response of total indifference to the frivolous quarrel, registering as a lack of solidarity with the traumatized country it had supposedly come to help. Vanix, what time is it? Stefano, according to the moon, it must be midnight. Maurice, Mater Link, Princess Malay. Characters, young woman, also known as the young one. Older woman, also known as the oldest. Neon Sign, Omnia Mors Equat, death makes everyone equal. Setting, a thousand year old tree, a giant, planted in the earth is of defying humankind, standing tall, its verticality persisting despite everything else having fallen. A supremely starry sky, its infinite stretch, its emptiness impossible to fill. A sign of the human condition, shooting stars, metaphysics, the transmigration of souls and spirits. A neon sign with the words, Omnia Mors Equat. All of these elements, none of which is real or absolutely indispensable. It is the sense of collapse, the most important feeling emanating from the stage that plays opening, that must remain central. Yeah? You're sleeping, aren't you? No. Pause, blackout. No? Look. Please look then. Look. Touch me. Yeah? What? Touch me, it's important. Can you feel my blood beating in your hand? Touch. Do you feel it? Yeah. Yeah. You're still sleeping. No. I'm not sleeping. So we can start again? Pause, blackout. What time is it? What time is it? What time could it be? Pause, blackout. Are you sleeping now? No. So whatever time it is, can we start our game over again, begin again? No. But we can't do what they're doing, those slackers. They chant the whole night long. They pray, they implore. They hug the earth with their faces. And I'll come back. I'm back again. Now it's stopped. They're lamentations. They're a chance. Ignoring everything that's been happening, everything about those foreigners, those missionaries who are taking advantage of the situation to invade us, who are profiting from our paralysis, those hysterics who come to save us and make us pay. I don't even see the beautiful sky over our heads. Even this beautiful sky right here. Yes, always praying, always complaining bitterly when everything's going wrong, when they're in a hole, when everything falls on top of them. It's always the others who must come and save us. We have to get up. Now that they have shut up, we can start again. Are you sleeping? No. Who can? Never be the way it was. Never be the same again. Never the same. Never. No one's sleeping. No one. No one's sleeping. No one's resting. No one. Even if you're sleeping. No one. No one's sleeping yet.  But what about them?  No one's sleeping. No one's sleeping. What do you want to do with the foreigners who are taking advantage of you? Who wants to melt into the depths of the night? Slush. Disappear. There have already been so many. So many who slipped away. They... We... They... They... And I... Always one eye. One eye to see. One eye open wide. If there's nothing we can do, at least one. Yes, one. Because we don't know. We can't know when nothing will show up, come back to crush everything and finish us off. No. Who can? Who can't know? Who can't tell us? Who? Nobody. Nobody. Nobody will sleep the sleep of the just. Yes. That. Yes. The sleep and rest will sleep. We deserve. We don't sleep that good sleep. No. We don't sleep. Who asks if I'm going to sleep? No one has slept since. Me neither. I don't sleep. I sleep a little. But I don't sleep. Look. Look. One. Look. That was incredible. One, one slicing through the great stretch of sky and falling disappears. Two! I saw another one. Wow, that one was disappearing. Falling and falling. Two shooting stars bleeding into the sky peacefully. Two stars in the night. Damn! Two. That's not how I watch. I watch every night. The eye is by the sun. I'll have to take a nap, take a nap, take a nap, rest. But if I don't have enough time, I'll have to sleep a little bit. Even if I have to sleep at the end, I'll sleep like I'm sleeping, I won't be able to sleep, I won't be able to live, even if I'm like a wife, I won't be able to... We can't. How could you? You're right. We can't. Impossible. Another one. Look. Another one. Yes, over there. Do you see it? Look, look, look. It's sliding, slipping. Follow it with your eyes. Follow it. Fillet, zétoiles, fillet. Where were you? I was over there. Over there, leaning against the other side of the tree on another part, watching the city below us extinguished. Missionaries, foreigners deciding what works and what doesn't. They're taking charge, burrowing everywhere. Counting stars. Who's that? It's not counting stars falling. It's not counting stars, because we're losing our heads. It's not counting stars. It's not counting stars. It's not counting stars. It's not coffee, that's it. It's not coffee. Look, look, look, look. One more. Look, look, look, look. Again. One more, yes. I see. How many will it take to close this chapter? It's crazy to count like this. It'll take too much time. Yes, crazy to count all those sparks, all that snuffing out, all those passages, all that slipping, shooting and sliding. We'll never finish. No, we can't stop. We can't stop our game. Now that we've begun, this game is infinite. We have to keep on. Begin again each time. You can't stop. You can't. Yes, let's keep on counting. Enumerating, voicing the numbers. Various of time. All those people really counted for us. You know they did. So we have to keep on counting. Yes. A long haul game, or endless ritual, then we'll sleep. When we'll be finished, we'll have all the time in the world to sleep after. Do you believe that? We'll be able to sleep finally. You believe it? Really you believe it after all this? Yes. It will calm us. We'll be calm after. So we'll sleep. At last. What? At last. Why that big sigh? What time is it? Time. I don't know. Touch me. You have nothing to say. What? Touch my body. Another one, though. Yes, another. No, not even the speck of another, not one, not the least trace of another star. I don't see if there's nothing in this sky, nothing. Am I losing my mind? Am I making all of this up? I saw something. I did. Don't you see? Touch me. Please. Touch me. No. Look over there. Right over there in that other quadrant. Don't you see that one? Don't you see? Look, look, look. This time. Yes. Instead of feeding ourselves, let's calculate. Let's count those who count for us. How long will this last, huh? Yes? Yes? Huh. I don't know. All those people.  And those who come, they're arriving by the thousands. All those thousands of coalitions of countries. They're organized there everywhere. All of them, those foreigners. They only just, nation against nation, in order to invade us, move in, take their places, stay. Despite the shipwreck.  They're only sad suddenly when they have to defend their own position on our land. They don't even have the time to ask if we see them. If we see them with our own two eyes, us two. Don't you see them? Haven't you seen them? How they're fighting each other?  They're tearing each other to pieces, fighting for their position. Each one with their coalition, their uniforms, their army. They're plotting their invasion. All that for us. For us? You see.  We shouldn't. We didn't ask for anything. But they feel sorry for us. For what happened to us. Worldwide solidarity. International pity. We don't want their pity. They're traumatized. And what can we do about it? They're bringing us help. We are important. Important to them. Capital. Right. Capital. Anyway, they're here. In us? We can't do a thing about it. They're here, taking their places on the request of our leaders. We'll summon them. Our leaders. Our leaders. What leaders? The country is them. Always waiting for the Messiah for somebody to come and save them. And what country? There is no country. There is no country anymore. What country are you talking about? You're joking. What country? Yes, they won't leave. What are they really doing here? They're analyzing our situation. There's even some of them specialists taking notes, summing things up. They want to help. Can you see them? I don't see them, do you? I don't see them either. I see them. But I don't see them. Why are you saying? Are you laughing? What are you saying? No, nothing. I'm not laughing. I'm joking. I didn't say anything. Anyhow, it's all our fault. A dead body attracts flies. But... I'm telling you, I don't see them. That's all. And there are those who are leaving. Them. They're leaving in the thousands. Those who can. They're leaving us behind. They're saving themselves. Foreigners are showing up. Our people are leaving. They're going far away. They won't come back. How can you be so sure? They're leaving us. Leaving us behind. It didn't just start today. Thousands of them are already leaving us. Ah. You see? Yes. None of that is familiar. The coming and goings of catastrophes and people. We're pretty used to it. Coalitions. Catastrophes that come, that go. Their dance, their endless puppet show. They're with us. What are you saying? Are you at it again? You're laughing. You think you can laugh about it? What? No, I'm not laughing. Well, I am laughing about it. Sometimes I have to. I confess. And you? You too? Yes. You were saying? It was you. Yes. You drive me crazy. What time is it? Time to start up again. To begin again. Let's do it. Let's play our game. Laugh with evil. Exercise it. Let's go. What time is it? Why? You're the one who stopped everything. You went away. It was you, wasn't it? But I came back. I'm here now. What time is it? Why? Why did you go away? Leave me. I was afraid to disappear for good. Afraid you were running away from me. What time is it? I don't know. I was here. I wasn't going anywhere. About those who leave. Who banded the country. Leaving us behind with our misery. We were talking about those who leave us. And so what? It's their right. Yes. But what about us? We just stay here. Who cares? Let them leave. Run away if they can. Very far, far away from us. Let them. It's strange. Those comings and goings. Don't you think? It's strange all the same. Those who go, who come. And that international solidarity. Yeah. That. What right do they have to come and treat us the way they do? This whole world of people. Us. The part of the world they have to save. A priority zone. What are they afraid of? Why don't they huddle together in their good fortune? Why all of a sudden such interest in us. Such a need to wipe their conscience clean. With their summarizing, their reporting. Why? Instead of keeping busy with something else. Rather than filming us in our disarray. Rather than watching us survive for better or for worse. For better or for worse. Yes. For better and for worse. We moved them. They're moved. And us. We can't hide anymore. They cage us. Stigmatize us. That's how it is. All our suffering exhibited right in their faces. They stigmatize us.  