Save Me A Seat at the Table for When I Get Home

The Poetry Foundation describes an ode as a formal written work meant to celebrate a person, place, or thing in varying forms. In this way, we can think of the work Solange produces as an ode to Black people, and more specifically, Black women. Similarly, Richards’ work is an ode to craft and the human mind. Solange’s ode is shaped by her attention to Black aesthetics of Afrofuturism and the like, while Richards’ is shaped through ceramics. 

In segments 5 and 10 of the video, Solange’s futuristic vision takes flight (no pun intended). It is where she literally places the reader in a sci-fi/fantasy world as we travel through space and time to the tracks “Exit Scott (interlude)” and “S McGregor (interlude)” from When I Get Home. The idea with these segments, like much of the video, is to showcase memory (the past) as an important piece of imagining a new future (and even a new present).

Here, Solange is using centering to build worlds as an ode to Black women. She highlights their resistance and resilience in the face of a world that leaves them with hearts that “know no delight,” and allows them to create their own. In this way, Solange prioritizes and celebrates the Black community as the creators and tastemakers of culture, encouraging the viewer to realize that “the glory is in you,” as Master P says in “Interlude: The Glory is in You.”

To come to the center, we all must have the audacity to dream. To create. To imagine a world that is different from the one we live in now. To use all of our experience to engage in the process of creation so that we can all understand and be understood. To live lives fully and on our own terms.

By creating work that allows an audience to come to center, Solange is telling us all to be No Limit Soldiers. 

Artists like Master P, Solange, and OutKast see Black people, hear them, and instead of making them shrink so that they can sit at a crowded table that doesn’t want them as guests to begin with, they have made their own tables by hand and pull up chairs to that one instead. 

We had to find that rhythm, that glory, given the circumstances and the cards that we were dealt. We have to be allowed to celebrate that. It just turned into a much bigger idea – outside of them I wanted to speak to other black men and women who really saw the sense of seeking independence and empowerment, like Master P. - Solange

When we speak of making our own tables and things like that, we find ourselves looking at how the artists mentioned work intentionally. It’s all about the aesthetics, but what are they? Well, for the likes of Solange and OutKast, it’s Afrofuturism, which I have already mentioned briefly, but it’s also about the Afro-surrealist aesthetic. 

We, as Black people, have historically not been presented as regal beings in society. I feel like if there is anyone who has expressed that from day one, it’s been Master P. He’s always been so, so incredibly regal, even in the way he expressed through his wealth — all of the gold, but also the wealth of independence. - Solange

These aesthetics are (without explicitly saying so) tied to/inspired by a centering practice. They promote an active and conscious reshaping of the present by placing Black people at the center of a work. And Solange uses them to her advantage, guiding her audience through her creative process. When I think about how these aesthetics, Richards, and Solange all come together, I am reminded of this bundle of quotes from Richards: 

1. “We come to know ourselves, and others, through the images we create…these images are disclosures of ourselves to ourselves. They are life-revelations”  2. “When one stands like a natural substance, plastic but with one's own character written into the formula, ah then one feels oneself part of the world, taking one's shape with its help but a shape only one's own freedom can create.” 3. “You can do very many things with [humans]: push us together and pull us apart and squeeze us and roll us flat, empty us out and fill us up. You can surround us with influences, but there comes a point when you can do no more. The person resists, in one way or another (if it is only by collapsing, like the clay). His own will becomes active”

Black aesthetics allow us to resist and take hold of our own (active) will. It is for this reason that we can make a full circle (see what I did there?) back to the final time we see Solange dancing with the holy ghost figure. 

She is actively using black aesthetics and historical connection to drive home Master P’s words as he says: “we came here as slaves but we goin’ out as royalty” in some ways this “royalty” can be interpreted as a richness in sprit, a centeredness if you will, that comes from acknowledging ones current position and ones past in order to step into a future that is of your own making. This point is also reinforced in the final segment as Master P says, “I don’t have no limit to what I can do,” and Solange is seen dancing in white with a crowd of people.  

“His name is literally Master P.” is another point my friend had made during our conversation. There is something there about Blackness and actively awakening one’s own will through resistance to the system. It takes, in my opinion, a certain ear (for hip-hop/rap, for Blackness, etc) to appreciate and understand Master P and his music. This is a point he recognizes himself as he says on “Interlude: For Us By Us”

“I tell people all the time, ‘if you don’t understand my record, you don’t understand me, so this is not for you.’”  

which is boldly Afrofurutisic and surreal because how else could a Black man from Louisiana really sit up here and call himself a master? He is taking the language of slavery and struggle for his people and using it to rewrite the present and the future—his nod to the past presents him as a master of himself and shows how Black aesthetics can be used not to forget or gloss over the past, but to reclaim it and use it to reimagine the present and future. By taking control of the narrative through naming, he is reborn, within a centering practice that allows him to merge timelines as Solange does and reimagine his own present and future. 

