Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “language is fossil poetry.” If that's true, then Báyò Akómoláfé is one of the most remarkable archaeologists and excavators of language's hidden meanings and of our shared human past.
What I love about Báyò is his capacity to reformulate, reimagine, reconfigure, and remember. He works with language in a way that deepens our understandings of what's true and real, and also what is untrue and unreal. He weaves those understandings together to help us move towards the boundaries of conventional life, where we might truly learn, grow, and discover.
He's an author, a speaker, a teacher. He's also the executive director of The Emergence Network and the chief host of the wildly popular online/offline course and festival, we will dance with mountains. But another way we might talk about Báyò is that he's a self-styled trans-public intellectual, which is a concept imagined together with and inspired by a much more ancient idea of a shamanic priesthood of the Yoruba healer trickster Eshu, who we talk about in our conversation.
It's possible that you'll hear some of Báyò's formulations and be struck with a sense of, "what does that mean?" In fact, I hope that’s the case! And I invite you to deepen into that encounter. That when faced with the unknown, you’re not immediately and unconsciously repulsed by it. Rather, you stop and ask, "What is the trick here? What is hiding inside these words? What is waiting to break open a belief or way of seeing that I need to let go of? That no longer serves me or the world?"
Show Notes:
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#82 Fossil Poetry (with Báyò Akómoláfé)