That's right. So now's the time for them to come and take over. The right moment. Never hesitating to tell us what we should do. Long lessons on how to behave. How to learn. How to imitate them. Imitate what they do. They'll never stop coming. They'll come, take over, set up their barracks, and adopt us. That's right. Let them come. What can we do?  Let them come. That's the way it is.  Let them do their thing. Accomplish their mission. Their great mission on our backs. Their timeless crusade. Those missionaries. As long as we're low as possible and there is steam, they might as well come. That's the situation. That's right. Let them come. Let them come, take care of us, of our misery, prolong the occupation. Let's hope it does them good. We can hope they get a bit price. Anyhow, it's done. We can't get along without them. If they come, it's to stay until they find other things to do, other places to invade, to get with their solutions to misfortune. After all, that's their job. Misfortune is their prey. Now, let them be. We hope our misfortune will feed them well, those opportunists. Bring them lots of money. I'll at least sign. I'll at least sign. I'll at least sign. A star, look. You saw it too? Did you really see it as I saw it shooting like that? Swoosh? You saw it? A star, yes. What are we going to do now? Now that we have nothing to do, no. No? I don't see anything. She doesn't see anything. You? Nothing. Me? Yes, you. Why? Me? Me neither. Nothing. Yes, you're right. What I see is we stay rooted here. Yes, we stay rooted here, rooted in order to number. To count the stars, the only thing to do. That's it then. I'll at least... I'll at least... Not another word, not another thought. What I see is the great collapse. Yeah? Right, huh? The great collapse. Yes. Right, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. The great collapse. Say something, speak, say anything, anything, speak. That's it, speak. I'm waiting for you. I'm counting on you. You must have an idea. What are we supposed to do? How can we do anything? How? We can't simply decide to stay here. You and me, you know it. Yes, I know it. Couldn't we just be happy to live? To breathe? Couldn't we? No, we couldn't. So what are we going to do? I don't know. I don't know, please. I don't know, please stop. I don't know, please. Just don't give up. Don't cry.  Maybe we could sell. Why, are there women? Sell. Do some little business, sell small things? They do that. Everybody sells. To pull their misery like this day they sell. What? Things, small things. We don't know how. It won't work. We don't know how. We don't know how to sell anything else. You're laughing, aren't you? You're laughing about it. That's not how we'll get out of this. You laugh. I thought you wanted us to change. I thought you wanted another life, done with the one you had before, finished. That degrade life is not what you said. Yes, I said that, I know. But now that he's, that he's not here, not alive. No, I don't want that life. Not anymore.    No. Yes. Like so many others. So many others. A huge number, in fact. Why? Don't tell me. No, don't tell me it means nothing to you. Don't tell me that. Maybe you're not shocked. But I didn't see it like that. I didn't see him so fragile. So vulnerable. I didn't see it. I didn't see it. So vulnerable. I didn't see it. But there it is. Like that. And who? Who finds something? They're all dead. All of them. All our clients, all of them. Yes. There's nobody left. Hardly anyone. There's not a thing left either. On the boulevard, the old boulevard where Péramon's place used to be, that great big boulevard where Péramon's house used to be. The main street, you saw it. Nothing standing. There's nothing left. Yes. Nothing we know is left standing. No. Nothing we know. There's nothing there. But we'll find something. We'll find something. Tell me. Yes. Tell me. It's impossible. Impossible all that. What happened is impossible. Tell me. Yes. I asked myself too. I asked myself what happened. No explanation. What happened to make everything fall in just a few seconds. Like huge implosion with all those people. No. There's nothing to say. Nothing. I'm telling you. What do they call it? The great collapse. Everywhere. Yes. For the whole world. And the whole world quakes from our great collapse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  We don't speak anymore. We don't speak.   We speak a little but we don't speak. Yes. It's true. It's true. Ah. Belle amour tombe. Belle amour tombe. Belle amour tombe. We're going to take care of ourselves. What can we do? Think. Think for ourselves. Even if now, now at this moment, we still can't think. That's true too. Yes. For us. And not far away, not far away, you can count. Make a long list. We're not the only ones. Plenty of others on Empty Lives now too. Yes. It's true. We should be thankful. We should think that there had been somebody that was still right here speaking. Everything fell but we're still alive. Alive and well, right? We can touch each other. Prove it. Yes. Yeah. Right? Yes. I know. But we have to keep on swallowing what food and our bellies live, don't we? Yes. Right. I know. We have to keep on. That's it. We have to. That's true too. It must be true. Yes. Yes. Is that it? Is that it? Obligated? Obligated, that's it. Like after all that torment, doing what we're doing, we're still living. We should live better. Count every day. Gold. Make each day count. Deserve every one of them. But how? We'll find a way. Yes. Benamu was hardly paying anything. It was the end. He was hardly worth anything. Don't you know that? Yes. I know it. We all knew it. But... Yes. That's the thing. But... That's the thing. He was useful. We had to... We could manage with him. Even if he wasn't much good, he wasn't worth anything anymore. He was finished. He didn't count anymore.  Then that thing, that avalanche, that horrible catastrophe. What did they call it? Those journalists? They had a way of naming it. The slaughter. The apocalypse and all life time. That's it. Exactly. The apocalypse. So treacherous. Who are you talking about? Them? Him? No. The journalist. Yes. Him too. I would have wanted him to hold on like us. At least see this. I would have wanted him to watch his fall with his own eyes. His misery ending. Drop by drop. Him who was expecting a quiet death. I would have wanted a longer death for him. A long, infinite decline. Like the way an old lion yawns in his cage waiting for the inevitable end. So debonair. Don't cry. I'm not crying. No. You're the one. You're the one crying. Dry your tears. I'm telling you. Don't cry. You shouldn't give him that gift. You shouldn't be so touched by him. Look. I'm not crying. Almost. But I'm not. We can't. We can't let him take pleasure in our sadness after. Not him. We won't cry, okay? We shouldn't cry for him. What good does it do? Tell me. Yes, right? What good? I know. I haven't stopped. His fate. I haven't stopped. Yes, right? Me neither. But let's stop now. We have to stand up. The other girls would be ashamed of us. The others, the girls, yes, huh? Yes, it's true. You're right. We should dry them up. It's over. Dry them up. Our eyes. We should move things right in the face. Yes, let's stop. Let's not cry. We can't. We mustn't. Not for him. No. Yes, right? Yes? Yes? You're right. But I never see. I never see it coming. And I can't stop it from coming. I cry, that's all. When it comes, I cry. I cry, that's all. You know. Yes? Me too. But just the same, we have to start. Find a reason to dry our eyes, like you say. Now on, stop everything. Dry our eyes and look at what life can be like after.  After the apocalypse, everything. We should be proud to have had that luck. We should, of so many others, here we are, us too, alone. Another chance at life. To start over, to begin again. Yes, start over. Tabula rasa. Start over at zero. Yes, begin again. Yes, tabula rasa. Make our destiny something we deserve. That's beautiful. What you're saying is beautiful. Why do you find the strength to say such things? To be so sure. It's beautiful, really beautiful. Abandon that dangerous life. No longer be the wolf kind of woman. Every crook, every bandit hustles and then mounts. No longer their slave. Live, live, live, finally. And make babies. Lots, lots, lots of babies. Yes, huh? We have to make a life no matter what.  Forget our beautiful whorehouse. It's ending in ashes. Babies, lots of them. Are you sure? We have to live, yes, no matter what. Live, grab onto life with no regrets. But should we add to it? Multiply the people out there? Should we be thinking about that now? Oh, we're forgetting to count. We're speaking, but we've gotten the stars. I know. But no one's saying anything. No one's up in arms about replacing. Replacing the number of people who've disappeared. Replacing them after? All of them. Those hundreds of thousands and even more.  