In a conversation with a close friend about my capstone and the way I see Solange, said friend mentioned, “Solange [and Master P] are Black on purpose. [They] aren’t trying to create art for anyone other than Black people,” not soley for the dollar, not for the accolades, or to pull up a chair to a table already set by people who want to capitalize off of them. Master P says as much in “Interlude: For Us By Us.” 

And they offered me a million-dollar deal, and had the check ready. Said I wouldn’t be able to use my name. I was fighting my brother, because “Man, you shoulda took the million dollars!” I said, “No, what you think I’m worth? If this white man offer me a million dollars, I gotta be worth forty, or fifty... Or ten or something.” To being able to make “Forbes” and come from the Projects. You know, “Top 40 Under 40.” Which they said couldn’t be done.”

He centered himself and took a chance, in turn building an empire that allowed Black people to make their own way through No Limit Records. This was huge for rappers in the South who were often counted out by rappers (and audiences) on the North and East coasts until OutKast won ‘Best New Rap Group’ in 1995 at the Source Awards, and André 3000 made the statement “The South got somethin’ to say.” 

I think that it was really healing for me to hear Master P tell those stories. He’s affirming that we can build and create opportunities for ourselves: we don’t have to ask for permission. - Solange

The healing Solange describes in talking about Master P’s storytelling is centering. It is an example of what centering can do when we move beyond the potter’s wheel (and sometimes even beyond the written word, or music, etc). It is about community and how being in community with others, especially elders, can be wholly beneficial to artists and non-artists alike. 

There’s no way I could spend all this time talking about this exhibit without mentioning the one and only Master P in his own section. I mean, he’s literally 90% of the interludes across the final project and A Seat at the Table. Without him, there really is no project, because Solange has arranged her tracks across both albums so that the interludes become integral to the full listening experience. 

For those that don’t know Master P, aka Percy Robert Miller (Cymphonique and Romeo Miller’s dad—iykyk), is a NOLA rapper who rose to fame in the 90s and is the founder of No Limit Records, a record label built from the ground up.

He started No Limit from absolutely nothing, and every record label in the industry came to him with multi-million-dollar deals, and he constantly spoke about self-empowerment, and not giving yourself to the highest bidder, and having the foresight and the rebellion to own that and to stand firm. Especially at that time, for a black man, it was just really, really mind-blowing to me […] He’s a hero. - Solange

His importance to Solange and A Seat at the Table comes from his position as one of (if not the) first person Solange saw put themselves and their Blackness at the fore. She says, 

Once I had these ideas of someone who really, really exhibited black empowerment and independence. I couldn’t think of anyone who was more fitting than Master P. He’s someone I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for. I asked him to come in and speak for this one song, and he ended up being the most incredible storyteller. - Solange

As her hero, his contributions to the project can’t be overstated. He brings a particular energy to the album that makes his words really stick. When placed beside Richards, we realize that he is absolutely right: there is no limit to what we can do when we lean into the creative process. 

In being creative, we also force ourselves to be brave, to be bold. In Master P’s context, centering takes on multiple meanings at once, putting poetry into practice and allowing storytelling to give the project real weight. Richards says that 

poetry is truth [...] But it doesn’t invent the truth. It too must listen, to the poetry that flows inaudibly beneath all speech. So it is difficult to use words and yet to invoke the sense of life which is unspoken, unspeakable, what is left after the books are all decayed, lost, burned, forgotten. What remains after the pot has disappeared. - Richards 

Master P found the poetry in his history and, through his craft (hip hop), molded it into a centering narrative. He grounded himself through his ability to create and sing his “battle cry,” to rewrite his present and future (taking a different path than his parents/grandparents, and even other artists in the industry who would’ve taken the million dollars he was offered).  

His boldness in doing so clearly helped to center Solange and, in turn, has centered this project. We can see as much throughout, especially in segments 4 and 11. 

To say that you and what you create are limitless is to show that resistance must be an intentional and active process that starts with a single individual and, through their work, becomes an example for others to follow. This is centering.

To be a No Limit Soldier is to operate in authenticity and independence, to lean into community and let your art speak for itself.

Even if I’m not sure it’s intentional, they’re literally everywhere. In Richards’ text, in Solange’s visuals, in the words Master P says on the interludes of A Seat at the Table. We can’t escape them—I can’t escape them. Pick just about any point in the video exhibit, and you’ll find a circle (for this section, I have included video segments 2 and 3 for examples of circular visuals and language). 

