Letter From The Editor
Vibe with this issue by listening to Austen’s custom Spotify playlist.
This month’s guest editor is Austen Smith. Austen (they/them) is a masculine of center, non-binary writer, editor, hoodoo practitioner, and tarot reader. Their work explores healing the spiritual impacts of oppression, reducing communal harm, and co-imagining liberation as a somatic experience in addition to an environmental reality. Austen is based in East Band Cherokee, Osage, and Shawnee territory, also known as Louisville, KY.
Ritual is intentional repetition. Personified incantations. It’s the act of turning our bodies into altars and our actions into offerings. Regardless of who we present ourselves to be, the outcomes we generate from our thoughts and behaviors reveal whether or not we are who we say we are. Rituals are commitment ceremonies to what and who we believe in, and it’s essential to liberation. What we pay attention to grows.
Growing up I always thought rituals were either performed in the church or in secret. The mysterious air around ritualism made it feel holy beyond measure, too pure for a common consumer like myself. No one told me ritual would be the bridge that could connect me to my ancestors, my culture, my community, myself. The unspoken fear about Black folks’ spiritual capabilities is an intentionally placed obstacle on our path to collective freedom. When they stole us from our Mother Land, they made sure to demonize our indigenous beliefs and practices. This issue is a testament to some of the routes we have navigated in order to find our way back to ourselves, a core connection for building new worlds.
The writers and visual artists for this issue of TAUNT have been working their asses off. Louisville’s creative community is, as always, flourishing in the midst of all the injustice. It has only made us stronger. It has only reinforced our voices. We will record this moment and all the moments to come the right way, in our own words. Our legacy will be documented so that we know exactly what to do should oppressors try us again. That’s what our ancestors did for us, and that’s what we will do for our descendants.
Our issue is full of everyday rituals, accessible to those seeking sanctuary within. Whether it’s to release grief, conjure joy, or ground down and find your center, it’s all here. These writers and visual artists connected back to their roots in order to share with us how they’re healing through the chaos and violence projected onto black bodies every day. Let them take you on their journey and show you that with forethought and intention, anything can become ritual. Sweeping the floor can easily become a ritual for clearing your path of oppression. Staying in bed a little longer becomes a ritual to honor the deep rest our ancestors deserved. A simple shower can become a ritual for washing away the day’s labor, anxiety, and insecurity. A meal can become a time-traveling device. The magic is in the mundane, and these artists did a phenomenal job of bringing it to the surface.
Let these rituals be a salve. Let them be a glimpse. Let them be a constellation that reunites you with your own power. If this issue finds you, it was meant to. To activate the magic in this issue, pour libations for the ancestors that prophesied this moment in time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. It’s up to us.
<3 Austen
Table of Contents
Cover art by Remi
Remi focuses on creating digital/graphic pop art self-portraits to reflect her ever-changing modes of performance and presentation. Ms. Dior is a student in the Pan-African Studies department with a concentration in Black Feminist Studies and Critical Trans Theory. She's a country queen whose ritual seeks to be in the right relationship with her ancestors, the natural forces and spirits of time and place.
The Balm Right Here:
Communing with Plants
Amber Burns-Jones &
Kendrick Burns
I begin my daily practice with plant caretaking, before attending to my other obligations. Prioritizing this time is an act of resistance. It is a reminder that my humanity comes before what society asks of me. I share my home with over 60 plants, mostly philodendrons, succulents, and hoyas. Soil is sprinkled across surfaces. It gathers under my nails and between my children’s toes. I lean on the practice of plant caretaking because of the daily lessons that plants offer.
The Tea in Ritual:
A Guide
Arielle Clark
I’ve become a tea enthusiast over the past year through owning and founding Sis Got Tea, Louisville’s first Black-owned, woman-owned, LGBTQ-owned tea café. I went from a McDonald’s sweet tea type of gal to a person who has a catalog of teas in her home. From sweet to earthy to bitter to smoky to herbal. I’ve got it all. Over the time that I’ve delved into the realm of this multidisciplinary drink, I’ve learned that tea is not only for oral enjoyment, but also for healing, grieving, celebrating, and for looking inward. I’ve learned that tea is both an outer and inner experience. So let me take you through the steps of the tea in ritual.
Breathing Life into Death:
Creating New Rituals
to Process Grief
Miracle Stewart
Death has always been an integral part of the Black community outside of trans-generational trauma. Most families have a designated person who handles the funeral arrangements and gathers everyone together for beautiful and often vivacious homegoing services. I am the child of that chosen death care worker.
Lovecraft Louisville
Gabe Tomlin
Science fiction and horror, at their best, offer up the supernatural as a means to wrestle with the nature of our reality. These genres feel like appropriate mediums to explore the realities of Black folks in America because the leap from science-fiction and horror to reality is not much of a leap at all. Watching Holy Ghost, the third episode of HBO’s Lovecraft County, made it harder for me to love my city. Now, it is difficult to see Louisville as anything other than a haunted house.
Body Work
Jasmine Wigginton
For something to become a ritual, it needs to be practiced daily.
It needs to become a part of you, a way to connect the intention of the mind with the body.
It is deep work.
Taking the spiritual, mental, and processing it into the physical.
Your body is a vessel for transformation.
Thank You To Our Friends 🖤
Spencer Jenkins
Spencer graciously welcomed TAUNT under his umbrella at Queer Kentucky to help us launch. This is a partnership, a friendship, and a momentum that cannot be stopped. Please visit and support Queer Kentucky’s fight for LGBTQ+ visibility in the Bluegrass State.
David Welker
David Welker designed our TAUNT logo and the STATUS QUO social media teasers. He is also designing our upcoming merch (Crop tops are coming, y’all!).
Jon Fleischaker & Michael Abate
Jon and Michael were unbelievably generous with their time and encouraging of TAUNT’s mission to toy with what Louisville’s media scene should look like.
Josh Moss
Thank you to Joss Moss for his mentorship and early enthusiasm for TAUNT. TAUNT appreciate’s Louisville Magazine’s collaborative spirit in helping spread the word about the new kid on the scene.
Deedra Tate
Deedra Tate and Don Meredith Co. printed our big ol’ thank you postcards. And they did the things you want most out of a printer – For the job to be fast and done right. If you’re trying to get a handwritten thank you in the mail, donate to TAUNT.
Our 300+ Donors
Folks from all over the country tossed cash TAUNT’s way during a global pandemic because they believed in Minda and the believed Louisville is a city worthy of the nation’s concern. Let’s get heard.