Because they remember too many things. All those who've disappeared, who will disappear. Nobody's up in arms about the emptiness. The nothingness they'll leave behind. How to fill it up. It's only when we talk about losing people that our heads work. Never about regeneration, renewal. It's not what you'd call glorious. They count the number of people. Wanting always to have you where to stop the growth. Waiting for the next catastrophe to help out. But now, all those hundreds of thousands. How do we replace them? Lots, lots, lots of babies. A star. Another shooting star, yes. You better say it once. We'll replace you. You want to replace everybody all by yourself? Just you? You think you can do it? What? I know. Don't pretend. I know. Do you hear me? I know. What? I know what you did. I know. Who told you? Who? Was it him? Who dared? Nobody should know I did that one last time again. I really hate him. Why did he do it? Forget it. It wasn't him. It wasn't the dead man. You saw it. I knew what was going on. We all knew. And we all felt sorry too for your sadness. Despite what you might think. My guess about us. Us too. We suffered with you. We all had the same thing happen with him. And everything about you was easy to know. You, the young one.  He let it show. I made you all sick. No. You didn't make me sick. And then the others. They don't count anymore. Death makes us all equal. But even so? I know I won't have anymore. Not coming from me, from my womb. I don't need to. And then it doesn't matter. Why should it? I won't have anymore from my womb. That I know. It's me who decided. The doctor told me after this last one. This great thing. I risked the end. The stopping for good. Like any other. Like for all the others. Like for every woman when the blood stops. Childbirth. It's all our fate, isn't it? Every woman. Every woman who exists. We know that. I knew it. I did. Me too. Me too. That. That. I had the choice. I chose. It was my choice. That's what matters after all. I don't know. I could have. This last one. I didn't want one from him either. I was just fresh beat. Before another would show up. Another he'd ask the same thing of. To give up having any. We were four. But four wasn't enough for him. Despite everything. All those. Those fetuses. I'm not sorry about it. I didn't want them from him. It won't be from me, that's for sure. But I will find lots now. Lots. I'll find them. I need to count. Keep track of those stars. All of them. I want to be able to accomplish something. Something more concrete. Something more regular.  Respected you. The oldest. Always needing to speak with you. And me. Me. The young one. I made sure he felt carefree. That's all. I know all that. I'm not angry with you because of it. To tell you the truth. Now that we're all equal. As you say. I was jealous of you too. Of everything he told you in secret. But today none of that makes any sense, does it? No. You're right. No? No. No. Like you say. So then how? How do we pick back up the normal course of things? Go down there. Me with people. Live with them as we used to. We can't wait like this until everything settles down. We're trapped. We're counting stars. But we're trapped. Perched up here. We're trapped. Hello. Men are stealing. Brutalizing. It's still going on. Fear. Fear has invaded us. And we're here under the street. Perched waiting for all to be over. Be settled. Yes? I'm getting out. No, no. No, no. Let them finish their wildness. You know it. You know what happens, what's happening now. They take it out on women. Even with the catastrophe. Right now they're taking it out on women. Everywhere in the camp they're taking it out on women. They're even more trapped than we are under this ancient tree. Perched will save. Stop. Who says so? Come on. Let them finish. Let this pass by. They're wild now. We should hide. But don't you ever stop? What? You know, don't you? It never stops the chase. You know it. War time, peace time, it's the same thing. You know it, don't you? No. No. I'm not going to stay. To wait for what? That they come here. Is that what you want? I want everything to pass by. Okay. Keep your mind busy. Stay busy. Count. Please count. Not one. Stop. They're all dead. They might shine, but not one of them shines for us. For us, they're all dead. Not one has ever shown for us. Don't you see that? Look! Take a minute. Look! I'm looking. I'm looking, yes. Count. Count now. Let's count. One. Two. One hundred. One hundred thousand. We need to mourn. So much snuffing out. So much snuffing out. So many disappearances. So many erasures. Yes. Yes. We must mourn. Cradle them one by one. Like a sour seed. Like a sour seed separates the seed so they sprout in bud. Count those who've been erased. Who've been erased in order to celebrate the life we still have to live after. Please. I'm asking you. Stay. Don't go. Stay here. You matter to me. We're only two now. Only two. Yes. Us. Only us. But you matter. You've always counted for me. Yes. I didn't know. No. No. You threw me. You moved me so. Me too. Yes. Me too. You? Yes. He didn't touch you. Move it to show. Ask him to touch you. Let me. Can I touch you? Just that. Touch your body. Yes. How soft your body is. What are you feeling? I'm trembling. You thrill me too. It's your way of looking at my body. You're soft and gentle looking. You're beautiful looking like an eagle like the damned. Keep your hand there. Go on. Don't abandon me. Touch me. Go ahead. No. What's happening to us? What's come over us? Do you think it's the catastrophe? All this out being together or fear? And the mix of hearts losing courage starting to crack? Do you think it's the catastrophe? That if things were different? Touch me. I'm begging you. Come on. Don't stop now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. Go ahead. Go ahead. Come on. Stop it. Are you okay? Sabah. Sabah. I don't get it. I don't get it. Sabah. What's happening? I don't understand. You don't want to, sweetheart. Are you losing your mind? You don't want to anymore. I don't know. Let's drop it. I'm sorry too. It's not your fault. It's me. Do I disgust you? Why? And yet I saw something in your eyes. I've seen it for a long time. I've seen it in your eyes. I know I have. I disgust you. Is that it? Such big words. Stop it. You don't do anything to me. It's me. You? I don't understand. You don't understand. I know. I would've wanted. I would've wanted so many things. So much more than this game, this ritual, this exhausticism. Love, love? Yes, between us. Beautiful, human love. The infinite shadow of love. The love of an impossible dream. The shadows voyage the memory of it. Love the way you dream about it when you're little. What remains when you grow up? The shadow of this love's dream. It travels within us. Love like a sweet and restful song. A sweet and restful song. It's barely audible humming. But oh, so restful. You can understand. It's too late now. What? I don't get it. Too late. Why do you say that? Are you so sure it's OK? Do you hear what I'm saying? Isn't it misfortune that's making us act like this? So different from how we would have acted. I mean, at another point in time, cooler, less turbulent, would we have acted the way we're acting now? Let ourselves get carried away. I'm afraid of it. Of the energy misfortune gives us. It's wrong. And I'm afraid of your fear. I'm even more afraid of never again having enough energy to live. Is that true? Come here then. Come to me. Come. I don't want you to reject me again. Come then. Promise. But. But what? Know nothing but. But? Do you really want to? You really want to? Forget it. I didn't say anything. You're so young, and I. And you? You know what I mean. You're only 35. No, 36. Yes, so? I'm a lot older than you are.  It's all of that. This new feeling, it's always that way. I don't understand. And I'm not as young as all that. You know that's true. That's right. You've seen it all. Maybe, in fact, you're even older than I am. What? Take it easy. You don't understand. I was joking, just to laugh. What time is it? Time laughs at us. Let's laugh a little as well, us too. But you didn't tell me. Where were you? And what's that you're wearing? Is that a noise? Don't you hear it? You tease. You've heard exactly what I said before. OK, sweetheart, you win. I'm not coming anywhere near you. Oh, no. No. Were you running away from me? Were you running? Was that it? Come over here. Please? Oh, I was behind the tree. I'll come in a minute. But wait, OK? On one condition, OK? OK?  No, not that. Not that. You know we can't do that. We can't close our eyes. I'm too afraid. Not that, OK? A noise. Do you hear it? There's some people in the past, on the path to the hill below us, among the trees that are still standing, despite the catastrophe. A handful of trees that are me. Maybe they're coming towards us. No, that's not. That's impossible. We're perched among the trees. We're well hidden behind this old one. It's impossible. No path leads to the tree where we are. Nobody sees us, but we see everything. Come on. We can't hear them anymore.  Don't cheat. I'm still hearing something. There's something. Is it you? Huh? Huh? Where are you? What are you doing? What have you been doing all this time? Tell me. Say something. Say something. I'm afraid. Just a word. I'm afraid to say something. Where are you? Is that you? Shush, shush, shush. Listen to the silence, the anguish, the fear. Fear that it's coming back to devastate us again. Devastate. Devastate. Yes, it's devastate. Listen to the silence it makes. No. I don't want to listen to that. Say something. Say something. I don't want silence. Say something. I want the sound of your voice to know you're there. That is soul. I want to know to hear life next to me. That I hear, no, no. No more silence or anguish around me. Please. Where are you? Tell me. Tell me. Where are you? Answer me. Answer me. Answer me. Please. I'm here. You scared me. I was afraid. Don't ever do that again. She slips on a military uniform with the insignia of the United States on the sleeve. The jacket is wide open, revealing her breasts. Look at me now. I put on my equipment. We're going to dance. Dance with me. What? Your equipment? What are you talking about? But what is it? She has a boombox in her hands. We hear a few bars of mambo music wafting from it. Yes, look at me. Want to dance? Oh, where did you get that from him before he left the earth? Isn't it something? I have one for you, too. You, too? Do you want it? Do you want it now? Another uniform? How did you do it? I saw him pass. Yes, he was on top of me. During the catastrophe, it was his back that protected me. Next to me, it's over now. Take this, take your equipment. Get dressed. We are going to dance. And then what? You really want to know, do you? You said you saw him pass. No. That's what I heard. No, he didn't just pass. Well, what then? I mean, he was still breathing. I could have pulled him out of it. He was wounded, but I could have lived. He could have lived some more again. I could have helped him, but I didn't want him to live. I didn't want him to go on living. I helped him. It's me. I helped him die. Are you sure? Are you really sure of that? I don't know. But in the end, he's not here, is he? You're right. You're right. Let's forget it. You're right. Relief. After the catastrophe, some relief, at least that. Yes. And so I took this thing, his radio, and then the uniform. I thought it could somehow be useful that I could make something of it. You never know. It was such a symbol for him. With it on, he looked like a hero. All those international military uniforms. So what about a heroine? A woman soldier. Now, I'm a soldier, a heroine as well. Come to me, my heroine. Come offer me that dance.  