• Digging, Flapping, Churning, Soaring
• Zandria F. Robinson (bio)

my sister and i created wondrous shadow worlds for ourselves when we were girls. We were dancers on clouds and underground, or we had to lie still under floor planks with heavy boots plodding above us, or we were mean teachers in one-room schoolhouses with unruly children, or we were grandmothers being monstrously magical and impossibly old for no good reason. Quite often we were flying, free or in spaceships. No one could tell me I wasn't out there somewhere on another planet; Star Trek: The Next Generation just got canceled before Captain Jean-Luc Picard and them found me, which is just as well because, to this day, I don't want anybody to know exactly where I am. We sat on the very top branches of the two pine trees Daddy planted for us when we were born, watching what Anansi the Spider and Bruh Fox was up to. And we almost always had swords, even in that classroom. We were ghosts and dead and deadly.

Outside of the goings on of these worlds, I recall being periodically preoccupied as a girl with where Ms. Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers were taking us. Mama sang all the songs on the oldies station, whether the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin,'" or Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair," or anything Temptations, with equal vigor, like she hadn't heard each song in many years, when in reality they were in such regular rotation that my sister and I would be going about our everyday lives and suddenly burst out, "Parsley, saaaage, rosemary, and thyme!" Nonetheless, Mama was transported somewhere far away by these songs and so were we, as much as we allowed them a spot on the soundtracks to our sword fights and space travels and grandmother tales. But when the opening bass beat, the all aboard, the altar call, of the Staple [End Page 6]

Jeffrey Gibson, another side inside of you, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, glass beads, and artificial sinew inset into wood frame, 82 × 74 × 2.5 in. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Singers's "I'll Take You There" would come on, Mama's drama reached new registers. She would sharply shout, "Hey!," snapping us back to the present of our funky bodies in our usually hot car like a boomerang. It was startling, the shout and the special joy with which she sang and waved her hands, seeming to let Jesus take the wheel and making me nervous. It was also, I felt, a betrayal. Because I would look over at Mama, eyes closed sometimes while she was singing, fingers steady snapping, face so peaceful and joyous, and I just knew she knew the place and exactly how to get there. I wondered why in the hell she wouldn't just take us there instead of violin lessons. [End Page 7]

Jeffrey Gibson, brighter days, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, glass beads, and artificial sinew inset into wood frame, 96.125 × 107.875 in. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

In church, they sang of the hereafter and heaven and yonder and elsewhere and going and going and going there. Where and when was there? The imagination, made manifest in their voices laying on top of one another, was the fuel, the ignition, the propulsion, for where we were trying to go. I came to know death, standing over bodies in caskets as choirs sang above, as freedom and peace and escape to this yonder. Heaven as a place and an ontology. I was still scared to die then, but I asked the spirits that visited me to show me. Over and over, they led me to the floors and the tops of woods, to the rivers, to the oceans, and to the electric space just above my head, which, in a good moment, led to the cosmos. [End Page 8]

For my sister and me, the material world overlapped with our interior worlds, the infinite but fragile container for our imaginations, in ways we didn't and still don...

• 挖掘，拍打，搅动，飙升
• 赞德里亚·鲁滨逊（生物）

当我还是女孩的时候，我姐姐和我为自己创造了奇妙的影子世界。我们是在云端和地下的舞者，或者我们不得不躺在沉重的靴子上方的地板下，或者我们是指一间教室里有不守规矩的孩子的老师，或者我们是祖母般的魔力，而且变老了不可能。好理由。我们经常在自由，自由或飞船中飞行。没有人能告诉我我不在另一个星球上的某个地方。星际迷航：下一代刚在让·卢克·皮卡德（Jean-Luc Picard）上尉被解雇之前，他们就找到了我，这同样是因为直到今天，我都不希望有人知道我的确切位置。当我们出生时，我们坐在爸爸为我们种植的两棵松树的最上面的树枝上，看着蜘蛛侠阿南西和布鲁·福克斯在做什么。而且，即使在那个教室里，我们几乎总是有剑。我们是鬼魂，死了又死了。

在这些世界之外，我记得自己经常被一个女孩迷住，她是Mavis Staples女士和Staple Singers女士带我们去的地方。妈妈会在旧歌台上演唱所有歌曲，无论是妈妈和爸爸的“ California Dreamin”，还是Simon和Garfunkel的“ Scarborough Fair”，或任何具有相同活力的诱惑，就像她从未听过很多首歌一样。十年中，实际上他们经常轮换，以至于我和我的妹妹过着我们的日常生活，突然间突然冒出来：“欧芹，sa菜，迷迭香和百里香！”尽管如此，这些歌曲把妈妈带到了很远的地方，所以我们也一样，只要我们允许他们在我们的剑术，太空旅行和祖母故事的配乐中占据一席之地。但是当开始的低音敲打时，钉书钉全部落在祭坛上[End Page 6]

杰弗里·吉布森（Jeffrey Gibson），你的另一面，2020年。画布上的丙烯酸，玻璃珠和人造筋插入木框中，尺寸为82×74×2.5英寸。由Sikkema Jenkins＆Co.提供。

歌手的“我会带你去那里”问世，妈妈的戏剧获得了新的记录。她会大声喊道：“嘿！”，像飞镖一样，把我们带回我们那辆通常很热的汽车里时髦的身体。她唱歌和挥舞着手，这真是令人吃惊，高喊和特别的喜悦，似乎让耶稣动了车轮，使我感到紧张。我觉得那也是背叛。因为我会看着妈妈，所以有时她唱歌时眼睛会闭着，手指会平稳地响动，脸是如此的平静和欢乐，我只知道她知道那个地方以及确切地知道如何到达那里。我想知道为什么在地狱里她不只是带我们去那里，而不是小提琴课。[结束第7页]

杰弗里·吉布森（Jeffrey Gibson），“明媚的日子”，2019年。画布，玻璃珠和人造肌腱上的丙烯酸镶嵌在木框架中，96.125×107.875英寸。由Sikkema Jenkins＆Co.提供。

在教堂里，他们唱着以后，天堂，更远处和其他地方的歌声。那里的时间和地点？在他们的声音中，彼此之间相互叠放的想象力是我们试图去往的燃料，点火装置，推进力。我知道死亡，随着合唱团在上面吟唱，站立在棺材上的尸体，自由与和平，并逃到了那边。天堂是一个地方和一个本体。那时我仍然害怕死，但是我让拜访我的精神向我展示。一遍又一遍，他们带领我到达了树林的地面和顶部，河流，海洋以及我头顶上方的电气空间，这在好时机促成了宇宙。[结束第8页]

对于我姐姐和我来说，物质世界与我们的内部世界重叠在一起，这是我们想像的无限但脆弱的容器，以我们过去和现在仍然没有的方式……