Circles are connected to many things in ways that we can see and in ways that we can’t. For example, we can see the passing of time and even measure it by changes in our bodies, but we don’t see that the cycle loops: we are born, we live, we die. However, when we take on centering practices, we add to the cycle and are reborn. As many have said, what matters is how we live in the middle, and what better way to live meaningfully than to come to center through art (this is where we are reborn)? 

What’s so interesting about the motif for me is just how often I was drawn to circles as I went about pulling clips. It had gone completely over my head until I showed my first draft to my mom, who was like “The way you’re using circles is so clever!😁” and I was like “lol, girl what?😗” and then I went back to the project file and was floored at how my subconscious was picking up on all these circles, spheres, and rounded metaphors.

My engagement with them is immediate, and segment two starts with Master P’s voice on “Interlude: Pedestals,” and we are hit with the image of a circle within a circle, and people dressed in black coming to the middle. In the third sequence, the camera has flowing, rounded movements, and people are walking in circles…I mean, literally, out of the video’s 11 segments, only three do not feature circles visually, but even still, they are embedded in the language. 

Going back to Richards’ text, circles are integral to centering. She says this outright: 

As we grow to life size, our perceptions widen and deepen and grow finer in detail. A curious thing happens: and again I grasp it through a potter’s image. As we come to contain reality as our inner shape, we “fall into round.” We take the shape in which we are originally “thrown.” Awareness and behavior fuse; inner and outer dissolve to transparency. - Richards 

Ah, the circle of the potters’ wheel (even though I have never worked with pottery myself, I feel like Richards has written about it in a way that makes me feel like I have). You start by slapping a misshapen circle of clay onto the wheel, then mold it carefully into a cone, and from there you shape it any way you want as long as it’s centered on the wheel. It’s just like with music and poetry, you can sing the words anyway you’d like as long as you’ve got some of the basic technical skills down.

When looking at pottery as a metaphor, Solange further emphasizes its connections to music by discussing repetition and returning home (the act of returning to something can also be looked at as a circular process).

I think repetition at this place in my life has given me a lot of reinforcement—a lot of reinforcement to my spirit, my mind, and my body, and trying to align all of those things and really ground myself in them so that I really believe them [...]and I think so much of this album and this project, and this film is really about my body and the things that I had to do to reinforce these beliefs into my body. It’s one thing to think with your spirit; it’s another thing to actually live it through your body. - Solange

In her text, Richards has a way of coming back to the physical body. In the body is where it all takes place. By ‘it all,’ I mean centering, life, time…it’s all connected, and Solange is constantly on the move. 

Richards text opens with the following quote: 

For CENTERING is my theme: how we may seek to bring universe into a personal wholeness, and into act the rich life which moves so mysteriously and decisively in our bodies, manifesting in speech and gesture, materializing as force in the world the unifying energy of our perceptions. 

To center and be centered is to be connected with the body. It’s about being aware of it and using it to our advantage to create, as Liz Duarte shows in her video on centering clay on the potter’s wheel.

Solange is very connected to and aware of her body. It plays a huge role in her visuals, and she has talked about it a lot in interviews.

So much of this whole project is about my body. It’s one thing to feel with your spirits and another to actually feel it with your body. Repetition is a way to reinforce those mantras.” ‘When I Get Home’, then, is in part about feeling unmoored from yourself and the need to re-center. - Solange

She is always moving, always using her body to fill space, to translate words, to connect with the (universe) holy ghost figure, her ancestors. Her constant movement is repetitive and visually leads her back home to Houston and to a reimagined future where Black people can exist on their own terms (shout-out Afrofuturism!).

When art is done with the body in mind (by pottery, dancing, acting, singing, etc), we can (through centering) see how “art creates a bridge between being and embodiment,” supporting the idea that by tending to the body and creation, we can all enter our own centering practices.

This “bridge” is not always circular; it can be a line, a triangle, or any other shape. This understanding of centering also leads us back to how the term is most commonly used in wellness practices like yoga, meditation, and breathwork. The point is that the mind and body become connected.

Speaking of wellness practices and the body, the “Nothing Without Intention (interlude)” from When I Get Home speaks to the merging of the two modes of centering laid out by Richards and wellness practitioners.

In Segment 9, I use it to call attention to Solange’s movement and to how intentionally it is executed across her visuals. I think it highlights the importance of centering — it must be done with intention. Similarly, segment 8 shows the value of doing with intention — it leads you back to yourself and into the “magic” within. 

Just as Solange’s body is always moving and Richards describes the constant dialogue of centering, so too does the circle motif (which we will take more about next) reinforce the loop (of time, of the body) of centering.