We have to celebrate what you've done. Come on. Let's dance. Let's dance until we're drunk. Big dance. You shimmy. You're shimmy so fine that I could die from it.  You shimmy and we will fly away.  Take it off and slip this on. You too, here. Really? Go ahead. Again. It's just a game. Yeah. Don't you want it? I want your toy. Yes, right? Yes, huh? Why, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? To exercise the evil, all the evil that's surrounding us. To exercise it? You think so? To exercise it? Go ahead and do it. Wait, wait. Take it, baby. Give it here. She slips on the military uniform with the insignia of United Nations, France, on the sleeve. Well, we're all armed now. So now we can dance left. They dance again. Young woman moves away abruptly. Wait a minute, wait. Older woman pulls the young one brutally towards her. Where are you going? From here on, the theater is transformed into a tragic, surreal ritual. The young one frees herself, runs behind the tree. She comes back wearing a strap-on dildo.  Then she forces her down on all fours and savagely plays at sodomizing her. When she's done, the young one stands up without a motion, hands the strap onto the oldest, who repeats with the young one what has just happened to her. They play this game over and over. Meanwhile, a neon sign attached to one of the branches of the tree by an old frayed rope slowly lights up. It proclaims Omnia, Moors, and Quat. Death makes everyone equal. Se filo men fiel gemalti. Everything becomes dust, a veil of traveling dust, even without when it travels. And the cry from the people. The cry, the cry, and the agony of the children. The cry of its enchantment, despite everything, the sea that sings spirals, the sea, its cry, the cry that humans don't hear, don't hear anymore, caught up in their own pain, their own cry, their sad cry that kills, that kills everything. This more found, a cracking, that's what was first. Then our feet became unsteady, our feet that stumbled, that never stumbled, never our stumbling feet, that event, that will take years, then years waking up. It's becoming forever rewarded. Dr. Lisa Cheyenne, who will be the full performance, we're gonna transition really quickly to the post-performance discussion. So I think we're gonna turn it over to Christian Flo, who's gonna moderate the discussion. Thank you everyone, and thank you everyone for coming. Thank you also to Kaniza and Gina and Charlotte. Cheyenne. Cheyenne, my apologies, Cheyenne, for an amazing reading and to Judy Miller for a fantastic translation that you've made for a really invigorating and engaging place to start with. So my name is Christian Flo. I'm a faculty member at the University of Buffalo in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. I work in the French program. I work, among other things, in theater and performance studies, and that's part of the reason why Stephanie had contacted me to be here today. So, and I'm thrilled to be here to be part of this. I don't wanna say too much about myself because I'm not the focus of this, obviously. So why don't we turn to the video from Guy Régis, the junior. Cheyenne, I'm a little nervous. I'm a commentator, for the last eight months that have followed me through this catastrophe. The text has invited me to write it. I came to Haiti just after and today it's been... I'm very happy to know that even if I'm not here, these words are with the public who will hear them. Good evening with this text.  Guy was basically explaining that the reason he filmed the video where he filmed it was in his garden so that he's part of nature and you can see trees, you can see the plants, the tree that inspired the tree in the text itself and because the trees were one of the few things, along with nature that survived the earthquake. As the houses made of cinder blocks and cement fell, the houses made of wood stood. So nature stood and he was inspired by that, witnessing that after the earthquake to write this piece, which he wrote in the months after and which eventually had its first reading at... He did not talk about this, I'm interjecting this to give a little context, which had its first reading in a draft version in 2011 at Avignon. It was then premiered in 2013 at Tarmac in Paris and then we're having a reading here today. He concluded by saying he was extremely happy to share the words with all of us here today and wished us a wonderful evening. So on that note, I don't want to say too much about Guy because I want the panelists to speak more about their work with his work. But Guy is a poet, playwright, translator, performer among many things and as you've heard from the introduction, has accomplished quite a bit. He writes both in French and in Creole. So he's a pleasure to read and to his work to know. All right, so before we begin, I want to follow the lead that was set and just ask each panelist to introduce themselves briefly and then we'll go from there. Oh, okay. I'm Gina Athenai-Ulys and my day job, I'm a professor of anthropology, but in my heart, I'm actually an artist. I'm Judy Miller and in my day job, I'm a professor and in my dreams, I'm an artist. My name's Kanesa Shaw, I make theater and I usually make theater with Cheyenne Williams. Okay, great. All right, so when I was reading the translation, after reading the original, but before seeing what you guys had decided to do and I have to say weaving Gina's essay to this was quite spectacular to say the very least and just. There were three things that really stood out to me that I want to ask the three of you about. One was about the presence of the international in the work. One is about the aesthetics and ethics that are used for the international publics for this work, who are the international audiences who are going to see it and then the question about women and gender, the work of women and the work around gender that this text is putting forward. So I have long notes that I'm going to skip because I get excited and write a lot. So the presence of the international, we hear it talked about in terms of a mission, the younger calls it a timeless crusade. We hear the explicit references to the United Nations, to the United States, to France. And so we hear the characters talking about how such international presences pay attention to Haiti when things happen like this and thereby as in certain contexts, Haiti is exceptionalized. But then we also hear about the alternative responses that the characters are putting forward. What are the ways to live amidst such a traumatic crisis? What are the ways to try to work through it and to try to survive? So I wanted to ask the three of you, as translator, as director and as performer, how you, whoever wants to go first, please do, what you felt the international presence meant to you as you worked through the text and if you, in putting together the translation or the reading, that changed? Shaisa? First, I want to say how moved I am by what I saw.  It was wonderful and it was a very difficult text to translate. It was a very difficult text emotionally to translate so that comes back probably a bit to the international business because the United States and France is right on the line, right, and being accused of something really terrible that they should be really accused of. I saw that in the translation. Guy made it very clear in the preparatory remarks, the remarks that he made. The horrible kind of ritualized sodomy scene at the end is a very complex one as far as I'm concerned and I think for staging, some kind of staging, that would be really interesting to talk about how one might attack that and I do think it probably has something to do with performance ritual and Haiti turning it around upside down in a kind of a way but that's just a thought I've had from reading his stuff. So I'll let it go with that. It's a very strong condemnation and it should be. I'm going to start with women. Please do. After a disaster, everyone stages a version of waiting for Godot. It's become this like signifier of the impossibility to hold extreme trauma or devastation collapse and I think Guy has offered us a new container and what excites me in particular about the text is this explosion of the misogynist tropes of a woman's body as a metaphor or the margins as the place that we use to talk about the center, queerness as a metaphor, this kind of Western patriarchal conversation in which prostitution becomes the ultimate signifier of violent power relations and here Guy takes that and he explodes it into this allegorical, this poetic, this repetitive, this existential landscape and that is what most excites me about the text and felt like the grounding point from which to consider this transnational conversation. Well I guess I'll put those two things together. A note about Haiti's solidarity with angels, I think for me, well first I need to say that I actually agreed to do this, I have to give shout out to this, there's a little bit of a backstory here that's really interesting because I taught Kinesi and I taught Cheyenne. They're both my former students and at Wesleyan University, that's the day job. And so when Kinesi asked I was like, sure, whatever you say, because