Busy being black
“This podcast is a powerful and insightful uncoverings about what it means to be both black heritage and LGBTQ” Jess Creighton opened this session with Josh Rivers from Busy Being Black in the best way.
Josh spoke about storytelling being like archeology, story tellers are the archeologist. Josh looked at this podcast as a catharsis which he found by asking and answering questions. “Looking at the multitudinous of our lives”.
In an emotional interview, Jess and Josh discuss if the podcast is a protest, though Josh says it’s a compendium of many small instances which discuss the lives of people in this community and in doing this in some ways it does sound and is a protest because this is part of their world.
The key message of this podcast is that ‘it’s for us and by us’ so how much is it for the ‘outsiders’. Josh said that this podcast is about creating a space for this duality, “The goal of Busy is to create a space in which our stories are centered and we are not contending with...and we are always having a conversation about blackness or queerness in opposition to whiteness”.
Josh discussed how the content is created and why this content is a good platform for helping those outside with understanding the narrative in this group. These stories are important, this podcast is preserving these conversations and this is an archive.
Jess asked if this process has healed Josh. His answer is something everyone should listen to right now in difficult times.
Josh Rivers what do you hope for, is something he asks at the end of Busy, his answer “I really hope that black people can live with abandon, where we can pursue our joy, where we don’t have to worry about being killed or discriminated against or incarcerated...”. Join the session to hear Josh’s insightful words.