As Summer turns to Fall, we’re continuing to partner with the
School of Radical Attention to bring SIDEWALK STUDIES to DC. Part walking meditation, part humanities seminar, SIDEWALK STUDY will help us cultivate the poetic, the spirited, the irreducible forms of shared presence beyond commodity, beyond policy.
We’re after sacred attention: that portal to the infinite, that vital precursor to anything meaningful we do, be it love or labor. The process is simple: we’ll meet up at Point A, read an excerpt, wander to Point B, practice together in a bespoke attentional exercise, and then discuss.
Attentively,
Kanika, Josh & Aaron
Our theme for October is GHOSTS! We'll be hosting the following Studies:
In his sweeping survey of the rise of secularism, Charles Taylor reveals how the modern world has been drained of its spirits. But our supposedly disenchanted culture is still haunted by an older sense of the sacred that keeps leaking back, especially at threshold moments like birth and death. As we meander through the stones and bones of Oak Hill Cemetery, we’ll explore what it means to re-enchant our attention on hallowed grounds where the veil is thin and the self more porous.
Text: Charles Taylor's A Secular Age
Date: Friday, October 16th @ 1-3pm
Location: Oak Hill Cemetery [map]
In “The Spirit of Freedom” sculpture outside the African-American Civil War Museum, we see the ghosts of freedom fighters and their families gazing into the distant future with hopes of abolition and liberation. They, like the freed men & women of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, remind us that the dead are still trying to tell the living something, about the names we carry, about what it takes to seek justice and unshackle our selves. What do we see and hear when we open our senses to the lessons of our ancestors? We’ll time travel through the historic U Street corridor and the newly re-opened African American Civil War Museum to learn what the past wants to impress upon us.
Text: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
Date: Saturday, October 31st @ 3-5pm
Location: African-American Civil War Memorial [map]