the idea for me as I'm entering into this sort of art practice and art of having my former students tell me what to do was actually kind of thrilling because it's also signifying a real shift that I'm entering this art world and they're in it and they've been in it professionally longer than I have and I trust them explicitly which is the reason that my commentary on the women must be prefaced by what? Because I did feel the same way and I could say a whole lot about that because I think there's something to be said about how women configure into the imagination of Haitian men. I'm currently reading Adriana in All My Dreams for something else with the French Council which is with Kayama and Laurent, et cetera and I have the same commentary, the same sense of women's bodies become these battlefields and that's not my terminology. It is someone whose first name I cannot remember but whose last name is Thistleweight who actually has written a book called Women's Bodies as Battlefields, right? Like how violence gets enacted through eroticism and I thought that was so brilliant so my, you know, yeah, anyway but the thing about the international community so what was fascinating to me was when we were talking about what are we going to do with this? I trust you but it needs a feminist intervention without a doubt for me. It needs a black feminist intervention and knowing that I had written or what I had written in we started to talk about it so there was the moment in reading the text and sort of seeing what it means to be positioned in the diaspora to be writing about the earthquake and what it means to be on land and Haiti and writing about the earthquake so that was the part for me, you know even reading, you know, about they always leave us that's the feeling of being left behind because people migrate, right? And the ones who are left behind are left behind in very particular conditions unless they are financially able to live a different kind of life so that sense of continuous competition to live to have your most basic needs be met and then to be doing that in the face of catastrophe was something that actually made me realize there's something there to be explored but I haven't had to explore quite in that way except from what I hear from family when we talk on WhatsApp. Thank you. And so I want to kind of follow these threads because those are actually parts of my questions because can I, definitely when I read this I mean you can't help but think of Godot, right? It's there. Oh, it's beautiful. The lift he gives us in that. Yes, exactly. And then it also reminds me of Franca Chen's play Mello Vivi with a Piage which came out in 2010 and was written about the earthquake with two male characters trapped in a space having a similar dialogue and so what's really interesting about this that was that Guy has decided to and he was interviewed about this and said I wanted to let women talk about the evil and also the masculine, right? So it's as if he's taken this form that existed and perhaps done his best to, in his efforts as he talks about to speak when worked with the most disenfranchised populations to speak and work with the most marginalized populations like the Soros Foundation, the award he has right now working on a project in Port-au-Prince about violence, preventing violence against youth, working with artists, it makes sense that he does this in reference to what really appears to be a model of queerness that in other contexts, in Vodou context, in Haitian context comes through, at the very least, through the reference to the Gete at the end, the Gete spirits and where the Sodomizing Ritual actually is part or that's where it becomes complex how to read this. So my question about this is then before international publics, because this work has circulated in international spaces, what does this work say to international publics, both in its original version in French and Coyote, but also now, today, in English and Coyote with the bits of French that are in there. So again, that's for all three of you, and please... I would love to Russian answer that one. I don't think we've that evolved. I don't think we've that evolved. I mean, I'm still sort of dedicated to it as a project. We've talked about this and there's a way. We've had some subversion. I think we live in a world where ideas about race, ideas about black women, ideas about Haitian people in general and Haitian women are so fermented that it requires an intervention of some kind to dislodge what becomes so obvious on the page. So for me, a big part of this, which was through directing and conversations, what can we do to take this material, it's rich material, but to sort of shake it up a bit so that some of those fermented ideas don't get re-fermented. Because I think the danger, that's the first danger, and I think Kanesa can speak more to this but heard a love of opera in singing and chants. It was like, I hear a song here. Can we find a song? Can we find a song? That was her asking for some kind of something to sort of add something more that actually is going to add nuance and more texture and weight to the words. So then we don't end up sitting with ideas that most of us are not evolved enough to think in sophisticated terms when it comes to race, especially in these times. So for me, that's how I would like to answer that. Did you go to the YouTube and see any, there's some clips of the reading in Avignon. I don't know if you did that or not, but it's, to me, is pretty much in line with what you're saying because the actors were dressed as dominatrixes. So we have women's body on stage in leather and net stockings and so on. Black women's bodies, too. Because not just women's bodies, black women's bodies, because I think it needs to be marked. Which I, in my humble opinion, was a mistake, but it was saying something, it was also what happens in French theater a lot. Of course. With all women's bodies. Very French, very French. And the French, I believe, are paying for this, right? Yeah. Guy's text, for me, I feel that it holds all of this space for many things to be true at the same time. Part of what I love about it is a platform for many languages to be spoken at once. So aesthetic languages, formal languages, but historical languages and cultural languages. And when I think of the international platform for a transnational conversation about parasitic development aid, which is really the heart of his text, I think it's a glorious and buoyant world in which many things can be true at once. Is Nicole still here? Oh, hi, Nicole. When I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about this play, I think about what happens when we do it in Paris, Kigali, in Rwanda, New York, and Port-au-Prince at Guy's Festival, because he has this extraordinary festival that's really based on kind of South-South dialogue. And then we have this really complex conversation happening in the world Guy has created that allows us to really think transnationally about development aid. So that's what I think. I think we need a France, Kigali, New York, Haiti tour of the piece, and some magical insanity would go down in terms of thought. I love it. Would you do it, please? Yes, let's do it. That's what we're doing. All right. So I want to open to the audience for some questions. I just want to kind of tie a little bow around all this because it's tomorrow from Gina's other work. It seems like this text offers a new narrative of Haiti, another way to think of Haiti. And then also in the words of the younger, why not a heroine? Right. Why not a heroine as opposed to a hero? All right. So please, any questions or comments from the house? It was a lot. It was a lot. I was spent by the time we were done. Thank you so much to the two of you. And I think the comment you just made about the international aid piece, but we don't even have to go into it. We can also add in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Please. Let's go there too. We can add in Louisiana. What festivals do you have? I have Louisiana. I've got V.I. and I can get Puerto Rico. Don't worry. Add them to the list. I clearly remember in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo, here it is pre-Internet, pre-Whatsapp, pre-Facebook. People literally were waiting in lines that went about a mile to use the phone. You had to wait to get ice. There was the Virgin Islands, a colony of the U.S. was waiting two weeks without any ships of food coming in the island. There were the New York Times reported about the wild rasta men wielding machetes. Well, yeah, we had to wield machetes because there were trees in the road and there was no equipment. So cut the trees down. So it's so relevant. And then we became militarized because then in comes the National Guard and these tankers are running down an island that it's as big as Manhattan with a quarter of the people. So there, and then fast forward now and Maria and Irma happened and there's FEMA, again, brutalizing and or under fall while you didn't get water damaged. This is when that, you know, like just the whole underfunding of FEMA. So the same conversations are happening internally as well as internationally is something that we look at or we should be looking at here as well. And that's so incredibly true and this sense of what does it mean to have art conversations, cultural conversations that are happening in a South-South trajectory so that there's a kind of legibility that comes forward or recedes in different contexts, but what would it mean to centralize a text like this in a South-South dialogue, in a direct South-South dialogue and the kinds of conversations, platforms that would come out of that. That's so true. I mean, if I may add, one of the things that the project has the potential to do is to have this more public dialogue within spaces where it doesn't tend to happen which should be within an artistic realm about accountability. Because I think, you know, there were many of articles, I mean, Jonathan Katz says, you know, this wonderful book about the earthquake and it's the big truck that came by and left behind a disaster. Talking about how much the aid effort, right, quote-unquote help left behind a disaster and in a sense, you know, this conversation is about those who are left having to live with that disaster. You know, and something anecdotal that, you know, important to note, I'll never forget, you know, several years afterwards, you know, because of what it did to the economy, for example, that a cab ride that used to be something affordable would now be quoted to you in US dollars because the presence of the international community for the years that they had funding was there for so long that it jacked up the prices on everything and you come home and you're being quoted in US dollars and it's like, and the price, it's not just you're being quoted in US dollars, the actual amount is met for an aid worker who has a per diem. That's something, that is very real. Literally now $3,000 and they're outpricing anybody and things aren't so, you can't afford it and then they're going to leave and then we're at this and you're like, well, what's going on here? And we don't even need to talk about the investors that are coming now and buying up property that people can't afford to fix because then they're insured for X amount of dollars, but they're only getting, they're under insured or not insured or not getting their money that they thought they were going to get and so they can't afford to fix and so their house is in ruins and so somebody comes in and buys up a whole track of property and then it's gone. No, very much. And Kanesa, what you said is spot on. Guy's work really, the corpus of work, his work does this. It really looks at South-South context to say in some of his works, well, this could happen in Haiti, this could also happen in Port-au-Prince, this could happen in Rio, this could happen here, it could happen anywhere where such circumstances unfold. So do we have time? No, we do not have time for one more questions. All right. Oh, we can do one more? All right. Yes, one more. I will end the songs, I'm sorry. I was wondering whether the singing and the text, was it your choice or was it written in the text and if it was yours, how did you come up with it? It was beautiful. It was amazing. There is an indication, several places in the text, I think it says women's voices wafted in, something like this. So there's a few indications in the text that song might be present. Part of my thrill in getting Dr. Ulysse to work with us is in part having her, the many performance languages she speaks, of course, theatrical languages, song languages, but also a kind of, I can't help but hear an academic thought in the language when she speaks and I was so excited about all of those languages being together in the material and knowing that there is this trove of musical knowledge that Gina would bring to the table. So we kind of talked through, the first thing we did was talk through some songs and selected the songs and placed them and then began kind of arranging them with the text. And I just say something about the chance, right? So Saint-Philomen, it's too Saint-Philomen, the martyr Virgin, right? So in terms of us playing with all of this, Grandos Clemency.  It's Grandos Clemency. And then Saint-Marie Madeleine, which is one of my favorite chants, especially because it seems like F-A-K-A Twigs is all about Magdalene nowadays, anyway. And I'm like, you need to know this song. And it's Saint-Marie Madeleine, Priez-vous-les-en-jour? Attention, Grandos Clemency. And it's the song that's sung just before a ceremony gets to turn to the more plio part. And it's to Saint-Marie Madeleine, who knew that God had risen and was the only one who believed it. Pray for the angels. Because there is a God. Hello. Yeah, something like that. Hello. And the third one. Oh. Oh, Trumble, Theatrumble. Well, Trumble, Theatrumble, this was really a love thing in terms of like, my students are coming back. It's actually Nwae-nape-Nwae. It's due as we. And after the earthquake, Nwae-nape-Nwae-Nwae-Nwae-Nwae-Nwae. After the earthquake, I took license and changed the words to Trumbling, The Earth is Trambling. Trambling, The Earth is Trambling. As we should just see us tremble again, Kacha. As we should just see us tremble again, Kacha. Save the lives of your children because we are trembling. Drowning. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you put the asian dialogue in a good way. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Well, we had to bring her in. Yes, you did. You had to. Oh, my God, this is great. You guys, thank you again. Kanaeza, Judy, Gina, Cheyenne for humanizing further Jesus Human Theater. And thank you to Stephanie and Frank for making this happen. Yes, thank you, Frank. And thank you, Christian, for a wonderful discussion. Yes, thank you. My pleasure.


Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Gabriel Pinder from Neolithium. How are you today, Gabriel? Oh, fantastic, Tracy. How are you? Well, certainly fantastic is the right way to start this interview discussion, because the output of news since January, actually since December, has been incredible, and the news has been substantial. You made a deal with the largest EV battery company in the world, CATL, prior to the holidays, and they just recently announced that they're going to increase their investment in Neolithium. So how about we start there? Yes. Now, we have been working with CATL for a while. They have looked at the asset. They have done a whole bunch of work. As you know, they have massive plans. They're building plans in Germany. They're looking at Jakarta. They're looking at the U.S. They're expanding their plans in China. And for every one of those plans, they will need more and more and more materials. So that's why they're talking to us about lithium. So it's a so far it's a it's a good relationship that we have with them. Their director is joining, I think, this month, our board. So that's that's all fantastic news, really. Well, I'll tell you, speaking of fantastic news, why CATL selected of course, Neolithium, one of our analysts did a top seven reasons why Neolithium was one of the most exciting lithium companies in the entire world presently. So I would like to know what you what you deem to be the most competitive reasons why an investor should be looking at Neolithium. Yes. So we did we did talk a few times about the quality of the asset. We we have one of the lowest impurities project in the market. As you know, we are targeting to produce this is a Brian project. We're targeting to produce lithium carbonate as a as a main as a main product. And the importance of of lithium carbonate for us is that we can get there quite quickly in a very efficient way, utilizing the lowest amount of energy, saving water at the same time. Because the the key to do all of this is having low impurities. When you have low impurities, you have less chemicals, less reagents to put into your brain. And then you can get quicker and faster and in a more efficient way to lithium carbonate. So those are all very good news, very good reasons, really. So, of course, all of you out there who are new to the lithium sector and understanding the importance of lithium to the EV battery, you may appreciate that Neolithium was named to the 2021 OTCQX Best 50. I know you're very humble and understated, Gabriel, but can you talk to us about this and why you think you had such a good year last year and what we should anticipate for this year? Well, I think like most of junior companies, we our price was quite depressed. We listed at around a dollar Canadian at around a dollar to a dollar ten. And then we did a couple of capital raises. But during 2018 and 2019, lithium carbonate price really came down from a peak of 20,000 to a very low of almost 4,000. $5,000. It was a question of demand. Demand was not there yet. Some of the some of the big lithium producer anticipated the market. They expanded production and the market was not ready to take it. Now what happened in probably the end of November and December is that the market was was able to start increasing. You see battery factories everywhere popping up and they need to secure production. And that basically improved the price of lithium carbonate from 6,000 to around $10,000 in just a question of weeks. And the juniors that are considered that are going to be the next producers in the market like like neo-lithium were benefited from that. So that's our big push. Actually, we notice a massive influx of U.S. investors also into into the trading before it was mainly Canadian we're listed in the TSX. But now we see the OTCX improving a lot. So yes, we're paying a lot of attention to the U.S. Okay, so further to this, all of you out there who of course have a lot of understanding in this particular sector will appreciate your management team. You touched on how a member from CATL will be joining your board. Is that correct? Correct. And and of course you've got Constantine Carinopoulos on your your team. Correct. And Waldo Paris as our CEO. So he was also the founder of Lithium Americas. So so it's it's a quite an experience group of people. I'm very lucky to be working with all of them. Of course, you also on top of everything in addition to CATL increasing your investment in neo-lithium. You just closed a thirty point two million dollar bought deal financing. Would you like to talk to us about the highlights of that deal? I think it was done at the right time. It was as you saw the capital appreciation was significant and we have an opportunity to get ahead of the of the game. I'll tell you usually Gabriel, I would now ask you what we should anticipate the next quarter or two. But I think there's so much news for investors to take a look at that has occurred since the new year. I'd like them to go research a company and then I'd like to invite you back for an interview to talk about what we should anticipate in two thousand and twenty one. I hope you'll join me for another interview here shortly. Oh, absolutely. We have a lot of news coming in the very very short period. So yeah, I'll be delighted to do it. Okay. Thank you so much for joining us today, Gabriel. Thank you, Tracy. See you soon.


Let's look at the effect of the state that a substance is in and the rate of the reaction. Here we're going to add some lead nitrate and some potassium iodide, both are solids at room temperature. If we put them next to each other, nothing happens. But if we take a solution of the same compounds, lead nitrate and potassium iodide and let the two bubbles run together, you notice that as soon as the water touches, the reaction occurs. So having the substance as a solution, the reaction rate is much, much faster. Here you can see if we just add water, it reacts quickly.


Welcome to Digital Asset News. My name is Rob. And today, just like the thumbnail and title suggests, there really are no more excuses for getting into Bitcoin. I mean, we've heard everything from the ESG compliant to the illicit activity to it just takes too much energy. And really, it's all going to be debunked. So we're going to talk about that. And also, we're going to take a look at two Titans and they have conflicting views as to when to invest in the crypto and digital asset. So the first things first, this is an article that broke today. And it talks about how US is the first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining center to open in Q1. And it says US will open its first nuclear-powered data center offering Bitcoin mining in the first quarter of the year, data center, and it's going to be a data center. So there may be other things in there, but it's expected to start hosting nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining, the first ones, and cloud computing services in the first quarter, the first such service in the US. In August 2021, Talon Energy partnered with US-based Bitcoin mining firm TerraWolfe to develop the Nautilus CryptoMine, a zero-carbon Bitcoin mining facility on Kimo's data's campus. And what this really comes down to is ESG compliance. I personally think it's just nonsense, but I mean, there's different companies that will give that land excuse, so whatever. So there is a report from the Center for ESG and Sustainability provides a new analysis suggesting that nuclear power does a remarkable job when measured by ESG standards and deserves increased support from the financial community. And of course, you can take a look at that here at the Center for ESG and Sustainability. So when I take a look at that, there's a couple of things. First of all, if we can just agree that this is an ESG compliant, that means that these companies, like the ones that's like, you know, Schuchster or Kevin O'Leary talks about is like, well, there's a big ESG compliant issue. Well, if you're going to use nuclear power and you get away from fossil fuels, that will alleviate that argument. And then on top of that, you're going to see, here's some people go, well, what about nuclear power because of nuclear waste and all that stuff? That's going to be awful, but not so fast. There's a couple of videos from Kyle Hill, and he's an engineer, and he just debunked all that information because it's just so old. So I'm going to link this video in the description about 18 minutes, and it really goes over in a concise way, why that's just a pretty much a ridiculous argument. And then also, if we're going to take a look at ESG compliance and the different problems that have, there was another piece from, this is Daniel Batten, Climate Tech VC, ESG analyst. And he says, look, environmentally, Bitcoin has a positive negative ratio of 31 to 1. This means Bitcoin is probably the most important ESG technology. Here's the summary. And he gives it like this, but here's how it all breaks down. He says, firstly, we're no outlier. Out of five peers, fund managers of Climate Tech, four reached a similar view to our own, and five hadn't made a company-wide opinion yet. And he states, the Washington Office of Science and Technology policy affirmed this type of mining, which was, this was in September 2022, crypto mining operations that captured vented methane, which is apparently bad for the environment, not apparently it is. We'll just say it is. To produce electricity can yield positive results for the climate. So what they're doing is they're capturing this methane that's being given off, they're powering the Bitcoin miners, and we're using something that would otherwise damage the environment. So win, win, win. So how they reach the view, and they give it a just a little breakdown. But here's the 21 ways it does. I'll link this in the description so you can view it. Here's the positive. It's the first off-grid customer for renewable operators, number one demand response for tech. And of course, you can see that in the Texas miners, places like Riot, what they do is they say, look, we want to mine Bitcoin. If we're going to do that, we will take off the excess power. If you're having a different strand of the grid, we will turn off all of our Bitcoin miners and push that back to the grid so people can use it. So again, win, win, win. Retired gas picker plants, gas picker plants, peak flow management, voltage management, so on and so forth, and the methane reduction, and of course the macro. And then there are some negatives. Can't get away from it. Network emission levels, e-waste, open up previous fossil fuel sites for people who aren't using these renewable energy sources. And of course, nuclear power is talked about. Grid load dumping. And of course, the big one, noise pollution. So that again is just one of those components like I just, as we move away from these things, the narrative gets weaker and weaker. And on top of that, the other big one that I always hear about is this, illicit activity. There was a report, and this is from Michael Morrill. We talked to this many times in the show. He is the former director of intelligence at the CIA. And this is what he came up with. He goes, look, here was my conclusion. There was two. The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin and illicit finance are significantly overstated. The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transactions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and disrupt illicit activities. But simply blockchain analysis is a highly effective tool, blah, blah, blah. So again, this is one of the reasons why you've seen the Department of Justice come out. They said, you know, we're cracking down on these places because everything's on an open ledger. I got to tell you, if I was in the cartel and I'm not anymore, but if I was, I would definitely just want to use the US dollar because it's way less difficult to track. I mean, it's just, it's just not. But if we want to do everything on an open ledger, again, another one of those narratives to fall. Anyhow, let me know what you think about that in the comment section. Let's move on to our next piece, kind of some goodish, baddish news Celsius. So they want approval for customer withdrawals of the flare token airdrop. That's great. US Bankruptcy Court authorized eligible XRP holders to receive the flare tokens due under a prior agreement. Now, before I go on, I know people next to XRP Army are going to say, well, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do this? This is just a report that came out, information. So when I find out something, I'll let you know. This was signed by Judge Martin Glenn, US Bankruptcy Court, Sundance from New York, authorizes Celsius to return funds transferred to the platform. That sounds good. After the company filed for bankruptcy on July 14, I don't know who was transferring funds to Celsius after July 14, maybe people who had collateralized loans. But if you do that after July 14, you're going to get some money back, which is good for you. I, however, have six figures locked up and that was before July 14, so that's just how it is. Customers are allowed to withdraw funds, transfer the platform after the bankruptcy patrician. The withdrawals will need to be approved by the appointed committee of creditors and should the transfer amount exceed 40 grand. So the good news is they did greenlight a FLARE token airdrop to eligible creditors. FLARE, which is going to be a DeFi for XRP, you're going to be able to get that at some point. Celsius itself qualifies to receive 150 million tokens, valued around 0.04 cents on Wednesday. So just, I would imagine they will be dumping that in the market to pay back things. And that's the goodish-ish news. Now, there's a big question, which is where should we be going? Where should we buy? When should we buy? There's two conflicting camps here. And this right here is Dan Moorhead, and he says, look, Bitcoin's bottom and you should start buying right now. It'll soon make the early gains. He is the CEO of Pantera and he said a couple of things that were interesting. First, Moorhead compared Bitcoin's 54% drawdown from January 1st to January 17th, 2023 to Tesla, Meta and PayPal stock, which all tanks slightly more around 60%. I think that's a weird thing to compare it to those stocks, but yeah, I suppose so. I mean, I guess. Blockchain's resilience in the face of a terrible macro market for risk assets and historic idiosyncratic disasters is impressive, and I have to agree with them there. It is. I'm surprised that people have held on with diamond hands. I believe that Bitcoin has already bought them and we'll see blockchain assets continue their 13-year, 2.3x per year appreciation trend soon. So basically saying buy now. Now, that part's interesting. This part is even more interesting. Bitcoin bottom or not, DeFi clearly the next crypto cycle. This is from, there's a scenario where people will offer DeFi and apps. And it's like the average person will have apps on their phone that give them access to DeFi where they'll be able to engage in financial transactions without banks, brokers, lower fees, global liquidity, and no centralized exchanges. And markets are operating 24-7. The internet, but for finance, however to do that more institutional capital needs to come into DeFi. This is why I'm always harping on just a little regulation and just to get some clarity so we can have this institutional capital so people can get access to it. For them to go through DeFi, there's going to be some kind of maker-taker volume on the other side. So we need to have a little more liquidity in here, but I think it is the future and I think it could be big. So that is just the first part that Dan Moorhead talks about. And here's the second, Raul Powell. Love Moratim. He's got some opinions. And he says, look, he goes, you need to wait before March 2023. Now this could be a grifter type of assessment, but some of it makes sense. And he says this, it boils all down to this. Powell believes that we are nearing the bottom of the sell-offs in crypto, three areas that come to his inclusion, rates have changed interest rates, rates have changed the dollar, rates have changed the commodity prices. The narrative you will see is that macro is about to be terrible. So all assets must fall. Look for the turn in the next six months. Central Bank will say, unemployment is coming up, inflation is coming down. That's when you should have to go in heavy. Here's my assessment. I have no idea. I don't think anybody really has a crystal ball and knows anything what's going on. So what I do is I just dollar cost average. And I will buy every single bottom for Bitcoin. That's the beauty of it, because I just dollar cost average every day. Around $40 or so. I think I might actually might increase that a little bit as time goes on, but we'll see how it goes. So again, I don't really care what happens. I just don't want a long run in two, three, four years. Probably rewarded. And that's my outlook. So let me actually think about that and then to finish up Cardano. Everybody's favorite ghost chain. Nah, nah.  This is pretty good. Cardano based over collateralized stablecoin Jed to launch next week. And if you aren't, I wouldn't didn't really know what's going on. That actually reached out to me and wanted me to talk about it. And here we go. So and of course, before we go on, no, they're not giving me any money to talk about this is just an article that was interesting. Jed will be backed by other tokens and requires more than 400% in collateral value to be posted before it is issued to a user. So this is Cardano's stablecoin. This over collateralized mechanism would allow Jed's value to hold stably during market stress and prevent a repeat of Terra, the infamous stablecoin, which was algorithmic. It's expected to go live on over 40 Cardano based dApps on launch. The Cardano dApp ecosystem locks up over $72 million worth of tokens as of Wednesday. So I'm just going to link this in the description. I'm going to do something different. It's a little spoon feeding it to you. I'm going to have you make the decision. So this is an explainer video. It's about three minutes long. You can watch that link the description. This is the medium article about why Jed should be called an over collateralized stablecoin and not an algorithmic stablecoin. And you can check those out. Now, as far as like the ghost chain, I say that in jests, look, I have a Cardano state pool, I believe in Cardano, things going to do great things, but it really comes down to utility. And to talk about that in that light, I'm going to have Mickey Watkins on again from World Mobile Token. And just as far as utility goes, you know, they're already up and running. They're already running 1.69 terabytes for telecommunications across parts of Africa. And all guess what? They're coming to America. And guess who's going to have one of those at their sports facility? Who knows? So I will be doing that interview today. I'll release that hopefully tomorrow. And that is it for today. So look, if you liked today's video, do me a favor, give me a thumbs up, consider subscribing. Everything we talk about on this channel is time sensitive. That's it for today. I appreciate you stopping by. I do, and I'll see you on the next one.


There's krill oil, it is originates from shrimps just found in North Atlantic area. Does those have the rule of fishing outside water or even if they are inside and die it's okay. Okay, when it comes to the, so you're talking about the oil extracted from shrimps you're saying? For krill, krill. It is shrimp but called krill. Start of shrimp, okay. Okay, let me just explain one issue about the fish. Yeah. When we talk about fish, the scale fish which is halal, there are only two things about it. Number one, that it should have scales. Number two, it should have been fished where it was alive when it came into your control. So for example, either you fish it out and it's alive and then it dies later on, it's fine. But if there is a fish which was floating on the water and it was dead, it is halal for us. However, when we talk about commercial fishing, where these huge vessels go and you know, they put in this net of you know, long area and then it's tons and tons of fish are trapped in it. As long as the fish were trapped in that net when they were alive, that's fine. If they die after coming into the net, it's halal. For example, you are fishing and you had about, let's say two, three hooks there with the bet. And one fish comes in and it's trapped. You don't want to take it out, you still want to wait for other two bets to be occupied, waiting for other fish to come in. While you're waiting, the first one dies. But because it died after it came into your control or position, it is halal for you. And so as far as the issue of, you know, so scale fish is concerned, if there's no issue of the fisherman or the fisher woman to be Muslim, there is no issue of Bismillah, there is no issue of slaughtering it, no. The main thing is that it should be when you caught it, it was alive, whether it came out of the water or it came in your net and then it died. So any kind of egg or oil made from the fish, which is halal, is also permissible. Now that special case that you asked, I have to just go through my email to check because I think this question came and I'm asking my son to later on all these questions of this part put together. Okay, maybe go to the next question while I look at this. Okay, thank you. We are now going to be serving Tabarak and to just assure you all, Al-Spitsira is halal, so no issues on that front, inshallah. Okay, I have the answer for Monoriba's question about krill. Yeah, this is a question somebody sent to me in 2014, June. And my answer there is I looked at this oil, krill oil, although krill looks similar to shrimp but it is not from the shrimp family and so its oil would not be okay for us. This is as far as consuming that oil is concerned. What about using it for ointment or rubbing on use? If we can... What? He's mentioning that krill is the best source of omega-3. Okay, but since it is not actually from the shrimp family, it would not be permissible to consume it. Okay. Thank you. We do have a lot of questions to get through, so if we can just try and keep our questions as brief as possible. Do we have any on the... We have quite a few on the later side. Thank you very much.


We are to explore concept of emotions, it is now the time to understand how these emotions are basically attained and what different theories are reflecting about these emotions. Suppose evolutionary theory of emotion, the concept is that feeling of love and affection is the basic emotion and lead the people towards excitement and the situation in which they can live together or they can reproduce ideas, generations and different relations. So, there should be good and pleasant relationship between the people who will live together. And for this, the second situation of feeling of fear, people move away from it. Relations end or work, people who will be born understand that we have to distort those relations. We have to reduce the hatred, increase the love and increase the pleasantness. And in unpleasant situations, the other person is feeling uncomfortable. So, comfortability is human nature, it is in pleasantness, in honour, in acceptance, in the acceptance of expression. And in the way of expression, we should express ourselves and listen to the other person. Listen, expression is a more perfect way to express our emotions. In this, there are dangerous things that can lead us to an undangered situation. And that unpleasantness, which is the truth, sometimes such things happen. So, we have to lower down while expressing. So, we have to prepare our body that whenever we are expressing, we are expressing with low profile. So, these emotions will start managing us. Similarly, we see that the emotions motivate us. The abilities inside our body reconcile, energise us. There is a double-up situation in which we get motivated, we get excited, we get empowered. And we get such stimulus, which we do not understand. And we are ready to complete that task and we are ready to move that task. And we are going to do that work. The thing we understand is the acceptance of expression. It is respect. It is sharing with other people's ideas. It is participation. And it is a regard. Every thing cannot be regarded. But it can be heard. It is not necessary to act on it. It should be acted on everything. But the chance of expression should be given. And there is a fact in it that emotions are the means of our success. How it is a more possible way that we are feeling emotions. And we are definitely leading and moving towards the success of the event. Because we have energies, we have hope, we have success. It shows us that there is no doubt in it. And we avoid using these words. We need to use good positive words with full impression, full expression, and with full confidence. There is another theory in it. Jam, Lang theory of emotion. It is about physical ability. That we energize ourselves by physical expressions. And our body movements are like this. We are trying to run. We are trying to reach there. So when we have prepared ourselves, we have equipped ourselves. That we are running the race. Yes, we will complete it. And when we come into running the race, then accompanied situation, when we start, then after coming into that situation, we energize ourselves. And we keep on increasing. And then the next success is doubled up. When we are winning the others. If we take one step forward, we think we got successful. Emotions are external situations that we control or understand. And when we don't believe in the expression, then we reflect our expression. We prepare ourselves. Someone said a sentence and we are ready for his excitement. Emotions are expressed. After that, it is expressed in some way. If there is happiness, then it is expressed in happiness. If there is sorrow, then we stand up for sorrow. We walk and then we feel that yes, this is the news of sorrow. And in this, the reactions, the reactions of emotions, someone else expressed it and we answered it. For that too, we too are ready. We don't get up. We give some attention, sit down. And we don't express it in that way. We turn our face to the other side. We change the situation. Physically, we move from that situation. That expression is with us to control ourselves. And in this, we try to control our physical reactions. That is very helpful for the control and to understand the emotional concept expression of emotions. Thank you very much for understanding.